"Great Awakenings" in American history are periods of religious revivals. Wikipedia says: "The Awakenings all resulted from powerful preaching that gave listeners a sense of personal guilt, their sin, and the need of salvation by Christ."
There are some parallels between such awakenings and the current enthusiasm for woke.
This was stimulated by Ross Douthat in the NYTimes who wrote:
What's really inflaming today's fights, though, is that the structural-racist diagnosis isn't being offered on its own. Instead it's yoked to two sweeping theories about how to fight the problem it describes.
First, there is a novel theory of moral education, according to which the best way to deal with systemic inequality is to confront its white beneficiaries with their privileges and encourage them to wrestle with their sins.
That's a similar strategy to the revivalist appeals prominent in the Great Awakenings--you convince the sinner of his depravity and the essential need for repentance as a prerequisite to God's grace. A further step is to examine your actions every day to determine if you are following a righteous path--for predestinarians that's the way to feel some confidence that you're one of the "elect", that you're saved from hell.
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