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HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer

Excerpt from Harry Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”

In the following article historian Harry Stout investigates the connection

between the Great Awakening and the American Revolution.1 (So this article is

a secondary source.) For background on the Great Awakening see Out of

Many, pp. 125‒28. Historians use the term “American Revolution” to refer not

only to the Revolutionary War (1775−1783), but also to the significant political,

cultural, economic, and intellectual changes that transformed American society

in the later 1700s and early 1800s. It is this wider “revolution” about which

Stout writes in this article.

Questions to think about: 1. In what ways might the Great Awakening be described as

“revolutionary”?

2. What types of people might see the Great Awakening as threatening,

and why?

1 Harry S. Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the

America Revolution”, William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 34 (1977), 519−533

and 540−41; this excerpt from the article was printed in Major Problems in

American Colonial History, ed. by Karen Ordahl Kupperman (Lexington, MA,

1993), pp. 382−88.

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HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer

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HIST 120 Dr. Schaffer