Pages

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

The Enlightenment vs The Great Awakening

The differences between the enlightenment and the great awakening don't stop at the superficial aspects of both. They both influenced completely different demographics. Mostly the elites adopted the enlightenment while the great awakening influenced the more common people.  It rather reminds me of how "Born Again Christian" is a label given to only famous people and powerful personalities like former president Bush, President Carter, Tom Hanks and hilariously Charlie Sheen. The later seems to adopt the title out of some publicity scheme. Nevertheless, I don't know the details but I have never met a person who claims to be a born again Christian and I only heard the term on TV, which made me think it's reserved for famous people. Back at the original comparison, even though both principles are somehow noble and had great concepts that benefits humanity, they still have some flaws. The great awakening breached to have no more slaves and called for freedom and equality while the enlightenment had no problem with owning slaves. The enlightenment sought out the improvement and the perfection of the human society while the great awakening focused more on the revival of religion. The great awakening didn’t pay much attention into science and education but it did help building a better society by freeing slaves and giving women the right to vote and participate in the society. We can observe a similar behavior these days where the higher class focuses more on science and education while the lower class tend to be more religious. However, back then the enlightenment and the awakening seem to complement each other instead of going against each other. Unlike today, where there is a constant debate on whom is right and which is better, Science or religion. Personally, I don’t believe they should be separate and apparently, people shared my view in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

No comments:

Post a Comment