Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen - First Great Awakening

First Great Awakening

Frelinghuysen served as a precursor to the First Great Awakening where his evangelistic contributions culminated in a regional awakening within the Middle Colonies. His ministry was greatly assisted through the efforts of Gilbert Tennent and George Whitefield. He sought to evangelize the Raritan Valley through Reformed pietism, that also owed much to the theological thought of the Puritans as well. Utilizing this theological thought, he employed a three-pronged evangelistic strategy. His chosen evangelistic strategies were preaching, church discipline, and a contextualization of the Dutch Reformed ecclesiastical practices.

His preaching aimed to convict people of the need to examine their lives in order to ascertain the validity of their salvation. In contrast to the staid orthodoxy of many of the Presbyterians and much of the New York Dutch Reformed Clergy, Frelinghuysen's evangelistic preaching penetrated the raw frontier of early eighteenth-century life of New Jersey. He attempted to ingrain within the listener a deep conviction of sin. Frelinghuysen evangelized the New Jersey Colony by using a blunt preaching style which classified his audiences into two basic categories: regenerate and unregenerate. One individual's response to the awakener was offered in the following apt summary: "We welcomed him with joy and love, in the hope that his service would be for our edification. But alas! to our great sorrow, we, soon, and increasingly found that the result was very different. His denunciations uttered against all of us from the pulpit . . . and on all occasions, to the effect that we were all unconverted . . . were severe and bitter."

Church discipline was also utilized to awaken the dormant New Jersey congregations to the realization that some of its parishioners did not meet the scriptural standards of salvation. They were therefore frequently prevented from participating in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. For Frelinghuysen, "fencing the table", or preventing people from full participation in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, not only purified the sacrament but it also alerted his parishioners to the stringent need for holy living. Church discipline was a reinforcement of his pietism, for it caused individuals to inspect their lives for holy living. If they failed to see either their sinful hearts or if they could not point to righteous acts of fruit demonstrating salvation, they stood in need of conversion. Consequently, Frelinghuysen stressed that a person's experience of conversion was accompanied by distinguishing outward behaviors which proved them to be recipients of the new birth. Few acts incited such anger for the Colonial citizens as did Frelinghuysen's "fencing the table."

Lastly, in Frelinghuysen's efforts to reach beyond the Colonial church, he rooted his ministry in the Reformation concept that the church would continuously reform, or ecclesia semper reformanda. As he adjusted to the Middle Colonies, Frelinghuysen believed the colonial church was compelled to change for its survival. Faced with a different context from the Netherlands, the result was an Americanizing movement led by Frelinghuysen's arrival in the Colonies in 1720. In place of conformity to Dutch traditions of language, style, and liturgy that were designed for the Netherlands, Frelinghuysen conceived of a church that was not restrained by the formalism prescribed by the Classis of Amsterdam.

Though the records for Frelinghuysen's four churches are not used as sources by contemporary church historians, some accounts of the evangelistic results experienced during his ministry remain extant. In 1726, Frelinghuysen admitted thirty-eight new converts to his four churches while an additional sixteen converts were added in 1729, and again in 1734. An additional fifty members were added in 1739, while another twenty-two people were verified as regenerate and able to participate in communion in 1741 in the New Brunswick church. In sum, he gained 180 new converts in the Raritan and New Brunswick churches alone. Such numbers of converts may pale in comparison to the throngs of people who responded to the itinerant evangelist, George Whitefield; yet, these numbers mark a sizeable proportional increase in the churches themselves.

Notably, none other than Jonathan Edwards credited Frelinghuysen with the beginning of the awakening in New Jersey upon his discussion with Gilbert Tennent:

"But this shower of Divine blessing has been yet more extensive. There was no small degree of it in some parts of the Jerseys, as I was informed when I was at New York, (in a long journey I took at that time of the year for my health) by some people of the Jerseys, whom I saw, especially the Rev. Mr. William Tennent, a minister, who seemed to have such things much at heart, told me of a very great awakening of many in a place called the Mountains, under the ministry of one Mr. Cross; and of a very considerable revival of religion in another place under the ministry of his brother, the Rev. Mr. Gilbert Tennent; and also at another place, under the ministry of a very pious young gentleman, a Dutch minister, whose name as I remember, was Freelinghousa ."