Significance of the Great Awakening

I am so horribly ignorent of this part of history, can anyone recommend a good book on the subject?

Yes.  But you should read Martin Marty's Pilgrims In Their Own Land first.  Then you should get a copy of The Great Awakening by Alan Heimert and Perry Miller.  Once done there, you should read The Sacred Cause Of Freedom by Nathan Hatch.  The first book is a survey of religion in North America starting with the Spaniards through the Great Awakening and afterward.  The second book is about the Great Awakening itself.  The third book is an analysis of how religion shaped the rhetoric of the American Revolution.  Not light reading, but well worth the time if you are truly serious about this subject.  No pain no gain. 🙂

That's good.  I should follow your recommendations for my list of books.

On a kind of seperate note what draws you guys to the great awakening? What was it about that time and circumstance that interest you?

For me, it's a fascinating time period.  It was an age when civilization could set up successful colonies across the ocean, but these colonies were in the midst of wilderness and the unknown.  It was a time when European cities could be exquisite, yet in the colonies I picture the towns as being on a small scale.  Out of the scattered growth within the colonies emerged a cultural force which kind of prefigured the religiosity of the future American nation.  It's interesting to see how this happened in the American colonies in relation to what was going on across the Atlantic at the time.