Explain what the Great Awakening was and explain how it, as an intensely religious movement, contributed to the development of the separation of Church and State in America.
The Great Awakening was a religious revival of enormous scale that occurred in the mid-18th century. This was the first "mass movement" of the American people, and a number of important ministers rose to prominence during this time period, including Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Both of these men attempted to sway their audiences into the fervent religious mentality of the previous generation, although Edwards was a well educated man with reasoned, thoughtful, vivid and at times, even frightening views of Calvinism, while Whitefield was simply an excellent orator who could move even Benjamin Franklin to tears. The Great Awakening did more than produce profuse amounts of prosperous and skilled preachers, however. In fact, this intensely religious movement actually contributed to the separation of Church and State in America. This happened for a number of reasons, most significant of which is that, because of the Great Awakening's emotional nature, religion became something more individual that people did not want the government to interfere with. In addition, the controversial nature of the Great Awakening caused a myriad of break offs and new sects to be formed; more than the government could reasonably control.
Many Great Awakening preachers relied on vivid details and striking emotional appeals. This resulted in a shifting view of religion. Rather than adopt the fervor of their parents, many younger Americans chose to express their beliefs differently: at George Whitefield's revivals, sinners rolled around on the ground and proclaimed their conversion in many emotionally fueled religious ceremonies. Much of the previous generation had seen the Church as a group of only the "elect", God's chosen people. Religion was dry and methodical: you were either saved or you weren't. The new ideas that the Great Awakening brought forth suggested that a man might be able to save himself, and that it was beneficial for sinners to repent, while "old-time religion" might have accepted what they saw as "sinners" as already damned. The Great Awakening imbued American religion with a sense of hope and individuality. People came to believe that conversion was an internal experience unique to each person, and the government, they reasoned, had no place meddling in the singular religious experience that belonged to each person. Thus the Great Awakening, which was inherently religious, changed the popular view of religion so that people felt the government had no place in religion, contributing to the eventual separation of the Church and the State in America.
