Great Awakening, Revivals and Calvinism

The Great Awakening, Revivals and Calvinism
by Edward T. Babinski

Edward T. Babinski
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Trevor (Calvinist), Grt.Awaken, My Calvin research

Trevor writes:
Hello;

You mentioned briefly that the Great Awakening had no lasting effects, in our last email.

Here is further food for thought that verifies your conclusion. I have attached several quotes about the after-effects of the Great Awakening. There did seem to be some social effects, such as how life was conducted and how beliefs were changed (i.e. altar calls, prayer benches or weeping benches were commonplace for people to cry at in front of the church, the rise in millenial fervor, etc). American Christianity actually took on a sour note after the Awakening. To be truthful, the fervor of the awakening made people get into an uproar of emotions and hysteria over the feeling of religion and guilt, etc, but no lasting intellectual effects resulted (except the writngs of some of the Calvinists who were critical of the awakening.

SEE ATTACHED FOR QUOTES.

Also, you are proably busy (too busy...like me). But if you ever get the chance, the best analysis of the Great Awakening I have read has been "The Religious Affections" by Jonathan Edwards, who stated the hogwash in most of the manifestations of the Awakening. And HE was the one who supposedly started it...only to become its harshest critic. You might enjoy it.

G'DAY

Trevor J.

SEE ATTACHED. Tell me if it accords with your conclusions on the Great Awakening.

Thanks Trevor!

I forgot about Edwards being The Awakening's harshest critic.

Reminds me.... There was a famous Catholic, Cardinal Neuman (Newman?), who wrote a thick, highly praised book titled ENTHUSIASM in which he critiqued religious enthusiasms of the past. Actually when you study the Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter Reformation, you find the Protestant and Catholic scholars agreeing that serious thought takes precedence over religious enthusiasm. Scholars do not seem to appreciate religious enthusiasm very much, they are much more concerned with trying to "prove" things to one another via the intellect.

Here's a quotation I ran across that mentions ye olde "mourning bench":

ROBERT INGERSOLL ON "REVIVALS"
I regard revivals as essentially barbaric. The fire that has to be blown all the time is a poor thing to get warm by. I think they do no good but much harm; they make innocent people think they are guilty, and very mean people think they are good.

In the days of my youth, ministers depended on revivals to save souls and reform the world. The emotional sermons, the sad singing, the hysterical "Amens," the hope of heaven, the fear of hell, caused many to lose what little sense they had. In this condition they flocked to the "mourner's bench" -- asked for prayers of the faithful -- had strange feelings, prayed, and wept and thought they had been "born again." Then they would tell their experiences -- how wicked they had been, how evil had been their thoughts, their desires, and how good they had suddenly become.

They used to tell the story of an old woman who, in telling her experience, said, "Before I was converted, before I gave my heart to God, I used to lie and steal, but now, thanks to the grace and blood of Jesus Christ, I have quit 'em both, in a great measure."

Well, while the cold winter lasted, while the snows fell, the revival went on, but when the winter was over, the boats moved in the harbor again, the wagons rolled, and business started again, most of the converts "backslid" and fell again into their old ways. But the next winter they were on hand again, read to be "born again." They formed a kind of stock company, playing the same parts every winter and backsliding every spring.
- Robert Ingersoll, "Why I am An Agnostic"

HOW DIFFERENT ARE MOST "CONVERTED" PEOPLE?
Were it true that a converted man as such is of an entirely different kind from a natural man, there surely ought to be some distinctive radiance. But notoriously there is no such radiance. Converted men as a class are indistinguishable from normal men.

By the very intensity of his fidelity to the paltry ideals with which an inferior intellect may inspire him, a saint can be even more objectionable and damnable than a superficial "carnal" man would be in the same situation.
- William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

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Oh, I had no idea you were an Aussie! (But your "G'day" gave it away.)

I look forward to seeing your paper and/or your collection of quotations concerning the abominable fancy! Wish I had time to look in the book I already mentioned to you, for the Isaac Watt's quotation. (Some of those books must include an index of "topics" that might include "hell" or "the saints" and make it easier to find the line that we would both like to verify.)

Lastly, I recently completed some Calvin research, regarding two questions in particular, whether a "rebellious" child was exectued in Calvin's Geneva (at least one was -- see my references below), and adulterers as well, and what Calvin's complicity was in those events, and whether those events were unusual even for their brual time period. Kingdon (who has edited the definitive modern day translation of the Registers of the Consistory of Geneva in French, as well as publishing the first three years of them in English), admits that the executions for adultery In Geneva were unusual even for their time period, and Calvin argued for executions in both the case of adultery, and "rebellious" children.

Best, Ed

My Advice About Debating With Christians

My Advice About Debating With Christians
by Edward T. Babinski

David Lee:
Hi, I had a mini-debate with a man named Jason Gastrich. As soon as it became obvious I was doing well in a debate he booted me from his list and on a public newsgroup made remarks accusing me of making slanderous remarks. He also claimed to know you and said he was a good friend of yours. I told him I knew Ed and that post was the one that was booted from off his "forum." As soon as he starts losing he starts accusing you of using foul language. Jason also deleted a URL I made claiming it wasn't allowed, but let Charity post two of his. I just wanted to know if you knew of this man?

David

Ed Babinski:
Hello David, (you can also pass this along to Jason and his group, or anyone else for that matter),

Jason Gastrich rings a bell from a while back, we exchanged some emails and nothing was decided between us. *smile* I strive to remain polite in most cases with everyone I meet. Hey, making enemies is easy, especially when discussing "hot" topics. Keeping the pot from boiling over is the difficult part.

I have not been on Jason's list, but of course, if you join an Evangelical Christian group you should expect the Referee's judgment calls to be at least a little slanted in favors of the Ref's favorite team. I have noticed that most Evangelical websites I've visited, notably the young-earth creationist ones, and the hard line conservative apologetics ones, do not provide links to "heretical" sites of fellow Christians (like old earth creationists! or moderate historical Bible scholars), let alone links to freethought sites that question the Bible's history, science, etc. While the freethought sites do tend to provide links to conservative Christian sites. *smile*

When worse comes to worse in an email conversation there are a few things you can do:

1) Take a long walk or shoot some hoops, take a deep breath, stretch, and only dive back in after you're calm, relaxed and refreshed -- keeping in mind that taking whatever you do 'too seriously' is also one of the signs of an imminent nervous breakdown. *smile*

2) Remind yourself that you're just one person, you can't change the world, and that people are addicted to their beliefs, they identify their beliefs with their own egos and defend them like their own children, and that the mind of man is wonderfully versatile at inventing the most imaginative excuses rather than admit things it doesn't want to admit.

3) Keep in mind that people avoid change until the pain of remaining the same is greater than the pain of changing.

4) Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by ignorance.

And...

5) The only books or ideas that usually influence us are those which have gone just a little bit further down our particular path than we have gone ourselves.

The wisdom of Line 5) may explain why most people, Christians included, do not usually seek to debate those with views near their own, they usually prefer people with views further from their own. There is less chance of such views connecting with their own and altering them. (Kind of like the way an immune cell needs SOMETHING to latch onto on the surface of an invading bacterium before it can interact with it and destroy it.) If young-earth creationist Biblical inerrantists debated mostly old-earth creationist Biblical inerrantists their interactions would have the most chance of being the most friendly and productive. But neither side really wants that. They want to destory the "infidels" who live far off in the distant land of evolutionary biology. *smile* It's more fun to hack your way through a thick jungle of views you differ with much more, cutting and slashing the thick vines in your way with your machette.

Oddly enough, Evangelical inerrantist Christians agree they have an inerrant perfect book along with the Holy Spirit "leading them into all truth," but even with those two BONUSES, they can't get fellow Evangelical inerrantists to agree on the meaning of a host of verses in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

It seems that they should tackle their fellow brethren, those who agree with inerrancy and the Holy Spirit's truth leading ability, i.e., before trying to convert others who don't share those two HUGE supernatural bonuses. I mean, theoretically it should be a piece of cake getting brethren to agree on lesser matters of Biblical interpretation if they first agreed that they had a perfect book, and they both prayed beforehand for the same Holy Spirit to guide them both into ALL truth. Yet in practice, conservative inerrantist Christians have a habit of not even being able to get along with fellow members of their own denominations. It's been that way since Calvin and Luther didn't get along (Luther thought Calvin's view of the Eucharist was "damnable" and threatened people with hell who agreed with it). See the first website below.

Calvin, Luther and other Reformers, and their animosities

Protestant Divisions and Mutual Animosities

Dialogue: John Calvin's Letter to Philip Melanchthon Concerning Protestant Divisions: Its Nature, Intent, and Larger Implications

Martin Luther the "Super-Pope" and de facto Infallibility With Extensive Documentation From Luther's Own Words

The Protestant Inquisition ("Reformation" Intolerance and Persecution)

John Calvin (what a guy)

Quotes from John Calvin

Quotes from Martin Luther

Luther the Deranged Theologian

Martin Luther: Hitler's Spiritual Ancestor (an entire BOOK on the web)

I would also add that Europe was set ablaze by hosts of armed Christians who agreed with both the Trinity and Young Earth Creationism, but still wacked at each other for thirty years of perhaps the bloodiest battles Europe has ever seen, Catholic nation against Protestant nation. Oh well.

EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE THIRTY YEARS WAR (THE THIRTY YEARS WAR? WHAT'S THAT?)
By the division of Christianity at the Reformation, religious authority itself became the cause of conflict. The Protestant states thereafter rejected the right of the Universal Church to judge their actions, while the Catholic states took that rejection as grounds to make war against them in clear conscience. The outcome was the Thirty Years War, the worst thus far in European history, which may have killed a third of the German-speaking peoples and left Central Europe devastated for much of the seventeenth century.
- John Keegan, War and Our World (the Reith Lectures, 1998, broadcast on the BBC, recorded at the Royal Institution, the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, King's College, London)

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Herbert Langer in The Thirty Years' War, says that more than one quarter of Europe's population died as a result of those thirty years of slaughter, famine and disease. Ironically, the majority of Europeans who killed each other shared such orthodox Christian beliefs as Jesus' deity, the Trinity, and even "creationism." So you cannot blame the horrific spectacle of the Thirty Years' War on modern day scapegoats like atheism, humanism or the theory of evolution. Such a war demonstrates that getting nations to agree on major articles of faith does not ensure peace, far from it. Some of the most intense rivalries exist between groups whose beliefs broadly resemble one another but differ in subtle respects.
- E.T.B.

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The Thirty Years' War was the last great religious war in Europe. Starting as a civil war between Protestants and Catholics in Germany, it burst into flame in 1618 when Protestants in Prague stormed the royal palace and threw the [Catholic] governors out the window (they landed on a pile of manure and survived). Shocked, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand II sent troops into Prague to force all Protestants into exile, leading the Protestant king of Denmark, Christian IV, to attack Ferdinand in Saxony. The battle then raged through France, Germany, and Sweden with nations and religious groups fighting a long series of battles over both territory and theology. - Jerry MacGregor & Marie Prys, 1001 Surprising Things You Should Know About Christianity

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The underlying causes of this devastating, general European war were conflicts of religion: Protestant verses Roman Catholic reform, pluralistic tolerance versus arbitrary imposition of faith, Lutheranism and Calvinism and the Protestant Union versus the Catholic League. - George Childs Kohn, "Thirty Years' War" (1618-48), Dictionary of Wars, rev. ed.

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There was a time [during the Reformation] when religion played an all-powerful role in European politics with Protestants and Catholics organizing themselves into political factions and squandering the wealth of Europe on sectarian wars. English liberalism emerged in direct reaction to the religious fanaticism of the English Civil War. Contrary to those who at the time believed that religion was a necessary and permanent feature of the political landscape, liberalism vanquished religion in Europe. After a centuries-long confrontation with liberalism, religion was taught to be tolerant.

In the sixteenth century, it would have seemed strange to most Europeans not to use political power to enforce belief in their particular sectarian faith. Today, the idea that the practice of religion other than one's own should injure one's own faith seems bizarre, even to the most pious churchmen. Religion has been relegated to the sphere of private life -- exiled, it would seem, more or less permanently from European political life except on certain narrow issues like abortion.

Religion per se did not create free societies; Christianity in a certain sense had to abolish itself through a secularization of its goals before liberalism could emerge.

Political liberalism in England ended the religious wars between Protestant and Catholic that had nearly destroyed that country during the seventeenth century: with its advent, religion was defanged by being made tolerant.
- Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man

Banned Book: About Leaving the Fold by Edward T. Babinski

"The book was recently removed from the shelves of the Anderson County Public Library in South Carolina (Babinski's home state), due to complaints from patrons. The book contains nearly three dozen first-hand testimonies from former fundamentalists who have become liberal Christians, agnostics or atheists. According to Babinski, 'I've tried to get the local newspaper to interview me since writing my book, but they never had the time. Sales have been slow. Now, miracle of miracles, the book is being mentioned in newspapers, television and radio. God bless those Christians!'"

The Secular Humanist Bulletin

Your comments are welcomed!

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Controversial Book: "Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists"

by Edward T. Babinski

This book is primarily a collection of testimonies by people who were Protestant Christian fundamentalists and who later left fundamentalism (with the exceptions of Tom Harpur and Harvey Cox, who were moderate Christians whose views underwent a broadening similar to what some fundamentalist contributors experienced).

A hard-line fundamentalist may wish to warn the authors of this book's testimonies, and anyone reading this book, that "hell" is probably their "next destination." But he will have to do better than that if he hopes to convince his former brethren to rejoin him in his "straight and narrow" appreciation of the Bible and Jesus. He may even have to read this entire book to understand where his former brethren are "coming from" rather than simply predict where he thinks they are going.

I first tried marketing this book in parts. The testimonies of those who had left fundamentalism but remained Christians were to be published by a moderate liberal Christian press; the testimonies of those who had left both fundamentalism and religion were to be published by an atheist or agnostic press. However, some testimonies, such as those by William Bagley and Ernest Heramia, did not fit easily into either category.

I contacted several moderate and liberal Christian publishing houses and found that none of them were interested in "testimonies." I think that is a defect of moderate and liberal Christian sensibilities. Perhaps they do not wish to "lower" their standards, so to speak, by copying confrontational evangelistic techniques used by conservatives and fundamentalists, one such technique being "testifying." (Can I hear an "Amen," brother?) Yet personal testimonies are remarkably effective at conveying feelings, not merely facts; deeds, not merely dogmas; and they incite people to act as well as to think. For many years evangelical Protestant Christianity has used the power inherent in a single person's "testimony" to win new converts and buoy the faith of old ones.

So, after several rejections from moderate and liberal publishing houses, I offered the testimonies to the largest free-thought press in America, Prometheus Books. At first I was skeptical whether a "free-thought" press would print testimonies by people who had remained Christians, but I was assured that promoting genuinely free thinking was more important to the press than selectively chopping up every hundred-thousand-word manuscript they bought until it resembled a ten-page primer for atheism. Prometheus has published three full-length autobiographies of people whose faith in Christianity was shattered after they had witnessed the unethical or demagogic practices of church leaders and the naivete of their followers (i.e., Salvation for Sale, Don't Call Me Brother, and Jesus Doesn't Live Here Anymore). None of the authors of those books is an atheist. Furthermore, printing only testimonies advocating atheism would be to fall into the same error as that of the fundamentalists, who feel it imperative that everyone believe exactly as they do.

I suppose that the nearest that fundamentalist Christians ever came to advocating greater diversity rather than greater uniformity was when Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, which, until its demise in 1986, focused on the moral (and political) concerns of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews. Considering what fundamentalist Protestants teach about the grave errors of Catholicism (not to mention Judaism), that was quite an amalgamation for a fundamentalist like Jerry Falwell to construct. But, as they say, "politics makes strange bedfellows." For that matter, so does televangelism."

(Chuckle.)

This book exemplifies how an even more diverse array of people (far more diverse than the Moral Majority) is willing to band together to speak out on an issue that has intimately affected all of them, hoping thereby to increase the volume and scope of their declarations.

Once you have read all the testimonies, certain threads linking them together become apparent: the dilemmas and fears each person faced in leaving fundamentalism behind; their gradually dawning courage to ask crucial critical questions, and to continue asking more questions; their discovery of how wonderful it can be to allow one's innate curiosity the freedom it craves; and the blossoming of their distinctive personalities and beliefs. Anyone who enjoys a novel with idiosyncratic and markedly diverse characters will enjoy reading what lies ahead.

Of course, people who have left fundamentalism can differ markedly in their reactions to it. At one end of the spectrum are those who bid fundamentalism a "fond farewell." They had fun as fundamentalists, particularly in their youth. They also remind us that belonging to a fundamentalist church is a healthy alternative to drug addiction, alcoholism, and crime. A fundamentalist church setting can provide some with the social and psychological context that helps them to legitimize and catalyze radical changes they wish to make in their lives. (Of course, individuals must also want to change in the first place. No mere context can do that for you, as groups like Alcoholics Anonymous have pointed out.)

At the other end of the spectrum are those who aim both barrels at their former fundamentalist lives and beliefs. They view fundamentalist organizations as robbing people of their money (through "tithing," "giving till it hurts," and phoney come-ons to garner more contributions than a television ministry knows what to do with); robbing people of their time (every minute involved in church activities); robbing people of their health (phoney promises made by "faith healers"); and robbing people of their individuality, their freedom of thought, or even their ability to appreciate life.

Both perspectives can undoubtedly be true, depending on each individual's personal experiences. It was left up to each contributor to discuss in whatever terms they chose their entrance into and exit from fundamentalism, and to explain where they are today.

If you are a Christian, you may be interested primarily in testimonies by former fundamentalists who remained Christians. If you are not a Christian, but open to non-Christian spiritualities (wiccan or eastern), then you may find testimonies of that nature more to your liking. If you "don't know" which part of the book you might enjoy reading first, try the testimonies of those who became agnostics. If you are an atheist, your curiosity may be peaked by that section. Or, if you are a historian, you may wish to flip to the final section of testimonies of historical figures.

Readers of all persuasions should peruse the annotated bibliography that lists further testimonies. Or, you may wish to advance directly ahead.

© 2003

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