A look at the religions of Colonial America and the impact it had on life and education.

1. Religion in the Colonies
Could I live like this?

3. Religion led to schools
● Training ministers required advanced study
● Northern colonies were heavily populated;
schools could be founded
○ 1638-Harvard University; Boston Latin founded
○ William and Mary (1693); Yale (1701)
● Southern colonies sparsely populated
○ schools not feasible

4. N.E. Primer

5. Great Awakening
● The Enlightenment pulled people away from
faith
○ A life of the mind, not of the faith;
○ Deism arose and was popular
● A wave of Evangelism broke out
● First mass movement in America

6. Edwards and Whitefield
● Jonathan Edwards begins it in western MA
Inspires his congregations to greater faith
● Sinners in the hands of an angry god
● He is a Puritan/Congregationalist
● George Whitefield--Anglican minister
GA-MA tour
● He is a show--About a “New Birth”-Born again
movement--outdoor sermons

7. how does this work?

8. Great Awakening Revives and Splits
● Faith is re-awakened in America
● But churches now split: old vs. new
○ Reason vs. Faith
○ More schools spring up to properly train ministers
● Princeton (1746); Columbia (1754); Brown
(1764); Rutgers (1769); Dartmouth (1769)
○ All had religious purpose

9. Impact
● Created religious differences that had to be
tolerated
● Emphasized the power and right of the
individual to judge things for himself
● America is the promised land where humans
can work to perfect reason or faith or both