1. Awakenings & Enlightenments pp. 91-98

2. Pattern of Religions  Variety in colonial America  Difficult to impose any one religion on any large area  Church of England in VA, MD, NY, NC, SC, GA  Increased variety in Christian denominations  Catholics & Jews remained religious minorities & suffered persecution

3. The Great Awakening  Concerns about declining piety (reverence for God) & increased secularism  Began with increased religious fervor, 1730s-1740s  Esp. appealed to women & younger sons  Reflected desire to break away from families and start a new life

4. Great Awakening  Evangelists  John & Charles Wesley-Methodism  George Whitefield-see link  Jonathan Edwards-Puritan  Led to divisions between “New Light” revivalists & “Old Light” traditionalists  Some revivalists said book learning was a “hindrance to salvation”  G.A. caused a great upheaval in the culture of colonies

5. Enlightenment  Result of scientific & intellectual discoveries  In competition with the Great Awakening  Natural laws regulated workings of nature  Francis Bacon, John Locke older ideas  Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, James Madison were newer thinkers  Human reason  Created progress & advanced knowledge

6. Enlightenment  Increased emphasis on the importance of education, politics, & government  Encouraged one to look at oneself, rather than look to God for guidance

7. Education  Emphasis on education in colonies, but work often interfered  MA law in 1647 required every town to have a school  Quakers set up church schools  Apprentices learned from craftsmen in cities: evening schools  Few children went beyond primary school years  Literacy rates in colonies were higher than in Europe  Over ½ of white men could read and write

8. Education  Males had more educational opportunities, but females had primary home schooling and higher literacy rates  African slaves had few chances at schooling  Literacy discouraged, so there was no questioning of status  Most Natives preferred to educate their children in their own way  Due to increased literacy, almanacs were published and circulated (p. 94-95)

9. First Colleges  Tied to religion & training of preachers but had wide-ranging curricula—  Logic, ethics, physics, geometry, astronomy, Latin, Greek, etc.  Harvard, 1636, MA  William & Mary, 1693, VA  Yale, 1701, CT  College of New Jersey (Princeton), 1746  King’s College (Columbia), 1754, NY  Academy of College of Philadelphia (Penn, Ben Fr.)  Offered mechanics, chem., agri., gov’t., commerce, languages, 1 st medical school

10. The Spread of Science  Increased interest in scientific knowledge  At colleges  By amateurs & scientific societies  Ben Franklin—Kite experiment proved that lightning & electricity were the same; invented the lightning rod  Cotton Mather—Inoculation against small pox

11. Concepts of Law & Politics  In comparison to England court procedures were simpler & punishments were different  Stocks, branding irons, whipping posts, ducking stools  Royal government was far away, so colonies had a large measure of self-rule  Voted for colonial assemblies  Royal governors had limited powers  Colonies largely were independent of Parliament