IV. The Inadequacy of the Colonial Churches

In this new country, especially under frontier conditions, the church, for various reasons, never kept pace with the population. There were successive waves of migration from other countries, of differing religious backgrounds, ^{14Leonard W. Bacon a history of American Christianity pp. 36, 37.} and migrations are, as Candler remarks, periods of definite peril and moral danger to those cut off from established; vitalizing forces and the old restraints. Our Colonial forefathers were divided into separate jealous colonies, with differing religious groups in the lead, but in most cases with no dominant religion. Under the stress of wars and frontier conditions and the inadequacy of churches and pastors, religion declined, manners coarsened, and intemperance and licentiousness prevailed. Even the established churches were honeycombed with the unconverted. Such was the serious situation in Colonial America on the eve of the Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century. ^{15Warren A. Candler great revivals and the great republic pp. 39, 40.}PFF4 20.2

The early Puritans had been men of sturdy faith, strong convictions, and deep moral earnestness. But their religious life was controlled by the forbidding principles of duty and fear, and their ultra-Calvinism practically denied man’s free moral agency. In the attempt to hold the succeeding generations, the “Halfway Covenant” filled the churches in New England with unconverted members, with general spiritual and moral declension as a natural consequence. ^{16Frank G. Beardsley, A History of American Revivals, chap. 2; see also Wesley M. Gewehr, The Great Awakening in Virginia, pp. 3, 4.}PFF4 20.3

In the colonies where the Anglican Church was established, the same spiritual declension was to be found, because political considerations rather than spiritual qualifications governed the appointment of the clergy. Furthermore, the great majority of the colonists were not church members. Of the 101 voyagers on the Mayflower, only a mere dozen were church members, or even professing Christians. Sweet summarizes the situation thus:PFF4 21.1

“That New England was the best churched section of the colonies goes without saying, and here church membership was about one to eight “in 1760. In the Middle Colonies where the great new German and Scotch-Irish immigration was coming to a larger extent than anywhere else, the proportion of unchurched was much larger, and was perhaps something like one to fifteen or eighteen. In the Southern Colonies the ratio of the churched to the unchurched was not more than one to twenty; taking the colonies as a whole, the ratio was something like one to twelve.” ^{17W. W. Sweet, Revivalism in America, p. 18.}PFF4 21.2