殖民时期的美国：大觉醒运动 | 托马斯·基德

第一次美国革命并非发生在1776年。

The first American revolution didn't happen in 1776.

它发生在近五十年前，且与政治无关。

It happened nearly fifty years earlier, and it wasn't about politics.

这场革命关乎宗教信仰。

It was about religion.

我们称之为大觉醒运动，它像独立战争一样深刻改变了美国。

We know it as the Great Awakening, and it changed America almost as profoundly as the War of Independence did.

到十八世纪三十年代，美洲殖民地已实现永久定居。

By the seventeen thirties, the American colonies had achieved a permanency.

这意味着它们已成为全球版图中不可分割的部分。

That is, they were now a fixture on the global landscape.

随着每年越来越多的欧洲移民到来，未来看起来一片光明。

With more and more European settlers arriving every year, the future looked bright.

对某些人——尤其是一位牧师而言，新的繁荣付出了沉重代价。

To some and to one clergyman in particular, the new prosperity came at a steep price.

这位牧师就是乔纳森·爱德华兹，马萨诸塞州北安普顿公理会教堂那位热情洋溢、才华横溢的牧师。

That clergyman was Jonathan Edwards, the fiery and brilliant pastor of Northampton Congregationalist Church in Massachusetts.

爱德华兹对他眼中教民们自满的态度深感不安。

Edwards was disturbed by what he saw as his parishioners' complacency.

他坚称，仅仅在周日去教堂做礼拜是远远不够的。

It wasn't enough for them to show up in church on Sunday, he asserted.

他们需要与上帝建立个人关系，这种关系无法通过神职人员来传递。

They needed a personal relationship with God, something that could not be mediated by clergy.

唯有上帝的恩典，而非宗教仪式，才能将他们从地狱之火中拯救出来。

God's grace alone, not religious ritual, would save them from the fires of hell.

若我们改善生活的目的不是为了走向天堂，那么一切努力都将白费。

If we improve our lives to any other purpose than as a journey toward heaven, all our labor will be lost.

爱德华兹的布道引起了强烈共鸣。

Edwards' message struck a chord.

不到一年时间，这座边疆小镇几乎每位居民都如《新约》所言，宣称自己获得了重生。

Within a year, almost every resident of his frontier town professed to be, as the New Testament puts it, born again.

这是美国福音派基督教的起源。

It was the beginning of evangelical Christianity in America.

如果说爱德华兹点燃了新的宗教热情，那么乔治·怀特菲尔德则将其煽动成熊熊烈火。

If Edwards kindled a new religious fervor, it was George Whitfield who fanned it into a bonfire.

怀特菲尔德1714年出生于英格兰。

Whitfield was born in England in 1714.

尽管他在牛津大学学习哲学和神学，却从未担任过固定教职。

Although he studied philosophy and theology at Oxford University, he never took a permanent pulpit.

相反，他作为传教士四处游历，先是在英格兰，后来到了北美殖民地。

Instead, he traveled from town to town as a preacher, first in England and then in the colonies.

怀特菲尔德天生具有演说天赋且极其勤奋，他吸引了令人难以置信的庞大群众——仅举两例：波士顿2万人（当时该市人口仅1.7万）和费城2.5万人前来听他布道。

A naturally gifted orator and an incredibly hard worker, Whitfield attracted mind boggling crowds, 20,000 in Boston at a time when it had a population of 17,000, and 25,000 in Philadelphia, to cite just two examples.

人们常常步行或骑马数日长途跋涉来听他演讲。

People would travel long distances, often walking or riding for days to hear him speak.

这种万众瞩目使他成为美国第一位真正的名人。

All this attention made him America's first true celebrity.

这也将怀特菲尔德与一位雄心勃勃的印刷商、未来的名人本杰明·富兰克林联系在了一起。

It also connected Whitfield to an ambitious printer and future celebrity himself, Benjamin Franklin.

富兰克林看到了通过出版怀特菲尔德作品获取暴利的机会，而怀特菲尔德则看到了向更多美国人传播其思想的机会。

Franklin saw an opportunity for a major windfall in publishing Whitfield's works, while Whitfield saw an opportunity to get his message out to even more Americans.

两人都如愿以偿。

Both were right.

富兰克林赚得盆满钵满，怀特菲尔德则收获了更多皈依者。

Franklin made a fortune, and Whitfield made more converts.

大觉醒运动本质上是宗教事件，但也产生了深远的政治影响。

The Great Awakening was fundamentally a spiritual event, but it also had profound political consequences.

宗教自由这一典型美国理念正是在这一时期形成的。

The quintessentially American idea of religious liberty took shape during this period.

在大觉醒运动之前，美国的宗教活动受到政府的严格管制。

Before the Great Awakening, American religious practices were tightly regulated by the government.

牧师通常没有自由建立新教堂或随心所欲地布道。

Pastors generally did not have the freedom to start new churches or preach wherever they wished.

但大觉醒运动的流行及其对个人与上帝关系的关注冲破了这些限制。

But the Awakening's popularity and its focus on the individual's relationship with God overwhelmed these restrictions.

它还激起了革命的最初萌芽。

It also stirred the first inklings of revolution.

如果你能反抗既定的教会，你就能反抗政府。

If you could rebel against the established church, you could rebel against the ground.

但大觉醒运动所做的远不止于此。

But the Great Awakening did even more than that.

它塑造了美国革命前的文化。

It shaped America's pre revolutionary culture.

它不仅提高了各殖民地的圣经识字率，还将美国植根于犹太-基督教世界观中。

Not only did it increase biblical literacy throughout the colonies, it also rooted America in a Judeo Christian worldview.

例如，富兰克林和托马斯·杰斐逊——可能是开国元勋中最不教条的两位——希望美国的国玺以摩西带领以色列人出埃及为主题，并配上'反抗暴政就是服从上帝'的格言。

For example, Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, perhaps the two least doctrinaire of the Founders, wanted the seal of The United States to feature Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt under the motto Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

当著名爱国者帕特里克·亨利在1775年'不自由毋宁死'的演讲中敦促他的弗吉尼亚同僚投身革命事业时，他使用了圣经的语言来表达。

When noted patriot Patrick Henry exhorted his Virginia colleagues to embrace the cause of revolution, in his 1775 Liberty or Death oration, he used biblical language to do it.

他宣称，诉诸武力与万军之神的庇护是我们仅剩的选择。

He declared that an appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that has left us.

他的听众们在大觉醒运动中成长，对这种言辞心领神会。

His audience, reared during the Great Awakening, understood that kind of talk.

杰斐逊也是如此，他在《独立宣言》中用宗教语言捕捉到了自由的神圣精神。

So did Jefferson, who used religious language to capture the sacred spirit of liberty in the declaration of independence.

人人生而平等，造物主赋予他们若干不可剥夺的权利。

All men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.

这些权利包括生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。

Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

大觉醒运动比任何单一现象都更有效地建立了美国人的共同身份认同。

The Great Awakening did more than any single phenomenon to establish a common American identity.

它将从佐治亚到马萨诸塞的殖民者团结在一套共同价值观之下，其中最重要的是自由本身是神圣的——它并非来自人类，更非来自国王，而是源自上帝。

It united colonists from Georgia to Massachusetts behind a shared set of values, foremost of which was that liberty itself was holy, derived not from man and certainly not from a king, but from God.

我是托马斯·基德，普拉格大学《美国历史》第一卷与第二卷的作者。

I'm Thomas Kidd, author of American History volumes one and two for Prager University.

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Thank you for watching this video.

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