Religious Fundamentalism During The Great Awakening

Religious Fundamentalism Religious Fundamentalism is when people revert to the original, highly orthodox beliefs of the bible. A fundamentalist is a theolo¬¬¬¬gically conservative Christian Protestant who embraces classical orthodox Protestant doctrines. Instead of using extravagant rituals, they preferred plainer methods of worship, such as praying daily and attending church regularly. They believed that all history originated from the scriptures of the Bible and based their entire life on it.
During the Great Awakening, a great religious fervor was whipped up throughout America. Many people, swept by the moving sermons from people like Jonathan Edward and George Whitefield, started to attend Church much more. The Great Awakening created a division within the Church, separating clergy between old lights and new lights. Old lights focused on the plain, theological aspect of the Church and found actions of the new lights suspicious. On the other hand, new lights chose to focus on the spiritual and emotional aspect of church, occasionally including things like dance and song in their sermons. Overall, since the old lights believed in the original values of the bible and worshipped God plainly, they could be …show more content…
The old lights preferred very orthodox practices of religion. Their sermons were highly intellectual and by consequence, difficult to be understood by the general public and were occasionally found very boring. In addition, they did not approve of the new and innovative religious practices of the new lights and found them suspicious. The old lights believed that the best way that the best way to worship the lord was through continuous daily prayer, which, since the beginning of time, has been thought of as the most common and standard way of practicing religion. Overall, the old lights, with their highly orthodox methods of practicing religion, can be considered