The Great Awakenings

The Church Divided

In what remained of the embattled Roman Christian Empire, the Church was divided into two main bodies. The Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church was centered in Constantinople (now Istanbul in northwest Turkey), and the Roman Orthodox Catholic Church remained centered in Rome (RNA 54). Both of these religious bodies can trace their origins to Emperor Constantine, by whose authority Christianity was established and under whose edicts the Way of Y'shua and his disciples died. The New Universal Roman Religion has little in common with the Judaism of Y'shua and his followers.

The famed Jerusalem Rebbe Gamaliel was shown to be correct in his estimation of the new movement (Acts 5:34-40). Without rabbinic authority and maintaining the Jewish traditions, the Way sect was unable to survive. The religion known as Christianity bears little theological association with the doctrines espoused by Y'shua, James, Peter, and Paul, as the following video from Jews For Judaism discusses:

The Awakenings

From the Battle of Tours until the 1960s, Christianity remained the indisputable religious, social, and legal authority of Western society. It is not surprising, therefore, that most of what are termed spiritual awakenings, as well as the revivals that occur within them, have taken place within the Christian arena (RNA 10). By this I mean that for the most part, the historic Western awakenings began as reform movements within the Christian communities.

As we will see as we continue, there were significant exceptions to this, such as the rise of Chassidus among the Jews.