In This House We Believe: The Protestant Roots of Wokeness
29th May 2024
In 2017 the pseudonymous blogger Spotted Toad appears to have coined the term “The Great Awokening” to denote the decade of identity politics mania that began about 2013.
His joke was of course a pun upon the various Great Awakening religious revivals that periodically swept Protestant America in the 1730s and the early 1800s (especially in upstate New York’s “burned-over district”), and the liberal Social Gospel movement of the late 19th century that inspired humanitarian reformers such as Jane Addams.
But Protestant history, which was long recognized as absolutely central to American history, is increasingly seen as boring, and thus all this is fading from consciousness.