Using Tennents' strategy, the clergymen of Presbyterian, Puritan and Baptist churches were conducting revivals in their regions by the 1740s. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards stirred up flamboyant and terrifying images of the absolute corruption of the human nature in their emotionally charged sermons. These preachers also described the terrors awaiting the unrepentant in hell in their powerful sermons.

Some of the converts from the early revivals in the northern colonies were inspired to become missionaries to the southern region of America. The great awakening continued to spread in the late 1740s when Presbyterian preachers from New York and New Jersey started proselytizing in the Virginia Piedmont. It also spread to central North Carolina and the surrounding colonies by the 1750s when some members of the Separate Baptists moved from New England. Notably, 10% of all southern churchgoers were evangelical converts by the eve of the American Revolution.

There were...
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