Professor Patrick N. Allitt’s work in American religious history blends clear narrative, critical analysis, and a keen sense of how religion shaped U.S. public life. Below is a concise blog-style post suitable for students, general readers, or course pages that introduces Allitt’s approach and highlights key themes useful for anyone studying American religious history.
This is where the course truly catches fire. The Second Great Awakening (1790–1840s) democratized American religion. Allitt describes the "burned-over district" of upstate New York, where spiritual fervor was so intense that it produced everything from Mormonism (Joseph Smith) to the Seventh-day Adventists (Ellen White) to the Shakers.
Allitt excels here by connecting theology to social action. He demonstrates how the Awakening fueled the abolitionist movement (Theodore Weld, the Grimké sisters), the women’s suffrage movement (Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who cut their teeth in temperance societies), and the utopian communities (Oneida, Brook Farm). The lecture on "Southern Religion and Slavery" is particularly sobering, showing how both slave owners and enslaved people used the Bible—one to justify hierarchy, the other to promise deliverance.
One of the greatest risks of teaching religious history is condescension. A secular historian might dismiss revivalist fervor as mass hysteria. A partisan historian might demonize opponents. Allitt avoids both traps. He explains what people believed and why those beliefs made rational sense within their historical context. You leave understanding not just the events of the Great Awakening, but the emotional experience of being born again. TTC - Prof. Patrick N Allitt - American Religious History
The course shines brightest when discussing the Second Great Awakening. This is where the American religious identity truly diverges from its European ancestors.
Allitt describes the "burned-over district" in upstate New York with a storyteller’s flair. This was the Silicon Valley of the 19th-century soul, birthing Mormonism, Adventism, and a feverish wave of evangelicalism. But the professor connects this spiritual fervor directly to social progress. He draws a straight line from the revival tents to the abolitionist movement, women’s suffrage, and temperance.
His central thesis here is profound: In America, religious enthusiasm almost always translates into social reform. The American notion of "manifest destiny" and the "city on a hill" has always been active, not passive. Believers felt compelled to remake the world. Blog Post: Teaching to the Core — Prof
Unlike simplistic “Christian nation” narratives, Allitt highlights:
The final section covers the astonishing rise of the "megachurch" (think Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and the Crystal Cathedral). Allitt also covers the expansion of non-Western religions: the influx of Buddhism and Hinduism after the 1965 Immigration Act, the rise of Islam among African Americans (the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad), and the New Age movement of the 1970s.
The course ends with the Reagan era and the politicization of the religious right. Allitt concludes with a sobering look at the contemporary landscape—the decline of mainline Protestantism, the rise of the "nones" (religiously unaffiliated), and the persistent vitality of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity. Instructor : Professor Patrick N
One of Allitt’s most compelling early arguments is that America was not founded as a monolith, but as a messy collection of religious experiments.
While high school history textbooks often lump the colonists together, Allitt meticulously dissects the theological differences between the Puritans of New England, the Anglicans of Virginia, and the Quakers of Pennsylvania. He paints a picture of a "haven for hell-raisers"—a place where religious dissenters who couldn't fit into the rigid structures of European society came to build their own versions of utopia.
Allitt argues that this fragmentation laid the groundwork for American federalism. The necessity of different sects learning to live side-by-side (often uneasily) forced the evolution of the separation of church and state—a concept born not out of atheism, but out of a desire to protect the purity of religious sects from government interference.