From maritime Canada to the Carolina backcountry, New England to the Illinois prairies, Protestants in British North America and the new United States influenced by the evangelical awakenings of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were known as the "people called New Lights." This occasional blog features news, reviews, and research notes, along with dispatches from the archives and edited transcriptions of notable, obscure, and downright quirky manuscripts chronicling the religious beliefs, practices, and experiences of the people called New Lights from 1730 to 1850.
I recently contributed a post to the Omohundro Institute’s Uncommon Sense blog. The short essay provides an overview of “History of the Jerks: Bodily Exercises and the Great Revival (1803–1967),” an innovative digital archive and teaching companion for my essay, “Seized by the Jerks: Shakers, Spirit Possession, and the Great Revival,” which appeared in the January 2019 issue of the William and Mary Quarterly.
Check it out!