The Secular History of the United States

One of the more interesting posts in recent months at Left2Right, courtesy of historian James Oakes.  His conclusion (for which his post provides the support):

The wave of evangelicalism that swept the United States beginning in the 1790s was not really a "second" Great Awaking at all.  It was not a continuation of the earlier failure.  It was something else.  What, precisely?  Well, nothing "precisely," but a lot of things.  And one of the things that evangelicalism was in the "New Nation," I suggest, was a reactionary assault on the secular humanism of the Revolution. 

It still is.