Great Awakening
The Great Awakening was this kind of event — a wave of religious revival in the 1730s–40s.
What is a religious revival?
After the Revolution, Americans wrestled with this core question about their new nation.
What did it mean to be an American?
Puritanism began as a movement to reform this English church.
What is the Church of England?
This traveling preacher taught people just needed a personal relationship with God, not church leaders.
Who is George Whitefield?
This word describes advancement based on talent rather than birth — a core ideal of the young nation.
What is meritocracy?
This Puritan-founded colony in America is the example used to show how Puritanism shaped American identity.
What is the Massachusetts Bay Colony?
Alongside Whitefield, this preacher was the other key leader of the Great Awakening.
Who is Jonathan Edwards?
This idea held a woman's role was to raise virtuous sons for the republic, even though she couldn't vote.
What is Republican Motherhood?
This Puritan leader described Massachusetts Bay as "a city upon a hill."
Who is John Winthrop?
The Awakening encouraged colonists to seek this kind of direct connection with God.
What is a personal relationship with God?
This term describes the growing divide between the industrial North and the agrarian, slaveholding South.
What is sectionalism?
This belief held that the Puritan community was chosen by God to be different from every other society.
What is cultural exceptionalism?
The Awakening united colonists across colonies and helped spread ideas that fed into this event.
What is the American Revolution?
Excluded from full citizenship, these communities used the nation's own ideals to push for their own independence.
What are free Black communities?
Rooted in Calvinist beliefs, this idea held that God had already decided who would be saved.
What is predestination?