New Lights vs. Old Lights: The Great Awakening's Political Battle

Puritanism and the Theocratic Vision of Colonial New England

After the English colonists established themselves in their newfound territory, they began constructing a new society governed under the Puritan moral code. This is vital to understanding New England Puritan society, whose approach to self-governance involved implementing laws and social norms adherent to the teachings of Puritanism — the prevailing religion not only in the colonies, but in England (their mother country) as well.

The development of a theocratic society in New England was accompanied by its leaders' preoccupation with improvement rather than conversion: they "were worrying less about conversion and more about improving society based on their moralistic beliefs" (Findling 2). With this objective in mind, leaders of New England society encouraged the religious revival popularly known as the Great Awakening — identified as the "public expressions of faith and conscience" — wherein emotion was considered the most powerful vehicle for conveying religious belief.

The Great Awakening and the Rise of the New Lights

With the development of the Great Awakening came the New Lights movement — groups of religious believers commonly identified as Separatists, or Baptists, because they held that "infant baptism was wrong and that God ordained that a believer's baptism was necessary for the purity of the church. For them, immersion in water fully represented the complete rebirth of the believer" (Swift 4). Evidently, the Baptist view of Christianity differed from the traditional Puritan belief in infant baptism.

Nevertheless, because the New Lights managed to entice people to convert willingly to Christianity, the movement was regarded as essential to a larger agenda: establishing a theocratic society dominated by Puritan moral codes and norms. The personalistic, emotionally direct style of evangelical preaching proved far more accessible to ordinary colonists than the formal doctrines of the established church.

Old Lights vs. New Lights: An Inevitable Conflict

Over time, what emerged was not a theocratic society run by the Puritans, but an evangelical society in which the Baptists became leaders and evangelism became the prevailing form of religious practice. An inevitable conflict between the "Old Lights" and the "New Lights" was the result. Because of the personalistic mode of spreading the Gospel, evangelism became widely popular in eighteenth-century New England society, steadily weakening the power and influence of traditionalist religion.

Another decisive advantage the New Lights movement held over the Old Lights was its encouragement of religious freedom and individualism among its followers, as well as its abolition of the old practice of tithing (Swift 5). These structural differences made the New Lights far more appealing to colonists who were already beginning to prize personal liberty and autonomy in their daily lives.

Bibliography

Findling, J., and F. Thackeray. Events that Changed America in the Eighteenth Century. Westport: Praeger, 1998.

This book is a comprehensive guide to important events in Colonial American history. Events that occurred between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are covered, particularly those that served as precursors to the development of American society and its independence from British rule.

Long, K. The Revival of 1857–58: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Long's study of the Great Awakening examines the movement from multiple perspectives, taking into account geographical, social, and cultural differences across the New England colonies. The book provides an in-depth analysis of the effects of the Great Awakening on American colonial life and its impact on religious revivalism in the nineteenth century.

Swift, D. Religion and the American Experience: A Social and Cultural History, 1765–1997. New York: M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 1997.

Placing the American colonial society in context, Swift analyzes the role religion played in America during the pre- and post-Revolutionary periods. Looking beyond Puritanism and considering various religions present in the country during the nineteenth century, the author conducts a comparative study of each tradition and gauges its impact on the development of an independent nation, focusing primarily on social and economic change.