Trending in the 18th Century

What was trending in the 18th century? Today, Stephen Nichols walks through five key developments that shaped the church, including revival, hymnody, and the early sparks of global missions.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. On this episode, we are looking at what was trending in the 18th century, and we begin at the tail end of the 1600s with Philipp Spener. He was at Holla University in Germany, and he’s considered the founder or the father of Pietism. He was born in 1635 and he died in 1705, and he put a heavy emphasis on individual devotion and piety. He was followed there at Holla by August Herman Francke in the early 1700s who furthered Patriotism’s influence. It would go on to influence the Moravians, and at the end of the 1700s, we would see Pietism manifesting itself in the Methodist movement.

The second thing trending is English hymnody. You could say that in the eighteenth century, we went from zero to sixty with English hymnody. Isaac Watts first published his hymns and spiritual songs in the year 1707. Of course, he continued to write hymns the rest of his life, and then he was joined by the Wesley brothers, John and Charles. And between the three of them, thousands of hymns were produced over the eighteenth century and many, many hymnals and many more continue to be published.

The third thing trending is the Great Awakening. This was a transatlantic phenomenon. In Old England, it’s George Whitfield, and again, the Wesley brothers. In New England, it’s Jonathan Edwards. You begin to see in the 1720s and 1730s, what were called harvests or revivals. But by the time we get to 1740, this is again a transatlantic phenomenon. It is up and down the coast and through all of the American colonies. And so, we have the Great Awakening. And after it, of course, would be the aftermath and the response and people trying to make sense of it. So a very significant definitive moment in the eighteenth century was the Great Awakening.

Fourthly, trending we have the foundations and beginnings of the modern global missions movement. Of course, this would take off in the nineteenth and twentieth century with developments of much more efficient communication and transportation systems. But the roots are right there. In 1701, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts was established. This was in the United Kingdom, and the “Foreign Parts” refer to the foreign parts of the British Empire. And at that time they said the sun never sets on the British Empire. In 1710, the first Modern Bible Society is founded. This will be very significant, these institutions, for Bible societies, for Bible distribution, and how crucial that is to the missionary movement. And then we have Jonathan Edwards again publishing his Life of David Brainerd and inspiring missionary biography. You begin to look at missionaries in the 1800s, 1900s, even in this century. And you’ll see a common thread that many of them read or were influenced by Edward’s life of David Brainerd. And then in 1792, William Carey published his An Inquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathen.

Well, the fifth thing trending in the eighteenth century is bad news. And that is the clash with enlightenment, rationalism, and the rise of deism. In deism, God created the world, but he stays at arm’s length. He is a distance from the world. Deism rejects the supernatural in this natural world. There’s no Bible, no miracles, there’s no incarnation. And all that means simply that there is no Christianity. Well, deism was and is a destructive force, and we see it trending in the eighteenth century. So what was dominating all of the news feeds and all of the conversations in the 1700s, it was pietism, it was English hymnody, it was the Great Awakening, it was the beginnings of what would become the Modern Global Missions movement, and lastly, it was deism. Well, that’s the eighteenth century. And I’m Steve Nichols, and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.