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The religious zeal that marked the first Puritan colonies was destined to wane.  As new generations were born, and new waves of settlers arrived, new priorities and visions of the good life began to take shape.  Many professed a Christian faith and had connection to the church, but not with the same rigor as those at who first landed at Plymouth or Massachusetts Bay.  This growing secularization caused great distress for church leaders, and thus the early 18th century saw the first calls for a return to the faith – the call for “revival.”  In this episode we examine this particularly American dimension of Protestantism – the revival – and how it shapes our experience even today.   We’ll look at famous personalities such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfiled, as well as the movement they inspired, known as The First Great Awakening.

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Why I hate Ash Wednesday, the illegality of death in Irvine, and the comfort of Psalm 23.

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The Reformation gave birth not to a solitary Protestantism, but to a wide variety of Protestantisms.  (The Reformers came to quick agreement that the Bible – and not the traditions or authorities of the Catholic Church – was the ultimate arbiter of truth.  What they could not agree upon was what the Bible intended to communicate.)

In this episode we examine the early Protestant denominations (Lutheranism, Anglicanism, the Reformed and Anabaptist traditions…) and how each was shaped by a particular theological interpretation.  We then go on to look with detail at English Puritanism and the conflicts within British Christianity that would eventually lead some across the Atlantic to new colonies in North America.  We’ll look not only at the Pilgrims of Plymouth, but also the Massachusetts Bay Colony and the subsequent formation of other religious communities along the Atlantic seaboard.

As we explore, we’ll see just how profound an impact these early settlers – and the theologies from which they were born – continue to have on American Christianity today.