American Demagogue

October 18, 2019

In the 1730s and 1740s, an evangelical Christian revivalist movement swept across the Thirteen Colonies. Itinerant charismatics such as Gilbert Tennent and George Whitefield preached a gospel of hellfire to audiences numbering in the thousands or tens of thousands. Worshippers wept, shrieked, danced, and deserted mainstream Anglican and Congregationalist churches in droves. The movement appealed especially to women, the enslaved, the working class, and other disempowered groups, whom revivalists allowed to worship alongside white male elites. Establishment leaders deplored the emotionalism and egalitarianism of the movement, but to little avail. According to independent historian Dickey (Rising in Flames), the Great Awakening's democratization of religious experience destabilized the colonial order. Amid church schisms and general turmoil, revivalism instigated a thirst for liberty and climate of dissent that fed the American Revolution. (Historians continue to debate the true extent of the Great Awakening's impact.) Dickey chronicles events and personalities, teases out nuances, and delivers insights briskly and clearly. One critique is that Dickey neither consistently uses the lens of populism to analyze the Great Awakening nor examines how the movement influenced later American demagogues, from Joseph McCarthy to Donald Trump. VERDICT Despite its misleading title, this work remains a thoughtful take on an intriguing period of American history.--Michael Rodriguez, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 15, 2019
In colonial America, the first European settlers sought freedom from established religion, but next generations turned that contrariness into a new orthodoxy. The Puritans heirs' needed to find emotional vent for their beliefs. England's George Whitefield preached ardent sermons in all thirteen colonies. Even young students at both Harvard and Yale were caught up in the ecstasies of this ferment. Ben Franklin had little use for such preaching except for its ability to bring profit to his printing business. Jonathan Edwards' star rose simultaneously, and he manipulated both a wealth gap among colonists and hard economic times to promote the famous Great Awakening. Many women found their voices liberated and fostered still more agitation, upsetting the staid social order. Politics intersected with this religious, populist fervor and the seeds of the American Revolution were sown and began quickly to grow, affecting decades far beyond the Revolution itself. Journalist and U.S. historian Dickey (Rising in Flames, 2018) enhances his account with illustrations from contemporary sources, which give readers compelling images of this era's vivid personalities.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)