Primary Authors & Sources
From the Great Awakening through Whitefield and Edwards to later American revival and church history, students read the preachers and historians who shaped North American evangelical memory. Jonathan Edwards’s Treatise concerning Religious Affections remains the classic theological test of genuine revival—discernment without quenching the Spirit. George Whitefield’s Journals give the itinerant’s own record of preaching that crossed the Atlantic and bound the Awakening together. Charles G. Finney’s Lectures on Revivals of Religion state the later “new measures” tradition that Reformed students must weigh carefully against Edwards. James Paterson Gledstone’s Life and Travels of George Whitefield narrates the evangelist’s career for the church-history classroom. Leonard Woolsey Bacon’s History of American Christianity places awakenings inside the longer story of congregations, denominations, and mission on this continent. Together they serve ministry that knows both fire and discernment.
What You Will Study
Students study North American revivals from the Great Awakening through nineteenth-century camp meetings, frontier expansion, and the rise of voluntary societies that reshaped American Protestantism. The course examines Edwards, Whitefield, Wesley's influence in America, Second Great Awakening phenomena, and denominational fragmentation alongside genuine gospel preaching that transformed communities. Readings include revival narratives, sermons, and critical Reformed assessments of enthusiasm, revival methods, and church polity debates. Students analyze how revivalism intersected with slavery, republican politics, and westward migration. Attention falls on lessons for contemporary evangelism and church growth in the Florida Keys without importing uncritically every revival technique or theological reduction associated with American awakenings.
Course Objectives
Objectives include narrating major American revival movements with primary source support, evaluating Reformed critiques of revival excess and Arminian theology, comparing New Side and Old Side Presbyterian divisions, and identifying lasting contributions of awakenings to American religious culture. Students will write essays on conversion narratives, preaching styles, and church membership practices during revival eras. The course cultivates discernment between Spirit-wrought renewal and manipulative or superficial religious excitement. Students will explain how revival history informs modern church planting and evangelistic strategy. Assessments require engagement with Jonathan Edwards's theology of revival alongside cautionary Reformed perspectives.
Ministry & Life Application
Revival history teaches contemporary ministers both the possibilities of widespread awakening and the dangers of separating experience from confessional doctrine. House church leaders in the Florida Keys can pursue earnest evangelism while maintaining Reformed standards for conversion, membership, and worship. Pastoral ministry gains perspective on American religious culture that shapes many congregants' expectations about spirituality and church life. This course equips shepherds to encourage genuine zeal without sacrificing truth for numerical success. Congregations are served by leaders who know their national religious history and can guide believers toward biblical piety rather than sentimental or manipulative substitutes.