Just before mid-century the country experienced its first foremost religious revival. The Great Awakening swept the world, as religious power pulsed between England, and the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s. In America, the Awakening signaled the foundation of an encircling evangelicalism, the belief that the spirit of religious practice was the "new birth," stimulated by the preaching of the "Word." It revitalized even as it separated churches. The followers of the Awakening and its evangelical force developed into the largest American Protestant denominations by the earliest decades of the nineteenth century. Opponents of the Awakening or those split by it, Quakers, Anglicans, and Congregationalists, were left behind. They, who were left behind, were also known as the "Old Lights," as opposed to the converted "New Light." The "Old Lights" were usually established ministers. They believed the acts of "New Lights" were acts of illness, even so madness.
Even though the fury continued and the separation of the congregations prolonged, the Great Awakening had many constructive results. Christianity spread amongst the American colonies, including the "Indians" and the "African Americans," giving the American colonies a united religion. Additionally, many well-known colleges (Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth) was established because of the Great Awakening.
