The Third Great Awakening began in 1857-1858 has been called by many names including the Businessman’s Revival, the Layman’s Revival, and the Union Prayer Meeting. But it is most widely known as the Revival of 1857-1858. We must briefly distinguish between a revival and an awakening. Revivals tend to be localized events (church, village, town, […]
In Part I, we noted the ebb tide of religious fervor and an increase in secularism and irreligion following the American Revolution, especially in the decade of 1790s. The Constitution creating the United States of America had just been ratified in 1787 and the Bill of Rights was added in 1791. Washington was President and […]
“No country on earth was ever founded on deeper religious foundations,” wrote Sherwood Eddy in his 1941 The Kingdom of God and the American Dream. The persecuted refugees from Europe landed on the shores of a vast wilderness and established thirteen colonies, practically all on strong religious foundations, during the first decades of the seventeenth […]
John Adams said, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In other words, the America of the Founders was based upon the assumption that […]
In Part I we looked at the origins and spread of the concept of American exceptionalism as well as the claims of its deniers and detractors. In Part II we will discuss the one essential ingredient that led to America’s exceptionalism and why exceptionalism’s deniers and detractors are so adverse to any consideration of its […]
What is this thing called “American exceptionalism” that surfaces periodically in political speeches, esoteric articles and books in the academic world, and an occasional mention on talk radio? The term “American exceptionalism” is of recent origin (less than 100 years) but the concept of the unique and exceptional nature of the United States has been […]
George Washington’s farewell address to the nation was published on September 17, 1796 near the end of his eight years as the first president of the newly minted United States. He spoke of his concern for the nation’s welfare as he expressed his “sentiments which are the result of much reflection, of no inconsiderable observation, […]
Most Americans have lived under a growing cloud of anxiety and dread for several years. This American angst has escalated into anger which is often expressed in a scatter-shot resistance to what they perceive is happening in American society. They know that something is systemically wrong with America’s institutions and direction, and they see and […]