Triumph of the Laity: Scots-Irish Piety and the Great Awakening, 1625-1760 Book

The Great Awakening of the 1740s was a religious revival of dramatic scope and violence that swept through the mid-Atlantic colonies, transforming 18th-century American society. The origins of the Awakening, however, argues Marilyn J. Westerkamp in this important revisionist study, were far removed from America in time and place. Examining the revivalist movement in Scotland, Ireland, and the middle colonies over a 135-year period, Westerkamp shows that the Awakening had its roots in Scots-Irish revivalism and travelled with Scots-Irish emigrants to the North American colonies. Hardly the spiritual innovation that it is sometimes represented to be, the Awakening was thus but one development in a longstanding revivalist tradition. Westerkamp's findings, drawn from previously neglected primary sources in the U.S., Ireland, and Scotland, will profoundly affect the direction of all future scholarship of the revivalist tradition.