Inventing the "Great Awakening"
Recent scholarship has sought to diminish the scope and scale of the Great Awakening, as the mid-18th century evangelical revival was called on this side of the Atlantic, attributing it to the invention of 19th-century historians. Lambert (history, Purdue Univ.), well known for his biography of George Whitefield (Pedlar in Divinity: George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals, 17371770, Princeton Univ., 1994), argues that it was an invention, but of the Colonial revivalists themselves. Lambert uses the term invention in its most positive light as a creation rather than a fabrication or contrivance. Through careful use of primary sources, an understanding emerges of how early revivalists constructed their own understanding of the work in which they were involved and how they were able to develop and expand the movement. Significantly, this work goes beyond explaining the revival itself and shows how a popular movement developed prior to the advent of modern media. Although the bibliography is thin in places, this is a significant scholarly contribution to the literature. Recommended for academic libraries.Daniel D. Liestman, Kansas State Univ. Lib., ManhattanCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.