The Second Great Awakening

American History to 1877

Religion and the New Nation

• Religion essential to morals of republic

• Most states keep tax-supported churches

• Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1786

– Jefferson, Madison, Baptists, and Presbyterians vs. Anglicans

– Jefferson: religion a private opinion; state should not impose opinions

– Baptists: US not a “Christian nation”; separation of church & state

• Disestablishment’s slow progress elsewhere

– Vermont 1807; Connecticut 1818; New Hampshire 1819; Mass. 1833

• Baptists and the First Amendment

– “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

1790s: Is religion dead?

• French Revolution, 1793

• New England ministers worry

– Victory of rationalism?

• Revivalism quiet in the South

– Migration from Piedmont to the West

• Jefferson’s victory in 1800: official atheism?

Revivalism returns

• Revivals in Connecticut & at Yale, 1802

• Presbyterians on the Kentucky frontier

• Cane Ridge, 1801: “America’s Pentecost”

– First large camp-meeting

– Perhaps 20,000 attend

The Camp-Meeting

• Presbyterian communion scene

Camp Meetings

• Lorenzo Dow and the “jerking exercise”

• Presbyterians recoil from Cane Ridge

• Baptists grow reluctant

• Methodist Camp Meeting Plan, 1809

• Methodist Camp-Meeting, 1819

• Methodist Camp Meeting, 1839

Methodism

• John Wesley (1703-1791)

• Francis Asbury

– First bishop, 1785

• Success of the circuit rider

• Methodist meetings

– Arminian theology (anti-Calvinist)

– Emotional religion

– Dreams and visions

– Miraculous healings, speaking in tongues

Methodists & Revivals

• Embrace camp-meetings

– Peter Cartwright

• Appeal to women

• Appeal to African Americans

– Antislavery principles

– “Thoughts upon Slavery,” 1744

African Americans & Revival

• Attraction of emotional spirituality

– Roles for women

• African elements

– Ring shouts

– Call and response hymns

• African Methodist Episcopal Church

– Richard Allen, 1816

• Baptist churches in the South

Fire in the “Burnt-Over District”

• Settlement after 1815

– Erie Canal opens New York & Great Lakes

– Godless frontier?

• Charles Grandison Finney

– Presbyterian minister

– Rejects Calvinism

– “New measures”

– “Protracted meeting”

– Role of women

Fervor sweeps the nation

• 1820s-1836: High expectations

• America: a new kind of nation

– Freed from constraints of history

• Confidence that all would be solved

– 1800 years of error to be overcome

Millennialism

• New expectations of Second Coming

– Finney: evangelize the world in 3 years

• William Miller

– Predicts millennium 1843

– Recalculated for 1844

– The “Great Disappointment”

– Hiram Edson: cleansing of temple in heaven

• Seventh-Day Adventists, 1860-63

Restorationism

• Denominationalism

• Dismay at proliferation of churches

– Goal of Christian unity recedes

• Disciples of Christ/Churches of Christ

– Alexander Campbell, 1808

– “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak;
where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent”

– Simple creed; radical ecclesiology

– Popular on frontier, along Ohio River

The Mormons

• Joseph Smith, Palmyra, NY

– Confusion of denominations

– Treasure seeker

– Angel Moroni, Mt. Cumorah, golden plates

– Translation of Book of Mormon, 1830

• Restoration of the true church

• Conversion in Kirtland, Ohio

• Battle in Far West, Missouri, 1839

The Mormon Zion

• Nauvoo, Illinois

• Schism & strange new doctrines

– Revelations

– Polygamy

• Arrested for destroying presses

– Killed by mob, 1844

• Brigham Young

– Trek to Utah, 1846-48

Democratization of religion

• Faith in the “common man”

– Priesthood of all believers: right to decide for oneself

– Sola scriptura: pure Bible, pure doctrine

• Arminianism replaces Calvinism

• Vernacular preaching

• Mass-market religious press

• American popular religious music

• Ministers: From office to profession

• Feminization of Christianity

• Christianization of the nation

– Association of nation with Protestantism