Page "First Great Awakening" Paragraph 14

Historians have debated whether the Awakening had a political impact on the American Revolution, which took place soon after.

Heimert ( 1966 ) argues that Calvinism and Jonathan Edwards provided pre-Revolutionary America with a radical and democratic social and political ideology and that evangelical religion embodied and inspired a thrust toward American nationalism.

Colonial Calvinism was the basis for the American Great Awakening and that in turn lay at the basis of the American Revolution.

Heimert thus sees a major impact as the Great Awakening provided the radical American nationalism that prompted the Revolution.

Awakening preachers sought to review God's covenant with America and to repudiate the materialistic, acquisitive, corrupt world of an affluent colonial society.

The source of this corruption lay in England, and a severance of the ties with the mother country would result in a rededication of America to the making of God's Kingdom.

However, Heimert has been criticized for not recognizing the differences between educated and uneducated evangelists, and for not recognizing the significance of Separate-Baptists and Methodists.