Well, of course, there were some others who were associated with The Great Awakening—William Tennet and his sons stirred the Presbyterians; one named George Whitefield stirred the Anglicans.

The results of The Great Awakening were rather short-lived. They were successful for a while; this fervor was rekindled, but it would not take long before people began to, once again, change their focus from religious matters to political matters. And of course, what was successful about The Great Awakening was many-fold, no doubt. But there was a renewed interest in education and scholarship. So, as an indirect result of The Great Awakening a number of educational institutions were begun in this country that still exist today. Several universities were started as a result of the revival spirit: Princeton, Rutgers, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Washington and Lee. Many of those schools make up the “Ivy League” schools that are still around today. And, yes, they did have their origin as religious schools.

During this period of The Great Awakening, there was also a new concern about Indian missions—taking the “gospel” to the natives. And there were indeed some other good things that came about from this Great Awakening.

The attention, as I said, would not stay long on spiritual things. And one of the things which would dictate the citizenry’s attention was the sound of the drums of war, looking toward what would eventually be the Revolutionary War, and disconnecting from the crown. There would be, as regards spiritual things, religious things, as a result of the war and dislocations from families and many other things that resulted from war in that day, and result from war even today, the result that churches became weak; people became more immoral, and those sorts of things. And so, when peace came upon the land in 1783, churches—and speaking now generically across the board—churches found themselves to be in something of a weakened condition.

But, we would see, though, that with freedom, with the declaration of our independence, and winning our independence from England, there would also be a great impact on these churches. They would see that where many of them had had this connection, as well, back to England, that connection was now severed. And so, it did not take them long after the Revolutionary War to begin to sort of restructure themselves and change the way that they looked on the world, the way that they conducted themselves, the way they organized, etc.

The religious picture in America at the close of the 18^th Century was not especially promising. The strong religious motivation that was so conspicuous in the early colonial days had long since disappeared. Even The Great Awakening had not for long stemmed the tide running against religion. It has been estimated that less than ten percent of the population belonged to any church by 1800. The Episcopal Church, which had been the established church in several of the Southern colonies, had lost these privileges, to its dismay. The Congregational Church was, before long, to lose similar privileges in New England. Most would agree that separation of church and state has proved beneficial in the long run to both church and state, but at the time that the established churches lost these privileges, few of their leaders were able to foresee the advantages that that separation would bring.

Again, this was very, very cursory, but we see, now, where we stand in this country at the end of the Revolutionary War—nearing the end of the 18^th Century. Next time, we’re going to look at the further development of denominations, the establishment of new denominations, in this country. And then, that’s where we will set the stage for our discussion about the Restoration.