Originally submitted in Political Science 563 to Dr. John Shockley, Fall, 1993 and revised for the graduate paper competition and the two-paper option.

NOTE: When this paper was converted to html through FrontPage, the footnotes were stripped. There are 120 footnotes, some quite lengthy, so anyone interested in the full-footnote version can contact me: larrypahl at wideopenwest.com

There is a radical fault line between fundamental religious faith and social science methodology. This fault line has been blurred, to be sure, with the powerful Twentieth Century onslaught of Marx, Darwin and Freud, which has turned theology, in centuries past considered the queen of sciences, into simply a polite handmaiden of sociology and psychology. The use of providential causation as an a priori mode of reasoning--once the norm not only for religious divines and Puritan fathers, but also for a wide assortment of influential scientists and men of letters from former times including Jefferson, Kepler, Newton, Faraday, Lord Kelvin, and George Carver--has been vaporized in our time by the positivist underpinnings of modern social science.

Social science, like all science, insists that what knowledge it "proves" or is attempting to study be subject to empirical analysis, to tangible, objective phenomenon that are susceptible of quantitative measurement and replication. Social science does not accept the absolutist propositions that illumination, intuition, insight, faith or revelation sometimes claim, except insofar as these propositions are defended within the working parameters of social science.

Fundamental theological assertions such as the divinity of Christ or the assumption of Mohammed cannot be disproved by the methods of social science. In fact social science cannot even recognize these propositions within its working realm.

The fault line between social science and revelational fundamentalism is, theoretically, deep and complete. Not only are the cardinal propositions of, for instance, fundamental Christianity outside the realm of social science, but the philosophical underpinnings of social science methodology are in large measure antagonistic to its revelational foundations. It is implicit that social science carries with it the notion that only what can be measured or at least tangibly comprehended by the senses is meaningful. While at times social scientists will admit the existence of other ways of knowing they can only embrace these on a basis other than that of social science.

This reverse antagonism also shows itself in that it is the nature of social science that its propositions can never be more than probabilistic. They could never be absolute because of the possibility they could by some future research be falsified. On the other hand, fundamentalism insists upon the absoluteness of its basic tenets. They are not open to debate or question. The fault line is deep, the impasse great.

The present study will attempt to integrate a concept residing largely in the empirical wing of the discipline of political science--that of critical realignment--with the social and religious history of America by William McGloughlin in Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, a book partially purposed to suggest the importance of an interdisciplinary study of religion in America. This integration will work from the proposition that the major regional and continental awakenings in American history have been the causes two generations later of major political consequences, namely, the "critical realignments" studied in the field of political science. This paper is thus a tentative bridge over the deep crevasse of religion and social science. These introductory remarks have been added to boldly remind any reader of the ultimate immiscibility of radical religious faith and social science methodology, at the same time that a species of such a hybrid study is being engaged! Because of the growing popularity of world-systems theory and its ability to pulverize disciplinary boundaries for the sake of the forward progress of truth, and because the visible universe of practitioners on each side--theological and social scientific--is joined in what could be called the common locus of "human inquiry", the two are being engaged in the hunch (and hope!) of a Hegelian synthesis.

The synthesis attempted in this paper will perhaps be least welcome in political science for it suggests the critical realignments are the outworking of religious awakenings in a previous generation, thus minimizing or bypassing as cause altogether the more immediate factors of party or policy cited most often in the discipline. But even if the thesis here keeps some political scientists at a distance, let them note that this thesis is a profound affirmation of the discipline's critical alignment paradigm. Coming at a time when there is much talk of abandoning the critical alignment paradigm for lack of recent historical manifestation it is perhaps not an inappropriate time for political scientists to eavesdrop on an alien discipline. A species of this suggestion comes in a recent flagship essay from the discipline's flagship organization, The American Political Science Association:

The generational factor of awakening offers to political scientists a view they could not so easily receive on their home turf’,a turf harboring many empiricist land-mines, still buried and undefused from former wars, grimly waiting below the surface to inflict damage or fear. The literature seems unable to get beyond the measuring of the political results, the changed party alignments. But now that these are measured, what is their significance? Is this good or bad? Are these results desirable? Why or why not? Should we seek to push our political system toward another critical realignment? Can we? Why or why not? These are the answers that enter my mind as I read the literature of realignment, but I do not find them addressed in depth. I have not found my soul nourished from the wells of political science on this question of "critical realignment" which looms large near the center of the discipline. Since the fact-value distinction places severe methodological--and psychological--limits on inquiry, and keeps its adherents from probing in certain directions it should only be expected that sometimes other explanatory paradigms might be imported into the conversation.

McGloughlin posits five major revivals in American history. The first, the Puritan Awakening beginning in England, contains a core of concepts that have embedded themselves in the American psyche. In the periods of stress that have inevitably arisen since that time, there has been a return to this core of values, redefined for the new exigencies and challenges. The Awakenings to be studied, while each unique and distinctive, are nonetheless the record of America's renewal of the Puritan core which includes the following elements:

This is the core of concepts that every awakening and reform movement keeps intact. This core is reshaped and reworked with each major awakening.

The five Awakening periods defined by McGloughlin are as follows:

• The Puritan Awakening and Revolt, 1610-50. While this awakening took place in England it had spillover effects on the American colonies then being formed.

• The First Great Awakening, 1730-60. This is the widely recognized "Great Awakening".

• The Second Great Awakening, 1800-30. An evangelical reworking of Calvin.

• The Third Great Awakening, 1890-1920. The Social Gospel movement.

• The Fourth Great Awakening, 1960-90(?). The Greening of America counterculture. McGloughlin adds the "?" after the year "1990" because he wrote the book in the latter 1970s.

The "critical realignment" paradigm in political science posits a core of factors which must come together within the same relatively short period of time. These factors include:

The periods of alignment largely agreed upon by political scientists are as follows:

The people affected by the awakenings and the people involved in the realignments are not in neatly sifted pockets labeled "religious" on the one hand and "political" on the other. The disciplines of history, religious studies, and political science by nature tend to be unidimensionally delimited; that is implicit in the meaning of the word "discipline". They come to their subject matter with a scope and method that is narrowed with certain disciplinary tools and working assumptions. But this is not true of the subject matter of these disciplines, the people and events being studied. They are whole and integral while at the same time diffuse and complicated. If there is not some correlation of result in the findings of the different disciplines perhaps we are being shortchanged or hoodwinked by one or all of them. "Culture core", "Awakenings" and/or "Critical Realignments" might be cleverly concocted academic schema which give the feel and appearance of genuine phenomena but which, when examined impartially may be grossly hyperbolic, inadequate or chimerical. A multi-disciplinary study should be welcomed as a possible cross-check of each individual discipline's findings.

The working thesis of this paper is that each of the major periods of awakening is followed by a critical alignment about forty years (two generations) later.

The abbreviated operational definition of "critical realignment" used in this paper is one which would be accepted by most political scientists: "A major social and/or political change in which elites and electorate are sharply divided and a significant and lasting shift in voter preferences occurs." Political scientists have not built a hierarchical taxonomy nor a necessary chronological schema from the elements associated with the critical alignment paradigm, but neither have they discouraged nor delimited attempts to do so. Some have been willing to use the concept merely as a cipher for dramatic changes at the elite level, while some have indeed focused on the requirement of party polarization on an issue of high public salience as being the center of realignment, as is basically here being done.

Some adjustments have been made as addendums to the critical frameworks involved here. The first adjustment is the adding of one awakening period (discussed below) and the second is the adding of two critical realignment periods. The critical realignment addendums come at the earliest period of American history, at periods which most political scientists would hesitate to use as laboratory evidence because of the many dissociative factors of that early period compared with the other realignments, not to mention the absence of political parties per se. But the evidence which can be gathered of these early periods fits the critical alignment scenario, if blocks of public sentiment can be considered as "aboriginal" parties. The two periods of "critical realignment" added are, first, that of 1686-90 and that of the founding period, 1776-90.

The awakening being added comes soon after the Second Great Awakening. This is the Adventist awakening known as the "Miller movement" in the decade 1835-1844. One reason for the addition of this awakening is because if it is ignored, then there is no awakening period to precede the 1896 realignment by two generations. Another way to say that might be to say that the present working thesis of this paper requires that there be an awakening somewhere around that period. It could, of course, be that the present thesis is "flawed" or imperfect as would be expected of any paradigm, were it not for the glaring failure of McGloughlin to have included the Miller awakening in a more prominent position in his essay. That is to say that this study will argue the "Miller movement" was indeed a watershed revival with broad and lasting consequences. It has not been intellectually concocted, hatched as a wind-egg of academic desire. More will be said on this in the section on Miller.

McGloughlin has done work on the theory of awakenings, but not in the book being used in this paper as the "expert" witness about America’s greatest awakenings. The theories deal with awakenings as unique movements of God's Spirit, the ultimate prime movers in assessing cause-effect relations among the elements discussed here. The original submission of the present paper to Religious Studies/Political Science professors at Western Illinois University, and then to the interdisciplinary journal Religion and American Culture,used a species of this theological perspective of McGloughlin as a driving edge. It is the attempt of the present paper, being revised for the "two-paper option" of the Western Illinois University political science masters program, and for a graduate student paper competition, to relegate certain aspects of that perspective to the footnotes and keep the body of the work in a framework within the boundaries of political science.

There is a time lag of about 35 to 50 years--about two generations--between the time of an awakening and the period which will see its influence translated into political results. The political reform taking place in the time of the critical realignment is not necessarily a "religious" one. The "religious" element comes with the awakening when individual consciences are motivated and inspired. The political manifestation of this manifests itself in the second generation, in a "critical realignment."

An example from a personal "micro" history might serve to illuminate the awakening-realignment thesis at the "macro" level as being used here. James Madison was very emotionally effected in his early career when he saw a group of Baptist ministers imprisoned in his native Virginia for the crime of not being Anglicans. This touched him in a very deep way, which animated his writing and speaking about the importance of "religious liberty." Here was Madison's "awakening". His translation of this positive, spiritual, motivating awakening into political results (i.e., e.g., the disestablishment of the Anglican church) took thought and work and legislative battling, and it came only after a process of intellectual and emotional distillation. At this "micro" level there is obviously no gap of generations from awakening to realignment: Madison’s personal growth over time acts as the symbol for that gap in this illustration.

Every major shift of political policy, every major change in the patterns of group thinking and voting, has an antecedent factor. Policy shifts and changes in political party are not extemporaneous events hatched in a moment of time. The awakening works its spiritual and moral effects in its own generation and these in turn appear to have political consequences two generations later. The religious motivation seems in some ways to be "washed out" in the development of its later political consequences. While having acted as cause and catalyst to the critical realignment, it has now passed from the scene. The mother has died in giving birth to the baby. This then creates an opening for another awakening.

The body of this study will be divided into an examination of the following six periods of Awakening-Realignment:

• Puritan (1610-40) and its restructuring of Puritan society in Massachusetts, 1686.

• The Great Awakening (1730-60) and the Founding period of American history (1776-90).

• The Second Great Awakening (1800-30) and the Civil War Realignment (1860s).

• The Millerite Movement (1840s) and the 1896 Realignment.

• The Third World Great Awakening (1890-1920) and the New Deal Realignment (1930s).

• The Fourth Great Awakening (1960-1990?) and the Coming Realignment (2000?).

By beginning with this relationship the present thesis is set apart from the literature of critical realignment because it comes in America's aboriginal period before parties and presidential campaigns. Additionally this beginning point links back directly to England and ultimately Europe. In tandem these suggest that the present thesis could be extended to other periods of history. Awakenings precede major political changes. One of the theories for the existence of two-partyism in America is "natural dualism,"a theory which holds that social and economic interests reduce political contestants into two great camps. While the theory is used to explain the two party system in America, it is not critical to the theory that parties be present. The same theory could be used to defend the simple idea being used here: the dual camps discernible in these two pre-two-party periods of American history can exhibit the same kind of effects seen in a critical realignment. To do so does invite the search for a phenomena with an application larger than American two-party electoral politics.

The Puritan Awakening started as a quarrel over the purification of the Church of England but spread during the awakening to include a host of political and economic issues which completely polarized the Puritans and the majority in the Church of England. Puritanism, the "new light", became the counterculture to the Anglican "old light." The Puritan counterculture was the embryo from which the American experience derived. This included its belief in a higher (Biblical) law, inalienable God-given rights, its millenialism, and a growing theory of separation of church and state. These grew in America, instead of the Anglican ways, in part because adjustment to the frontier provided no institutions to sustain the Anglican traditions. Following the thesis of this paper, we should expect to see a realignment--or its analogue in this pre-two-party era--somewhere approximately in the 1680s.

1688 was the year of political defeat for Puritanism in England with the Glorious Revolution. A case could probably be made for that event and its associated issues as a critical realignment. But it is America that must garner our focus. This time in America was one in which a notable turn was made from the feudal, corporate, and organic nature of Puritan society towards a more individualistic, contractual society such as would characterize the future America. America's economy began rapidly expanding at this time and there was a strain in the Calvinistic core of Puritanism at finding the proper line, as Richard Bushman wrote in Puritan to Yankee "between laudable industry and reprehensible worldiness." It is during this period that a bourgeois capitalist system took its place in America replacing the patriarchal agrarian system. With this general backdrop we now move to a closer inspection of the "critical realignment" in America at this time.

Kenneth Lockridge, studying the town of Dedham, Massachusetts, in A New England Town, the First Hundred Years, described 1686 as the critical turning point in village life. The following quote is taken from his chapter entitled, appropriately enough for our thesis, "Toward a New Society":

The organization of Lockridge's book shows the central placing of 1686 as an epochal time. Section I, "A Utopian Commune" chronicles the life of the town, and all of New England of which it is a microcosm, until 1686. That is the year beginning Section II, "A Provincial Town" whose chapter titles are "Toward a New Community", "Toward a New Politics" and "Toward a New Society". Two events at this time-fulcrum year are instructive as to its pivotal nature.

The first, general, is that this is the year from which the consensual nature of political decision in Dedham transformed to majoritarian. "By 1686, the Covenant was no longer enforced and would never again be the guide for every policy and every action. The harmonious society so painstakingly built under its influence no longer existed..."

The second, specific, was that the newly created office of town treasurer found as one of its assigned duties "to make demand, sue...according to law...and to receive moneys from the inhabitants to carry on such suits at law, or matters of trouble." A revolution had indeed occurred! The communal ideal in the compact of the Covenant was demolished.

This view of the change in the nature of Dedham in the 1680s is matched by John Demos' observation in A Little Commonwealth that the closely knit communal order of Plymouth Colony, more loosely controlled than Massachusetts Bay, broke down within a single generation. Darret Rutman, writing in American Puritanism also echoes this theme. The availability of cheap land and the increasing autonomy of the younger generation led to a major disruption of the patriarchal peasant order. Rutman says

Our working definition of critical realignment includes the notion of "a major social and/or political change..." To the above social and political changes let one more political change be added.

In 1686 King James II decided that the colonists had too much freedom. He decided to take away some of the rights promised in the colonial charters, including the right to elect lawmakers. A new governor was sent to destroy the charters of all the colonies. Arriving in Connecticut he demanded that the charter be brought to him. Though he never received it as it was hid by the colonists in the now famous Charter Oak, he declared that it was null and void. The colonists bided their time and in 1689 after William of Orange had taken the throne in the Glorious Revolution, they forced the governor to return to England. The crisis had come. It caused a polarization and led to a major political change--the ousting of the king's governor. This cemented the colonists by drawing some of the formerly pro-British supporters into greater loyalty to the new homeland. In this event a dynamic characteristic of a critical realignment is mirrored.

Our thesis calls for two generations of time to elapse after an awakening for a realignment to take place. The group of historians quoted here, one pinpointing the year 1686, a generation after the Puritan Awakening, have sketched a major change in the American mindset with manifestations in the political, social, and economic realms. Since there are no national elections to use as data from this period, we cannot strictly follow the critical realignment schema in assessing this period, other than in the caricature used above. But it fits the larger vision of the present thesis, that major political change is effectuated two generations after the awakening. This thesis includes the notion that while the awakening is spiritual, often with quiet, almost invisible operation, its political coattail is manifested carnally and tangibly. It seems fair to conclude that a critical realignment, at least a germinal prototype, occurred at this time.

Awakening-Realignment Relationship 1. In each one of the six awakening-realignment connections that will be studied here specific notice will be paid to the relationship between the character of the awakening and the character of the realignment. The thesis here expects that inspection will reveal some tangible similarity or at least some form of tangible relation. It is significant enough to find that the awakenings are in all cases two generations before the realignments, but it would be even more fruitful to see that each individual awakening and realignment bear significant visible relation.

In the present case the Awakening separated English society. The outworking of the Puritan impulse reached separate political results two generations later. In England, the Puritan revolution was consummated in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution. England still has a state church and a monarchy. In America, at about the same time, the core motive energies of the Puritan Awakening were being advanced, not defeated by retreat to Anglican hegemony. The latent individualism of Calvinism began bursting through the Puritan collectivist covenant. The political development that was effectuated was not a rejection of the Puritan challenge, but a next-stage advancement of it. This silent revolution of the late Seventeenth Century assured the continuation of a Puritan culture core at the same time that it redefined it.

To describe this change in terms of the language of critical realignment we could say that the previous majority party, the Covenant Party, was replaced by a new party, the Provincial or Yankee Party. The shift in the electorate took place at all levels, and witnessed a greater involvement of the "electorate", in this case the township areas outside of the central village where power was centralized. Indeed, it was the pressure of the outlying sections against the formal sovereignty of the town center which led to the breakdown of the old order. The Covenant Party's platform issue of communal decision making was polarized with the pre-democratic platform of the emerging majoritarian party, the Yankee Party. An old regime was toppled with the ousting of the King's governor.

The economic transformation taking place was bringing to a majority those who were willing to take Puritanism into a mercantile mode into which it would have refused to go before the realignment. Of the major realignments recognized by political science, two especially, that of 1896 and also the New Deal, involved an economic transformation. Adding this economic consideration to the Covenant and Yankee Party framework above with its many similarities to realignment theory, it seems therefore plausible to see this period as an aboriginal "realignment". Its political consequence, worked through by the newly emerged party, would be the change from consensual to democratic government, and a widened sphere of political involvement among the citizenry.

The relationship between this awakening and its corresponding realignment, if the late Seventeenth Century be allowed as an American realignment, seems direct and sensible.

Edmund Burke in 1775 noted that the patriots of the North American colonies constituted "the dissidence of dissent and the Protestantism of the Protestant religion." Michael Waltzer in The Revolution of the Saints writes of this same period, "What Calvinists said of the saint, other men would later say of the citizen." The organic link is noted here between pure Protestantism and republicanism, coming in that order.

This helps confirm this second awakening-realignment. The Great Awakening is the great archetype awakening, whose broad and profound effects are noted by secularist and saint. And the American founding has become the great archetype of democracy, with all but six of the nations of the world with single constitutions using the U.S. Constitution as precedent. The Great Awakening was the rebirth of the Reformation on American soil. It ensured that American Protestantism, at least at this period, would not rest on a potentially dead formalism developed in England, two centuries removed from Calvin and Luther. The preaching of Whitefield and other itinerants acted as powerful vessels of spiritual renewal. Jonathan Edwards, who McGloughlin places on center stage in this Awakening called it a "surprising work of God." Among the four American awakenings this one seems the most profoundly spiritual, causing pronounced personal growth in thousands of colonists. The collective effect of these many personal choices, by all accounts, moved the American character forward as if it was one individual, writ large. The awakening was pervasive, across every class, as if a mighty cloud had been dropped from Heaven in which all were bathed by a great awakening.

Following the framework of this study, the Founding period must be examined as to its fitness to be considered a "critical realignment." As to its critical nature in the formation of the American republic none can doubt or gainsay. One thing we must look for immediately in assessing its place as a "critical realignment" is a catalytic event or crisis. The revolt from England would certainly seem to qualify here. The formation of the Federalist and anti-Federalist antagonisms during the latter part of this period (1776-1790) would seem to fit the critical realignment call for a sharply divided policy issue, in this case the ratification of the new Constitution. The Federalist papers were one small part of a "great debate" which was conducted with "pamphlets, papers, letters to the editor, and speeches."

Without going into a detailed examination of this Framing period as to its manifestation of "decomposition of party identification, weakening of traditional bonds, shifts in electoral coalitions, shifts in party identification, higher levels of party identification, new voters joining the majority party" it can be fairly said that a good case could be made that the period "qualifies." Certainly there was a weakening of traditional bonds in terms of attachments to the mother country. Most historians relate this as a process which finally came to a breaking point at this time. As to "shifts in party identification" Madison would be a prime example in his shift from a Federalist to an anti-Federalist position on the bill of rights and ratification. "New voters joining the majority" could be viewed as the result of the Federalist's compromise promise of a bill of rights which led to a winning consensus on ratification. Brady makes the case that the policy changes associated with realignments are enacted by the new emerging majority which again, seems to fit this Founding period in that the controversial policy--the Constitution--was ratified by this new majority. Rather than attempting to finalize the case, it is sufficient for this paper to say that it seems a solid argument could be made to consider the Framing period as a period with critical realignment characteristics before the era when political science begins defining critical realignments. With the Civil War and New Deal it certainly stands out as a pivotal period.

Awakening-Realignment Relationship 2. Thus the Great Awakening and its profound spiritual effects upon the individuals of the American colonies was the precursor to the period of the Founding and Framing of the American Republic a generation later. The fresh, buoyant optimism of the Great Awakening provided the nourishing rain for the growth of the momentous political transactions a generation later. In this second awakening-realignment the relation seems to be that a pure and powerful awakening which deeply affected the outlook of American colonists between 1730 and 1760 had a correspondingly profound effect in the political realm two generations later: the creation of a stable and lasting governmental structure.

Like the Great Awakening the Second Great Awakening was a powerful movement which tangibly inspired thousands of Americans. When Alexis De Tocqueville visited America at the end of this Second Awakening he was moved to write that one thing that distinguished Americans was the righteousness being proclaimed from their pulpits. He wrote that he had never encountered a people whose everyday cultural experience was so religious. The horizontal dimension of this Awakening, as in the last, is present, indicating a broad effect, cutting across denominational lines. An example illustrating this would be the growth of several religiously based voluntary associations cutting across not only denominational but also geographic lines, including many Bible societies such as the American Bible Society, and the American Temperance Society. The key difference with this Awakening was the enlightenment's effect on evangelical Christianity which led to the reworking of the harsher elements of Calvinistic theology, especially the place of free will in a system so grounded in determinism. This led to a profound sense of liberation in this Awakening. Notice what John Simmons writes about this period:

Awakening-Realignment Relationship 3. This theme of liberation in the Second Awakening has what would seem to be an obvious connection in the abolitionist-liberation movement to which it led, culminating in the Civil War realignment period when the decisive political decisions were made, so long delayed by well-meaning but overly-timid compromise, that would ultimately end slavery and spawn Constitutional amendment to insure its obliteration. An awakening whose motif was "freedom" led two generations later to an Emancipation Proclamation. Following the thesis here, the awakening spawned movements which led to a political fulfillment, the emergence of a new public policy. It is significant that immediately after the formal end of this Awakening (1831) William Lloyd Garrison began publishing the Liberator, the organ of the "movement that would ultimately destroy the second party system. The preeminent issue was, of course, slavery." Garrison had personal links to Charles Finney, one of the key revivalists of this period, in that Finney allowed his church to be used to form the American Anti-Slavery Society under Garrison's leadership. Finney's convert Theodore Weld also organized abolition crusades in western New York and Ohio that might have been even more effective than Garrison's in the East.

It is significant given the thesis here that Finney did not approve of Weld's efforts to lobby in Congress to obtain a law abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia.

Finney did not want to release a moral issue even as clear cut as human slavery to a movement that was not religiously empowered with "revival." The issue certainly did become secularized, mingled with abolitionist absolutism, sectionalism, and Christian moral overtones thus manifesting the connection of our present thesis; revival leads to political change. The manifestation of this revival in the electoral realm was the inability of the Whig/Democrat party system to deal with the slavery issue. The Whigs and Democrats were divided over slavery. Northern Whigs aligned with anti-slavery Democrats to form the Republican party in 1856. This is the critical realignment which accomplished the implementation of the anti-slavery political goals. The level of commitment to the emotional issue of slavery was strong enough to split many voters away from their own party, namely the Whigs. Democrats lost strength in the New England and Middle Atlantic states where Republicans filled the new void and the Whigs all but disappeared. These changes were accomplished in the 1856 congressional election. The die was thus cast for the political accomplishment of the public policy that caused the electoral revolution (abolition of slavery). It was after 1860 that the policy changes were effectuated. As "brother killed brother", there was a tremendous threshold price for our delayed resolve to eliminate an acculturated national injustice.

He began preaching this message in 1831 and soon attracted thousands of followers, initially in New York and New England, and ultimately around the world. Miller was a well-balanced man with a mild demeanor. Those who were attracted to his views were largely productive American citizens from all walks of life. These were not "fanatics" in the sense of being drawn from the margins of society. Millerites came from nearly all Protestant groups, "most especially Baptist, Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian", showing the broad appeal of his message. American religious historian Sydney Ahlstrom notes that his meetings took place "all across the country, with Miller himself lecturing over three hundred times during one half year period. Despite warnings and condemnation from many quarters...hundreds of thousands began to prepare for the Lord's coming." McGloughlin notes too that "so many Americans chose to believe William Miller..." Religious historian LeRoy Edwin Froom writes

Wheaton historian Mark Noll calls the Miller movement "a national phenomenon." These acknowledgments show the wide influence of Miller's message. Considering the widespread opposition Miller faced, especially from the organized churches, several of which made statements condemning the movement, the extent and effect of the revival is magnified. Americans and others around the world were aware of the movement even if they were not convinced of its message. Such polarization as it engendered is not characteristic of small scale revivalism.

Several aspects of Miller's message set it quite apart from the other awakenings of this time period. McGloughlin deals most at length with Charles Finney from this period. Finney defined progress not in terms of wealth or power for the nation, but in terms of the increasing piety and morality of its people. Finney believed that since the Bible said "Be ye perfect" then men were able to perform it. Finney added his immense influence to that of John Wesley in the promotion of the doctrine of holiness. From total depravity with Calvin Americans now swung to total perfectibility.

Finney championed the postmillennial position; that is, that humanity will first perfect itself by social and political action and the Kingdom of God on earth will commence, to last a thousand years. Miller, on the other hand, championed the premillennial, catastrophic position which said that most of humanity, not truly following the Lord and growing in grace, was becoming worse and worse and this would continue until the return of Christ, which would be the apocalyptic ending of the present age and ushering in of a thousand year heavenly reign with Christ. Miller's perfectionism was more limited than Finney's because it applied only to the saints, the believers. It was not all humanity that was to be perfected but just the true believers. While Miller was pessimistic about the ultimate fate of the bulk of humanity, the pessimism never was ascribed to God. His mercy and love for mankind was always stressed as the incentive for the perfectionist preparation needed to be ready for His return. McGloughlin states that this perfectionism "constituted almost a revolution in American religious thought" because it was so widespread among Christians.

The Miller movement came to an abrupt end when 1844, the year Miller had expected to see the return of Christ, came and went.

It would be easy from this epitaph to dismiss the seriousness and widespread influence of the Miller movement. It should be noted once more that the adherents of Miller were largely hardworking, respectable Americans. Some had come from other churches and many were new converts who had been positively affected by William Miller. As an Adventist historian writes:

From this summary of the Miller movement, to a review of the critical alignment coming two generations later, an intervening observation from a religious and political historian would be in order.

Is there a "long-term effect" from the Miller Awakening to the 1896 realignment two generations later?

The critical alignment of the 1890s involved the rise and fall of the Populist party and the emergence of the Republican Party as the new majoritarian party. The Populist party was a temporary home for farmers, especially from the South and West, feeling displaced by the growth of the industrial order. The Republican Party was the home of the Northern and Eastern industrial interests. The Democratic Party absorbed the principles of the Populist Party thus insuring Populist demise. There were polarized issues--free silver, income redistribution, and immigration/expansionism--and a crisis event in the panic of 1893. The policy changes associated with this realignment were enacted by the emergent majoritarian (Republican) party. The election of McKinley in 1896 assured America's industrial future.

Awakening-Realignment Relationship 4. The Miller awakening and the 1890s realignment were placed in connection with each other because of the thesis formed here. Now is the time to examine the fruitfulness of this pairing. Let the question posed above begin the inquiry: Is there a "long-term effect" from this Awakening to the 1896 realignment two generations later? The following observations point to some direct link-ups between these two periods further confirming the overall strength of the paradigm developed here:

As Millerite campmeetings spread West a large number of farmers became followers of Miller's teachings. Miller himself was a farmer. Millerites did not focus on social, political, or economic problems; their lives became caught up with the imminent climax of history. They were almost completely apolitical. With the disappointment they experienced when Christ did not return as expected, they probably did not quickly reintegrate into the larger political life of America. Given the tendency in human nature, however, to go from one extreme to the other over time, it could well be that their children and grandchildren--following the thesis developed here--became animated, not about the phantom return of Christ, but about farm problems. We have recently undergone a species of the generational flip-flop: The generations after the Depression were Spock-spoiled and the cry of the Spock me-first generation's offspring is "Give me limits" and discipline returns. Thus, the Miller movement, a populous "loser", that rose and fell quickly (1831-1844) was a catalyst for the Populist "loser", that rose and fell quickly.

The Miller movement, with its perfectionistic bent, was in agreement with the temperance movements. But, as fits the thesis here, the Millerites did not initiate temperance movements at this time. That would have diverted the focus of the awakening away from its advancing spirituality to the mere carnal level. Thus at the awakening level one could be in agreement with the general idea of temperance as being an accessory to true Christian life, but in the political stage two generations later we would expect to see more focused lobbying for temperance. This is indeed what happened. The first groundswell of Prohibition was brewing in the 1890 realignment era. The Republicans resisted an ultra Prohibitionist stance, but they did favor temperance, and of course, finally did approve Prohibition. The seeds for this could conceivably be traced to the perfectionism of milleniarism, now finding its political outlet in one generation. Here again is a "long-term effect" from this Awakening to the 1896 realignment two generations later.

Following our thesis here, of a spirited awakening preceding a period of heightened political awareness, an historian writing specifically of this 1896 realignment period says

"...religion shaped the issues and the rhetoric of politics, and played the critical role in determining the party alignment of the voters."

This can fit our thesis that, during the Awakening, the focus is not on political activity, but in two generations, when the Awakening is channeled into tangible form, the religious element can either be "washed out:" In this case not by being eliminated, but by being transmuted from a spiritual idea to political rhetoric. Religion is still around at the realignment stage but not in the more "pure" or motivating form characterizing the awakening. A door for Gantryism has been opened.

The Miller awakening is the only one with a premillenial character and the realignment it precedes, that of 1896, is the only historic Republican realignment. There seems to be a very definite theoretical connection between the general social policy of Democrats and postmillenialism, and the general emphasis on individual responsibility in Republicans and premillenialism.

The historian quoted above, Richard Jensen, makes the case that evangelical pietists gravitated to the Republican party and liturgical antipietists to the Democratic. Millerism would have had most effect on the pietists. The evangelical Paul Kleppner, a prolific author in the field of voting behavior, points out that Bryan's advocacy of an active government, done in evangelically toned rhetoric, "repelled many of the [Democratic] party's normal ethnic and religious support groups." Because Bryan was using pietist language he alienated some of the Democratic vote. The invigorating spiritual influence through the ministry of Miller, advancing him and his followers to thoughts of the cross of Christ and the powerful reality of the Kingdom of Heaven (which never came in 1844) has transmuted a generation later to thoughts of a cross of gold and talk of an interventionist government (which never came for Bryant in 1896).

The third awakening, as characterized by McGloughlin, was less spiritual than its predecessors. A contrary constellation of "prophets" fueled this awakening. Billy Sunday, the "stardust trail" revivalist who gathered huge crowds all over America, was what McGloughlin called an "old light", that is, one defending the Christian values which always in the past had been a fixed part of the American mind, but now were being eroded by science and psychology. McGloughlin seems ready to write him out of this awakening, since his views were not in the new mainstream. The "new lights" were of theistic evolutionary persuasion, architects of a philosophy of social change borrowed from a neo-Kantian reworking of Christianity in Germany which was drawing American converts. This philosophy, which became the defining core of American liberal Christianity, can be summarized as the duty of man to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth in social action. These Social Gospelers believed Jesus taught a social ethic, not an individualistic one. If America was to revitalize its culture, it would have to severely modify the Protestant ethic and its political blood brother, laissez-faire.

The forces of this modification were divided between those avowedly Christian and those avowedly humanist. "The leading figure in the in the Christ-centered group was the economist Richard T. Ely; the leader of the humanists was John Dewey." The leading Social Gospel ministers in the Third Awakening had no qualms about working with both groups to uplift the masses with religion and science rather than to throw them to the vagaries of laissez-faire. A species of social Darwinism originated by Lester Ward, the first professor of sociology at Brown University, became a cutting edge of the Third Awakening. Unlike Spencer's view that used laissez-faire as the vehicle of social development, Ward saw Americans entering a more mature stage of development, when they would cooperate more fully and plan for their future. He wrote:

Here was the cradling philosophy for cadres of future social scientists who would make the collective national welfare their highest ideal, protecting the weak with wise, planned policy. John Dewey's pragmatic philosophy furthered this new revolution of thought.

The above is McGloughlin's characterization. McGloughlin, while being eclectic with interdisciplinary study, is a historian. His characterization of John Dewey as a leader in an awakening would draw the ire of modern evangelical fundamentalists who would place Dewey in a category with Satan himself. Grouping together the leading intellectual gurus in a given era who have used "religion" in some is not necessarily good history. Hitler, history tells us, was a Catholic; the pope is Catholic. We can then group them together as Catholics. This is a caricature of the difficulty McGloughlin gets into by seeking to place so diverse a group of Christians, humanists and quasi-Christian humanists in the same awakening in a convincing way. McGloughlin’s awakenings from here become recognition of great social and intellectual movements, but not awakenings in a way in which many traditional evangelicals would agree. The liberal Christian's social gospel, being able to so easily mix with the views of those not even remotely Christian, would raise severe red flags to the traditionalists. They would have to agree, however, that the impact of traditionalist revivalists such as Billy Sunday, was no where near as pervasive within the nation as George Whitfield’s specifically or the Great Awakening preachers generally. This being noted here, it will suffice to continue with McGloughlin’s characterizations of the awakening periods.

McGloughlin is aware of a challenge from traditional Christianity and he says the "purpose" of his essay is to clarify his response to that challenge:

So McGloughlin is seeking for a paradigm real and substantive, but "post-Christian." He recognizes that the present and previous awakenings have not had anything resembling a traditional Christian basis.

With McGloughlin it must be affirmed that since there is "agreement that widespread expressions of religious concern have recurred periodically in American history, the task of the historian is to explain why they occurred in those particular spans of time, ...among those particular people..." With McGloughlin it should be affirmed that the nuts and bolts of great awakenings lie in "complex and social and intellectual relationships."

Some historians have used natural catastrophes to explain these things. Some say it is charismatic individuals. Others have said they are battles between a dying but entrenched religion with a new one. Others would say that these are idea wars where only the rational process is in operation. Traditional fundamentalists would invoke the mysterious workings of the Holy Spirit as the agent of such causation. There may be truth in all of these, and it dangerous for the fundamentalists to assume that the form of "revivalist" commands the same influence in American society it once did. One can never assume that the ones claiming religiosity are the ones being most moved by real spirituality. This is the job of the historical interpreter.

While Dewey used religious motifs in his writing he is plainly driven by human reason in the order of Enlightened philsophes. In Dewey we are getting Dewey and not the Sermon on the Mount. The point here is that we can agree with McGloughlin that this Third Awakening was a time of cultural reorientation for America and we can even call it a Third Awakening using his definition, but we must recognize its difference from the other awakenings. While mindsets were guided by it and its teachings permeated the society, there is a question as to whether lives were individually transformed as in the first three awakenings. It might have provided a new light but the flame didn't provide warmth. But one cannot deny that a crescendoing message, with a certain harmony, was transpiring at this time.

The Christian traditionalists need to consider to what extent laissez-faire, normally a fixed part of the evangelical worldview, had become a covering for greed and other effects outside the orbit of normal Christian ethics. They should also have been challenged at this time to consider what the role of the church was in relation to the new thinking--ultimately leading to the New Deal--about "protecting the weak" through social engineering.

To the extent that the prophets of the Christian church of this era failed, is perhaps the extent to which the new lights succeeded in winning to their side the (formerly) uncommitted. The charity of the new social architects could have been mixed with the piety of the evangelicals, but separated, charity is honey and piety often vinegar.

Awakening-Realignment Relationship 5. It may seem that the awakening-critical realignment relationship would be damaged by some of the considerations just mentioned. But there is a continued "fit" of our paradigm of awakening-generations-realignment with a simple adjustment. The adjustment would be simply a repetition of that which prompted the "Awakening-Realignment Relationship" section in each of the six eras. There should be a relationship between the awakening and realignment. If the awakening is of a different sort, then we should simply adjust our expectation of what to find at the "result" end--the political effect.

And that is exactly what we find in our examination of this fourth awakening. The New Deal era ushered in the political effect of the welfare state. That is the central policy issue of that critical realignment. The crisis event was the Great Depression. The new migration to the Democratic party, making it the new majority party, came from those "most affected by the Depression--farmers and northern working class city dwellers."

The new policy issue--massive government intervention in national economic problems--was surely a man-made solution from braintrusters who weren't really sure themselves where their policies would lead. This system surely started the era of massive national deficit budgeting. This is a profoundly different political effect than the strict construction of a Constitution governing a laissez-faire polity guaranteeing citizens positive rights. This is a profoundly different political effect than eliminating slavery and deepening the protections of citizen rights. The effect of a massive man-made welfare Leviathan is a natural result of a man-centered, humanly-derived social "gospel." The goal of the American Economic Association (A.E.A.), the organization founded by Ely and other Social Gospelers, and pietistic Protestants, was the "spiritual rebirth of society" through condemning laissez-faire, "not of individual souls."

Here is a system that replaces many of the functions that the church was once to provide. The church should help the poor, feed the hungry, shelter the battered families, protect the orphans and the fatherless, give dignity and work to the unemployed. A secular giant now takes the place of what once was considered Christian duty. This is partly because of the Christian church’s amalgamation with secular thought, and partly, again, because this is the natural result to expect if the input cause is the philosophy of the A.E.A. and John Dewey. Dewey was the prophet to progressive humanists like Jane Addams and Lincoln Steffens who were almost indistinguishable in their political and social philosophies from the Social Gospelers and Christian sociologists (many from German graduate schools where a blend of Christian faith and professional expertise was being synthesized) with whom they often worked closely. With this coalition, what difference would it make whether one attacked the economic problem from a church or a state base? Since the secular government was in a better position to address the problem centrally and organizationally, why not the state as vehicle for economic redress? Ely's draft for the statement of purpose of the A.E.A. read in part:

This is social philosophy, not religion. Its ultimate political manifestation--in New Deal economics--was a man-made monument that "replaced" the place the Christian gospel had once enjoyed, providing welfare through debt. It seems a rational connection between awakening and realignment is here demonstrated, at least partially.

Now we have arrived at the most crucial and pivotal tandem comparison of this study. One test of any paradigm is how well it can predict what is to come, how well it can make the uncertainty of the future more tangible, understandable. Let us proceed then to the instant relationship of awakening and realignment with its fruitful potentiality.

McGloughlin presented a lecture at University Church of Loma Linda University in 1973 that in many ways was the rough draft of the book which has been used so heavily in the present study. There McGloughlin gives the era of the final awakening as "1950-1980." When he published Revivals, Awakenings and Reform in 1978, five years later, he gives the era as "1960-1990(?)." Since we can here see an example of the problem of properly assigning historical meaning to the present and past we are reminded again to proceed with this inquiry into the future cautiously. Probably one reason McGloughlin changed the beginning of the period from 1950 to 1960 was to put the Eisenhouer "do-nothing" decade out of anything called an "awakening.". The "Beatniks" Alan Watts, Allen Ginsburg, and Jack Kerouac all from the late 50's were perhaps the initial "cracks" in the cultural crevice which has now been fully ripped open, the "morning black holes of the countercultural revolution" which has expanded in the next two decades. The Beats questioned the modern mechanical escalator of success, the fast-paced, high speed super highway to wealth, power and fame.

In the 60's it was Free Speech at Berkeley, Flower Power in San Francisco, and the Civil Rights Movement in Selma and Montgomery. In the 70's Eastern religions made a rapid and widespread appearance in America, along with recreational drug use, High Priest of LSD Timothy Leary, and liberalized sexual mores. Ahlstrom and McGloughlin write about the radical departure from the Judeo-Christian core here revealed. Can the center hold? All the national newsmagazines have done special issues with eloquent essays on the post-Christian culture we have entered. Immorality, violence, crimes of the most despicable nature and unfathomable motive are now regularized through sound- and video-bite TV, as is the mass dictatorship of a public opinion which is satisfied with being uninformed. If words are bullets, America is in the midst of Culture Wars as bloody as the Civil War. AIDS, abortion, gays in the military, gay marriages, unwed mothers, absentee fathers, education are some of the battle grounds. The new baby-sitters for children are often MTV, violent video games, rap lyrics and junk food and Dr. Bloom reminds us that the modern god is relativity. The Furies of the worst of Nietszche and Camus seemed loosed upon a ghost with no backbone in which the only sense of stability--and it too is chimerical--comes from the facade of institutionalized salaries drawn from bankrupt treasuries. Some say the biggest miracle of all is that the collapse has not yet come.

This characterization is an attempt to put a sound bite on our modern crisis; too large to chronicle accurately, too deep to uproot by any known means. It is time to return to the core of our inquiry: what awakening has taken place amidst all this? Since I grew to maturity during the time of this final awakening let me personalize an initial reply. The "countercultural revolution" that swept America in the late 60s and the 70s was a profound influx of new energy and new thinking. Daniel Cohen in The New Believers: Young Religion in America, chronicles some of the new religious movements that entered American life in the 1970s: The Children of God, the Jesus People, the Charismatic Revival, the Unification Church, the Divine Light Mission, TM, Hare Krishna, Subud, Satanism and the Process. Ahlstrom adds Positive Thinking, Scientology, Theosophy, Occultism, Bahai, Zen, Cosmic Consciousness and Rosicrucianism. I remember the gravitation towards Eastern religion that took place when I was in college. The concept of karma, that what happens in any one part of the universe has a corresponding effect somewhere else, was especially appealing because it made life meaningful and precious. I was reared in a rather "typical" American home where there was some churchgoing but no real religion.

To help fill the void of meaning that entered my life during my college years, in what was really a personal search for the meaning of life, I veered from my political science major enough to take some theology. The theology courses I took, reading Buber and Kant and Tillich and Kierkegaard and others under the umbrella of "Christian existentialism", provided some temporary benchmarks for me in my search. As a true initiate into the paradoxical, oxymoronical discipline of "Christian existentialism", in the valedictory address I gave in 1972 at Colgate University I told the assembled graduates, guests, and administration that we were all prisoners of Spaceship Earth, we all lived in a yellow submarine, we were all sailors on a stormy sea and we owed each other a terrible loyalty. We were all headed to a land we were ignorant of and we'd best get along while we were headed there. I gave this valedictory without a cap and gown because about one third of the graduating class had chosen not to wear a cap and gown at the ceremony. I would submit that that was a radical departure from hundreds of years of tradition on this continent and the Old World. Something strong was in the air. We felt that the cap and gown was an elitist symbol that didn't really mean much. In my valedictory I mentioned that a hard-working Chicago plumber might have been more moral and lived a more meaningful life than a college grad who had spent four years drinking and fooling around with a little reading and test taking in between. Did the cap and gown, whatever it was meant to symbolize, prevent the bombing of Vietnam?

This was indeed a time of national awakening. One generation dropped its hair--women by letting it hang, men by increasing by several inches the collective average hair-length--and sit-ins against racism were conducted, and thousands of young Americans marched on the Pentagon. The decade of the late 60s and early 70s was, for a short time, the Age of Aquarius.

Near the end of this period Nixon aide Charles Colson, a prime target of countercultural rage, wrote Born Again. That title became a buzz word which is now a standard part of American vocabulary even being used as the basis of one of the questions on the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research's famous survey data on the Presidential elections. Many Christian ministries said they experienced an unusually powerful anointing in their ministries at that time. Dr. Billy Graham paid to be on national TV the last day of 1975 to talk about a great anointing that had taken place in America, with Bible study groups springing up everywhere. Certainly this was part of the awakening of this time.

And now a surgical distinction must be made. Dr. James Dobson, one of the leading family-values advocates in America, a man with a mailing list of two million, a leading evangelical Christian and friend of the Christian Coalition an organization with over 1,000,000 paid members, in the spring of 1993 put out one of his newsletters in which he listed five bad things that came out in the mid-1970s.

• Drugs being used for recreation. E.g. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix.

• Premarital and extramarital sex were considered moral and healthy if done properly, with mutual consent.

• Radical feminism offers the only justice and equity for women.

• God is dead, or at least irrelevant.

• Divorce is an easy way out for the frustrated, disappointed, or adventuresome.

Now these are certainly all bad things from a traditional Christian point of view. But it is always easy to rewrite history to flatter yourself in the present. Dobson, by being able to point a finger at the cause of all the evil in today's society, the evil the Religious Right does not like and is trying to root out, somehow feels that the Right is all right. And in that self-analysis he fails to get the full message of the 1970s. To repeat what was acknowledged earlier in this paper, searching for evidence of true awakening may require that we look at places other than the ones who claim to be speaking for God. For I know that I was being "awakened" in the early 70s, in that I was confronted with values challenging my cultural background and my upbringing.

There are now many articles appearing comparing the 1960s with the 1990s. Conservatives, such as Cal Thomas and Dobson, and liberals such as Fred Barnes and Lewis Laphamare involved in these ‘60s-’90s analyses. It is a fertile topic because there is as yet no hardened analysis accepted by all. The fact that there is a hovering over the comparison of these two decades, and not, say the ‘50s and the ‘80s, is an indication of the epochal nature of both. The ‘60s are the awakening, and the ‘90s appear to be the beginning of the long-awaited realignment. What is the relationship?

Barnes says that the present Congressional power brokers, who are the "driving force in American politics,"headed by Newt Gingrich, see the ‘60s as the enemy. Barnes says of this group:

Essentially Gingrich lines up with Dobson. They were the good boys during the horrors of the ‘60s countercultural revolution--McGloughlin’s Fourth Great Awakening--and now they are going to take back the culture. Historian Gingrich sums it up this way:

But Dobson and Gingrich, representing the resurgent and probable cutting edge of the coming realignment, have failed to notice what good and positive messages came from the era they would like to remove from history. They have missed the Awakening. To focus on this Awakening, I have listed five positive things that came out of this era:

FIVE POSITIVE ASPECTS OF THE 1970s AMERICAN AWAKENING

• The message that greed is wrong as a motive in business. There is more to life than profit. It is people that matter, even if the standard of living must drop to make it so.

• The development of the understanding that massive pollution of the environment is wrong. Responsible stewardship of the Earth is a solemn responsibility.

• Racism and prejudice are wrong at the individual, corporate, state, national and international levels.

• War was not a good solution for Vietnam, and rarely ever a defensible option.

• Western Christianity, Protestant and Catholic, is largely bankrupt. This is the reason the other religions mentioned above flourished at this time. The institutions of Christianity in America were not standing by the post of duty to the larger secular society. Christians were off in safe havens and cubbyholes with no message coming to terms with any of the world’s crises.

A short response to Dobson and Gingrich might be in order here.

Drugs were an attempt by some to get more from life than they were getting from American culture and Christianity, always America's default religion. This does not condone the drug usage, but certainly the child psychology expert (Dobson) should recognize that a child (the countercultural generation) not given defensible limits and laws will experiment to find them. The Christian Church which Dobson clings to is as guilty as Jim Morrison here.

Proper sexual relations of all kinds were not systematically taught to young people by any American institutions at that time. How can you blame young people for violating laws when no rule books have been given? Who spent time teaching them, for instance, how to talk and be friends with the opposite sex? Who taught young men how to view women as people and not objects? Women have been often misused in the name of religion and the default pattern of husband-head male-dominance. True marriage expectations and relationship principles were not being taught very widely even (especially?) in Christian circles. This is not to condone the misuse of sexuality which bothered Dobson, but to plead for a fuller look at the problem.

The awakening provided a chance for American culture, with vaguely Christian underpinnings and assumptions, to examine itself. Those who were awakened at the time, however, seem to have made peace in short time with the culture they attacked. This was perhaps typified by Chicago Seven member and Yippie leader Jerry Rubin when he began selling bonds not long after having urged college students to drop out and revolt.

So the reactionaries have taken power, it seems, if the current Republican majorities continue to post victories in 1996. That year will be roughly the beginning of the two generation baseline we have been charting here, and that election will tell whether the Republican resurgence, so powerful and pervasive in 1994, will continue as a true realignment, by definition, should. The one major missing element is a triggering or crisis event.

The call to a higher consciousness in the Fourth Awakening, a call to a greater commitment of life energy to the task of service to fellow men passed through America, ultimately unheeded as it blew in the wind. The Woodstock and countercultural revolution, and its possibility of being joined with the traditional Christian "born again" revival never actualized. The hope of wedding the best energies and practical, working principles from each, discarding the imperfect and immoral, and joining them synergistically as one, has gone the way of the original Puritan ideals, amuck.

The Christian world showed no finesse in its interface with this Awakening. The Dobsons and Gingrichs rejected all that was dressed differently. Like the Pharisees who couldn't believe a Nazarene carpenter could be the forerunner of a movement that could challenge the power and pride of their religious organization, the Christian establishment could only see an enemy where difference and novelty arose in the 1960s and 70s. And so, as in the last Awakening, the Christian religious establishment was not only not at the cutting edge of the Awakening, but in many ways an adversary to it. And the proponents of the idealism which fueled the Awakening seemed to simply fade away into the excesses of the culture they had challenged, with but faint and occasional whispers now of ecological righteousness and attacks on corporate profiteering.

What form will the realignment take? Here is the critical moment. By the thesis of this paper the realignment, meant to come a generation after the awakening, is not quite due. The predictions by Kevin Phillips and other political scientists who called for and looked for realignments were premature. The thesis here would seem to provide an outward barometer of hope to those within the discipline of political science who may have become resigned to the notion of there being any possibility for a critical realignment.

What form will the realignment take? To use the principle we have established to this point we might be tempted to follow what McGloughlin predicted, especially with the election of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. McGloughlin is downright Rousseauian in predicting the political changes which could be wrought by a an awakening like the Fourth:

Al Gore’s work Earth in Balance, and the outlook which it represents, sounds just like a fulfillment of McGloughlin’s "harmony between man and nature," and perhaps the Clintons’ health care initiative as a manifestation of "Christian socialism?"

The greening, countercultural elements of the fourth awakening seem to have an affinity with the recent passage of the NAFTA treaty, linking Canada, Mexico, and the U.S. in new and special ways, breaking down national sovereignties and showing a governmental respect for the environment. Given this perspective we might, following McGloughlin’s example, say that the NAFTA treaty offers a glimpse of the coming realignment. NAFTA contains the following elements we would expect to find in this realignment:

Awakening-Realignment Relationship 6. If there is at least a glimmer of truth in what has been written here, the realignment is coming. But current events seem to indicate that it will not take the form McGloughlin predicted. The perspective of Dobson, and Gingrich, and Cal Thomas seems to be the prevailing one. A new consensus seems to be saying, with Barbara Whitehead’s Atlantic article, "Dan Quayle Was Right." Those who can hardly be called conservatives seem to be gravitating toward to a reluctant, but real, alignment on certain conservative values. James Q. Wilson says in an article for Public Interest that a "variety of public problems can only be understood--and perhaps addressed--if they are seen as arising out of a defect of character formation."Richard Cohen of the liberal Washington Post laments the lack of male role models and fathers, leading to violence and unemployment for their children. David Broder argues that the facts of social disintegration "are so staggering, this is no longer a matter of ideological argument...It is no longer possible to pretend that the values by which people live their lives don’t matter." President Clinton said in his 1995 State of the Union address, "Our problems go way beyond the reach of government. They are rooted in the loss of values...We cannot renew our country when, within a decade, more than half of the children will be born into families where there has been no marriage." Others joining this "consensus," according to Thomas, include Charles Krauthammer of the New Republic, Michael Barone of U.S. News, and William Raspberry of the Washington Post. Thomas writes:

Cal Thomas may not have it all right, but he certainly does not have it all wrong. More crucially here, there does seem to be a growing acknowledgement of the failings of welfare-state liberalism--the basis of the former realignment--and the crescendoing crystallization that is supposed to be characteristic of realignment.

Our recognition here of the relative antagonism between the countercultural ideals of the ‘60s Fourth Awakening and its (apparent) associated realignment, requires an explanation. There was greater harmony in the other awakening-realignment match-ups. It seems that the Fourth Awakening, the most radical of them all, strayed too far from America’s culture core. Its political effects two generations later--the era just before us--seem to be that of reaction, not new age "flow;" no anointing by the Aquarian water-bearer. Rather than a political realignment based on some kind of onward and upward movement or growth, some "New Frontier" or "New Deal" we find a reversion to an American past: a "contract." We hear of restoring the past, not a new vision for the future. The millennial door, the bright hope to which the other awakenings all to varying degrees looked, does not seem to be the Polaris of the coming realignment. There is dismantling, not building.

But since the Fourth Awakening appeared to have two stages--the secular ‘60s and the "born again" revivalism of the early ‘70s, it is possible that there will be a second phase of the Republican realignment, one which begins to legislate the morality that Dobson and Gingrich and Thomas are certain of. The Prohibitions of the new ‘90s. This legislation will bear the carnal religiosity referred to above as the spiritual counterfeit which can often accompany the political realignment. Perhaps the promise push for a school prayer amendment will be the catalyst.

The trigger event--the realignment pillar most obvious for its absence--may dramatically alter much of what has been said here. The danger of forced conformity, and "tyranny of the majority" seems a plausible scenario

Perhaps it is simplest to say that the apparent coming realignment is in direct connection to the Fourth Awakening in the way that every counterrevolution is connected to the initial revolution. To the extent that is true the awakening was a bust and the realignment a facade, at least compared to the other awakening-realignments we have so far studied. The thesis of this paper is admittedly strained by this last awakening-realignment disjunct. The interpretations of the near future, once that future has unrolled into what will then be the present, will be the ultimate arbiters.

In any case, it will be interesting to see if the expected realignment comes, and what form it takes.