Sarah Osborn was born into
Calvinist Protestant Puritanism where she was well-trained to understand God as
a wrathful authority who knew humans unable to be anything but sinful. However,
throughout all Sarah’s hardships and personal struggles, her concept of this
all-knowing God adapted to the environment of societal change that was
happening around her. Her story is one of evolving Christian understanding from
trembling before an inscrutable, unknowable God to one who interacts and
embraces humans through personal experiences. As a result of the influence
of the Enlightenment and Millennialist movements that fueled the First and
Second Great Awakenings, evangelicalism grew from 1720 – 1790, in part, because
it offered Christians assurance of salvation and individual authority that was
lacking in Calvinist Puritanism.
Calvinist thought that made the
journey with the Puritans settling the new world was very clear concerning the
human condition. Puritan beliefs were grounded in the understanding of God, the
human condition, and predestination; Sarah was taught early that God was an
unknowable sovereign who determined who was saved and who was eternally damned,
that “Christ’s death had not redeemed all of humanity but only a
small group of the ‘elect.’”[1] All
humans were corrupted by the original sin of Adam and Eve and that “it was
crucial for even the youngest to be exposed to the concepts of original sin,
heaven, and hell.”[2] Calvinist
Christians were “completely dependent on a transcendent and uncontrollable
God,”[3] where
no one could save themselves, and further, they could have no assurance of
salvation from the inscrutable and unknowable God. She boldly wrote about her
contemplated suicide as a young adult, as she was completely convinced she was
“monstrous, God-provoking, and hell-deserving.”[4] In
the midst of her struggle, she concluded that God had “punished her for
disobeying her parents” and that she had been afflicted due to her own
behavior.[5] It
is clear from her writing that she was experiencing a deep need for assurance
of her own salvation, as she could not see how she, a wretched sinner, could
possibly be affirmed before the God she knew.
The growth of evangelicalism out of
this Calvinist Puritan belief structure cannot be considered without acknowledging
the influence of the Enlightenment’s radical “assumption that individuals had
the freedom to create a better world.”[6] Enlightened
thinkers advocated individual freedom, and freedom from the past, by suggesting
that the traditional Christian view of the human condition – and everything
else, for that matter – needed to be tested and proved through rationality and
empirical evidence. As this new way of thinking pervaded social thinking,
Christians took on the new language of experience as a way to prove the
existence of God and a justification of their beliefs. For Christians like
Sarah who struggled with uncertainty of salvation, it spoke to a need – it
addressed doubts of an unknowable God; spiritual experiences were valid and
authoritative when couched in the language of the Enlightenment. Rationally
proving God was active in the lives of Christians by describing and
experiencing emotional reactions to preaching resulting in conversion filled
the need to finally know their eternal fate in certainty. It was the
Enlightenment’s push for rational, empirical proof through experience that
Christianity co-opted in the form of evangelism, as Brekus explains:
"Earlier Christians had defined
conversion in multiple ways – it could mean changing one’s life by going to
church regularly, taking communion, studying the Bible, or living according to
the Ten Commandments – but for evangelicals it meant an immediate, heartfelt
change. True religion, they claimed, was ‘experimental.’ Influenced by the
Enlightenment emphasis on personal experience as the foundation of knowledge,
evangelicals did not view conversion as an intellectual assent to the truths of
the Bible or as a slow, imperceptible turning to God; for them it was a ‘new
sense’ that was real as the physical senses of seeing, hearing, or tasting.
Because people could actually feel and know whether they had been born again,
they could be virtually sure of their salvation."[7]
The push of individualism, freedom
of thought, and the need for assurance of salvation spawned revivals across the
colonies. Starting with Charles Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent, and then followed
by others, revival preachers called sinners to experience the emotional,
individual experience of conversion. Not only was this emotional experience
proof of God working in the life of an individual, but it provided the
authority of a testimony that one could rely upon as rational and empirical.
Sarah, and many others, were desirous of assurance of salvation that was
previously elusive. She “envied them, and she seems to have embraced the
evangelical movement as her own because she longed for their confidence.”[8]
Sarah began attending revivals and
embraced evangelical thought where “she could say – with assurance – that she
knew what mattered. She knew that she had been born again.”[9] Even
though she continued to hold to the traditional Calvinist views of God, and
that suffering and affliction were signs of God showing care, she embraced the
assurance of salvation. In her quest for assurance, she wrote to Gilbert Tennent,
a revival preacher, looking for his affirmation of her salvation. In this
letter to Tennent she describes her “religious experience,”[10] and
based upon that, he gave affirmation of God’s grace toward her. She was
relieved and even stated that she was “restored as if were from the grave”[11] of
doubts.
Evangelicalism focused heavily on
an emotional conversion experience, one that made the seeker feel that God
indeed was participating in their lives. In addition to this important
conversion experience, spreading the gospel gave Christians a purpose - sharing
the ‘good news’ of salvation and the assurance they had experienced. The
complete authority of the Bible was of utmost importance, however spiritual
experience and personal testimony was of such a priority that special training
(such as seminary) was not required or needed; anyone with a testimony and a
desire to share was qualified. Within this context of evangelicalism arose
another movement, Millennialism, which focused on the prophecy of the last book
of the Bible (Revelation). Millennialists believed that Christ would make his
second appearance in the world any day, and that human history was, indeed, in
the last days. This created a sense of urgency and need to convert sinners, as
well as purging Christians of sinful behavior, in preparation of the world for
the Second-Coming. Sarah was like many others who agreed with the
Millennialists; the imminent return of Christ and the reality of the American
Revolution resulted in an urgency and purpose which made people feel that they
were part of a bigger picture, God’s greater plan. Spreading the gospel to all
was foremost, as Sarah wrote, “I know not what is before us […] no not for an
Hour, but would fain Hope the Glory of the Latter days is beginning to dawn.”[12]
During the Second Great Awakening,
religious authority to share and interpret the Bible according to personal
spiritual revelation inspired many religious innovations that challenged
traditional views of divine revelation, property ownership, and family
structures. Moreover, evangelicalism gave voice to marginalized groups, such as
women and African Americans (both slaves and freed), due to the spiritual
equality afforded to all according to the Bible. Encouraged by the urgency of
the ‘last days,’ and Sarah’s desire to share the gospel, she moved into this
new-found religious authority and gained a reputation for her fervor to
encourage and pray with those who came to her home. Crowds including African
Americans, boys, and women filled her kitchen to listen to her read from the
Bible, council, and pray. Like other evangelicals, Sarah made a “determined
effort to convert the enslaved” and wrote that she “ha[d] thought it a duty to
encourage them”[13] Interestingly,
due to Sarah’s history of failing health and hardship, people were “drawn to
her because of her steadfast faith in the midst of suffering.”[14] It was only through the spiritual equality encouraged in evangelicalism that enabled a woman to function as an evangelical leader, if only from her
home. In this way, she was able to model the embrace of suffering as the will
of God, while evangelizing and spreading the gospel to those eager to hear. She
utilized her spiritual liberty within evangelicalism to speak with authority
and confidence of the assurance she herself had gained.
Evangelicalism had become an
important mode of Christianity partly due to Christians, like Sarah, who responded to the need for assurance of salvation from a hidden, inscrutable Puritan God.
This enlightened thought was a completely “new way of thinking about human
knowledge – that marked a break with Puritan tradition.”[15] The
rise of evangelicalism, as traced through the First and Second Great
Awakenings, enabled Christians to feel the desired acceptance of God and
assurance of salvation, as well as exercise a new sense of liberty and
authority gained through spiritual experience. This newfound freedom allowed
them to boldly share the message of the gospel as well as engage in a bigger
purpose of God’s plan and the imminent return of Christ in the environment of
the American Revolution.
[1] Brekus, Catherine
A. Sarah Osborn's World: The Rise of Evangelical Christianity in Early
America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 37
[2] Ibid., 38
[3] Ibid.,
37
[4] Brekus,
Sarah Osborn’s World., 70
[5] Ibid.,
70
[6] Ibid.,
7
[7] Brekus, Sarah
Osborn’s World, 94
[8] Ibid.,
95
[9] Ibid.,
95
[10] Ibid.,
122
[11] Ibid.,
123
[12] Brekus, Sarah
Osborn’s World, 251
[13] Brekus, Sarah
Osborn’s World, 250- 251
[14] Ibid.,
254
[15] Ibid., 97
March 2016
