Great Awakening

American  

noun

1. the series of religious revivals among Protestants in the American colonies, especially in New England, lasting from about 1725 to 1770.

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Etymology

Origin of Great Awakening

An Americanism dating back to 1730–40

Example Sentences

In the 19th century, after the Second Great Awakening, few traveled to the Holy Land.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 7, 2025

The original Great Awakening was a series of 18th- and 19th-century religious revivals that swept through the American colonies and states, establishing evangelical Christianity as an enduring and powerful force in the country.

From Slate • Sep. 25, 2024

Mormonism was born through the spiritual quest of Joseph Smith, who was raised amid America's Second Great Awakening during the early 1800s, a period of Christian revivals.

From Salon • Mar. 29, 2023

The concept has a history stretching back to at least the First Great Awakening in 18th-century New England, when crowds of newly fervent Protestants gathered to hear vivid extemporaneous sermons by pastors like Jonathan Edwards.

From New York Times • Feb. 23, 2023

And, like the Great Awakening of 1740, it was the providential preparation of the American church for an immediately impending peril the gravity of which there were none at the time far-sighted enough to predict.

From A History of American Christianity by Bacon, Leonard Woolsey