Patrick Henry and the Revivalists

Thomas Kidd describes Rev. Patrick Henry’s (the revolutionary’s uncle) reaction to the revivalist era:

For the revivalists, religiosity and morality were not enough for Christians: instead, they focused on the experience of personal conversion, or being “born again.” Some of the new preachers even hinted that certain of the Anglican parsons had never truly put their faith in Jesus for salvation. Pastor Patrick Henry thought that the evangelicals only whipped crowds into a religious frenzy, reporting that they screamed at their congregations that they all were “damn’d double damn’d, whose souls are in hell, though they are alive on earth, lumps of hellfire, incarnate devils, 1000 times worse than devils.” An alarmed Pastor Henry envisioned these wild preachers shouting and beating their pulpits until their frightened audience fell into convulsions (30).

{Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots}