Great Awakenings

By Hans Leaman

The Philadelphia region played a major role in the three major religious “awakenings” that shaped American religion and popular culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Religious revivals were common experiences encouraged by evangelical Protestant churches as ways to convert people to religion or to renew their faith. Often termed “great awakenings” for their emotional effects in stirring spiritual reflection and then excitement, they were usually carefully managed events that involved powerful preaching, hymn singing and music, staging for effect, and mass gathering of people. The diverse range of Protestant groups in the Philadelphia region made it a fertile ground for cross-denominational collaborations that, for many people involved, signaled an “awakening” from staid religious practices, and the founding of large nondenominational publishing houses in Philadelphia provided a means to extend such revivals through the publication of religious tracts, newspapers, and other printed material to other parts of the nation.

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