The Great Awakening and the Separation of Church and State

The Great Awakening was a religious revival movement that cropped up in American history in around 1734. It was a revival of the old ways of thinking about religion. It started in Northampton, Massachusetts by John Edwards, a fiery preacher. These preachers felt the Church was becoming too liberal in its acceptance of people and its general principals. These firebrands of religious ideals felt the whole system was soft and the ignited a fire of religious fervor by their own crazy talk of how people were going to be damned to hell forever unless they repented. The main reason all this insane speeches of eternal damnation caught on was because they simply accepted the meetings as a form of entertainment and something to do. The meetings were notoriously flamboyant and places of deep, deep emotions. After Edwards, George Whitefield led the Great Awakening to new popularity and brought even more spirit and life into the religious life of the colonies. All in all, the Great Awakening brought tones of spiritual life into the colonies.

The question on hand is how the Great Awakening triggered the separation of Church and State. In my opinion, the colonists felt that religion was too good to be spoiled by the problems and general nastiness of political dogma and problems. They were already taking steps towards such a separation by saying that no preacher could become a member of the town council or hold political office. These colonists were caring for their precious, holy of holy religions and not letting it become corrupted. By corrupted, I mean that the authenticity of their spiritual devotedness would become soiled by worldly matters. No true God loving Christian would want this to happen. Religious matters should not become a bureaucracy. This is the rules of God, not your own interpretations of them. Finally, real religious faith would not interfere with politics to get people to believe in their faith. That is not faith at all and proves further that religious interferences in politics would only ruin the authenticity of any religious endeavour.

Our modern government has a clear separation of church and state. Sometimes the argument crops up that the government should allow religious prayers and values into the system. That argument would surely not be agreed upon by a colonist who lived in the Great Awakening since they would see this as promoting the lack of authenticity in their religion. Plus, this type of worship is not personal and deeply meaningful, it is fake and forced. Modern politics are too vastly ever changing to be confined to one religious dogma and due to their dynamic attitude any religious interference would really not work well.