The First Great Awakening
Student Name ___________________________________________________ Date ________________
Activity #1: Jonathan Edwards
Directions: As you read the excerpt from Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry
God,” list the images that he uses, and the underlying religious beliefs that he is expressing through
those images.
Image
Religious Belief
1
1 -- Permission is granted to educators to reproduce this w orksheet for classroom use
Image
Religious Belief
2
2 -- Permission is granted to educators to reproduce this w orksheet for classroom use
The First Great Awakening
Student Name ___________________________________________________ Date ________________
Activity #1: Jonathan Edwards
Directions: Read the following paragraphs as an introduction to the First Great Awakening and the role
of Jonathan Edwards in that religious movement.
Excerpts from “Religion in 18th Century America”: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html
Evangelicalism is difficult to date and to define. In 1531, at the beginning of the Reformation, Sir
Thomas More referred to religious adversaries as "Evaungelicalles." Scholars have argued that, as a self-
conscious movement, evangelicalism did not arise until the mid-seventeenth century, perhaps not until
the Great Awakening itself. The fundamental premise of evangelicalism is the conversion of individuals
from a state of sin to a "new birth" through preaching of the Word.
The first generation of New England Puritans required that church members undergo a conversion
experience that they could describe publicly. Their successors were not as successful in reaping harvests
of redeemed souls. During the first decades of the eighteenth century in the Connecticut River Valley a
series of local "awakenings" began. By the 1730s they had spread into what was interpreted as a general
outpouring of the Spirit that bathed the American colonies, England, Wales