The following article appears in today's Washington Post:

Bush Tells Group He Sees a 'Third Awakening'
Washington Post ^ | September 13 2006 | Peter Baker

President Bush said yesterday that he senses a "Third Awakening" of religious devotion in the United States that has coincided with the nation's struggle with international terrorists, a war that he depicted as "a confrontation between good and evil."

Bush told a group of conservative journalists that he notices more open expressions of faith among people he meets during his travels, and he suggested that might signal a broader revival similar to other religious movements in history. Bush noted that some of Abraham Lincoln's strongest supporters were religious people "who saw life in terms of good and evil" and who believed that slavery was evil. Many of his own supporters, he said, see the current conflict in similar terms.

"A lot of people in America see this as a confrontation between good and evil, including me," Bush said during a 1 1/2-hour Oval Office conversation on cultural changes and a battle with terrorists that he sees lasting decades. "There was a stark change between the culture of the '50s and the '60s -- boom -- and I think there's change happening here," he added. "It seems to me that there's a Third Awakening."

The First Great Awakening refers to a wave of Christian fervor in the American colonies from about 1730 to 1760, while the Second Great Awakening is generally believed to have occurred from 1800 to 1830.

Some scholars and writers have debated for years whether a Third Awakening has been taking place, although some identify other awakenings in U.S. history. Bush aides, including Karl Rove, have read Robert William Fogel's "The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism."

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...

Bush's comment probably won't get much media attention (unless it's to criticize him for again "wrapping America and his policies with the Bible"), but these comments are significant.

It's been my conviction for some time that the great divide in our nation isn't simply a political divide, or a divide between ideologies, or a cultural divide alone.  The chasm that divides the nation is primarily a spiritual one.  The major divide in America is between people of faith and radical secularists.  The divide is between those who look to God and who incorporate their convictions into their opinions and their lives, and those who consider that the material world is all there is.  The secularists rage over the influence (which appears to be growing) of faith and religious convictions in our national life.  Secularists accuse the "religious right" of wanting to set up a theocracy as oppressive as the Taliban. 

Secular materialism, on the other hand -- a worldview that rejects God and religious teachings in general -- has a poor track record when it comes to the affairs of men and nations.  While the secularists appeal to what they view as "enlightment," to the elevation of reason, knowledge, and tolerance, history has shown that when the reality of God is dispensed with, and the belief that life has no special origin and no special purpose, and that man is accountable to no one but himself, mankind spirals down into chaos and unimaginable inhumanity and brutality.  While secularism claims for itself enlightenment and tolerance, secularists are appallingly ignorant of religious conviction and are intolerant of people of faith.

Something has to give in this struggle between faith and secularism, and if I understand the signs of our times correctly, faith has the momentum at the moment, because what the secularists have to offer isn't enlightenment and tolerance, but nihilism.  And the "weapons" of our struggle, because it's a spiritual struggle, are the resources of the Spirit -- praise, worship, prayer, and revealed truth.  This struggle certainly shows up in the battles of the "culture war," and within our political contests, but the struggle is, primarily, spiritual in nature.  And it's still unclear which viewpoint will emerge as the dominant one.

I can't say with confidence that America is in the midst of, or is about to enter, a period of awakening.  I pray that's the case.  But it should be remembered that awakenings, historically, are first and foremost spiritual awakenings, revivals and reformations, that expand and strengthen the influence of Christianity and Christian spirituality within the American culture.  A spiritual awakening tends to result later in social reforms.  From the following review found on Amazon, Fogel  seems to view the historical awakenings as primarily social, not spiritual, reformations.  It's an interesting consideration, even if Fogel's perspective is too narrow:

Fogel's purpose is to provide "a framework for analyzing the movements that shaped the egalitarian creed in America." Throughout U.S. history, there have been several of these movements ("Great Awakenings") which help to explain all manner of major transformations. The First (1730-1820) is manifest in the American Revolution. Fogel observes: "Steeped in the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and harboring suspicions of the established churches, the leaders of the Revolution tended to view all political issues through the prism of natural rights rather than divine revelation."

As Fogel explains, the leaders of the The Second (roughly 1800 until 1870) "preached that the American mission was to build God's kingdom on earth....An array of reform movements [eg temperance, abolition of slavery, elimination of graft in government] sought to make America a fit place for the Second Coming of Christ." The Third (from about 1890 until the 1930s) involved a continuation of certain reforms as well as the introduction of others led by modernists and Social Gospelers who "laid the basis for the welfare state, providing both the ideological foundation and the politic drive for the labor reforms of the 1930, 1940s and 1950s, and for the civil rights reforms of the 1950 and 1960s, and for the new feminist reforms of the late 1960s and early 1970s." 

In Fogel's view, the Fourth Great Awakening now underway has resulted in attacks on material corruption, the rise of pro-life and pro-family movements, campaigns for values-oriented school curricula, an expansion of tax revolt, and an attack on entitlements. Fogel observes: All of the Great Awakenings are "not merely, nor primarily, religious phenomena. They are primarily political phenomena in which the evangelical churches represent the leading edge of an ideological and political response to accumulated technological, economic, and social changes that undermined the received culture."