Great Awakenings are commonly said to be periods of religious revival in Anglo-American religious history. They have also been described as periodic revolutions in American religious thought.

The Great Awakenings appear to form a cycle, with a period of roughly 80 years.

There are three generally accepted Great Awakenings in American history:

• The First Great Awakening (1730s - 1740s)
• The Second Great Awakening (1820s - 1830s)
• The Third Great Awakening (1880s - 1900s)

Some scholars accept a Fourth Great Awakening which occurred during the 1960s and 70s, corresponding to a rise in the charismatic/Pentecostal movement in the United States.

The Pattern of Great Awakenings

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A Great Awakening happens when social change renders traditional religion (or the thesis in Hegel's terminology) unable to answer questions posed by contemporary life. A certain disconnection occurs between religion and the real world. New belief systems attempt to fill the gap, eventually leading to a full Great Awakening.

A Great Awakening consists of the rise of a multitude of new denominations, sects, or even entirely new religions. In addition to completely new belief systems, existing belief systems gain new popularity. Since, by its nature, religion is traditional and hard to change, many new beliefs attempt to do an end-run around tradition by appealing to even more ancient (and sometimes fabricated, or at least distorted) tradition, dismissing current beliefs as either innovations or having lost some elements over time. This is why Great Awakenings are often referred to as revivals.

In response to this new antithesis, fundamentalist sects form, which oppose some of the new ideas (while quietly accepting others).

Over the course of roughly the next 40 years, a form of natural selection takes place, as the more radical sects on both sides are either defeated or merge into a new synthesis of belief. A crucial step is the coming-of-age of a generation raised in the beliefs of the newest Great Awakening. For them, the beliefs, even if not their own, are a fact of life, and not dangerously radical.

But this new synthesis eventually ossifies, becoming the new thesis, starting the cycle over.

American Great Awakenings

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Although the Great Awakenings influence and are influenced by religious thought from throughout the world, the cycle of Great Awakenings appear unique to the United States. This could be because the United States is home to many different denominations and sects, while remaining largely Protestant. The lack of a single dominant faith or state-sanctioned religion means new ideas can be spread without having to slowly reform existing institutions from within, or allowing pressures to build up until the existing institutions are violently overthrown. On the other hand, the established sects have enough prestige and inertia the pressure for new ideas build into a regular cycle of bloodless revolution.

Since religion has often been used to dictate or justify morality, the Great Awakenings have exerted influence on the politics of the United States. Joseph Tracy, the minister and historian who gave this religious phemonenon its name in his influential (and still, to many, definitive) 1842 book The Great Awakening, saw the First Great Awakening as a precursor to the War of Independence. For another example, the abolition movement, part of the wider Second Great Awakening, eventually contributed to the American Civil War.

Further reading

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• Alan Heimert; Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution;Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966
• Robert William Fogel; The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism; 2000, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0226256626
• Alan Heimert and Perry Miller ed.; The Great Awakening: Documents Illustrating the Crisis and Its Consequences; New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967
• Frank Lambert; Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994
• William G. McLoughlin. 's Revivals, Awakenings and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (1978)
• Joseph Tracy, The Great Awakening: A History of the Revival of Religion in the Time of Edwards and Whitefield, 1997, Banner of Truth, ISBN 0851517129. This is a reprint of the original work published in 1842.
• Harry Stout; The Divine Dramatist: George Whitefield and the Rise of Modern Evangelicalism;Grand Rapids, William B. Eerdmans, 1991

Religious history of the United States

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