Despite his low-key sobriety, he had a knack for making believers go wild, and he was at the center of what eventually became known as the Great Awakening. Five generations after the first Puritans arrived, the zealotry had diminished. Americans still read the Bible and went to church, but the religious boil had become more of a simmer. Reverend Edwards found he could turn up the heat, whipping proper New Englanders into ecstatic and agonizing deliriums that he and they took to be miraculous proofs of God. Especially the kids. The Great Awakening got started as America’s first youthquake.fn2
