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The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment was a European intellectual movement that celebrated rational inquiry, scientific research, and individual freedom. It is often called “the Age of Reason” due to its emphasis on finding natural laws that explained how people and societies should operate. This focus on reason was inspired by the Scientific Revolution, which emphasized the use of close observation, scientific experimentation, and precise calculation to understand the workings of nature.
The Enlightenment in America
Enlightenment concepts such as the emphasis on observation, experimentation, reason, and the need to re-think old ideas fit the American experience. However, these ideas also clashed with religious beliefs that were foundational to the New England colonies, where Puritans prized revelation from God over reason. The European ideas of the Enlightenment were disseminated in the colonies by way of commercial contacts, newspapers, and taverns. In taverns, men often gathered to share news from Europe and discuss new ideas. Additionally, Enlightenment ideas influenced the political documents that would be written just before the American Revolution.
The leading American Enlightenment figure was Benjamin Franklin. He did many things to spread Enlightenment ideas, such as publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack, founding a library, helping to found the University of Pennsylvania and the American Philosophical Society, and conducting scientific experiments.
The Great Awakening
As the Enlightenment questioned the place of religion in a rational society, some thinkers were concerned about the need for religion and emotion as part of human existence. This concern occurred just around the time that the ideas of the Great Awakening traveled from England to the colonies, leading to a widespread revival of religious zeal.
For example, in the 1600s, most New England colonies centered on an established Puritan church that was organized into well-regulated parishes (a small district typically having its own church and pastor). The expectations for membership in these parishes were strict, and failure to participate in church meant that an individual could not vote or participate in politics either. In this way, religion and politics were tied.
By the 1700s, a larger and larger population in these colonies was shut out of church membership. In the 1740s, itinerant preachers (preachers who travel around on horseback) such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, began spreading Great Awakening ideas in the colonies. They claimed that parish ministers were incompetent, and that the Puritan idea of predestination (the idea that God had long ago decided who would achieve salvation, and there was no way to change that) was false. These ideas appealed to the masses and invigorated colonial religious life, bringing many who had left the church back into membership in new types of churches, such as Baptist and Methodist. The Great Awakening was the first popular movement to spread through all 13 colonies.
Anglicization of the Colonies and Growing Mistrust of Imperial Control
Anglicization was the colonial adoption of English customs and traditions. It’s important to remember that colonists considered themselves to be English citizens, and this belief shaped colonial culture and politics in 18th-century North America. For example, colonial courts adopted English common law (laws established from customs and standards set by English courts). A transatlantic print culture (the availability of European books and newspapers to the colonists) helped to spread European intellectual movements, like the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening, across the colonies.
These new Enlightenment ideas of natural rights and individual liberty, however, led to growing mistrust and resistance to imperial control. The effects of more democratic religious ideas promoted by the Great Awakening spread to social and political relations as well. Generally, it seemed that the automatic deference to British authority was declining, an issue that would come to a peak with the American Revolution.
