- Sep 2015
Nathan Cole, The Spiritual Travels of Nathan Cole, 1761.
Do you think the scene that Cole describes is related or similar to more current day religious practice?
How does Cole come to see himself being “saved”? Is it related to a particular church or church authority? How might Cole’s experience be a threat to established church authorities?
In the 1730s and 1740s many rural folk rejected the enlightened and rational religion that came from the cosmopolitan pulpits and port cities of British North America. Instead, they were attracted to the evangelical religious movement that became known as the Great Awakening. The English Methodist George Whitefield and other itinerant ministers ignited this popular movement with their speaking tours of the colonies. In this account farmer Nathan Cole described hearing the news of Whitefield’s approach to his Connecticut town, as fields emptied and the populace converged: “I saw no man at work in his field, but all seemed to be gone. ” Like many others during the Great Awakening, Cole achieved an eventual conversion by focusing not on intellectual issues but on emotional experience. Cole took away an egalitarian message about the spiritual equality of all before God, a message that confronted established authorities.
IV. Pursuing Political, Religious and Individual Freedom
Study Questions for this section:
What were the three different colonial political structures and how did they function?
How did the elected assemblies differ from Parliament in England?
How did changes in marriage, print and religion affect the colonists ideas about their obligations to authority?