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Nostalga, It's What's For Dinner!

Written by Wes

Tuesday, 20 March 2007

This Lent I'm reading Spreading The Gospel In Colonial Virginia . Its an interesting book, and it's been nice reading some primary sources from that period in history. One thing that struck me in the opening essay, however, was the impact that the Great Awakening had on religion in Colonial Virginia.

Now, I've been familiar with the Great Awakening for some time, but just about everything I've read on it has been focused solely on its impact on New England. I knew that the Awakening had an impact on the rest of the colonies, but I've never really had an opportunity to read anything that gave me a broader perspective. This was my first chance to read the writings of both "New Lights" and "Old Lights" outside of New England.

The first thing that I noticed when reading these Colonial preachers was divisive the Awakening was. When you talk to people about the Great Awakenings nowadays they, if they've heard about them at all, tend to have a nostalgic understanding of them. People talk about the Great Awakenings as a time of wonderful revival and religious fervor, and they were, but no one seems to know that the Awakening split congregations along certain lines. Where one congregation existed, two or three formed along slightly different theological lines.

Upon reading authors from the period of the Awakening, you get the picture that quite a few of its opponents (not all of them, but quite a few) were not so much upset with the fact that people wanted a deeper experience of religion, but that upon being "awakened" they tended to look different than their pre-Awakening brethren! For their part, "New Lights," could be equally as uncharitable to their "Old Light" cousins - especially towards a church such as the Church of England.

So, while the Awakening is indeed a high-point of religious experience, it also highlights the American tendency toward schism. Such is the sad irony of our revivalistic spirit. To make matters more complicated, in the 1990's many churches were actively praying for a "Third Great Awakening." I have no problem with the impulse that prays for a heightened experience of Jesus Christ - but I am worried that the prayers sprung from the nostalgic understanding of the first Awakenings. People were excited by the prospect that folks would repent and turn to Jesus, but in their prayers they were showing that they understood that a lot of baggage came with this heightened awareness. In the end, in fact, when people "wake up" to the Gospel Jesus might change them into someone who is largely unlike those who carried the Gospel to them in the first place. Revivals are, in fact, dangerous times for the Church at large - because it forces us all to face our own baggage and the traditions we've created to replace Jesus. Dangerous, but invigorating as well.

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