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The Great Awakening

Religion and Revolution in Colonial America — A High School & College Primer

You have an AP US History exam next week, a college survey course midterm coming up, or a kid asking why the Great Awakening shows up on every American history test — and you need a clear, concise answer fast.

**TLDR: The Great Awakening** covers the First Great Awakening from the 1730s through the 1770s in plain, efficient prose designed for high school and early college students. The guide opens by placing the revival in time and context, then walks through the colonial religious landscape that made the upheaval possible. It profiles the movement's key preachers — Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Gilbert Tennent — and explains exactly what they preached and why crowds of thousands showed up to hear them. From there, it unpacks the New Light/Old Light split that fractured established churches and launched new denominations. The final section, the one most likely to appear on a colonial america religion AP US history question, traces how revival ideas about individual conscience, spiritual equality, and the right to challenge authority fed directly into the political thinking that produced the American Revolution.

Each section leads with the single most important takeaway, defines every term on first use, and includes worked examples and practice questions. No filler, no padding — just the orientation you need to walk into class or an exam with confidence.

If you need a first great awakening exam review you can finish in an afternoon, this is it.

What you'll learn
  • Describe what the First Great Awakening was, when it happened, and who its key figures were.
  • Explain the religious and social conditions in the colonies that made the revival possible.
  • Analyze the theology and preaching style of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and other revivalists.
  • Distinguish between 'New Light' and 'Old Light' factions and their lasting effects on American denominations.
  • Evaluate how the Great Awakening influenced ideas about authority, equality, and liberty that fed the Revolution.
What's inside
  1. 1. What Was the Great Awakening?
    Defines the First Great Awakening, locates it in time and place, and previews why it mattered.
  2. 2. The Colonial Religious Landscape Before the Revival
    Surveys the established churches, declining piety, and Enlightenment currents that set the stage.
  3. 3. The Preachers and Their Message
    Profiles Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Gilbert Tennent and explains revival theology and preaching style.
  4. 4. New Lights, Old Lights, and a Fractured Church
    Explains the split between revivalists and traditionalists and the rise of new denominations.
  5. 5. From Pulpit to Revolution: Political and Social Consequences
    Traces how revival ideas about authority, equality, and conscience fed into Revolutionary politics.
Published by Solid State Press
The Great Awakening cover
TLDR STUDY GUIDES

The Great Awakening

Religion and Revolution in Colonial America — A High School & College Primer
Solid State Press

The Great Awakening

Religion and Revolution in Colonial America — A High School & College Primer

Copyright © 2026 Solid State Press.

Published by Solid State Press.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission, except for brief quotations in critical reviews and educational use.

Part of the TLDR Study Guides series.

Contents

  1. 1 What Was the Great Awakening?
  2. 2 The Colonial Religious Landscape Before the Revival
  3. 3 The Preachers and Their Message
  4. 4 New Lights, Old Lights, and a Fractured Church
  5. 5 From Pulpit to Revolution: Political and Social Consequences
Chapter 1

What Was the Great Awakening?

Between roughly 1730 and 1770, a wave of intense religious excitement swept through the American colonies from Georgia to Massachusetts. Preachers drew crowds of thousands, ordinary people wept openly at outdoor meetings, and congregations split into bitter factions. This was the First Great Awakening — a broad revival movement that reshaped colonial religion and, as we will see throughout this book, helped crack open the political assumptions that made the American Revolution possible.

The word revival, as historians use it here, means a sudden, widespread renewal of religious feeling and commitment — not a gradual drift back to church, but an urgent, emotional conversion experience that thousands of people understood as a direct encounter with God. Revivals are not unique to colonial America; they recur throughout American history. Historians call this particular episode the First Great Awakening to distinguish it from later waves in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Pinning exact dates to the Awakening is genuinely difficult, because it was not a single event organized by any one person. It erupted in different colonies at different moments. The Dutch Reformed congregations of New Jersey were stirred in the late 1720s by Theodorus Frelinghuysen. The Presbyterian backcountry of Pennsylvania felt it in the 1730s under William Tennent and his sons. Jonathan Edwards ignited a local revival in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734–35. The movement went intercolonial — and truly massive — when the English preacher George Whitefield made his celebrated tour of the colonies in 1739–40. Tremors continued into the 1760s and 1770s, especially in the South, where Baptist and New Light Presbyterian preachers were still winning converts on the eve of the Revolution. Think of the Awakening less as a single fire and more as a series of fires that burned at different intensities in different places over four decades.

About This Book

If you are a high school student who needs a focused Great Awakening study guide — for AP US History, a survey course, or a state exam — this book was written for you. It also works for college freshmen in survey courses, tutors prepping a session, and parents helping a student get ready for an APUSH Great Awakening review the night before a test.

The book covers Colonial America religion from the Puritan establishment through the revival fires of the 1730s–1770s: George Whitefield's open-air preaching, Jonathan Edwards and Whitefield's quick-moving theological message, the New Light versus Old Light split, and why this religious upheaval belongs in any serious look at American Revolution causes. A concise overview with no filler.

Read it straight through in one sitting to build a connected picture of colonial religious history for students who need context fast. The worked examples and end-of-book questions let you test what you have retained before your First Great Awakening exam review or class discussion.

Keep reading

You've read the first half of Chapter 1. The complete book covers 5 chapters in roughly fifteen pages — readable in one sitting.

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