Great Awakenings

Great Awakenings are periods of religious revival, particularly in the context of the United States. Pre 2022, there were 4 distinct Awakenings, the First, which occurred from the 1730's to about the 1740's gave rise to the first Evangelicals. The 2nd, which occurred from around the late 18th century up until the mid 19th century, led to movements such as temperance, abolition, and the push for women's rights. The 3rd Great Awakening, which lasted between roughly the 1850's up until the 1900's which saw Christian groups become more active in social causes, and the rise of sects such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, and Pentecostalist Movements. The 4th Great Awakening, the most disputed of the 4, occurred around the the 1960's to 70's, and saw the rapid growth of the Southern Baptist Convention, and what we would consider modern Evangelicals.

Post 2022, it appeared that awakenings would arise in rough 80 year cycles, though this is subject to considerable variability.

## 5th Great Awakening (2030's-2050's)

The 5th Great Awakening was a religious revival that started in the United States before going global. After the defeat of the West in World War 3, many conservative Americans blamed the defeat on spiritual and moral decay, as well as incumbent President Buchanan. As part of a growing backlash against the progressivism that had been continuing since the 2010's and 20's, a religious revival occurred across the United States partly in an attempt to restore America's supposed moral favor, and partly as a backlash to the perceived failings of the left.

Theologically liberal churches such as the United Methodist, Episcopalian, and Disciples of Christ had been losing followers since the 1980's, but had now been completely extinguished by the change in the cultural climate. In its place were a resurgence of theologically conservative churches, such as the Global Methodist Church, various Charismatic and Pentecostal movements, Mormonism, and of course, the Southern Baptist Convention. It's this awakening that was attributed towards the sharp shift on American attitudes towards same-sex marriage, transgenderism, abortion, and the separation between church and state.

It was the 5th Great Awakening that created the rise of the American Evangelical Convention, quickly becoming the nation's dominant religious organization, surpassing even the Southern Baptist Convention. It was a loose confederacy of churches which chose to adhere to certain theologically conservative principles, and spanned many sects from Baptist to Methodist to Presbyterian. The Catholic Church saw a decline as well, as American theologically liberal style of Catholicism declined along with its Mainline Protestant peers, even as the Catholic Church worldwide was growing more traditionalist and conservative. As a result of mass conversions of America's growing Hispanic population, as well as an exodus from the liberal American Catholic church, Catholicism became confined to only the first or second generation Hispanic population, before it eventually reformed and caught up to the rest of the world.

The 5th Great Awakening is largely credited with breaking the gridlock on the culture war, which had been locked in a stalemate for many decades, as the right continued to radicalize while the left attempted to drag the nation to the left. With a new surge in socially conservative Christian voters, the right gained a distinctive advantage, and rode the wave of Christian evangelicalism through the Cortez era, securing socially conservative positions on social policy for decades.

Christian nationalism had also become popular in the preceding decades, now with total control over the legislature, executive and judicial branches, Christian nationalism became the dominant ideology of the Republican Party, and American Evangelicals took towards warping and reforming the nation and the Constitution in their own image. Including destroying the separation between church and state, declaring the United States officially a Christian nation, delegalizing of same sex marriage, issuing a ban on abortions, and various others. The movement eventually went worldwide, with American missionaries bringing the Awakening to places such as Sub Saharan Africa, South America, and even China, where parts of it would spin off into its own form of Taiping Christianity.

Table of American Religious Affiliation in the year 2056, widely considered the peak of the 5th Great Awakening.

## 6th Great Awakening (2120-)

As a reaction to the extreme social conservatism of the 5th Great Awakening, and the slow decline of religion's popularity following the 4th World War, as well as a younger generation of Christians exploring liberal ideas once again, the 6th Great Awakening saw a mass popularization of Christian Universalism, a highly theologically liberal religion that insisted the Bible is not always relevant with modern concerns, that all people go to heaven, and that all faiths should be tolerated. The Christian Universalist Movement acknowledges that the United States was founded as a Christian nation (Though most historians say it is not, and say this is an unfortunate consequence of the so-called "Patriotic Education" instituted under conservative administrations) but that the Christian values of America ought to perpetuate are tolerance, loving thy neighbour, and turning the other cheek.

The American Evangelical Convention would collapse during this time, but its worldwide branches would eventually create the Global Covenant, an organization mainly based in Africa that would continue to espouse the teachings the American Evangelicals taught them. Sects such as the Southern Baptist Convention would shrink in the face of a growing wave of theological liberalism. There are also new religions such that believed that the end times were coming, or in some cases, that the end times had already occurred, and that the United States is the promised New Jerusalem in the Bible.

Examples of this include the National Awakening, a sect which believes that the Rapture will not happen until after the Book of Revelations and that Christian nations such as the United States should prepare themselves for the inevitable end times. And Michaelian Christianity was founded by a preacher who was present at the Battle of Chicago and believes that the 4th World War accurately describes the apocalypse in Revelations and that the United States is the New Jerusalem. Transhumanist religions, which were birthed during the 5th Great Awakening also saw a resurgence, along with eco religions following the environmental disaster in WW4.

An ongoing battle between the theologically liberal and conservative churches continues as the nation once again wrestles with problems of transhumanism, the spiritual status of artificial intelligence, same-sex marriage, and Biblical Literalism.

This wasn't the only movement to fruition, however, another response to the extreme religious takeover that plagued America for decades came in the form of the Second New Athiest Movement. After the death of a popular LGBT figure, the reign of Lisa Maxwell, Cortez, Snowden and the overall persecution of non-Christians saw the rise of such a movement, many people who were closeted atheists, agnostics, and anti-theists flooded the streets, protesting, rioting, and taking the internet by storm later on with many content creators and celebrities tackling religion and the damaged it caused, attracting hundreds of thousands to millions of followers, eventually influencing younger generations to question or abandon religion altogether. They were all met with outrage and violence by right-wing counter-protestors, but that only radicalized atheists even further, and took up arms to protect themselves, backed up by transhumanists, LGBT and so much more, they would, later on, support the Futurist Party as they closely align with their views and even managed to infiltrate the party too further their goals via promoting secularism, which they eventually did under the Reed Administration who gained a super-majority within the house and the senate.

A survey even showed that many atheists during the times of the 5th awakening and Word War 4 under theocratic states homeschooled their kids, teaching them about evolution and other things that greatly contradict the corrupt education system, which would then bloom a new generation of atheists and agnostics alike, all hell-bent on criticizing religion and even hurting those who have wronged them. Many Athiest Organizations of been established during those times, helping those who survived religious abuse and discrimination.

\*Note, since many Christian Universalists consider themselves "cultural Christians" as opposed to practicing Christians, this may be inflating the number of Christians in the United States as of 2130.