“the jerks”—convulsive or rhythmical motions of the body that continued involuntarily despite attempts to calm them. The noise of the revival could be heard for miles, with many among the throng coming as observers of the spectacle rather than as participants. Because of its size, religious enthusiasm, and widespread national reporting, Cane Ridge came to epitomize the way people understood the Kentucky revivals. But the revivals also continued in the Cumberland region in 1801, increasing in both number and fervor. Distinguishing characteristics of the revivals The phenomenon of bodily exercises At the same time, ministers at Cane Ridge and others began to express significant reservations skeptical of the scope and prevalence of the bodily exercises, especially in regard to the suspicion that some of the ministers encouraged them, or declared people converted because of them. Presbyterian Richard McNemar was especially indicted as encouraging physical enthusiasm, but Stone was also criticized for making no effort to bring order to the increasingly wild behavior of both worshippers and ministers. Similar criticisms had arisen in Logan County the year before, but the growing success of the revivals had served to drown them out. By 1801, the critics were growing louder again, led by James Balch and Thomas Craighead. Though the revivals continued to attract crowds, opposition to them was significant enough that one Sunday, McGready had to preach from the steps of his Red River meeting house, having been locked out by an anti-revivalist church member. McGready addressed the controversy by defending the exercises in 1801, using examples from the Bible and the writings of Jonathan Edwards, who had encountered a similar controversy during the revivals of the "awakenings" in the 1730s and 1740s. McGready explained the falling, shrieking, and crying for mercy as responses by the people to the realization of the depth of their sins and the coming of God’s judgment. Loosely quoting Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he described sinners’ realization that they hung from a “brittle thread of life” over the “devouring flames” of hell. Under such an impression, McGready reasoned, it was no wonder a person cried for mercy or lost his strength. Though McGready did not address directly one of the most controversial of the bodily exercises, convulsive movements called “the jerks,” he did address leaping and dancing, which were sometimes included under the term because all such movements were understood to be