Church History in Plain Language

Era 6 · 1648 – 1789

The Age of Reason and Revival

Tired of religious war, Europe turns to reason, and Christianity answers with a religion of the heart.

Shelley calls the period from 1648 to 1789 "the Age of Reason and Revival." The two words pull in opposite directions, and that tension is the story of the era.

Reason: After a century of religious war, many educated Europeans lost patience with dogma. The scientific revolution of Galileo and Newton showed a universe governed by orderly laws. Enlightenment thinkers asked whether Christianity's miracles, mysteries and clergy were reasonable at all. Some became Deists, believing in a distant creator but not in revelation. A few became open skeptics.

Revival: At the same time, a wave of heartfelt, personal Christianity swept through the Protestant world. Puritans sought holy lives and pure churches. German Pietists stressed new birth and Bible study in small groups. Moravians sent missionaries around the globe. In Britain, John and Charles Wesley's Methodists preached in fields and sang a new kind of hymn. In America, the Great Awakening set colonial towns ablaze. This "religion of the heart" laid the foundation of modern evangelicalism.

The era also saw new churches: Baptists, Quakers and Methodists. Puritans settled New England. In the East, Russian Orthodoxy faced the reforms of Peter the Great. The era closes with the French Revolution in 1789, which would turn the relationship between church and state upside down.

Timeline: The Age of Reason and Revival (1648 – 1789)

1650170017501642 English Civil War begins1649 Charles I executed1652 Patriarch Nikon's reforms; Old Believer schi…1675 Spener's Pia Desideria1678 Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress1682 Avvakum burned at the stake1687 Newton's Principia1689 Act of Toleration1703 John Wesley born at Epworth1706 Ziegenbalg and Plütschau, first Protestant m…1720 Frelinghuysen's revivals in New Jersey1721 Peter the Great abolishes the patriarchate; …1727 Moravian revival; 100-year prayer watch begi…1736 Bishop Butler's Analogy of Religion1738 John Wesley's heart "strangely warmed" at a …1738 Aldersgate: John's heart "strangely warmed" …1740 Gilbert Tennent's "Danger of an Unconverted …1744 First Methodist Conference1755 Lisbon earthquake shakes faith in providence1758 Edwards dies after smallpox inoculation1782 The Philokalia published in Venice1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom1791 John Wesley dies1791 First Amendment guarantees religious freedom
Selected key dates from each chapter of this era. Click an event to read its chapter, or see every date in this era on the master timeline.

Chapters in this era

  1. 1Puritans, Baptists and QuakersPuritanism, the English Civil War, Cromwell, the Pilgrims and New England, Baptists, Quakers, Bunyan, and the Toleration Act.
  2. 2Pietists and MoraviansSpener and Francke's Pietism, Halle, Count Zinzendorf and the Moravians, the 100-year prayer meeting, and the Jansenists and Quietists.
  3. 3The EnlightenmentThe scientific revolution, Descartes, Locke, Deism, Voltaire, Hume, Kant, the Galileo affair, and Christian responses to the Age of Reason.
  4. 4John Wesley and the MethodistsThe Holy Club, Aldersgate, field preaching with Whitefield, Methodist organization, Charles Wesley's hymns, and the split from the Church of England.
  5. 5The Great Awakening in AmericaThe First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards, Whitefield's tours, Old Lights and New Lights, enslaved Africans and Christianity, and the American Revolution.
  6. 6Orthodoxy in Russia and the Ottoman WorldRussian Orthodoxy from 1453 to 1800, the Old Believers, Peter the Great's Holy Synod, the Philokalia, and the Greek church under Ottoman rule.