This book is a history of an astounding transatlantic phenomenon, a popular evangelical revival known in America as the first Great Awakening (1735-1745). Beginning in the mid-1730s, supporters and opponents of the revival commented on the extraordinary nature of what one observer called the "great ado," with its extemporaneous outdoor preaching, newspaper publicity, and rallies of up to 20,000 participants. Frank Lambert, biographer of Great Awakening leader George Whitefield, offers an overview of this important episode and proposes a new explanation of its origins.

The Great Awakening, however dramatic, was nevertheless unnamed until after its occurrence, and its leaders created no doctrine nor organizational structure that would result in a historical record. That lack of documentation has allowed recent scholars to suggest that the movement was "invented" by nineteenth-century historians. Some specialists even think that it was wholly constructed by succeeding generations, who retroactively linked sporadic happenings to fabricate an alleged historic development. Challenging these interpretations, Lambert nevertheless demonstrates that the Great Awakening was invented--not by historians but by eighteenth-century evangelicals who were skillful and enthusiastic religious promoters. Reporting a dramatic meeting in one location in order to encourage gatherings in other places, these men used commercial strategies and newly popular print media to build a revival--one that they also believed to be an "extraordinary work of God." They saw a special meaning in contemporary events, looking for a transatlantic pattern of revival and finding a motive for spiritual rebirth in what they viewed as a moral decline in colonial America and abroad.

By examining the texts that these preachers skillfully put together, Lambert shows how they told and retold their revival account to themselves, their followers, and their opponents. His inquiries depict revivals as cultural productions and yield fresh understandings of how believers "spread the word" with whatever technical and social methods seem the most effective.

The delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention blocked the establishment of Christianity as a national religion. But they could not keep religion out of American politics. From the election of 1800, when Federalist clergymen charged that deist Thomas Jefferson was unfit to lead a "Christian nation," to today, when some Democrats want to embrace the so-called Religious Left in order to compete with the Republicans and the Religious Right, religion has always been part of American politics. In "Religion in American Politics," Frank Lambert tells the fascinating story of the uneasy relations between religion and politics from the founding to the twenty-first century.

Lambert examines how antebellum Protestant unity was challenged by sectionalism as both North and South invoked religious justification; how Andrew Carnegie's "Gospel of Wealth" competed with the anticapitalist "Social Gospel" during postwar industrialization; how the civil rights movement was perhaps the most effective religious intervention in politics in American history; and how the alliance between the Republican Party and the Religious Right has, in many ways, realized the founders' fears of religious-political electoral coalitions. In these and other cases, Lambert shows that religion became sectarian and partisan whenever it entered the political fray, and that religious agendas have always mixed with nonreligious ones.

"Religion in American Politics" brings rare historical perspective and insight to a subject that was just as important--and controversial--in 1776 as it is today.

A pioneer in the commercialization of religion, George Whitefield (1714-1770) is seen by many as the most powerful leader of the Great Awakening in America: through his passionate ministry he united local religious revivals into a national movement before there was a nation. An itinerant British preacher who spent much of his adult life in the American colonies, Whitefield was an immensely popular speaker. Crossing national boundaries and ignoring ecclesiastical controls, he preached outdoors or in public houses and guild halls. In London, crowds of more than thirty thousand gathered to hear him, and his audiences exceeded twenty thousand in Philadelphia and Boston. In this fresh interpretation of Whitefield and his age, Frank Lambert focuses not so much on the evangelist's oratorical skills as on the marketing techniques that he borrowed from his contemporaries in the commercial world. What emerges is a fascinating account of the birth of consumer culture in the eighteenth century, especially the new advertising methods available to those selling goods and services--or salvation.

Whitefield faced a problem similar to that of the new Atlantic merchants: how to reach an ever-expanding audience of anonymous strangers, most of whom he would never see face-to-face. To contact this mass "congregation," Whitefield exploited popular print, especially newspapers. In addition, he turned to a technique later imitated by other evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham: the deployment of advance publicity teams to advertise his coming presentations. Immersed in commerce themselves, Whitefield's auditors appropriated him as a well-publicized English import. He preached against the excesses and luxuries of the spreading consumer society, but he drew heavily on the new commercialism to explain his mission to himself and to his transatlantic audience.

How did the United States, founded as colonies with explicitly religious aspirations, come to be the first modern state whose commitment to the separation of church and state was reflected in its constitution? Frank Lambert explains why this happened, offering in the process a synthesis of American history from the first British arrivals through Thomas Jefferson's controversial presidency.

Lambert recognizes that two sets of spiritual fathers defined the place of religion in early America: what Lambert calls the Planting Fathers, who brought Old World ideas and dreams of building a "City upon a Hill," and the Founding Fathers, who determined the constitutional arrangement of religion in the new republic. While the former proselytized the "one true faith," the latter emphasized religious freedom over religious purity.

Lambert locates this shift in the mid-eighteenth century. In the wake of evangelical revival, immigration by new dissenters, and population expansion, there emerged a marketplace of religion characterized by sectarian competition, pluralism, and widened choice. During the American Revolution, dissenters found sympathetic lawmakers who favored separating church and state, and the free marketplace of religion gained legal status as the Founders began the daunting task of uniting thirteen disparate colonies. To avoid discord in an increasingly pluralistic and contentious society, the Founders left the religious arena free of government intervention save for the guarantee of free exercise for all. Religious people and groups were also free to seek political influence, ensuring that religion's place in America would always be a contested one, but never a state-regulated one.

An engaging and highly readable account of early American history, this book shows how religious freedom came to be recognized not merely as toleration of dissent but as a natural right to be enjoyed by all Americans.

James Meredith broke the color barrier in 1962 as the first African American student at Ole Miss. The violent riot that followed would be one of the most deadly clashes of the civil rights era, seriously wounding scores of U.S. Marshals and killing two civilians, and forcing the federal government to send thousands of soldiers to restore the peace.
In The Battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights v. States' Rights, Frank Lambert--who was a student at Ole Miss at the time and witnessed many of these events--provides an engaging narrative of the tumultuous period surrounding Meredith's arrival at the University of Mississippi. Written from the unique perspective of a student, Lambert explores the riot and its aftermath, examining why James Meredith deemed it important enough to risk his life in order to enter Ole Miss and why scores of white students resisted Meredith's enrollment. Lambert captures the complex and confused reactions of the students--most of whom had never given race a second thought--and many of whom were not averse to Meredith attending Ole Miss.
In examining this single incident, Lambert illuminates the broader themes of social and cultural fault lines, Mississippi race relations, the fight for racial justice, and the political realignment that transformed the south. Part of the Critical Historical Encounters series, The Battle of Ole Miss: Civil Rights v. States' Rights is an ideal supplement for undergraduate U.S. Survey courses and courses in African American History, Civil Rights, the U.S. Since 1945, and the 1960s.

The history of America's conflict with the piratical states of the Mediterranean runs through the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison; the adoption of the Constitution; the Quasi-War with France and the War of 1812; the construction of a full-time professional navy; and, most important, the nation's haltering steps toward commercial independence. Frank Lambert's genius is to see in the Barbary Wars the ideal means of capturing the new nation's shaky emergence in the complex context of the Atlantic world.
Depicting a time when Britain ruled the seas and France most of Europe, "The ""Barbary"" Wars "proves America's earliest conflict with the Arabic world was always a struggle for economic advantage rather than any clash of cultures or religions. Frank Lambert teaches history at Purdue University and is the author of "The Founding Fathers and the Place of Religion in American," "Inventing the" ""Great Awakening, "" and ""Pedlar in Divinity"": "George Whitefield and the Transatlantic Revivals," " 1737"-"1770." American independence was secured from Britain on September 3, 1783. On October 11, 1784, the American merchant ship" Betsy" was captured by Salle Rovers, state-sponsored pirates operating out of the ports of Morocco. Algerine pirates quickly seized two more American ships: the boats were confiscated, their crews held captive, and ransom demanded of the fledgling American government.
The history of America's conflict with the piratical states of the Barbary Coast runs through the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison; the adoption of the Constitution; the Quasi-War with France and the War of 1812; the construction of a full-time professional navy; and, most important, the nation's haltering steps toward commercial independence. Frank Lambert captures the new nation's shaky emergence in the complex context of the Atlantic world.
Depicting a time when Britain ruled the seas and France most of Europe, "The Barbary Wars" proves America's earliest conflict with the Arab world was always a struggle for economic advantage rather than any clash of cultures or religions. "[A] concise overview of the centuries-long depredations of the state-sponsored pirates of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli, who not only seized ships but enslaved their crews."--William Grimes, "The New York Times" "Since September 11, politicians and pundits looking for historical precedents have turned to the United States' first sustained encounter with Muslim states: the effort to stop piracy by North Africans. In this useful introduction, Lambert puts the Barbary wars into the broader context of U.S. efforts to reshape and participate in the Atlantic trading order in the years between the Treaty of Paris that recognized American independence in 1783 and the final failure of Napoleon's ambitions in 1815. Trade at the time was seen largely in terms of concessions and privileges rather than universal laws and natural rights. Independence from Britain exposed U.S. commerce to the full range of mercantilist restrictions on trade, as well as to the depredations of the North African raiders. The engagements with the Barbary pirates were part of the larger struggle to establish the United States' place in the international order of the day. For those in search of lessons for today, Lambert's crisp and readable narrative makes clear that it took a combination of patient diplomacy, military force, and good luck to make the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds safe for U.S. commerce. One suspects that all three factors are needed again now."--Walter Russell Mead, "Foreign Affairs" "As Frank Lambert has written in his magisterial book on the topic, "The Barbary Wars," the conflict with North African pirates was more a 'sideshow' than the threat to 'America's survival.'"--"Chicago Tribune" "[A] concise overview of the centuries-long depredations of the state-sponsored pirates of Algiers, Tunis, Morocco and Tripoli, who not only seized ships but enslaved their crews."--William Grimes, "The New York Times" "[Lambert] does an excellent job of placing the Barbary Wars within the context of their time."--"The ""Roanoke"" Times" "Frank Lambert's new book is a lucid and compelling account of the new American nation's first confrontation with the Muslim world. Lambert situates struggle against North African 'pirates' within the broader context of America's quest for free trade and commercial independence, countering the anachronistic tendency of recent historians to inflate the significance of religious and cultural differences. "The Barbary Wars" is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the new nation's troubled early history."--Peter Onuf, University of Virginia "In this slim and eminently readable volume, author Frank Lambert makes a case for the Barbary Wars as the first true test of American Independence. Lambert, whose previous works deal with early American religious history, goes to great lengths to show that these disputes between North African Muslims and North American Christians were rooted in economics issues, and not in religious or cultural ones . . . Lambert skillfully addresses the American-Barbary disputes in the context of a wider Atlantic and international realm, giving a richly detailed and highly nuanced appreciated for the dizzying array of events that marked Mediterranean and North African history from the Crusades through the eighteenth century . . . "The Barbary Wars" is an important contribution to the fields of Atlantic and Early American history. Do not be fooled by the thinness of the volume; this is a weighty and much-needed corrective to the historiography of American relations with the Muslim world. Where others see the conflict as rooted in economic terms. Furthermore, his assertion that the conflict is best understood in the light of larger issues--the Napoleonic Wars, for example--allows the reader to better grasp the nuances of an often misunderstood chapter in American foreign relations. Lambert's sober reasoning and crisp writing allows him to use the particular events of the Barbary Wars to illustrate larger generalities in American and Atlantic history. "The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World" is a treatment that deserves a wide--and guarantees an engaged--readership."--Timothy G. Lynch, H-Net Reviews "Lambert argues that the Barbary Wars were an American struggle for the exercise of free trade rather than a battle between faiths or cultures, as they have been portrayed in other recent accounts seeking parallels with current American-Muslim entanglements. Lambert describes a United States separately embroiled with the armies of the French and the British and hampered by its virtual lack of a navy. As Lambert adeptly shows, the Barbary Wars changed all that."--"Library Journal"

Frank Lambert tackles the central claims of the Religious Right "historians" who insist that America was conceived as a "Christian State," that modern-day "liberals" and "secularists" have distorted and/or ignored the place of religion in American history, and that the phrase "the separation of church and state" does not appear in any of the founding documents and is, therefore, a myth created by the Left. He discusses what separates "bad" history from "good" history, and concludes that the self-styled "historians" of the Religious Right create a "useful past" that enlists the nation's founders on behalf of present-day conservative religious and political causes. Lambert believes that the most effective means of critiquing such misuse of history is sound historical investigation that considers all the evidence, not just that which support's an author's biases, and draws reasonable conclusions grounded in historical context.