Second Great Awakening

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For the album by Fireball Ministry, see The Second Great Awakening (album).

Great Awakening
First (c. 1730–1755)
Second (c. 1790–1840)
Third (c. 1850–1900)
Fourth (c. 1960–1980) view • talk • edit

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The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival movement during the early 19th century in the United States, which expressed Arminian theology by which every person could be saved through revivals. It enrolled millions of new members, and led to the formation of new denominations. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age. The Second Great Awakening stimulated the establishment of many reform movements designed to remedy the evils of society before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.^[1]

Contents [show] 1 Spread of revivals 1.1 Burned-over district 1.2 Adventism 1.3 Church membership soars 1.4 Frontier 1.5 Restoration Movement 1.6 Culture and society 1.7 Ritual and theology 1.8 Slaves 2 Prominent figures 3 Political implications 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading

[edit] Spread of revivals

[edit] Burned-over district

Upstate New York was called the "Burned-over district" because of the numerous revivals that crisscrossed the region. They spawned Restorationism and other new religious movements, especially The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints^[2] and the Holiness movement.

[edit] Adventism

The Advent Movement also emerged in this period in the 1830s and 1840s in North America, and was preached by ministers such as William Miller, whose followers became known as Millerites. The name refers to belief in the soon Second Advent of Jesus (popularly known as the Second coming) and resulted in several major religious denominations, including Seventh-day Adventists and Advent Christians. On the frontier the Awakening supported growth of the Methodists and Baptists. Baptists and Methodist revivals were also successful in some parts of the Tidewater, where an increasing numbers of plain folk (and slaves) were converted. Revivalists techniques were based on the camp meeting, with its Scottish Presbyterian roots.^[3]

[edit] Church membership soars

1839 Methodist camp meeting

The Methodists circuit riders and local Baptist preachers made enormous gains; to a lesser extent the Presbyterians gained members. Among the new denominations that were formed, and which in the first decade of the 21st century still proclaim their roots in the Second Great Awakening, are the Churches of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada.^[4]

[edit] Frontier

In the newly settled frontier regions, the revival was implemented through camp meetings, which often was the first contact the settlers had with organized religion. The camp meeting was a religious service of several days' length with multiple preachers. Settlers in thinly populated areas gathered at the camp meeting for fellowship. The sheer exhilaration of participating in a religious revival with crowds of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people inspired the dancing, shouting, and singing associated with these events. The revivals followed an arc of great emotional power, with an emphasis of the individual's sins and need to turn to Christ, restored by a sense of personal salvation. Upon their return home, most converts joined or created small local churches, which grew rapidly.^[5]
One of the early camp meetings took place in July 1800 at Gasper River Church in southwestern Kentucky. A much larger gathering was held at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in 1801, attracting perhaps as many as 20,000 people. Numerous Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist ministers participated in the services. Thanks to such leaders as Barton W. Stone (1772–1844) and Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), the camp meeting revival became a major mode of church expansion for denominations such as the Methodists and Baptists. The Cumberland Presbyterian Church emerged in Kentucky. Cane Ridge was also instrumental in fostering what became known as the Restoration Movement. This was made up of non-denominational churches committed to what they saw as the original, fundamental Christianity of the New Testament. They were committed to individuals' achieving a personal relationship with Christ. Churches with roots in this movement include the Churches of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Evangelical Christian Church in Canada and the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ.^[6]

[edit] Restoration Movement

Further information: Restorationism (Christian primitivism)

The ideal of restoring a "primitive" form of Christianity grew in popularity in the U.S. after the American Revolution.^[7]:89–94 This desire to restore a purer form of Christianity played a role in the development of many groups during the Second Great Awakening, including the Mormons, Baptists and Shakers.^[7]:89 Several factors made the restoration sentiment particularly appealing during this time period.^[7]:90–94

• To immigrants in the early 19th century, the land in America seemed pristine, edenic and undefiled – "the perfect place to recover pure, uncorrupted and original Christianity" – and the tradition-bound European churches seemed out of place in this new setting.^[7]:90
• A primitive faith based on the Bible alone promised a way sidestep the competing claims of all the many denominations available and find assurance of being right without the security of an established national church.^[7]:93

The Restoration Movement began during, and was greatly influenced by, the Second Great Awakening.^[8]:368 While the leaders of one of the two primary groups making up this movement, Thomas Campbell and Alexander Campbell, resisted what they saw as the spiritual manipulation of the camp meetings, it was an important factor in the development of the other other major branch, led by Barton W. Stone.^[8]:368 The Southern phase of the Awakening "was an important matrix of Barton Stone's reform movement" and shaped the evangelistic techniques used by both Stone and the Campbells.^[8]:368

[edit] Culture and society

Congregationalists set up missionary societies to evangelize the western territory of the northern tier. Members of these groups acted as apostles for the faith and also as educators and exponents of northeastern urban culture. Publication and education societies promoted Christian education; most notable among them was the American Bible Society, founded in 1816. Social activism inspired by the revival gave rise to abolition groups as well as the Society for the Promotion of Temperance. They began efforts to reform prisons and care for the handicapped and mentally ill. They believed in the perfectibility of people and were highly moralistic in their endeavors. The Second Great Awakening served as an "organizing process" that created "a religious and educational infrastructure" across the western frontier that encompassed social networks, a religious journalism that provided mass communication, and church related colleges.^[8]:368

[edit] Ritual and theology

Long (2002) notes that since the 1980s, scholars have connected American religious camp meetings to Scottish holy fairs of the 17th–18th centuries. Formerly they were thought to have originated in the unique conditions of the American frontier experience. The great wave of Scots-Irish immigrants to the colonies before the American Revolution brought such traditions with them.
Long examines the sacramental theology in communion sermons given by James McGready in Kentucky during the first decade of the 19th century. McGready's sermons demonstrated adherence to reformed theology, a Calvinist understanding of salvation, and a sacramental emphasis. A central theme of McGready's sermons was that of believers' meeting Christ at the communion table.

[edit] Slaves

Baptists and Methodists in the South preached to slaveholders and slaves alike. Conversions and congregations started with the First Great Awakening, resulting in Baptist and Methodist preachers being authorized among slaves and free blacks more than a decade before 1800. Early congregations were formed among slaves and free blacks in South Carolina and Virginia. Especially in the Baptist Church, blacks were welcomed in multiple roles. By the early 19th century, there were independent black congregations numbering in the several hundred in some cities of the South, such as Charleston, South Carolina; and Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia.^[9] With the growth in congregations and churches, Baptist associations formed in Virginia, for instance, as well as Kentucky and other states. Despite white attempts to control independent black congregations, especially after the Nat Turner Uprising of 1831, a number of black congregations managed to maintain their separation, even when laws passed requiring them always to have a white man present at their worship meetings.^[10]

[edit] Prominent figures

• Richard Allen, African Methodist Episcopal Church
• Lyman Beecher, Presbyterian
• Alexander Campbell, Presbyterian, then early leader of the Restoration Movement
• Thomas Campbell Presbyterian, then early leader of the Restoration Movement
• Peter Cartwright, Methodist
• Lorenzo Dow, Methodist
• Timothy Dwight IV, Congregationalist
• Charles Finney, Presbyterian, but anti-Calvinist
• William Miller, Millerism, forerunner of Adventism
• Asahel Nettleton, Reformed
• Joseph Smith, Jr., Latter Day Saint movement
• Barton Stone, Presbyterian non-Calvinist, then early leader of the Restoration Movement
• James Brainerd Taylor (no relation to Nathaniel William Taylor), Reformed, mentored by Asahel Nettleton
• Nathaniel William Taylor, heterodox Calvinist
• Ellen G. White, Seventh-day Adventist Church

The great revival quickly spread throughout Kentucky, Tennessee and southern Ohio. Each denomination had assets that allowed it to thrive on the frontier. The Methodists had an efficient organization that depended on ministers known as circuit riders, who sought out people in remote frontier locations. The circuit riders came from among the common people, which helped them establish rapport with the frontier families they hoped to convert.
The Second Great Awakening exercised a profound impact on American religious history. The numerical strength of the Baptists and Methodists rose relative to that of the denominations dominant in the colonial period—the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Reformed. Efforts to apply Christian teaching to the resolution of social problems presaged the Social Gospel of the late 19th century.
The United States was becoming a more culturally diverse nation in the early-to-mid-19th century, and the growing differences within American Protestantism reflected and contributed to this diversity. The Awakening influenced numerous reform movements, especially abolitionists.

[edit] Political implications

In the midst of shifts in theology and church polity, American Christians took it upon themselves to reform society during this period. Known commonly as antebellum reform, this phenomenon included reforms in temperance, women's rights, abolitionism, and a multitude of other questions faced by society.^[11]
The religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening was echoed by the new political enthusiasm of the Second Party System .^[12]
Historians stress the understanding common among participants of reform as being a part of God's plan. As a result, local churches saw their roles in society in purifying the world through the individuals to whom they could bring salvation, and through changes in the law and the creation of institutions. Interest in transforming the world was applied to mainstream political action, as temperance activists, antislavery advocates, and proponents of other variations of reform sought to implement their beliefs into national politics. While religion had previously played an important role on the American political scene, the Second Great Awakening highlighted the important role which individual beliefs would play.^[13]

[edit] See also

• Abolitionism
• Adventist
• Advent Christian Church
• Seventh-day Adventist Church
• Burned-over district
• Christian revival
• Christianity in the 19th century
• First Great Awakening
• William Miller (preacher)
• Millerites
• Temperance movement
• Third Great Awakening

[edit] References

1. ^ Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (1957)
2. ^ Matzko, John (2007). "The Encounter of the Young Joseph Smith with Presbyterianism". Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 40 (3): 68–84.  Presbyterian historian Matzko notes that Joseph Smith, Jr. had been awakened during a sermon by the Methodist minister George Lane."
3. ^ On Scottish influences see Long (2002) and Elizabeth Semancik, "Backcountry Religious Ways" at [1]
4. ^ Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People (2004)
5. ^ Dickson D. Bruce, Jr., And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845, (19740
6. ^ Douglas Foster, et al., he Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (2005)
7. ^ ^{a b c d e} C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, "Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of the Churches of Christ," Abilene Christian University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-89112-006-8
8. ^ ^{a b c d} Douglas Allen Foster and Anthony L. Dunnavant, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, Churches of Christ, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004, ISBN 0802838987, 9780802838988, 854 pages, entry on Great Awakenings
9. ^ Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 137, accessed 27 Dec 2008
10. ^ Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The 'Invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 27 Dec 2008
11. ^ Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of American Social History from the Colonial Period to the Outbreak of the Civil War (1944)
12. ^ Stephen Meardon, "From Religious Revivals to Tariff Rancor: Preaching Free Trade and Protection during the Second American Party System," History of Political Economy, Winter 2008 Supplement, Vol. 40, pp 265-298
13. ^ Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (1957)

[edit] Further reading

• Abzug, Robert H. Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination (1994) (ISBN 0-195-04568-8)
• Ahlstrom, Sydney. A Religious History of the American People (1972) (ISBN 0-385-11164-9)
• Birdsall Richard D. "The Second Great Awakening and the New England Social Order", Church History 39 (1970): 345–364. in JSTOR
• Bratt, James D. "Religious Anti-revivalism in Antebellum America", Journal of the Early Republic (2004) 24(1): 65–106. ISSN 0275–1275 Fulltext: in Ebsco.
• Brown, Kenneth O. Holy Ground; a Study on the American Camp Meeting. Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992.
• Brown, Kenneth O. Holy Ground, Too, the Camp Meeting Family Tree. Hazleton: Holiness Archives, (1997).
• Bruce, Dickson D., Jr. And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 (1974)
• Butler Jon. "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction", Journal of American History 69 (1982): 305–325. in JSTOR, highly influential essay
• Butler Jon. Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People. 1990.
• Carwardine, Richard J. Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America. Yale University Press, 1993.
• Carwardine, Richard J. "The Second Great Awakening in the Urban Centers: An Examination of Methodism and the 'New Measures'", Journal of American History 59 (1972): 327–340. in JSTOR
• Conforti; Joseph A. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition and American Culture, (1995).
• Cott, Nancy F. "Young Women in the Second Great Awakening in New England," Feminist Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1/2 (Autumn, 1975), pp. 15–29 in JSTOR
• Cross, Whitney, R. The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850, (1950).
• Foster, Charles I. An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front, 1790–1837, University of North Carolina Press, 1960.
• Griffin, Clifford S. "Religious Benevolence as Social Control, 1815–1860", The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 44, No. 3. (Dec., 1957), pp. 423–444. in JSTOR
• Hambrick-Stowe, Charles. Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism. (1996).
• Hankins, Barry. The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists. Greenwood, 2004.
• Hatch Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity (1989).
• Johnson, Charles A. "The Frontier Camp Meeting: Contemporary and Historical Appraisals, 1805–1840", The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 37, No. 1. (Jun., 1950), pp. 91–110. in JSTOR
• Kyle III, I. Francis. An Uncommon Christian: James Brainerd Taylor, Forgotten Evangelist in America's Second Great Awakening (2008). See Uncommon Christian Ministries
• Long, Kimberly Bracken. "The Communion Sermons of James Mcgready: Sacramental Theology and Scots-Irish Piety on the Kentucky Frontier", Journal of Presbyterian History, 2002 80(1): 3–16. Issn: 0022-3883
• Loveland Anne C. Southern Evangelicals and the Social Order, 1800–1860, (1980)
• Marsden George M. The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience: A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (1970).
• Matzko, John A. "The Encounter of the Young Joseph Smith with Presbyterianism," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 40/3, 2007.
• McLoughlin William G. Modern Revivalism, 1959.
• McLoughlin William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607–1977, 1978.
• Noll; Mark A. ed. God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790–1860 (2002).
• Posey, Walter Brownlow. The Baptist Church in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1776–1845 (1957)
• Raboteau, Albert. Slave Religion: The "invisible Institution' in the Antebellum South, (1979)
• Roth Randolph A. The Democratic Dilemma: Religion, Reform, and the Social Order in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont, 1791–1850, (1987)
• Shiels Richard D. "The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut: Critique of the Traditional Interpretation", Church History 49 (1980): 401–415. in JSTOR
• Smith, Timothy L. Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (1957)

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