In this article, Carpenter critically interacts with Robert W. Fogel who worked with the paradigm that cycles of ethical challenges in America were provoked by technological innovations that created moral crises. Fogel believes that these crises are resolved by evangelical awakenings. Carpenter see this view as a much too optimistic picture of American Evangelicalism. He rather sees cycles of apostasy continuing for three hundred years. Carpenter then reflects on these different cycles of the apostasy of the past three hundred years.