Baptist History - Part 2

Well, thank you guys for coming tonight. We went long last week and you guys came back still so that's a good sign. I appreciate it. As we talked last week about the history of the Baptist in England I hope that you kind of started to get a picture if you came in the door last week with no Inclination of Baptist history whatsoever.

I think you probably hopefully left realizing that what you may have thought was Baptist history, especially in light of many current Baptist churches. Indeed there was there are quite large differences from the historical Baptist.

And so this week we'll move our focus to the Baptist in America and in doing so we're going to see a lot of the same Themes come out. We'll also see some nuances and some differences and how things form here.

You'll recall from last week's lesson if you weren't here I'd encourage you to look it up online and listen. It'll help kind of put this all in perspective for you. But you'll recall we talked about In the mid early 17th century.

There were some people in England who were already starting to leave For America because of persecution and some of these people held Baptist beliefs so we're going to see that that pretty quickly led to the establishment of Baptist churches in America and Ultimately what we find out is that the beginning of the Baptist churches in America in the beginning of the Baptist churches in England Right in the same time frame very close together.

So it's not like there was a large delay, you know, 40 50 100 years later. It's all happening At the same time and really ultimately later in history. There was a lot of influence back and forth between the two groups.

We're going to see that the same Baptist identity takes shape in America that we saw in England. Remember the four things that we talked about. Baptists are Orthodox Baptists are evangelical. Baptists are confessional and then that Baptists are separate.

And so those same things will still carry through. I'm not going to spend time tonight to rehash that so again, if you if you missed that go back and listen to the last week's lesson that'll give you kind of a Profile to look at this through one thing We will see is that the American Baptists were in our more staunchly Calvinist in their theology and held fervently to the doctrines of grace.

We're only going to cover about half of the time period that we covered last week because I'm going to try and not go so Long and not be quite so tedious with facts and details. But what you're going to see is when we reach the end of the time period we covered around the year of 1800.

Virtually every Baptist in America was reformed in their understanding of the doctrines of grace of salvation and so I'll say this a couple times, but I want to put it right out there now. There are those in the Baptist churches today who would say that they are traditional and by traditional.

They mean that they are Arminian and they do not believe what we believe is Calvinist. They couldn't be more wrong. They have to look over the entire history of the Baptist Church to really say that. They draw their tradition from some different time period so without further ado.

We're going to start looking at the important people and dates and things that happen and we'll begin our study with a man named Roger Williams. Roger Williams was born in England sometime between the years of 1603 and 1606.

We don't know exactly when because his birth records were burnt in the Great Fire of London. He was given a formal education That included spending some time at Cambridge and also he received a BA degree from Pembroke College.

So he was an educated man During his time at university. He came to Puritan convictions by the influence of some there and So as a Puritan he looks around and sees this is a great time of turmoil distress.

Many of the dissenters those who Are arguing against the way things are working in the state church are being persecuted. He quickly came to the opinion that England wasn't probably the best place for him to be.

It was a dangerous place wasn't safe. He decided the best thing for him to do was to head for America and so he Heads to America and arrives in Boston on February 5th of 1631. So that gives you some idea of where we're kind of starting our time frame here 1631.

Roger Williams is in America. He was pretty quickly elected as a teacher at the church in Boston at the time remember this would have been a State sponsor a Congregationalist Church. This was not a Baptist Church.

He was elected as a teacher there. Over time he came to be a separatist and we talked about separatists last week. Quite a bit those are the people who came to believe that the only way for them To purify the church was to separate and form a new church.

They weren't going to be able to do it through the established order of things and So because of those beliefs he When he was asked shortly thereafter to be the pastor of the Church of Boston he declined.

He didn't think that it would be in keeping with what he believed to take the pastor there when he thought they needed to essentially abolish the church and form a new church so he decided to leave Boston and He moved down to Salem and he joined the church there in Salem.

And again, he was apparently a man of Gifting as far as a teacher. He was asked pretty shortly after that to assist the pastor at that church a man named Samuel Skelton. Unfortunately that never came to pass when the Shortly after that the people of the church at Boston who were upset because he'd refused the pastorate he was offered.

They sent a letter to the church at Salem and told them if you receive this man into your fellowship We will no longer fellowship with you. So that was a big deal and they essentially put the put the squash on that.

So our man Roger Williams is on the move again pretty quickly and This time he heads to Plymouth, Massachusetts. After a short time in Plymouth being a part of the church there He became concerned because essentially they had stolen the land that the church was on from the Indians from the Native Americans in the area.

They'd done this under some false assumptions. They had assumed that they had the rights of a Christian king and that because they were there to establish a Christian nation They could take whatever Was there they misinterpreted some Old Testament passages that made promises to Israel and Use them to warrant that they could just take the land do whatever they wanted to do.

So he was pretty upset about this didn't think it was very Christian or in keeping with scripture to do that and He started to argue with a few of them about it. And as you can imagine he made quite a few friends or enemies and So while doing this he started to make relationships to the Indians and study their language and shortly after this They actually called him back to Salem because their pastor Samuel Skelton.

We referred to earlier had to return to England. So again, he hasn't been in America a long time. He's been quite on the move in a time when moving probably wasn't the easiest process. He said it back to Salem now while he was at Salem.

He continued to argue for the fair treatment of the Indians because he saw so many Injustices happening and obviously from history now we can look back and see all of the terrible things that that happened to the Native Americans.

He started to attend a weekly ministers meeting there with with ministers from several congregations but over time he became increasingly suspicious that the Association of churches that had formed in that area was Overtaking the autonomy of the local church.

Essentially. It was being run from an associational level. He also continued to argue that the Indians have been treated poorly that they should purchase the land from them for a fair price and so He gained a lot of enemies.

Ultimately. What happened was there was an alliance formed among several people who wanted this man gone. He was causing trouble. They wanted to send him back to England. He managed to escape that narrowly and in doing so he headed to Rhode Island and So he comes to the area that is Providence, Rhode Island.

He negotiates with the Indians at this time. He's learned to speak to the Indians. I learned some of their language. He actually wrote some books addressing the language of the Indians and He he bought some land from them paid him a fair price to build a church.

And so in 1639, this is the date He established the First Baptist Church. What is now the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island remember from our study in England that it was sometime between 1633 and 1638 when the First Baptist Church was formed first particular Baptist Church was formed there again right in the same time frame 1639 in Providence, Rhode Island.

There's a church. That church still is there. Interesting history there. It is insanely liberal at this point today. They are not part of the Southern Baptist Convention. They are they are Way far gone.

So but the history is still there. He remained in Providence until his death in 1683 and he did several important things. He yes, sir. No, go ahead. I could presume but I don't technically know the answer.

So I'll defer. Yeah, I have seen second third and even fifth Baptist Church. So I don't know if it's just a matter of who showed up first or what? I have seen fifth. I think fifth is the highest number.

I've seen the fifth Baptist Church. No, it's okay. He fought many important battles of the time. Liberty of conscience we talked about last week arguing that the state didn't have the right to compel people to attend church or be a part of a certain church and so this is this is one of the most important things to understand about Baptist history is liberty of conscience was a Baptist calls from the very beginning because the state ruled.

In England and even here in America, we're going to see a little bit of persecution continued in America. You know, we talked about how they left England because of persecution. Well, guess what they got here and some of the first people who showed up said we're here.

We're free. No persecution unless you didn't believe exactly like them in that case. They railed on people. So he fought for Liberty of conscience. He also addressed various other doctrinal issues as you can imagine.

This was a tumultuous time as far as doctrine is concerned on the heels of the Reformation. There's a lot being argued people were back to scripture for the first time in a long time. He battled with the Massachusetts Bay which we'll see more of this later because they continue to infringe upon religious liberty.

That's what I was just saying. He battled with the Quakers and others who held errant theology. He was firmly Calvinist. He expounded his theology his Calvinist theology to show how it made no sense for the state to try to build a church.

So he argued from total depravity and other the points of the tulip that It makes no sense to try and impose someone into a church. It doesn't you can't regenerate someone by forcing them to attend a church.

So he made a very significant contribution to the body of the American Baptist police very early on. The next person we'll look at is a man named John Clark, he was another American early Baptist father.

He was born in Suffolk England 1609, so he was a contemporary of Roger Williams. He was a highly educated man. He studied law medicine and theology now you can imagine today. You would study law medicine or theology maybe but definitely not all three.

So he was a very smart man. Early in life. He became a dissenter. He came to Boston in 1637 when he showed up in Boston. It was at the height of a growing antinomian controversy there were. There was an antinomian controversy going on a person you may remember from history and Hutchinson was being tried at the time.

So he looked around saw the scene there and decided that wasn't probably the best place for him to hang out either. And he moved quickly in 1638. He moved to Rhode Island. So Rhode Island is kind of where the center of these very earliest Baptist life began in 1639 he met Roger Williams and Helped him who helped him purchase land from the Indians so now Roger Williams has bought land fairly from the Indians so has John Clark.

He founded the Founded Newport Rhode Island and the Baptist Church there was established shortly thereafter sometime between 1640 and 1644. So now we've got two Baptist churches in Rhode Island in the early 1640s.

We have a historical account of the poor treatment of some of these early Baptists. Remember I told you last week that Baptists and the church in general have suffered and grown. The most during times of suffering.

John Clark a man named John Crandall and a man named Obadiah Holmes who was also a significant contributor to Baptist life. Went on a trip to Massachusetts to visit a man named William Witter also someone who you may have heard of.

While they were there they were jailed. Why were they jailed. They were jailed because they were dissenters. They didn't believe as the people of Massachusetts believe. They remained in jail until some friends from Rhode Island came and paid their fines.

Two of the men Clark and Crandall were released but they were. They held Obadiah Holmes in jail and sentenced him to be this is the historical description well whipped and So he was thoroughly whipped and beaten in the public square.

Some of the other members of the church came later on to aid him to try and Negotiate his release from prison to pay his fines. Whatever the case may be they jailed them also. So this was not a popular time to be a Baptist.

It wasn't like they came to America. It was just suddenly okay to to believe whatever you wanted to believe. The persecution like this continued for some time. I don't have time to go in all the details but there are many stories like this and So John Clark sought a charter from England to establish Rhode Island so that he could prevent this because if they had a charter from the king establishing then that would make it.

Essentially they would have their own sovereign territory and the Massachusetts Bay could not legally infringe Clark heads back to England because to get this you have to go there again. This was before Google or Skype or any of those neat things.

And so while he was there He wrote a book called ill news from New England in it. He had the story of the poor treatment of the dissenters in the New World including Obadiah Holmes being whipped and those things that had happened.

He presented that work to Parliament. He spent 12 years in England awaiting a charter from Oliver Cromwell. This was during the time of the Protectorate and Unfortunately, he didn't even get a hearing until the monarchy was restored in 1662 so as You can imagine Connecticut and Massachusetts opposed the charter.

They didn't want the charter to be issued to Rhode Island. Specifically because Massachusetts was seeking at the time to take over Rhode Island. But it was granted by Charles the second in 1663 and Clark returned to Newport.

He spent the remainder of his life until 1676 as an active participant in Baptist life and the political affairs of the colony. And so This is essentially the the life and times of the very earliest Baptist churches we're going to kind of skip forward a little bit now and And get into the formation of some of the early associations when I say skip forward.

We're not going very far. We're going from 1640 1650 to right around 1700s. But like we said these people were struggling greatly and being persecuted for their faith whip beaten jail. You know, they were deprived of their families of their churches of everything.

Yet they were fateful so onto the formation of associations. The formation of associations was a very important milestone in American Baptist life. The associations did several things and we'll get into that.

But mainly what they did was solidify the influence and help to clarify the beliefs of Baptist in America. We had this infantile New group of believers who believe in this certain way and hold these beliefs.

But they really didn't have a wide influence at the time and they weren't fully accepted through the associations. It becomes very clear what they believe who they are why they believe it from Scripture and all these things.

And so the first association That we'll talk about is the Philadelphia Association. I Think you've mentioned this briefly. You mentioned their confession in your lesson. So while the persecution in the Massachusetts Bay was rampant the middle colonies were much more tolerant.

With the exception of a brief period in New Amsterdam religious liberty was the norm. Both New Jersey and Pennsylvania had policies of religious toleration. In other words, you could Essentially for the most part practice freely what you believed in New Jersey and Pennsylvania this environment allowed Baptist churches to grow and flourish in the area.

In 1707 Five Baptist churches came together to form the Philadelphia Association. So in 1707 we have five churches they were the Pinnipac Church led by a man named Elias Keech. He was the son of a man named Benjamin Keech another famous Baptist.

Interesting to see in Baptist life. There are a lot of father-son duos who really both made large contributions. And so I think that's kind of a neat thing. We're a church that focuses obviously on the family and on fathers being Leaders and teaching their children.

You really can see this through history. The Pinnipac Church the second was the Church of Piscataway, New Jersey. I probably butchered that name the Middletown Church the Welch Tract Church. Which is a group that had immigrated a congregation that actually came from Wales and the Church of Cohan see.

So five churches come together and they form this Philadelphia Association. This association grew over time and we're going to continue to see throughout history how they had an amazing influence but I want to go through just kind of a list of the ways that the Association aided the churches why they got together and most of this information is compiled from the minutes of their meetings because they had Annual meetings and other meetings and they kept pretty good records.

So a neat thing to look that we can look all the way back to the 1700s and see these records. The first way the Association aided the churches was to give advice to those churches that were facing difficult situations.

Again, this was a relatively new group of These specific type of believers and so although many of them had been Christians or came from Christian families or had a Christian history. There were new issues.

They were facing and addressing that they they sometimes need to help working through no different than today you know our pastor faces issues sometimes and Sometimes two heads are better than one and usually five or six are better than two.

You know It helps to get other thoughts and so the body of ministers would come together to address issues and consider them in light of scripture together. This would frequently lead to the production of essays in how to deal with the challenges that other churches had already faced.

These essays became widely used because as they would contend with an issue. They would produce this written work and then it would be used by the other churches. So when they came to face the same problem, they had some scriptural and guidance from wisdom to help them know how to deal with it.

Another important thing the Association did was to discipline ministers who were in need of it. There were a couple examples of this. I'll actually read you in the minutes of the associated associational meeting of 1712.

We read of a man named Thomas Selby who was being disciplined and this is the quote in the minutes. He was discharged from any further service in the work of the ministry. He being a person in our judgment not likely for the promotion of the gospel in these parts of the country.

He was essentially summarily dismissed. We don't know what he did or how it all came to pass, but we do know that he was given the boot. Another case in 1789 a man named mr. Worth from the Pittsburgh Church.

The minutes say of him. He was far gone in the doctrine of universal salvation. We are well certified by undoubted authority that he is now fully in that belief. We therefore to show our abhorrence of that doctrine and of his disingenuous conduct for a long time past.

Caution our churches to beware of him and of artists seagraves of the same place also who is a spouse the same doctrine. And so these people were not Saying come anybody doesn't matter what you believe join our church.

It's all good. They held very firm doctrinal positions, and they did not tolerate Heresy and so when appropriate they dealt with it. Yeah, you're right they held a pretty firm stance on that as well, I don't have any specific examples of it, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Another thing they did the Association also could discipline a disorderly church, and they would do that by withdrawing fellowship from them an interesting Baptist distinctive even today the Southern Baptist Convention has a Statement of belief it's called the Baptist faith and message 2000 because that's when it was last updated.

They they put out their Overarching positions on things, but they do not interfere necessarily in the life of a local church. Now what they will do if this church goes essentially off the rails and is no longer in agreement with what they teach.

Is they'll disfellowship them and so that's a unique way. They don't punish the church necessarily by coming down saying you must believe this. They'll just say if that's what you choose we see this if you choose to continue in this error We'll no longer have fellowship, and so they were doing that all the way back here.

One of the essays that I mentioned earlier there was an exposition of 2nd Corinthians 6 16 and 17 Which says what agreement has the temple of God with idols for we are the temple of the Living God as God said?

I will make my dwelling among them among them and walk among them. And I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst and be separate from them says the Lord and touch no unclean thing that I will welcome you.

And so that essay essentially expounded that and they use that to build Their scriptural warrant for a church who would not hold to purity of doctrine. They would essentially just break fellowship with them so They were definitely used to enforce what they believed.

But hopefully that doesn't give you the impression that all the Association did was To work in a negative sense. That's far from the truth. They also work to maintain harmony between the churches. Another note from the minutes of 1805 there was apparently a difference of opinion between individuals in a Middletown and a Hightown Church.

The Association adopted a resolution that recommended here's the quote a speedy termination of the difficulty referred to and It also offered practical help in resolving this matter and many others like it.

Furthermore in the promotion of unity the Philadelphia Association worked to adopt a confession of faith. This is where we say Baptists are confessional. This was an important thing to them. The purpose of adopting the confession confession of faith was that it would lead to doctrinal unity.

They believe very much that. The goal was for us to come together as believers. They come to a unity of what we believe about the scriptures so that we can promote those things together. Keith Three weeks ago now discussed that briefly the Philadelphia confession.

It strongly resembles the 1689 second London Baptist Confession. Essentially, that's the skeleton of it. They added a few things to it. Another neat thing they did the Association voted to print their confession in 1742 so that it could be circulated.

I can imagine at some cost but it wasn't just that they This body of leaders came together somewhere in a room and came up with this confession and then they kept it secret. They wanted everybody to know what it said and what they believe from the pastors all the way down to the church members.

In 1774 they adopted a practice of making observations and improvements of some particular article of faith Contained in our confession beginning with the first and so on in order. So in other words every year they would come together at their associational meeting.

They would take one of the articles of their confessions. Starting with the first and they would jointly discuss it and expound it and talk about what it meant. So that again, it wasn't just some document they produced long ago and set it on the wall somewhere and said yeah.

That's what we believe it was continuously being made of importance. This led to a strong doctrinal clarity amongst the churches of the Philadelphia Association and led other Associations to to later adopt its confession verbatim and cheerfully join with them in the work.

What we'll see later is that the Philadelphia confession became the confession for many other associations. They just took it because it was pretty well put together and said yes that. The Association also was able to speak on current events of the day including Immediate and important issues that were of ethical or religious concerns to the denomination.

They were when they were one of the earliest and strongest voices against slavery in the United States. The Association also encouraged the education and continuing education of those in the ministry.

In 1789 they began a fund to be used to educate young men for the ministry. Through this endeavor by others. They were also available to meet the mission needs of the churches in surrounding area. And so they would actually support ministers who could go preach and teach in areas where there was no preacher or no teacher.

There was a church that couldn't support a full-time minister. The Association actually had had men who they supported who could go and do that. We'll see that that specific function Will play a vital role as other associations are formed in the south and elsewhere.

Do you have a question? The cooperative program was born out of what's called the let's see what the hundred million said the hundred million dollar campaign the cooperative program came because in the 1920s they had this campaign to raise money to do all these things and they formed a board for the purpose of dispersing that money and That once that program was over.

They said hey this worked really well this board of people who helped us to say this goes here and this goes there and That ultimately grandfathered the cooperative program as it is today. And so when Keith refers to the cooperative program the Southern Baptist Convention today gets its funding from Southern Baptist churches Through the local and state conventions to the National Convention the cooperative program and that's how they fund All their mission efforts and various other things we were talking about this not long ago.

It's interesting that the cooperative program 97 of the funds that are given to the Southern Baptist Convention end up going to the work and so It's actually a little more than that less than 3 is what it costs them to administer.

That's pretty good considering the size the sheer size of the Southern Baptist Convention. It's huge. So that's the Philadelphia Association in 1707. They were the first ones they were Forerunners in every sense of the word because not only were they the first ones there, but they were very influential later on.

They did a lot of things that helped form new churches help them to grow help establish their doctrine and so I think I Could be overstating this but I think the strength of the Philadelphia Association Early on is why we see later that the doctrinal purity in the American Baptist Church is actually Stronger than it was in the English Baptist Church.

The Charleston Association and William Screven

Next we're going to move on to talking about a man named William Screvin and the Charleston Association. The Association itself didn't form until 1751 under the direction of a man named Oliver Hart. We won't get to talk about Oliver Hart, but he is an interesting character as well.

The Association was 1751 but the church that started it all was founded by a man named William Screvin. Screvin was also born in England. Somerton, England 1629 we know that he was baptized sometime before 1652 by a man named Thomas Collier who was a Calvinistic Baptist minister in England.

He functioned while in England in a position called gifted brother. And so what that meant was if the minister was absent or couldn't make it or whatever the case might be. He would actually be the one to preach.

So he wasn't like a full-time minister, but he did fill in. Yes, ma 'am. He was born in 1629. The Charleston Association was formed in 1751 not by him. He formed the church that eventually was the cornerstone of the Association that that is confusing.

And then he patted Methuselah on the shoulder and said good job. So He left England during the repression of Charles the second right as the Clarendon Code. You remember we talked about the Clarendon Code last week.

That was the four very stifling acts of Parliament that were meant to repress the dissenters. So he left about that time came to Boston in 1668 and he apprenticed himself to a man named George Carr. He became a prosperous businessman as a shipbuilder.

So he did again he he was a layperson in much of the sense at this time. He had a desire to form a dissenters church. He again had been baptized so we know he had Baptist beliefs or believed in believers baptism at least.

He had heard about a place called Kiddery, Maine that was held out as a haven for dissenters. A place where it was safe to be a dissenter. And so he moved there in 1673. By 1675 in this haven for dissenters.

He was being he was facing charges because he wasn't attending the the official church in the area. So wasn't much of a haven. Luckily the charges were dropped. He didn't end up in too much trouble there, but By July of 1681 he returned to Boston and here's an interesting thing.

He was baptized in the membership of the First Baptist Church of Boston. Even though he'd already previously been baptized by Thomas Collier in England. We don't know for sure why he was baptized the second time.

There's a couple of things that people Guess at first of all the records of his baptism probably didn't exist. And so he wasn't able to prove that he had been baptized. Also Thomas Collier who had baptized him at a time at that point had become a heretic could have been because of that too.

So he was baptized there shortly thereafter. He was licensed to preach there and shortly thereafter that he was ordained all in Boston at the First Baptist Church. And he decides that he will return to Kiddery, Maine where he had once been.

1682 is when he goes back to Kiddery and He founds a Baptist Church there. There is some early repression. Remember we said Kiddery was supposed to be a Dissenters haven it wasn't really they faced some early struggles.

But not nearly to the level that some other people did especially in the Massachusetts Bay Area. It gave way pretty shortly thereafter and so They were free to practice he was very active in the civic and political affairs of the area all the way until.

1696 and so in.

1696 and things happen that lead him and his congregation or at least a good chunk of it to move to Charleston, South Carolina. Quite the move in those days. I would imagine what had happened is they had first of all They had some trouble brewing with the Native Americans in the area.

Second of all they had depleted all of the available timber that was right there and easily accessible. So they had some very practical reasons to move. But he also had received a call from some in South Carolina To come there and minister.

And so he saw that. He took those two very practical signs in the call as a good indication of God's providence for him to head down to South Carolina. And we'll see that that that was a very Very good move because it proved to be very beneficial.

He arrived in South Carolina with with a good portion of his congregation. And so there were already dissenters there. There were some general Baptists and there were some particular Baptists. But there was no official church at the time.

And so he he brought his congregation so essentially they had a church and he received those others in he had some hesitations about receiving The general Baptist in you'll remember the general Baptists are the English Baptists who were Believed in general atonement, so they were Arminian in their theology greatly Arminian so he decided that he would receive them in and Hopefully not upset the theological balance and ultimately it did work out.

Essentially, we'll see the particulars the particular Baptists Theology won the day and most of the general Baptists at that time were assimilated in. So Screven's work in South Carolina leads to the formation of several other churches and eventually the Association later.

The churches there were the U-Haul Church, the Ashley River Church The Stono Church and the Welsh Welsh neck churches. Those were the first core group that formed the Association. The Charleston Association has been referred to as the womb from which the Southern Baptist Convention was formed.

The Association was thoroughly Calvinistic in its theology and adopted the second London Baptist Confession. So again, we have those people who would like to say that they are Traditional Baptists and are and they mean to say by that that they're not Calvinist like we are that's a false history that's a revisionist history a Really neat thing they did in 1813 that really kind of presses this point home.

The Association commissioned the printing of a work for the church called the Charleston manual. I would love to have a copy of this. It included the second London Baptist Confession a Work called a summary of church discipline and the Baptist catechism.

Remember I told you guys the Baptist used catechisms at one time. It was in this book. And so this was the Charleston manual for the churches. It had their Confession it had how they viewed church discipline is how it should be carried out and had their catechism so Very neat work Very reformed and all of its theology could not be mistaken for anything other than that.

It was not. It was not ambivalent or ambiguous in any way. And so those are the first two associations to form. And they will we'll talk about this in a minute. They will form what we call in American Baptist history regular Baptists.

We're going to try and clarify all these distinctions we make between regular separate Particular general all those things in a few minutes because it can get confusing. But at this point I want to move on to talk about the first Great Awakening.

The first Great Awakening was a great evangelical movement spurred on by many preachers. It swept across Protestant Europe and across and into America. Probably the most famous People from the Great Awakening would be the Wesley's.

But there were also many others who were very influential. Whitfield was actually the one who brought it to America. He's credited with that. But there was also Jonathan Edwards Gilbert Tennant many others who contributed.