How did the Great Awakening and Enlightenment change the political, scientific, and education foundation in America?

How did the Great Awakening and Enlightenment change the political, scientific, and education foundation in America?

Introduction

The Great Awakening and Enlightenment was an era of grand revivalism that extended all through the colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century. It lessens the significance of church doctrine and in its place put a superior significance on the individual and their religious and spiritual experience.

Discussion

Historical Background

The basis of the Great Awakening lie in a number of places, not the slightest of which was the challenge posed by this enlightenment to religious conviction. The revitalization of the Great Awakening affected all the American colonies, especially New England. The Puritans there were simultaneously encountering internal pressures since the individuals who were meeting the criteria for the membership of the church fell off. The thought for enlightenment challenged widespread assumptions and upturned the conventional dominance of religion over reason. Thus, the Great Awakening was a response or counter to these challenges.

Enlightenment also known as the scientific movement stretched from Europe to America. The most well known names affiliated with this era of blossoming rationalism include John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton. Newton's theories in relation to the laws that ruled the motions of outer space bodies proved that the tracks, the planets and stars traced in the sky were knowable and could be comprehended by human beings. Similarly, Locke, in his article, “Concerning Human Understanding” claimed that children were not born with instinctive or inherent knowledge sowed in them by God, however were in its place capable of interpretation and acquiring knowledge by means of experience, which was contradictory to the existing opinion of many. Enlightenment thinkers together with Locke believed that human beings were up to great advancement ...