Across the thirteen British American colonies in the late seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries there were revivals and expansions in Christian music as well as revivals and awakenings in spirit, heart, and mind. Individuals and churches were energized and revitalized. Many spoke of personal conversion and of personal relationships with God. New psalms, hymns, and tunes were published. Revivalist preachers, some from Europe and some from America, traveled to and across different regions preaching the gospel of Christ. They often included singing in their services. Some added hymns to their spoken or printed sermons to support their message. Multiple individuals recorded an increase and improvement in singing psalms and hymns. They gave details on changed lives and changed church services. Of course, these events did not come about without some disagreements, discontent, or differences in experiences.
Since those days, many sought to understand what took place. They wrote scholarly books and articles on varied aspects of the revivals of spirit and of song. They inspected specific individuals, denominations, events, preachers, songwriters, and musical styles. They evaluated sermons, psalms, physical responses, towns, and colonies. They analyzed a shift from psalm-singing to hymn-singing and the addition of singing-schools. Some considered the contributions and experiences of African Americans, Native Americans, or women. Others added in a transnational perspective, particularly with European nations. Still others, broadened their study to incorporate the Spanish American colonies as well as the British or to take the long view, placing the events within a timeline of other events. Additionally, some questioned the claims made or challenged the idea of a Great Awakening, as the series of eighteenth-century revivals is commonly called. Yet, in all this, little research has been devoted to the relationship between the revivals in music and the revivals in spirit. Although several mention a connection, only a small portion of the historiography touches on the subject. None identified looks at it thoroughly.
The purpose of this study is to find the relationship between the revivals of music and the revivals of spirit across the thirteen British American colonies during the long Great Awakening. The broad range of questions initially used to find what is known and the direction of the research include: In what way were they interconnected? How was their content related? What messages did they share? In what ways did one promote the other? Did either revival hinder the other? How did the relationship between the revival of music and the revival of spirit vary across denominational, regional, and hereditary lines? What specific psalms and hymns were sung at the various revivals? What psalms, hymns, and songs were written during the period? How did they relate to the sermons? Which were sung more often? What themes and doctrines did the sermons and the songs share? What does the religious music of the time reveal about the revivals? What does it indicate about the believers’ relationships with God? How did the revivalist preachers or teams use psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs?
The final guiding research questions and the narrowed perspective may shift as the research progresses. The current quest is to find out what primary records across the colonies show. In the colonists’ written reports, journals, or letters on the spiritual revivals, what references do they make to music? If and how do they relate that to the revival messages or to people’s responses? What references to music, psalms, and/or hymns do the preachers include in their records? How do they relate it to the spiritual revivals? How do the sermon topics and song texts compare? What do the newspapers of the time report? What do church or denominational records show?
The methodology for this study is a combination of religion and culture. It is transnational to an extent because much of the music and some of the preachers came from European countries. Primary sources will be the main focus. These may include personal letters, ministers’ reports, hymns, psalter and hymnal introductions and prefaces, psalters, sermons, news reports, denominational records, and revival records/ Appropriate secondary sources will also be incorporated. Furthermore, this study assumes that individuals’ spiritual experiences are genuine and that the Christian God is real. The author has written several course papers on similar topics, including “Consistency and Change in Colonial American Religious Music,” “The Influence of Culture and Revivals on Atlantic World Colonial Church Music,” “The Purposes of Eighteenth-Century Colonial American’s Church Music,” “American Church Music Between the Revolution and the Civil War,” and “The Intersection of Protestant Revival in Music and Spirit in Early America.” If the reader is interested, they can find a PowerPoint presentation and written notes for “Consistency and Change in Colonial American Religious Music” in Scholars Crossing at Liberty University or in Google Scholar because the author was asked to present her findings for the Research Symposium in 2016..