Awakening Religious Tensions Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Awakening Religious Tensions - Essay Example He put a lot of emphasis on being ‘born again’. George Whitefield truly believed that true conversion brought a noticeable change in the souls of those who were converted. George Whitefield greatly disliked what he termed as ‘lukewarm’ Christianity. This, to him, was the reason why so many Christians were unaware that they were doomed in the hereafter. He exhorted his massive audiences to guard against serving God half heartedly. He also made changes in his ministry that stimulated people to actively seek for true change. Watching the sermons George Whitfield was an experience that changed most of his congregations. Audiences sat spell bound as he enunciated statements such as â€Å"The Lord Jesus Christ understood how very wicked and devious men's hearts were; he also knew that many reach hell even as they narrowly bypassed heaven’s gates† with numerous gripping gestures (Bushman 123). George Whitefield’s messages succeeded in changing the way Christian sermons were delivered in the majority of churches. Gilbert Tennent’s sermons added to the urgency of the Christian message in the first Great Awakening. In his sermon titled, â€Å"The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry†, Tennent referred to ministers who opposed the spirit of the Great Awakening as ‘Pharisee-teachers’. ... This sparked a division in many churches, and resulted in a number of congregants starting to look for churches that had ministered who had been born again and could prove it. Another minister of the Great Awakening who spurred remarkable changes in American Christian society was James Davenport. Davenport was quite radical in his interpretation of what he believed to be ‘tainted’ or ‘not inspired by God’. For instance, he encouraged his hearers to prevent the devil from influencing their daily lives. He even sanctioned public bonfires in which all artifacts and instruments such as jewelry and novels which were perceived to be ‘inspired by the devil’ were burned in a pile. In a news report on the result of his preaching, on paper documented in 1743 that â€Å"Great groups of people rushed toward the place of meeting, and shoved artifacts with Violence into the burning pile, proclaiming, Go you with the Rest† (Bushman 125). Davenport influ enced his crowd to become more aware of evil existing in day to day existence, and pushed for a return to purity, zealousness, and steadfastness in the Christian faith. All these developments were received with great happiness by congregations on both sides of the Atlantic. Moreover, they did not inspire much approval among other ministers. An ordained minister of an established church order, Charles Chauncy, particularly abhorred what he referred to as the ‘emotionalism’ he saw in most of the meetings of the first Great Awakening. In a letter penned to George Wishart, a Scottish minister in 1742, Chauncy complained, â€Å"There was definitely no extraordinary difference brought about by the preaching and it is vain to act as if there was. Instead, what happened was that there rose a spirit of censorious,

Encountaring DAMIEN HIRST Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Encountaring DAMIEN HIRST - Essay Example This group of artists has been very controversial around the world, but especially in England where they came to prominence in the early 1990s. Almost all of them attended Goldsmiths College in London and were bought in the early stages of their career by the rich collector Charles Saatchi. Tracey Emin is a good example. Her most famous installation piece is called The Bed and takes the form of a double bed around which are many personal objects from her life. Another pair of London conceptual artists are the Chapman brothers, Jake and Dinos, who focus a lot of attention on torture and suffering in their work, going so far as to cast life size sculptures based on images from Goya’s Disasters of War. These artists all have in common the desire to shock and sensationalize and tackle subjects that are rarely considered to be art. The critic Matthew Collings had this to say about these London-based conceptual artists: Nobody can quite sum up what they stand for. The advance public ity of Brilliant! presents them as cheeky cockneys and punk rockers oppressed by the Thatcher junta, dodging IRA bombs, living in squats, and making rough and ready art that screams with rage and isn't intended for pristine white gallery space, but for rough and ready warehouse spaces in London's cockney East End. But no conceptual artist has been as controversial as the London artist Damien Hirst, who was born in 1965. In the beginning, while still a student at Goldsmiths, he helped to organize and exhibit art by other London YBAs.