Great Awakening. Although the term Great Awakening was not used by eighteenth-century Americans, it soon came into use by historians to describe a unique wave of intercolonial religious revivals that peaked throughout many of the colonies in the years 1740–1742. Historians described these revivals as a “Great Awakening” because they saw in those revivals novel qualities that would transform pulpit and pew in early America and that would mark the beginning of popular evangelicalism in the American