Talk:Fourth Great Awakening

1945 to 1965
Trace the "death" of the Third Great Awakening (henceforth known in this talk page as "3GA"). Sects and factions that will explode once the 4GA hits are developing but are still embryonic. Ossification of the 3GA synthesis causes some liberal factions to radicalize. Red Scare. Fair Deal splits Democrats, but not passed into law. Remember a recent American Heritage article - civil rights activists in Mississippi start a voting drive and have a seperate primary, in opposition to the offical Democratic one. Their delegates aren't recognized at the convention. This causes the activists to radicalize. Remember SDS involved. Maybe also MLK, Black Panthers? I'll have to re-read it. Some continuity between 3GA and 4GA liberalism. Catch-22. Vonnegut.

I think the only thing that can be attributed to this period is the rise of modern fundamentalism and growth in the pentecostal movement. Change much was impeded by effort that the World wars took to fight. This period after them is hardly an awakening. After failure of Prohibition, the Great Depression, the world wars; Postmodernism arises and becomes a common world view. Secularism is established as the governing order. The previous Puritan values become practically non-existant circa 1930 (likely due to the world events that followed that tore apart social structures.) when compared to the 1800s. In this respect it is definately Anti-christian change as a whole.

1965 to 1969
The 4GA proper begins. Exact date fuzzy and arbitrary. I personally pick the Kennedy assaination and the Beatles retreating to the studio as epoch-marking events. Also Vietnam heats up about that point. 4GA sects expand, but are still fringe. Note: Although the causes and effects of GAs are social, they are religous events. Need to focus on sects, cults, ect., not just political factions. However, some overlap. 1968 Democratic National Convention.

Baby boomers hit the borderline of adulthood, Vietnam, pretty much determine when the 4GA actually broke. Would have happened sometime (AFAIK, no demographic bulge with other GAs) but these deteremined exact timing.

1969 to 1980
1969, the Summer of Love, Woodstock, marks the point where the 4GA goes mainstream. 4GA sects gain popularity. Conservatives counterattack. Probably that rise Evangelical Christianity is an example of this.

'80s
Original 4GA activists go inactive, get straight carrers. Moral Majority. All quiet on the Western Front.

'90s
Culture wars continue, with new issues such as gay rights coming to the forefront.

4GA Themes
Civil rights not only major issue - not even the big one, to the original 4GAers. Need also to focus on other issues. Sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Pacifisim. No doubt others.

crazyeddie 07:01, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This is NOT an awakening!!
how can you call this a Great Awakening? this movement is entirely anti- christian and involves practices of witchcraft and athiesm! This should NOT be considered for the Lord at all. If anything it should be entitled the Anti- Awakening! I have very strong opinions for this awakening and the third. In fact after reading about these Great Awakenings I must say that only the first seems truly God-centered. the second is entirely about breaking up the church and the 3rd is about putting so called "science" into Christianity. Not only that, but it acts as if communism is of God, as is Athiesm! The 3rd only talks more about breaking up into "sects" such as WICCAN which is worshiping Satan! The devil is using these "Awakenings" to put more of him into the church!I shame the people who call these "awakenings"


 * Wiccans do not worship Satan, nor do New Agers, Neo-Pagans, Buddhists and Hinduis. --sparkit 02:00, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Fourth Great Awakening: Opposing Opinion to this Article
== I'd have to disagree on the entire premise on which Wikipedia seems to be treating the so-called Fourth Awakening. It seems to be treating the hippie/counter-culture/civil rights movement of ~1956 --  ~1977  as being the Fourth "Awakening", in the tradition of the previous three. Firstly, the term "Awakening" might be a misnomer, as these periods are typically and more accurately "Revivals" or "Reformations" of existing religions and sects, rather than some broad and nebulous shift in cultural values.

These periods (at least the 1st thru 3rd) have been characterized by 1). the expansion of existing RELIGIONS (both Jewish, Christian, and non-Denominational) and 2). formation of new RELIGIONS.

1st GA (1736-1750)- "Fire and Brimstone" Founding of Methodism, intellectual dominance of Calvinism [WEAK MOVEMENT]

2nd GA (early 1800-1840's) - "Camp Meetings"; Rise of Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, other congregationalists. Lutheran immigrants. Decline of Anglican/Episcopalian, Quakers, Orthodox Judaism Formation of Church of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), Seventh-day Adventists, Jehova's Witnesses, Restorationalists (Church of God, Church of Christ, Christian Church, etc. etc.), Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism emerge; Black religious organization  [POWERFUL MOVEMENT]

3rd GA (1880's-1910)- Post-Gilded Era revival/Progressive politics Rise of transcendentalists, Salvation army, Christian Socialism Formation of New Thought Movement (Unity Church, Church of Christian Science, Unitarian Universalists,     Divinity School, Scientology);  Rise of Pentecostals/Black Spiritualist churches  [WEAK MOVEMENT]

The hippie movement itself, though spiritualistic, did not significantly impact the established churches or religions in the United States, beyond forcing reconciliation among those which were still segregated. Besides Eckankar, Hare Krishna, and a few other fringe groups, the hippie movement cannot really claim that it led to the actual formation of any historically substancial new sect or religion, or otherwise ITSELF altered the impact of religion on American politics. The hippie movement, in my mind, was not a "revival" or "awakening" of religiocity, but rather a cultural values movement, the bedrock of post-modernism, disgusted with the development/corruption of liberalism, and a result of a numerous and dissatisfied generation. Cultural and political, not religious.

I believe the TRUE Fourth Awakening was the ACTUAL religious revival which took place IN REACTION TO the post-modernist society which the hippies and Radicals intended (and succeeded) to install. The growth of conservative religion 1978-present, I feel, is probably the most expansive, powerful, and historically significant religious revival in the history of the United States. (I might add, I am NOT a Christian) In the future analysis of American religious revivals, how could a historian ever disregard the current religious revival as not being the proper and historical "Fourth Great Awakening", succeeding the others?

"The term New Religious Right refers to a set of organizations that emerged in the late 1970s,     the Moral Majority (later renamed the Liberty Federation), the Religious Roundtable, and the Christian Voice;      their leaders, including Pat Robertson,   Jerry Falwell, and Ed. McAteer; and the movement that these leaders      and organizations fostered." - Himmelstein

The times also add up better. (Roughly 70-80 years between revivals. 3GA 1908-4GA 1978) Here's how I feel the "4GA" should be described:

4th GA (1978-2010?)- Fundamentalists Rise of social action groups (Focus on the Family, Moral Majority, CBN, televangelism); emergence of      unified national Baptist movement (Southern Baptist Convention), Rise of non-denominationalism/ restorationalism, Rise of pentacostalists (hundreds of millions of members worldwide), Rise of Youth Religious Culture Counter-Revival, Rise of Wicca, neo-paganism, New Age, etc.     Culture Wars, politics increasingly reliant on cultural/theological language, decreasingly concerned with social justice socialism/fiscal conservatism, "New Conservatism" "Reagan" Years: 1980-1992 New Centrist Coalition: 1992-2000 Bush Era: 2000-? stolid effort to place conservative judges on court seats, abortion issue crucial; beginning of effective integration efforts between black and white churches, conservative groups reach out to black communities (2000 Bush w 8% of black vote; 2004 %11 - Washington Post) [POWERFUL MOVEMENT]

I'd like to hear what others think about this revival. It is unique in many ways. Firstly, it is the most overtly political religious revival of them all, and I would think that the decline of the New Conservatives would also hark the decline of the Fourth Great Awakening, (though maybe it is the fall of the later which must predicate the fall of the former) and historical trends seem to indicate that this might happen some time between 2008 and 2010. Also, perhaps BECAUSE of America's influence in the world, this is the first US revival to ever co-incide with a general worldwide revival of religious expression. Catholicism in Latin America, Africa and Asia, Judaism in Israel, Hinduism and Sikhism in India, Buddhism in SouthEast Asia (Lesser extent) and of course, Islam whereever it might be found, have all experienced a resurgence and supplanted former social emphases like socialism, nationalism, secularism, materialism. In fact, in every place except Europe has this global movement been felt.

David Pritchard, Daytona, Florida


 * I'm crazyeddie, the one who started this article. First off, let me say that I'm an armchair historian. I am signed up for a undergraduate course in history, but I haven't started classes yet. So don't assume I know what I'm talking about! Secondly, I'll be the first to admit that this article is currently in violation of the "No Original Research" policy. However, this is not intended as a permament situation, I created this article as placeholder, until some real experts could fill in the gaps.


 * With those caveats in mind...


 * In school, I learned that Great Awakenings are "periods of revival in American religion". Correct as far as it goes, but rather yawn-inducing. In college, I read The Fourth Great Awakening & the Future of Egalitarianism by Robert William Fogel. Unfortunately, Fogel's background is in economic history, so he appeared to be a bit out of his depth when dealing with the underlying theology, etc, of the GAs. But he did work under the assumption that GAs were not just revivals in American religion, but actual revolutions. He also focused on the social and political impacts of the GAs.


 * One major flaw I found in his book was that he stated that the Fourth Great Awakening was the Fundamentalist revival, as you say. If you define a Great Awakening as a revolution in American religious thought, then this seems absurd, since it completely ignores the rather noticeable Hippie/Counterculuture movement that immediately preceded it. On the other hand, Fogel mentioned that every Great Awakening had a initial liberal, revolutionary, movement, followed by a conservative backlash, with a moderate synthesis developing out of the conflict. So, it could be that the Hippie/Counterculture movement was the liberal movement, with the Fundamentalist movement being the backlash.


 * It seems to me that you are defining Great Awakenings as consisting of these backlash movements - the Third Great Awakening being the backlash response to post-Darwinian atheism, Marxism, etc., and the Fourth being the backlash response to the Hippie/Counterculture movement. This definition might actually have merit.


 * I suppose the way to check this out would be to look at the first two GAs, since those are universally agreed to be true Great Awakenings. It does seem plausible to me that the First Great Awakening was a backlash response to the Age of Reason, with its diestic concept of the "clockwork God". From the article on the First Great Awakening, we have this sentence: "People became passionately and emotionally involved in their religion, rather than passively listening to intellectual discourse in a detached manner." In the Baroque Cycle (or was it Cryptonomicon?), Enoch Root mentions that, at one time, preachers were retail philosophers. Enoch was probably refering to the Age of Reason, the setting for the Baroque Cycle. If all of these is true, then one might well imagine that the preaching style of the liberal preachers influnced by the Age of Reason to be a bit on the dry, intellectual side.


 * I think I have just demonstrated the need for real experts here, since I'm relying on works of fiction for source material.


 * The next question would be "What was the Second Great Awakening a backlash response to?".


 * I'm really interested in what scholars think about all of this. I highly suspect the answer is out there in the journals, and hasn't trickled down to the textbooks and popular works yet. As a layman, I don't even know where to begin with this research, which is why I haven't been working on this article much lately. Hopefully, I'll learn how to research effectively while in this history program, and maybe I can piggyback some of this research on some school assignments. crazyeddie 6 July 2005 19:49 (UTC)

On a side note, I think we are coming into the tail end of a period of Republican domination of American politics, and that this period of domination has lasted since Nixon. It also seems to me that the Hippie/Counterculture movement was responsible, in part, for causing the switchover into this period. The previous period was an era of Democratic domination, starting with FDR. By opposing LBJ's Vietnam policy, the Hippie/Counterculture movement split the left, allowing Nixon to successfully win election, running on a platform of "peace with honor".

On the other hand, the Hippie/Counterculture movement and its intellectual inheritors, along with Nixon's bumbling, are responsible with the extraordinary weakness of this era of domination. The Republicans didn't recover from Watergate until Reagan. On second thought, it could be that the stigma associated with Nixon alone is responsible for the Republican's weakness. Who knows? I think that this era of domination will end in 2008, if not 2006, but that could just be wishful thinking on my part. crazyeddie 6 July 2005 20:01 (UTC)


 * In response to crazyeddie, the Second Great Awakening was a response to deism, secular humanism, and the Enlightenment philosophy that inspired the Founding Fathers. Wikipedia lists it as beginning in the 1790s; this would place it right after the ratification of the Constitution in 1789, which had just installed separation of church and state with its proclamation that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (First Amendment).  Since the government would not be the guardian of public morality as it had been in England, evangelical movements took that upon themselves.
 * I think the article as it stands is quite accurate - hostility to secularism, the decline of mainline Protestant churches, the rise in fundamentalist, evangelical and Pentecostal theologies, and the key issues of abortion, gay rights and creationism. There are two other issues that I think should be added;
 * 1) exclusivism ("only we can go to heaven"). This has always been a part of conservative-Protestant-American theology, but it wasn't a big issue before because everyone was Christian, and most people were Protestant.  By contrast it's one of the central tenets of this awakening, because immigration and liberalization have led to a rapid rise in other religions and theological viewpoints (atheism and agnosticism, Hinduism, Buddhism, quasi-religious movements like New Age, and most especially Islam, the personal demon of the modern fundamentalists) which they feel threaten the "Judeo-Christian" character of America.  More mixed has been the reaction to Judaism and to other Christian denominations like Catholicism and Mormonism; the religious right has largely toned down its rhetoric in order to gain support from them on issues like abortion and gay marriage.  I would argue, however, that the exclusivist prejudice against these groups is still very much there.  Witness Mike Huckabee's campaign, and the way he discreetly but effectively used anti-Mormon and anti-Catholic prejudice to eliminate Romney and Brownback, his main competition for the religious vote.  This prejudice becomes far more overt when fundamentalists are not on the national level and when their audience is WASP-only, witness John Hagee - and in my experience, fundamentalists and evangelicals are much less friendly to other Christians in the privacy of their own churches than they are at pro-life rallies.  Finally the Jews have good reason to be worried about the Christian Zionism that's become fashionable today - as Gershom Gorenberg puts it; "They don’t love real Jewish people. They love us as characters in their story, in their play, and that’s not who we are, and we never auditioned for that part, and the play is not one that ends up good for us.  If you listen to the drama they’re describing, essentially it’s a five-act play in which the Jews disappear in the fourth act".
 * 2) the rejection of the Social Gospel that figured so prominently in the third great awakening, and the switch to a Prosperity Theology more agreeable with the GOP. Before the seventies, the vast majority of religious activists - both the Republican pietists and their southern Democrat opponents - had been highly critical of the excesses of capitalism, and installing a sense of social justice into American society was high on their agenda (this inspired the Progressive movement during the early twentieth century, and eventually contributed to the New Deal).  The switch from social activism to laissez-faire capitalism is a massive revolution in the thought of religious activists in America - certainly it should be mentioned as one of the changes of the Fourth Great Awakening. 213.181.226.21 (talk) 10:52, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

There are some serious errors with the following statement: "The most anti-modern religious denominations (such as the Southern Baptists and Missouri Synod Lutherans) grew rapidly in numbers, spread nationwide, became politically powerful as part of the "religious right", and experienced grave internal theological battles and schisms." Regardless of whether one begins the so-called Fourth Great Awakening in the late 1960's or in the 1980's, the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod had long become a national church body before the 4GA. Moreover, the Missouri Synod reached its peak in the late 1960's (somewhere around 1968) and then stayed on a plateau for a long time except for losing approximately 100,000 members to a splinter group in the mid-1970's. Its phenomenal growth had occurred more between 1920 and 1960. Moreover, to say that the Missouri Synod became part of the "religious right" is laughable; as the noted German-American journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto (himself a Lutheran) has commented, Missouri Synod Lutherans are about as politically visible as the Old Order Amish are. To be sure, both the Missouri Synod and Southern Baptists "experienced grave internal theological battles and schisms," which is the only truth to be found in that entire sentence.Jkellrmn (talk) 03:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

All of this slipshod scholarship is disturbing enough, but it seems as if the authors of this article never stopped to think of the diversity within non-liberal forms of Christianity. For example, throughout the discussion page there has been much talk about the rise of "Fundamentalism" since the 1960's, but Fundamentalism hasn't become more popular than in the 1920's. If anything, it has shrunk to next to nothing, while Neo-Evangelicalism, as well as Pentecostalism and similar movements, have taken its place. Because of the carelessness of the authors, the Missouri Synod has been lumped together as part of an "Awakening Movement," when in reality the Missouri Synod has been nothing but disgusted by the various forms of revivals and awakenings popular in American Christianity.Jkellrmn (talk) 03:38, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * the text is clear enough. It correctly says Missouri grew after WW2 and became national; it does not say Missouri supported revivals. Scholars typically include Missouri in the "Religious Right" (see for example The religious right: a reference handbook by Glenn H. Utter & John Storey (2001) pp 126-28; Encyclopedia of evangelicalism By Randall Balmer (2002) p 347; God at the grass roots, 1996: the Christian right in the American elections  By Mark J. Rozell, Clyde Wilcox (1997) p 64. Rjensen (talk) 05:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
 * The article states that the 4GA occurred in the late 60's and early 70's, which is hardly right after WW2. (Others in this discussion thread have argued that the 4GA should be dated from 1980 onward.) But if one looks at the Lutheran Annuals (the official yearbook of the Lutheran Church--Missouri Synod), one will find that membership peaked in the late 60's, which is when this article implies that its explosive growth began. In reality that is when a two decades period of stagnation began, followed in more recent years by a slight decline. Moreover, it is grossly inaccurate to say that the Missouri Synod "became politically powerful." It may very well dislike many modern trends (e.g., abortion and gay marriage)and its members tend to be politically conservative (although as often for economic reasons as moral ones), but it has hardly become politically connected. The only Missouri Synod political figure of national note in the past four decades was Paul Simon, and he was hardly affiliated with the Moral Majority. Moreover, while the Moral Majority and similar groups were expanding their lobbying efforts, the Missouri Synod closed whatever tiny office it had in Washington, D.C. People who are or who seek to be politically powerful don't do such things.Jkellrmn (talk) 03:40, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * the section on Missouri gives the right dates. As for political activity, the RS have statements like this: "While more theologically conservative Protestant denominations, such as the Missouri-Synod Lutherans and the Southern Baptist Convention, expressed disapproval of Roe, they became politically active only in the mid and late 1970s." [from Byrnes, The Catholic Church and the politics of abortion p 158]; "The three-million-member Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church enlisted in the battle against abortion" [from Heineman, God is a conservative (2005)] Rjensen (talk) 06:48, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
 * First, I want to recognize that some of the recent edits you (Rjensen) have made have greatly improved the article. By backdating the movement to the post-WWII era, you have rectified most of my objections to the original article, which posited an explosive growth of the Missouri Synod when it had stopped growing. (I'll overlook the fact that the post-WWII rate of growth, though spectacular compared to the declining mainline churches, was actually rather lackluster compared to Missouri's historical rate of growth. I'll also overlook the fact that this entire article uses "awakening" in a different sense than is commonly used in American Christianity, since the article does acknowledge that the existence of the 4GA "has not been generally accepted.") However, a couple of difficulties remain. One of them, in fact, is a new one: now that you have pushed the terminus a quo back a quarter of a century, you really ought to address the question of the terminus ad quem. If the 4GA had truly begun in the late 1960's or later, the point might be glossed over inasmuch as it might be too early to define the latter terminus with certainty. But surely one must wonder if a movement that started nearly seven decades ago is still full of steam (especially given the stagnation of the two named archetypes of that movement). The other objection I still have is to the idea that the Missouri Synod became "politically powerful." That is quite overstating the case. While proponents and opponents of the Religious Right alike find it convenient to lump the Missouri Synod with it (because it makes the Religious Right look bigger, whether as a juggernaut or a bogeyman), such classification belies the reality. Jeffrey S. Walz and Steven R. Montreal have explored this in quite some detail in their book Lutheran Pastors and Politics: Issues in the Public Square (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), which surveyed political activities and attitudes of Missouri Synod clergy, primarily through the 2000 election. Although the authors note that the two-kingdom theology does not preclude political involvement in theory, in Missouri's case it "leads to political passivity in practice. Afraid of being too sure of God's intent in a fallen world, Lutheran pastors and parishioners, most notably in the LCMS, have tended to de-emphasize involvement in civil society. It bears repeating that evidence of this can be seen in the fact that Lutherans continue to be underrepresented on the national political scene" (p. 58). They add, "The LCMS often tends to be passive when it comes to political involvement despite its attempts to cocupy a middle ground [between the activist and isolationist poles represented by the ELCA and WELS]....On most issues, the Church sees its impact through individual Christians pusuing their vocations in an indirect and unintentional manner," (p. 59, emphasis added, but only because that phrase is a constant thread in that book) a manner that the synod's Commission on Theology and Church Relationships (in its 1995 document Render Unto Caesar) noted was the norm among Lutherans historically and especially among the LCMS. The vast majority (70%) of Missouri Synod pastors surveyed did not belong to any political-religious groups (p. 143); those few who did were far more likely to belong to a gun-rights group (by a ratio of nearly 6 to 1) or Habit for Humanity (by a ratio of 7 to 1) or Bread for the World (by a ratio of 2 to 1) than the Christian Coalition (p. 144). Walz and Montreal conclude, "Despite strong conservative and Republican leanings, pastors as a whole exhibited only limited political activism and involvement" (p. 164).Jkellrmn (talk) 16:47, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Upon further reflection I think the real problem is that the one troublesome sentence unintentionally lapsed into the logical fallacies of composition and division. It took events that rightly describe overall trends in this era and chose two denominations (SBC and LCMS) as the paradigm for them without asking if they properly exhibit all the particulars (the fallacy of division). I have been arguing that this is unfair to the LCMS (especially in regards to its political involvement), but the flip side is that the article has taken something rather unique to the SBC and LCMS--the theological battles and schisms--and applied it to the movement as a whole (the fallacy of composition). I've tried to obviate the difficulty by breaking up the four parts of the troublesome sentence and acknowledging that these elements are all somehow part of the story of this era of American Christianity without making any one church serve as the paradigm for them all.Jkellrmn (talk) 20:03, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Fundamentalism
Note that fundamentalism was founded and named in the 19th century. But not just for Christianity, but for Islam, Hindu, Buddhist (!), and Jewish. So it seems to me, less of a new American Great Awakening, but the rise of worldwide religious fundamentalism, the interpretation of one's scripture literally, by oneself. Student7 (talk) 23:34, 8 March 2014 (UTC)