Conceived in Liberty Volume 2 - Ludwig von Mises Institute

turned to the Anglican church. Methodism began as an evangelical tendency
within the Church of England. As such, it first took root in the colonies in
1763, in Dinwiddie County in southern Virginia, with the New Light
preaching of the Reverend Devereux Jarratt. Cooperating with Methodist
lay preachers emerging in New York and Maryland, Methodism grew rapidly
in the vicinity of Jarratt's parish.
Of all the major church groups, the Quakers were the least affected by
the Great Awakening. The Quakers were already pietistic and individualistic
and thus were not affected by this major attraction of the Awakening. Too,
the Quaker creed was highly optimistic and liberal, and at the opposite
pole from the rigid predestinarian Calvinist theology.
The consequences of dynamic new movements are not always the same as
their original objectives. For one thing, although the Great Awakening was
by no means an economic class struggle in intent, its permanent consequence
was to bring about a sharp religious split throughout the colonies
along income and educational class lines. The upper classes would remain
sober and rationalistic, whether as Quakers, deists, liberal Congregationalists,
conservative Congregationalists, or Anglicans; the lower classes would
adopt emotional and evangelistic creeds as New Side Presbyterians, Methodists,
or Baptists. Previously in America, there had been few if any religious
splits along class lines.
The Great Awakening, while reactionary in nature, also had progressive
and libertarian consequences: the Awakening split had fragmented the
Protestant churches. In doing so, the New Lights found themselves at war
with the established church in the various colonies—with the Puritans in
New England and the Anglicans in the South. At war with the establishment,
the New Lights were willy-nilly pushed by the logic of their situation
into libertarian positions and they contributed greatly to the weakening of
the establishment in New England and the South. Liberalism in Massachusetts
and indifference in the South had already weakened these establishments
internally, and the fissures opened by the Awakening greatly furthered
this task. Moreover, the ensuing multiplication of sects made it far
more difficult for any one sect to establish itself in place of the old creed.
In short, the Awakening permanently made matters far more difficult for any
sect to become or remain an established religion.
The most severe struggle against establishment came in Connecticut,
where control by the established quasi-Presbyterian church was far more
rigorous than in the more liberal and more truly Congregationalist Massachusetts.
The Connecticut Old Lights in control of the established church
were far more willing to tolerate other dissenting groups than their own
Separatists. At the behest of the Old Light ministers, the Connecticut Assembly
in 1742 outlawed itinerant as well as unlicensed preaching and took
away tax support from New Light ministers. Unlicensed or itinerant min-
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