Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

In New Jersey the battle between the Evangelicals, or New Side party,
and the Old Side party came to a head at the meeting of the Presbyterian
synod of 1741. The Old Siders expelled the New Side for their itinerant
activities, their bitter attacks, and their emotional stress on hellfire. After
vain attempts to win their return, the New Lights set up their own New
York Synod in 1745 at Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The developments
after the Presbyterian split, however, were the opposite of the Congregational
experience. The New Siders attracted the young ministers and grew apace
while the Old Siders dwindled. Finally turning conciliatory, the majority
New Siders were able to induce a reunion of both groups in 1758. The
New Siders founded the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) in 1746
as the first college of the Awakening, and this college became the main
training ground of Presbyterianism in America. And the College of New
Jersey symbolized its new position as the fortress of Calvinist orthodoxy
(taking the honors from an Old Light Yale) when it named Edwards its
president shortly before his death. The immigrant Ulster Scots, formerly
almost devoid of ministers, now received the expanding product of the new
school and were instructed by New Side ministers.
Frelinghuysen, a leader of the revival movement, also sparked a schism
in the Dutch Reformed Church in New York. The conservatives, however,
stood no chance there, for they called for remaining under the authority of
the Classis of Amsterdam as well as for services in the Dutch language,
whereas Evangelicals wanted independence for the American church and
preaching in English. Eventually, in 1772, the split was healed on Evangelical
terms.
As the New Side became dominant among young Presbyterians and
finally conquered the church, the new Presbyterian ministers to the Ulster
Scots naturally brought the Great Awakening to the South. Early in the
Awakening, a revival movement had begun among lay Presbyterians in
Hanover County in the Virginia Piedmont. Led by Samuel Morris and inspired
by Whitefield's sermons, they persisted as a New Side center nourished
by visiting New Side ministers. When the Reverend John Roan, in
1745, bitterly denounced the established church and its ministers, Governor
William Gooch, with equal bitterness, condemned "such false teachers . . .
who without order or license . . . lead the innocent and ignorant people into
all kinds of delusion," including "railing against our religious establishment."
In response, the Virginia grand jury indicted Roan for "vilifying the established
religion," as well as two laymen for speaking ill of the establishment
and for allowing Roan to speak in an unlicensed house of worship. The three
were eventually convicted and forced to pay small fines and court costs. The
embattled Old Siders of the Philadelphia synod welcomed Gooch's intervention
against their enemies. The New Siders won permission to continue
operations from Gooch, but two years later, the governor and Council issued
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