Gilbert Tennent was one of the most influential New Light Calvinists of the First Great Awakening. His Father, William Tennent established the Log College in 1727, the only school to educate pro-revival Presbyterian ministers in America leading up to, and during the First Great Awakening. In 1739, the Presbyterian governing body, told William Tennent his students would not be considered as pastors in Presbyterian churches. This was a move to quash the First Great Awakening by the anti-revival forces. This undoubtably was a factor in Gilbert calling many Old Light Presbyterians unregenerate.

The anti-revival establishment held that ministers must be educated at established elite universities in Europe (like Edinburgh or Glasgow) or New England (like Harvard or Yale). These universities downplayed or ignored the Biblical view of salvation as being the result of supernatural regeneration and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The universities in Scotland taught rationalism, and later, Scottish Common Sense Realism, which explained regeneration as the "tipping point of the understanding" and held the Holy Spirit was limited in how he could save sinners, as defined in the "verbal restrictive" theory. Harvard and Yale also taught rationalism, and considered the New England Way to be antiquated and unfashionable, and discouraged young ministers from participating in the First Great Awakening. For example, David Brainerd was expelled from Yale in 1742 for expressing pro-revival sentiments.

The Presbyterian governing body said the Log College produced uneducated, unqualified pastors. In fact, the name "Log College" was originally used as a pejorative insult by critics of the First Great Awakening.

In 1752, Gilbert went with Samuel Davies to London, England to raise money for the College of New Jersey, so there would be at least one school that could produce pro-revival ministers who would be accepted by churches. The Log College had been starved to death by Old Light Calvinist ministers and congregations who did not accept its graduates as qualified ministers. What Gilbert found in England was his sermon condemning Old Light Presbyterians, the so-called Nottingham Sermon ( The Danger of An Unconverted Ministry) had poisoned the willingness of prospective doners to give.

Samuel Davies noted in his journal that many Presbyterian, Baptist, and independent ministers had departed from Evangelical faith, calling it "antiquated and unfashionable". It verified the Nottingham Sermon, in which Tennent said, unconverted ministers were as bad a Pharisees, because they had "no experience of a special work of the Holy Ghost upon their own souls". The ministers who no longer believed in supernatural regeneration and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit were unwilling to support the College of New Jersey.