My dissertation argues that the diversity of early-national American bibles was a crucial factor in the explosion of diversity in Protestant practice witnessed in the Second Great Awakening.  In this period, bibles were available to more readers in more varied formats than ever before, and with this unprecedented access to scripture men and women from all walks of life and levels of education used their bibles to assert their own authority as religious thinkers and actors – not only for themselves, but also for others.  My archival work demonstrates that when individual readers and religious leaders (and would-be religious leaders) trumpeted the authority of the Bible, their own authority for the Bible was the crucial, unspoken, concern.