Mennonites, Revivalism, Modernity—1683–1850

In his Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter portrayed eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalism in America as part of a “revolt against modernity.” Others, however, have suggested the opposite. For instance, Timothy Smith in his Revivalism and Social Reform saw revivalism as fundamental to much nineteenth-century American benevolence, a progenitor of the very social gospel that Hofstadter associated with modernity. And Donald G. Mathews saw in the Second Great Awakening of 1780 to 1830 an “organizing process” that fostered institutional structuring, mobilization of people for action, and their nationalization—ingredients central to theories of modernization, although Mathews himself did not use the term.1