ABSTRACT
Exploring the relationship between internal states of mind and external circumstances comes naturally to scholars of American religion. In this stimulating essay, Jon Butler links these two concerns most directly in his discussion of the contrasting roles of the Tennent family and George Whitefield as evangelical leaders. Butler explores the careers of the Tennents and Whitefield in order to discover the different ways in which revivalist ministers appealed to lay audiences. More generally, Butler argues that early American religious life was astonishingly complex and diverse. His major revisions of received wisdom include: early American religion must be understood in a European context and not in isolation; the European pattern of state churches was renewed and reinvigorated in eighteenth-century America; Anglicanism was not moribund in the colonies; modest Christianization rather than deChristianization or declension (which an earlier overemphasis on the alleged waning of Puritanism decreed) best encapsulates religious trends in the eighteenth century. However, perhaps his most arresting claim is that the impact of the 1740s’ revivals known as the Great Awakening has been exaggerated. Rather, Butler persuasively suggests that the rise of religious pluralism and episodic revivalism, which extended almost a century from the 1670s through the 1760s, is a far more impressive feature of colonial American religion than a single Awakening.
