Historic Waves of Religious Interest in America

The current high prestige of religion has provoked a re-examination of earlier periods of spiritual awakening in America, but it has not yet produced any lessening of the traditional emphasis upon mass crusades conducted by professional evangelists. Most significant are four decades in American history—the 1790's, and 1850's, the ten years from 1895 to 1905, and the 1950's—when Christianity made major adjustments of thought and practice to cope with new social conditions. The latter three periods in particular differ from one another sufficiently to raise a question about attempts to generalize on the sociological conditions or the cyclical recurrence of religious revival. The awakening of the 1850's witnessed major attempts to apply Christian principles to the social needs of the growing new cities. That of the progressive era, perhaps similar in spirit but widely different in its forms, dealt with the amoral and revolutionary tendencies of industrial society. And the present groundswell of religious concern arises from a complex of factors whose kinship seems to be mostly one of timing. Industrialization seems to have created the kind of society in which stress along boundaries of social change increases rather than decreases man's need for clarification of the ultimate issues of life.