Great Awakening

Each of these "Great Awakenings" was characterized by widespread revivals led by evangelical Protestant ministers, a sharp increase of interest in religion, a profound sense of conviction and redemption on the part of those affected, an increase in evangelical church membership, and the formation of new religious movements and denominations.

It incited rancor and division between traditionalists, who insisted on the continuing importance of ritual and doctrine, and revivalists who encouraged emotional involvement and personal commitment.

[5] The First Great Awakening began in the 1730s and lasted to about 1740, though pockets of revivalism had occurred in years prior, especially amongst the ministry of Solomon Stoddard, Jonathan Edwards's grandfather.

[7] But as American religious historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom noted, the Great Awakening "was still to come, ushered in by the Grand Itinerant",[7] the British evangelist George Whitefield.

Whitefield arrived in Georgia in 1738 and returned in 1739 for a second visit of the Colonies, making a "triumphant campaign north from Philadelphia to New York, and back to the South".

[10] Michał Choiński argues that the First Great Awakening marks the birth of the American "rhetoric of the revival" understood as "a particular mode of preaching in which the speaker employs and it has a really wide array of patterns and communicative strategies to initiate religious conversions and spiritual regeneration among the hearers".

[13] In the later part of the 1700s, the Revival came to the English colonies of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island primarily through the efforts of Henry Alline and his New Light movement.

[16] Among these dozens of new denominations were free black churches, run independently of existing congregations that were predominantly of white attendance.

The revival of 1858 produced leaders such as Dwight L. Moody who carried out religious work in the Civil War armies.

[23] In recent times, the idea of "awakenings" in United States history has been put forth by conservative American evangelicals.

[25][26][27][28] In 2018, the British political commentator Andrew Sullivan described the "Great Awokening", describing it as a "cult of social justice on the left, a religion whose followers show the same zeal as any born-again Evangelical [Christian]" and who "punish heresy by banishing sinners from society or coercing them to public demonstrations of shame".