The First Great Awakening occurred in the American colonies in the early eighteenth century. This period of time was marked by a return to religion, doctrinal changes, and influences on social and political thought. At this time, many people did not live near a church, and were more concerned with survival and getting food from the land than they were about attending church. The movement started in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, with a Presbyterian reverend, William Tennent, and his four sons. The Tennents started revivals in the colonies, and also founded a seminary to train clergymen, now known as Princeton University. .
The movement spread to New England to the Puritans and Baptists. One of the main figures in the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, gave emotionally charged sermons. His sermons usually focused on "terrifying images of the utter corruption of human nature and the terrors awaiting the unrepentant in Hell" (Heyrman). One of his more famous illustrations from his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is that of the sinner as a spider suspended by a thin thread over a pit of seething brimstone. The idea behind this illustration is that at any time, without the church's guidance, we can lose our hold on life and be plunged into the fires of eternal damnation. .
Another influential speaker of the First Great Awakening was George Whitefield, a young priest from England. Whitefield's sermons were not anything more than the same thing Calvinists had been preaching for centuries. He taught that sinners were completely at the mercy of an all-powerful God, and that was their only hope for salvation. He said that "the key to residing in the Kingdom of God was having an emotional conversion experience" (Lecture Four). Another of Whitefield's ideas was that there were no denominational distinctions, that all sinners who love Jesus will be saved. At one sermon in Philadelphia, Whitefield looked to heaven and asked: "Father Abraham, whom have you in heaven? Any Episcopalians? No! Any Presbyterians? No! Any Independents or Methodists? No, No No! Whom have you there? We don't know those names here.