Primary Authors & Sources
HIST-302 builds its reading list from required primary and classical sources in north american revivals and congregational expansions. The authors below are read as teachers across the centuries, not as entries in a bibliography. Cotton Mather contributes Magnalia Christi Americana, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Jonathan Edwards combines intellectual brilliance with revival piety, showing how deep theology fuels genuine love for God and neighbor, notably in The Works of Jonathan Edwards. Joseph Tracy contributes The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion…, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. James Paterson Gledstone contributes The Life and Travels of George Whitefield, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
Taken together, these readings form a coherent conversation across centuries — students encounter real arguments, not flattened summaries. Charles Finney contributes Lectures on Revivals of Religion, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Lyman Beecher contributes A Plea for the West, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study. Philip Schaff, ed. provides access to the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers — the standard English patristic corpus that shaped Protestant and Anglican scholarship for generations, notably in TACHS - A History of the Congregational Churches in the…. Leonard Bacon contributes A History of American Christianity, offering firsthand access to the arguments, methods, and assumptions that shaped this period of study.
What You Will Study
Students study North American revivals from the Great Awakening through nineteenth-century camp meetings, frontier expansion, and the rise of voluntary societies that reshaped American Protestantism. The course examines Edwards, Whitefield, Wesley's influence in America, Second Great Awakening phenomena, and denominational fragmentation alongside genuine gospel preaching that transformed communities. Readings include revival narratives, sermons, and critical Reformed assessments of enthusiasm, revival methods, and church polity debates. Students analyze how revivalism intersected with slavery, republican politics, and westward migration. Attention falls on lessons for contemporary evangelism and church growth in the Florida Keys without importing uncritically every revival technique or theological reduction associated with American awakenings.
Course Objectives
Objectives include narrating major American revival movements with primary source support, evaluating Reformed critiques of revival excess and Arminian theology, comparing New Side and Old Side Presbyterian divisions, and identifying lasting contributions of awakenings to American religious culture. Students will write essays on conversion narratives, preaching styles, and church membership practices during revival eras. The course cultivates discernment between Spirit-wrought renewal and manipulative or superficial religious excitement. Students will explain how revival history informs modern church planting and evangelistic strategy. Assessments require engagement with Jonathan Edwards's theology of revival alongside cautionary Reformed perspectives.
Ministry & Life Application
Revival history teaches contemporary ministers both the possibilities of widespread awakening and the dangers of separating experience from confessional doctrine. House church leaders in the Florida Keys can pursue earnest evangelism while maintaining Reformed standards for conversion, membership, and worship. Pastoral ministry gains perspective on American religious culture that shapes many congregants' expectations about spirituality and church life. This course equips shepherds to encourage genuine zeal without sacrificing truth for numerical success. Congregations are served by leaders who know their national religious history and can guide believers toward biblical piety rather than sentimental or manipulative substitutes.