The Awakening of 1792 Onward - Part 1 — J. Edwin Orr

Faith and Skepticism Among the Founders

During the bicentennial year, I heard a friend of mine on television say it's about time people realized that this republic was founded by men of God and men of prayer. I said to my wife, that's only half true.

There were men of God and men of prayer in the revolution. There were some who were not. Who could call Tom Paine a man of God? He died in disgrace. On the other hand, Thomas Jefferson was a great man, but he didn't believe in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

When he wrote the Declaration of Independence, he didn't mention God, and the religious people ganged up on him and said, you must mention God, so he worked it in. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain rights.

And he spoke of nature's God. One of the heroes of the Revolutionary War was General Charles Lee, and he said, let's tear down all the churches. They stand in the way of progress. On the other hand, they say that George Washington was a man of prayer.

I understand his prayer life reached a climax at Valley Forge. He needed to pray there, all right. There were evangelicals and there were freethinkers working together for the independence of this country.

The Post-Revolutionary Moral Collapse

But what most people don't know is that in the wake of the Revolutionary War, there was a moral slump unparalleled. Drunkenness was epidemic. Out of a population of 5 million, 300 ,000 were confirmed drunkards.

They were burying 15 ,000 of them a year. They even had a whiskey rebellion. Just as Abbie Hoffman said not so long ago, every American has the right to grow his own marijuana in his backyard, these men said every American has the right to distill his own whiskey, and they wouldn't pay revenue.

And George Washington had to call out the National Guard of four states to put down the armed rebellion to overthrow the government of the country. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. Immorality was rampant with venereal disease and illegitimacy and the like.

Women were afraid to go out for fear of assault. Bank robberies had become an altogether daily occurrence. What about the colleges, the hope of the nation, the young leaders of the future? They took a poll at Harvard and discovered not one believer in the whole student body.

At Princeton, a much more evangelical place, they also took a poll and discovered only two believers and only five that didn't belong to the filthy speech movement of that day. What were the churches doing?

Churches in Decline and Spiritual Despair

The largest denomination was the congregational. Take a typical example, the Reverend Samuel Shepard of Lenox, Massachusetts, announced that he hadn't taken a single young person into fellowship in 16 years.

He said prospects were altogether melancholy. It was as if he was chaplain to an old people's home dying off. The Presbyterians met in General Assembly and their main topic was to discuss the gross immorality of the country.

The most aggressive were the Methodists and they were losing 4 ,000 members a year. The Baptists said they had their worst winter. The Lutherans were so languishing they discussed amalgamating with the Episcopalians who were even worse off.

They thought they would prop each other up. Samuel Provost, Bishop of New York, quit functioning. He had confirmed no one for so long he decided he was out of work. John Marshall was Chief Justice of the United States and he wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, Bishop Madison.

He said the church is too far gone ever to be redeemed. Voltaire said in 30 years time, Christianity will be forgotten. We went through a siege in this country in the 1970s, 60s and 70s. But nobody suggested the church was going to be wiped out.

But in those days the churches were in deadly fear. Young people had been turned away and the churches were dying off. This may sound like the hysteria of the moment. But Kenneth Scott Lantourette, the great church historian, said it seemed as if Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men.

War, Revolution, and Anti-Christian Influence

Why? In the American Union of States, possibly the result of the war, in wartime, especially war, fought on your own territory. There's always a moral slump. But then came the French Revolution and the French Revolution was anti-Christian.

They crowned a prostitute goddess of reason in Notre Dame Cathedral. Practically every church in France was closed. And the French were subscribing millions of dollars to enlighten young Americans. Now how did this state of affairs come to be changed?

Prayer for Revival and Jonathan Edwards's Response

It came through a movement of prayer. I must backtrack a little bit. A group of Scottish ministers published a plea for prayer for revival. A copy was sent to Jonathan Edwards, the great American theologian.

Jonathan Edwards had seen the revival of 1734 in Massachusetts and then he had seen the great movement I spoke about under Whitefield in 1740. This warmed his heart. He was so moved he wrote a response.

His response got longer than a letter. It became a book. The title of the book, if my memory serves me correctly, was as follows. A Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Extension of Christ's Kingdom According to Scriptural Promise and Prophecies Concerning the Last Time.

That was the title, not the book itself. Nowadays, titles are scarcely related to content. If you want to study the weather, meteorology, you do not read Gone with the Wind. It has nothing to do with that.

But in those days, the title told you what was in the book. Now, in case you missed the force of it, A Humble Attempt, that was New England modesty, to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God's People in Extraordinary Prayer.

The Necessity of United Prayer

That's what's so often missing from our adventures. Some of you may remember Key 73, when they had a great evangelistic drive all over the United States. But they took the attitude, you Southern Baptists don't need to work with the Missouri Lutherans.

Do your own thing, but do it at the same time. You Pentecostals and you Presbyterians don't work together. Just do your own thing, and perhaps we shall secure a great awakening. There wasn't an explicit agreement and visible union in extraordinary prayer.

You may say, well, what do you mean by extraordinary prayer? Well, what is ordinary prayer?