Winiarski suggests that New England Congregationalist churches were dominated by the beliefs and practices of the “godly walkers.” They would have of course emphasized the need for God’s grace and the power of God in regenerating sinners, but in practice they heavily emphasized religious duty and longtime holiness as the signs of saving faith.

I recently read my friend Douglas Winiarski’s new book, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England. The book comes from the University of North Carolina Press, one of the most distinguished outlets for books on early American history. And it follows mounds of scholarly articles that Winiarski, who teaches at the University of Richmond, has published on aspects of the Great Awakening in New England.

Winiarski has long since established himself as the master of the archives related to religion in 18th-century New England. I borrowed liberally from his work and advice in my book on the Great Awakening in America, published a decade ago.

So it is no surprise to me to find my expectations fulfilled in Winiarski’s long-awaited book. It is now the best, most comprehensive book we have on the revivals in New England, surpassing Edwin Gaustad’s The Great Awakening in New England, published 50 years ago this year.

Winiarski emphasizes, to a greater extent than I would have, the novelty of George Whitefield’s teachings and the “Whitefieldarian” tactics that drove the awakening. (I would have spent more time discussing evangelical theology’s roots in the Puritan, Presbyterian, and Pietist traditions before it.) He also argues implicitly that colonial New England before the Great Awakening had not entered a state of decline. It was not mired in “nominalism.”

Instead, Winiarski suggests that New England Congregationalist churches were dominated by the beliefs and practices of the “godly walkers.” They would have of course emphasized the need for God’s grace and the power of God in regenerating sinners, but in practice they heavily emphasized religious duty and longtime holiness as the signs of saving faith.

In stark contrast to the “godly walkers,” the new evangelicals, led in a singular fashion by Whitefield, argued that good works could easily deceive sinners about their acceptance before God. Many (including some pastors) came to believe that in the midst of their external conformity to Christianity, they had missed the whole point: the new birth of salvation.

In my Great Awakening book, I also emphasized how much the new evangelicals—especially the radicals among them—focused on the Holy Spirit as both the cause of true revival and of conversion. Early in his career, Whitefield distinguished the evangelicals’ faith as one that felt and understood the movings of the Holy Spirit. Then and now, such an emphasis makes critics nervous—who can tell what is a real move of the Spirit, and what is just overwrought emotion?

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