| Before the Great Awakening - J. Edwin Orr
Not many people realize that in the wake of the American Revolution there
was a moral slump. Drunkenness became epidemic. Out of a population of
five million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards: they were burying fifteen
thousand of them each year. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For
the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid
to go out at night for fear of assault. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.
What about the churches? The Methodists were losing more members than
they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season.
The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness.
In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennox,
Massachusetts in sixteen years had not taken one young person into fellowship.
The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians
who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York,
Bishop Samuel Proovost, quit functioning: he had confirmed no one for
so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment.
The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop
of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever
to be redeemed.” Voltaire averred, and Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity
will be forgotten in thirty years.”
Take the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard had
discovered not one believer in the whole of the student body. They took
a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place: they discovered only
two believers in the student body, and only five that did not belong to
the filthy speech movement of that day. Students rioted. They held a mock
communion at Williams College; and they put on anti-Christian plays at
Dartmouth. They burned down the Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced
the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of
a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey, and burned it in a public bonfire.
Christians were so few on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret,
like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would
know.
In case this is thought to be the hysteria of the moment, Kenneth Scott
Latourette, the great church historian, wrote: “It seemed as if
Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men.”
The churches had their backs to the wall, seeming as if they were about
to be wiped out.
How did the situation change? It came through a concert of prayer.
J. Edwin Orr, The Role of Prayer in Spiritual Awakening.
State of the New England Churches before the
Revival in Northampton in 1734.
There has been a great and just complaint for many years among the ministers
and churches in Old England, and in New, (except about the time of the
late earthquake there,) that the work of conversion goes on very slowly,
that the Spirit of God in his saving influences is much withdrawn from
the ministrations of his word, and there are few that receive the report
of the gospel, with any eminent success upon their hearts….. The
hand of God is not shortened that it cannot save, but we have reason to
fear that our iniquities, our coldness in religion, and the general carnality
of our spirits, have raised a wall of separation between God and us: and
we may add, the pride and perverse humour of infidelity, degeneracy, and
apostacy from the Christian faith, which have of late years broken out
amongst us, seem to have provoked the Spirit of Christ to absent himself
much from our nation. “Return, O Lord, and visit thy churches and
revive thine own work in the midst of us.”
Introduction to Jonathan Edwards faithful narrative of
the surprising work of God in the conversion of many hundred souls in
Northhampton and the neighbouring towns and villages of New Hampshire,
in New England in a letter to the Rev. Dr. Colman of Boston. Jonathan
Edwards Works, Vol 1, p344.
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