If one does a historical examination of the (Christian) Great Awakenings in the United State and Europe, a pattern slowly emerges. I am beginning to believe the Great Awakenings caused two things to happen. One helped focus society back on God. A theological re-centering. This is the view taught in all orthodox church history degrees. I also believe there was another simultaneous counterfeit revival of unorthodoxy that allowed a gradual if not imperceptible drift away from God. I believe the Church history I learned only captured half of the true picture. These incremental changes affected both religious and political thought within the nation over the last 300 years. I believe we need to analyze this thesis to understand what is taking place today in a dangerously divided America. These are not coincidences, they are indicative of existing socio-political and socio-economic conditions and the work of larger spiritual forces not easily quantified through natural means. Most have attributed these awakenings solely to the work of God. They are. I believe God allowed them. I suspect also that all the events that transpired were not of complete divine origin. There is a mixture here that needs to be shown. Not all the fallout of the awakenings were benevolent. The Devil tried to mimic and therefore mock God (1 Peter 5:8). The evil like a parasite hung on the revivals lurking in the shadow. Regardless, God worked through events to achieve His ends (Genesis 50:20).
The awakenings appear to have been cyclical. They are pointing towards something just like the Old Testament's events pointed...they point to Christ. The Old Testament point to the birth of Messiah. These Awakenings point to His return. Each awakening or revival lasted about 50-100 years in varying states of rise or fall. They are calls to repentance. This ironically parallels the cyclical nature of the Jews history in Israel. The process of: Sin-repentance-obedience. Sin-repentance-obedience ad nauseum. Second, the Great Awakenings consist of three phases, each about a generation long (30-40 years). The cycles begin with a phase of religious revival, propelled by new technological advances outpacing the human capacity to cope with ethical, moral and practical complexities that those new technologies brought.
The phase of religious revival is followed by one of rising political effect and reform, followed by a phase in which the new ethics and politics of the religious awakening come under increasing challenge and the politics promoted by the awakening goes into decline. Slowly a traditional religious orthodoxy is replaced with a ‘progressive’ movement with a diminishing moral return or erosion of righteousness. This then gives way to another revival or awakening. We see Romans 1. Given a choice man’s heart and mind are constant enmity against God. Yet God continues to draw us back to him.
The First Great Awakening occurred around 1730 to 1830. Theologically it started with a weakening of predestination doctrine or recognition that many sinners may be predestined for salvation / condemnation. There was introduction of revival meetings emphasizing spiritual rebirth. There was also a rise of an ethos of compassion and goodwill. The rise of altruism may not have been the pure theological impetus but it is what created the change of society to look to God. Weakening of predestination allowed for the leaking of the sovereignty of God from the Church at the very same time. This allowed the ingress for liberalism to enter. The door that allows good in can also allow an enemy to enter too. Calvinism and the Puritanical belief were slowly rejected in favor of a notion that salvation was available to everybody if they worked at it.
This was consistent with the American ideal of exceptionalism. It was a time where the frontier was open and anybody who wanted could obtain land becoming relatively prosperous. Americans were asked to Manifest Destiny as a birthright. All it took was the virtues of honesty and hard work. The idea of salvation though works gained popularity even though it wasn't entirely consistent with the Bible. It was the church already beginning to cater to the culture.
This inevitably lead to the American Revolution in 1760 to 1790 because of a belief in equality of opportunity or principle that accepted the inequality of income and other circumstances of life as natural but changeable. No taxation without representation was the call-to-arms. A belief that that persons of low social rank could lift themselves up by industry, perseverance, talent, and righteous behavior. Some could even rise to the top of the economic socio-economic ladder. An affluent middle class began to emerge. What we see for nearly the first time in history is the establishment of egalitarianism as national ethos in the United States. The American ideal with all its good...and bad. Near the end of this awakening America began to wrestle with liberalization of society started in its churches and its negative political effects 1790 to 1830. A society directly impacted by the watering-down of theology in the churches. Instead of unity in the house of God, division starts. Socio-economic, socio-political discord followed in parallel with the imperceptible hairline fractures initiated in the church. The Church...made of the very people that make up society. Fractured theology assisting in the creation of a fractured society. A war of division quickly followed in 1861-1865.
For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel... Thus is the Devil ever God's ape. ~Martin Luther
The Second Great Awakening occurred approximately 1830 to 1930. Due to the downgrade of theological belief and drift from Christian orthodoxy started in the First Great Awakening we began to enter a Second Awakening. The First Great Awakening brought God back to the fore but it also brought the Devil to try and subvert God at every step. The Devil is God's monkey. The Second Great Awakening being a spiritual movement in awareness of God leading later gives way to war and subsequent repentance again in WWI. The Second Great Awakening had to do with personal salvation. The American and French Revolutions and centuries of war were still fresh on people's minds. The theory was that we were all born equal but some had not achieved their full potential. The social movements were attempts at abolition of war, discord, colonialism, slavery, temperance, women's suffrage and most of all a society of only two class, aristocracy and serfdom.
The objective was equality of opportunity. A theory of egalitarianism consistent with the new American ideal pervaded the populace...even though it is not entirely a Scriptural principle. The Bible never says that we have inalienable rights. Regardless, the belief remained that different people will achieve different levels of success due to differences in their innate nature or God given gifts. There was also a liberal belief that everybody should have an equal opportunity at the start. The Bible never promises this...the Constitution did. There was the belief that anyone can achieve saving grace through inner and outer struggle against sin; introduction of camp meetings and intensified levels of revivals; widespread adoption of an ethic of benevolence. Again, we see an honest movement towards God that was simultaneously hijack by a belief that man could somehow affect his own salvation. A nation maintained its course away from its Calvinistic/Puritan roots and accidently believed because it was wholly Constitutional it was also wholly Biblical. It wasn't.
In terms of social politics, in approximately 1840 to 1890 America saw a rise of single-issue reform movements intending to contribute to making America more fit for the Second Coming of Christ. The belief that man could directly affect his salvation caused these. The underlying assumption was that by pushing these social agendas we were helping usher in the Kingdom of God. These included but are not limited to the nativist movement, the temperance movement and the abolitionist movement that culminated in the formation of the Republican party. This of course led to sweeping reforms aimed at eliminating all barriers to egalitarianism and equal opportunity. Although in-and-of-itself egalitarianism isn’t always a bad thing, it clearly got hijacked more and more as time progressed.
Egalitarianism helps end slavery but taken to its extreme it led to overt feminism and dismantling of the family unit/structure in the 20th century. The good that comes out of the Second Great Awakening/limited egalitarianism included antislavery and addressing moral corruption of the South. It also unfortunately led to the Civil War. As before, good comes out of the awakening but also an evil that deliberately shadows the actions meant for good. The Devil being an ape. This then leads to the transitional period between the second and third awakenings of about 1860s to late 1910s that sees the replacement of pre-war evangelical leaders with a shift towards unorthodox liberal theology. Midway through this revival it also sees the rise of what is termed Fundamentalism which was a rejoinder against liberal theology in Europe and America.
This unbiblical shift to extreme egalitarianism led to the massive tectonic theological shift away from the supernatural elements within traditional orthodox Christianity. The liberal theology movement of the late 19th century sought to demythologize the Bible or remove the supernatural elements in the Bible to make it dovetail better with empirical scientific evidence. To move it away from what the late 19th century philosophers viewed as its ‘unbelievability’ and align it to the enlightened, evolutionary and scientific viewpoint. A view that, ironically, had begun to surface in the Enlightenment as a retaliation to centuries of religious wars. Liberal Theology like the Enlightenment sought to remove God from His throne and enshrine human knowledge and reason instead. The irony of Enlightenment or light…being that it is the primary characteristic of Lucifer…the Angel of Light (2 Corinthians 11:14). All these events leading to the imperceptible but inexorable slide away from theological orthodoxy. These liberal ideas appear to have started with Friedrich Schleiermacher and were further spread by the German schools of thought via biblical higher criticisms like the Wellhausen Theory/Documentary Hypothesis. A hypothesis that attempts to refute the truths of Scripture. This slide away from Biblical Christianity was aided by Darwinian evolution and the profound effects of the Enlightenment spread worldwide by French, British and subsequently American influence.
Did this affect all of the Church negatively? Of course not. There was still a remnant of people that were completely Biblical and orthodox in their Christian beliefs. What it did profoundly affect is the orthodox churches influence on society. With less biblical orthodoxy (truth) to positively influence the world as salt and light we see a slow degradation of morality in society. The lack of Christian influence on the world after the Great Falling Away from orthodoxy into liberal theology in the late 19th Century portends the darkest evils humanity will ever face in the 20th century. The 20th Century in which we will see atrocities, crimes against humanity in World Wars and mass deaths under godless fascist and communist regimes.
{completed in Part II}
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