The Great Awakening1&the place of sport

Amid the tensions between old and new values in the middle period of the 18th century，religious revivalism swept the colonies.Thismovement，known as the Great Awakening，involved notonly religious inspiration but also a general ferment of new ideas about colonial American society，power，equality，and individualism.It produced a widespread experience—with religious revivals in all colonies touching all classes，ages，and races—and as the first intercolonial event the Great Awakening bound the colonies together in one step of a process that would culminate in the American Revolution.From 1730 to 1760，throughout the American colonies.The consequences of the Great Awakening in colonial America reached far beyond the religious sphere，and colonists'changing cultural values also affected sport.The call to colonists to awaken from their religious slumber came together with the clergy's powerfulmid-eighteenth-centurymessage that people should engage in moral pastimes and sport instead of vulgar and frivolous activity.Popular revivalism thus carried social and political implications thatwere reflected，among other things，in viewpoints on sport and the use of leisure time.

6-10　The Great Awakening