“Awakened in a New World”

Abstract This chapter recounts the end of John Leland’s life and considers his place in American religious history. Leland lived a remarkably long life—he was nearly eighty-seven when he died—during some of the most eventful decades of American history. His almost seventy years in the public eye allowed Leland to witness, and participate in, sweeping transformations in American society. These included the achievement of religious disestablishment in both Virginia and New England, the ascendancy of popular revivalism in American religious culture, the promotion of radical individualism in Baptist Christianity, the wide-scale rejection and modification of Calvinistic theology, the rise of denominationalism and voluntary evangelical societies, the ascendancy of evangelicals in American politics, and more.