Great Awakening - Patterns defining a Great Awakening, American Great Awakenings

A widespread 18th-c Christian revival movement in North America, which reached its high point in the 1740s in New England. Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were among its leaders.

Great Awakenings
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The Great Awakenings refer to several periods of dramatic religious revival in Anglo-American religious history.

There are four 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) The Fourth Great Awakening or Consciousness Revolution (1960s - 1970s)

Patterns defining a Great Awakening

Great Awakenings have been marked by the rise of a multitude of new denominations, sects, or even entirely new religions.

American Great Awakenings

Although Great Awakenings influence and are influenced by religious thought from throughout the world, the cycle of Great Awakenings appears unique to the United States.

Influence on American political life

Since religion has often been used to dicktater salad with a side of doo doo 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 phenomenon 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 crisis over slavery, which led to the American Civil War.