Compare And Contrast The Enlightenment And The Great Awakening

Two big social events happened that pushed the colonies in America towards the Revolutionary War, the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening. The Enlightenment that happened in the colonies stemmed from the Enlightenment that was also occurring in Europe, which was a movement to place a human’s capacity for reason above other factors of social status (Schultz, Mays, & Winfree, 2011). To basically summarize what was happening, at the time the Enlightenment as occurring the popular belief in society was still that of a medieval era like King Richard II in Shakespeare’s play in which rulers or anyone of social status was given that status by divinity through birthright. Pretty much the rich were staying rich and the poor were staying poor, with the assumption that this was predestination and divine right that caused a huge monopoly …show more content…
Essentially, the Enlightenment led to this Great Awakening that ended up dividing the Protestants by emotional freedom; on one side were the Old Lights who embraced aspects of the Enlightenment such as reason while condemning emotionalism, and on the other side were the New Lights who preached equality in Christ and new methods of prayer (Schultz, Mays, & Winfree, 2011). At this point these movements may seem like a religious battle more than anything, but according to Schultz, Mays, and Winfree (2011) there were five reasons why these were significant: the number of churches grew to meet demands, lower status churches began to rise in protest of aristocratic structure, religious order began to build colleges, ideas of religion and science were combined, and it severed the ties between colonies and established religious authority. Things were definitely heading strong towards a