Abstract
THE SERIES OF RELIGIOUS UPHEAVALS KNOWN AS the Great Awakening is now widely viewed as having prepared the way for the American Revolution. As the first popular intercolonial movement it stimulated the spirit of American nationality; in challenging ecclesiastical authority it undermined all established authority; its millennial social vision inspired a belief in the power of human action; it forged a link between ordinary people and their tribunes that was crucial to the subsequent creation of a people in arms.' Historians have noted that the Great Awakening marked the first time that considerable numbers of African Americans were won to Christianity; for a variety of reasons, up to then conversions had been few.2 In this essay I try to bring together some ideas I have gathered from scholars working, largely separately, in the areas of Revolutionary and African-American history. Here I make no claim to scholarship; the eighteenth century is not my period of study, and I have done little more than read a few books. Any value specialists may find in my speculations will represent partial payment for the delight I experienced in reading their works.3
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