t these differing views of the significance of the Great Awakening have come about even though the real significance of the Great Awakening has not been given systematic study as it should (Butler 305-306).
Bonomi offers an extensive examination of the issue and finds links among religion, society, and politics in colonial America, and she approaches the issue somewhat differently in that she assumes that the Great Awakening was a divisive element and that the divisions created contributed to the political life of the time:
Reflexes generated by the schisms of the Great Awakening and by the colonists' denominational rivalries made for a contentiousness that pervaded the entire realm of the provincials' public behavior, and eventually the categories in which they framed political and religious issues became almost interchangeable (Bonomi 9).
In analyzing this issue and proving her case, Bonomi examines the Great Awakening from 1607 to 1776, the eve of the American Revolution. She find advantages in studying the American practice of religion in this era, finding first that regional and denominational variations are given new meaning through such study, and second that "the rhythms and direction of religious culture are more easily discoverable when the various currents are allowed a more or less uninterrupted chronological course" (Bonomi 9). Bonomi does indeed take a chronological approach and begins with a consideration of the way a number of Old World churches and clergy slowly created ecclesiastical structures and gained influence up to about 1750. They also expanded their power in public life. This evidence leads Bonomi to conclude that there was an indispensable role for religion in politics between the Great Awakening and the Revolution:
Rather than treating colonial religion as a patchwork of discrete events and unrelated developments in individual denominations or specific provinces, I have tried to thread th...