Gilbert Tennent

Protestant evangelist, born in Co Armagh, Northern Ireland. He emigrated to America with his father c.1718 and entered the ministry in 1725. A fiery, persuasive preacher, he helped foment the religious revival known as the Great Awakening, during which he travelled through the N colonies with English evangelist George Whitefield. His dismissive views on the pastorate and on the Church as an institution provoked a schism among New Jersey Presbyterians in the 1740s. Mellowing in later years, when he served in Philadelphia he helped to heal the breach he had largely created.

Gilbert Tennent (February 5, 1703, County Armagh, Ireland - July 23, 1764, Philadelphia) was a religious leader.

Tennent was an Irish-born American Presbyterian clergyman, son and brother of three other Presbyterian clergymen. His father, William Tennent, came to America in 1718, and was the founder of a theological school at Warminster, Pennsylvania called, because of the way it was housed, the Log College. Gilbert was one of the leaders of the Great Awakening of religious feeling in Colonial America, along with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. For notices of Gilbert and other prominent members of the Tennent family, consult W.