The Great Awakening in America has been one of the most significant work of God in the history of the church. It was criticized and it was praised. It touched the lives of countless number of people from different status of society. In some respects it is a mystery because there is no single factor that contributed to the event. It can only be attributed to the sovereignty of God, according to His divine will and purpose. This essay will look at events that led to the Great Awakening.
             One of the significant factors that led to the great awakening was the decline in religious fervor in the eighteenth century. The North American colonies spiritual foundation was associated with the religious excitement that spread over Europe in the wake of the Reformation. The recession of this religious fervor at the beginning of the eighteenth century produced a decline in the religious life of the colonies. The religious fervor was replaced by interest in science and the age of reason. Rationalism was replacing and ridiculing revelation. Anglicans in North America embraced the age of reason, freedom and morality and discarded reformation theology to the past. The new spirit of morality and reason had a greater effect on the Puritan colonies. The Puritan commonwealth was entering the modern world. The church had made peace with the world. Rationalism had made God less reverent and man more respectable. Reason and science were the avenues through which truth was to be found. The traditions of the past were no longer binding in ones search for truth and the meaning of life.
             The modern thought of reason and science produced liberalism in many churches which came into conflict with the Calvinistic views of the Puritan colonies. Yale and Harvard Colleges were affected by the 'new' learning of Europe that arose in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Religion was now an affair of the intellect and the emotions were no longer a...