The First Great Awakening in Colonial American Newspapers: A Shifting Story by Lisa Smith

Abstract

Lisa Herb Smith closely analyzes the phenomenon called the First Great Awakening as it played out in colonial newspapers during the decade from 1739 to 1748. To define and give shape to her collected data, Smith identifies three important stages in the First Great Awakening: the years 1739–41, when the revival could be traced by following newspaper accounts of rev. George Whitefield’s tour of the colonies; 1741–43, the “most contentious years,” when (with Whitefield gone) “both revivalists and their critics were attempting to define the movement and influence public opinion” in the newspapers; and 1744–48, the years marking Whitefield’s second tour of the colonies, a period of marked decline in news concern about the movement (7). Smith highlights shifts that occurred across time or within individuals’ views about the awakening, showing how the revival was, across time, presented by the majority of newspapers she discusses, how the newspaper reportage differed in different regions, and how the central personalities of the revival were represented.