As colonies grew and developed in the Americas, so too did the needs and wants of the people who lived within them. With all the mounting turmoil that was stirring, people’s moral compasses spun about wildly, contrasting sharply, chalk full of uncertainty. Access to knowledge was available to a vast array of people from all walks of life.
This was the perfect recipe for a religious reformation, or The Great Awakening. Conflicting views and new knowledge from the Enlightened Era brought much of what people had known to be true into question. Sermons during the 1700s in America were of fire and brimstone that, instead of shepherding fearful masses into churches, sent people in search of a forgiving, kind, loving and merciful god. Different sects were born and with them, religious tolerance. To a point.
Now, the 1700s didn’t just start and a great revival of religion was born, in fact it wasn’t until the 1730s that the revival really kicked off. And there were plenty of events that acted as a precursor to the 1700s revival of religion.
Thoughts of religious tolerance and in a revisal of government were already in the works by 1689, “The Declaration of …show more content…
He claimed that, “...God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth, yea, doubtless with many that are now in this congregation, that it may be are at ease and quiet, than he is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell.” The only hope of salvation for his congregation was to convert and worship Christ, the Lord and Saviour. Only once they had devoted themselves to Christ would God look down upon them with mercy and be willing to save them from such a fate as those unconverted