Chapter One: Introduction

Abstract

Since colonial times, four "Great Awakenings" have occurred in the United States. These social movements have typically begun with religious revivals from which significant political, economic, and social changes emerged. William G. McLoughlin (1978, xiii), a religious historian, in his Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, has defined awakenings as "periods of cultural revitalization that begin in a general crisis of beliefs and values and extend over a period of a generation or so during which time a profound reorientation in beliefs and values takes place. Revivals alter the lives of individuals; awakenings alter the world-view of a whole people or culture." These awakenings have come in roughly eighty-to one hundredyear cycles.