America's Second Great Awakening Revival

American Minute ^ | August 7, 2019 | Bill Federer

[Perseverando]

The First Great Awakening helped unite the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War.

The embers of it began a Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s.

Thomas Jefferson noted in his Memorandum Book:

"I have subscribed to the building of an Episcopalian church, two hundred dollars; a Presbyterian church, sixty dollars, and a Baptist church, twenty-five."

On July 14, 1826, the Boston newspaper Christian Watchman printed an unverified story that Jefferson dined at Monticello prior to the Revolutionary War with Baptist Pastor Andrew Tribble.

The story described how Jefferson inquired of Pastor Tribble how Baptist church government worked, then Jefferson stated that he

"... considered it the only form of pure democracy that exists in the world ... It would be the best plan of government for the American colonies."

As recorded by Julian P. Boyd in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson "organized" a church.

He drafted church bylaws titled "Subscriptions to Support a Clergyman in Charlottesville," February 1777:

"We the subscribers ... desirous of encouraging and supporting the Calvinistical Reformed Church, and of deriving to ourselves, through the ministry of its teachers, the benefits of Gospel knowledge and religious improvement ... by regular education for explaining the holy scriptures ...

... Approving highly the political conduct of the Revd. Charles Clay, who, early rejecting the tyrant and tyranny of Britain, proved his religion genuine by its harmonies with the liberties of mankind ...

and, conforming his public prayers to the spirit and the injured rights of his country, ever addressed the God of battles for victory to our arms ...

We expect that the said Charles Clay shall perform divine service and preach a sermon in the town of Charlottesville on

[Perseverando]

Time for another great American history lesson from American Minute.

[Hieronymus]

Can’t argue with the observation that philosophically Baptist ecclesiology meshes best with the philosophy behind the American Constitution.

Eventually the Massachusetts Congregationalists in my family tree had the good sense to head west and, sooner or later, become Baptist (I’ve got one great-great-...-great-uncle who was a classmate of John Hancock [Harvard, class of ‘54] who, so far as I know, was the last serious Congregationalist minister in the family, who had a very hard time of it because his Congregationalist congregations were rife with Baptist thought).

[metmom]

Time for the Third Great Awakening.

I know many Christians have been praying for revival to come.

We need it desperately or this country is completely toast.