CONTENT WARNINGS: ✝️ Religion, 👩 Sexism
Divine America
In the 1730s, Protestant Christianity was in full swing as evangelicalism took hold in Britain and the American colonies. The Great Awakening, which would forever alter the course of American religion, renewed spiritual devotion – especially within Puritanism and Presbyterianism. It was at odds with American Enlightenment, the movement of radical philosophical ideas that led the colonists to revolution against the British Empire since the Enlightenment and soon-to-be American government were nonreligious and non-denominational.
The Great Awakening, which lasted until the 1740s, is a subset of colonial history already covered in a previous article. Instead of retelling transgender-related history already covered, this piece sets the stage by explaining the fundamental religious background those mindsets drew from. There are also modern connections that can relate to today’s political climate. Scholars theorize that we are amid a Fifth Great Awakening preceded by others in the 1740s, 1800s, 1890s, and 1960s.
New Ideas for a New World
Compared to organized religion in Europe, the Great Awakening brought ideas that challenged centuries-long notions. Regardless of what denomination one identified with, religion was formal and institutionalized—you couldn’t be saved from damnation without direct guidance from the Church of England or the Catholic Church. The Great Awakening prompted the forbidden question: Can Christians save themselves from faith alone?
This question changed the course of Christianity in the United States. While organized religion through churches is still valuable across all denominations, American Christianity especially values self-salvation over tithes or church attendance. The Great Awakening proposed that all people are born sinners, but can be saved through maintaining a direct and emotional connection with God. Before these ideas, salvation was something ‘bought’ by donating enough time or money to a church.
Despite these radical ideas, the Great Awakening also cemented strict ideas about gender. Settlers sailed to North America in search of religious freedom to pursue faiths obstructed in Britain – but they were ironically intolerant of Christian denominations different from their own. Puritans, Lutherans, Quakers, Baptists, Anglicans, and other subsets of Christians did not get along – which contributed to more colonies being founded when groups became too divided. Something they all had in common, however, was a tendency to morally surveil each other – evidenced by the use of the judicial system to execute during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.
There’s also a layer of hypocrisy within the Great Awakening and the ideas it bolsters – one of its core tenets is the duty each individual holds to achieve self-salvation from the damnation of hell. However, religious revival intertwines itself with organized religion as seen with the misuse of the court system by religious fanatics in Salem. The ideas behind the Great Awakening pose one’s personal connection and morality as superior to authority figures, but religious enlightenment pushes individuals to seek scripted guidance from authority figures like traveling preachers and then use religious teachings to enforce morality-based law onto others.
Without the Great Awakening, Puritanism might have died out in America. Religious fervor was steadily declining in the colonies, and figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield used to instill fears of hell by harping on sloth and other deadly sins. The dominant branches of Christianity utilized an “all or nothing” approach to morality, pushing gender-diverse individuals either to the closet or the courts like Thomas(sine) Hall. Gender variance undoubtedly existed during the Great Awakening, but the political climate obsessed with moral purity pushed individuals to secrecy while the historians of the time knowingly kept queerness out of documents as much as possible.
TRANS HISTORY KEY POINT
History is subjective. Any history class outside of high school will make this point – history books are written by the victors, so they control the narrative of how great they were and how terrible their victims were. Good students of history acknowledge this subjectiveness.
Miss Preacher: Religion Among Women
The Great Awakening denied women the ability to openly preach or take leadership roles, but it encouraged women to write about their religious enthusiasm in diaries and memoirs, such as in the cases of Hannah Heaton and Phillis Wheatley. A prominent example of this is the life of Sarah Osborn, a Protestant writer from Rhode Island who traveled in colonial America preaching ideas of the Enlightenment – even though both the Great Awakening and Enlightenment were male-dominated. Osborn’s thoughts were in line with the thinking of the time – she disagreed with liberal humanism in favor of Calvinist self-salvation.
Religious thought was one of the few socially acceptable paths for women to philosophize and write alongside men, even if they were not allowed to publish their works. Evangelism “sought to include every person in conversion, regardless of gender, race, and status” (Taylor) even though it incited conflict between “Old Lights,” traditional and orthodox thinkers, and “New Lights,” who sought the teachings of the Awakening. However, moral purity instilled strict gender roles that delegated women to be nothing more than homemakers doting on their husbands and children. These roles would be largely unchallenged until the first wave of feminism despite the impact American women had on the history and politics of the forming United States.
The only exception to this is Quakerism, which had a significant role in inspiring the minds of early feminism – in Quaker circles, women were invited to speak during official meetings, publish their writing, preach, and question authority. The schisms of gender and colonial religion highlight how disconnected North America was during British rule – even though all American colonies ultimately reported to Britain, one colony could have laws completely different than another based on religious creed.
THINK PIECE: Great Awakenings or religious revivals happen every 30 to 45 years. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the last one began in the 1960s – putting America on track for a Fifth Great Awakening. Transgender rights are the focus of this wave, alongside reproductive rights, police brutality, and other ideas that have been inserted into mainstream religion. What can history teach us about previous religious revivals to combat this one?
Knowledge Check
- Fill in the Blank: _____ referred to individuals who subscribed to the radical ideas presented during the Great Awakening.
– - According to preachers during the Great Awakening, the most important factor in spiritual salvation was…
a. charitable donations to the Church.
b. a personal relationship with God.
c. being born into a righteous family.
d. acts of kindness unto the unfortunate.
– - True or False: During the Great Awakening, women were encouraged to preach in all thirteen colonies.
– - Which of the following themes are true about the Great Awakening?
a. Gender roles were deepened, putting men further into leadership positions and women as homemakers.
b. In circumstances where queerness occurred during the Great Awakening, it was quickly punished and censored.
c. Despite the focus on self-salvation, the Great Awakening revitalized organized religion.
d. These are all true themes about the Great Awakening.
– - It is theorized that the United States is undergoing a _____ Great Awakening.
ANSWER KEY
1. NEW LIGHTS / 2. B / 3. FALSE / 4. D / 5. FIFTH
Further Reading
DISCLAIMER: While the links below work at the time this article was originally published, they may not forever – especially when government officials are intentionally purging official reviewed research and censoring mainstream media.
Anti-Trans Hate: Part of the 5th Evangelical ‘Great Awakening’? by Riki Wilchins (2024)
Colonial America: The Age of Sodomitical Sin by Jonathan Ned Katz (2012)
Enlightenment by Britannica (2025)
Gay American History by Jonathan Ned Katz (1976)
Great Awakening by The History Channel (2018)
LGBTQIA+ Community Records by the National Archives (2025)
The Colonial Experience by US History (2022)
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves edited by Laura Erickson-Schroth (2014)
US History #5, #6 and Black American History #7 by Crash Course