what were the main ideas of the second great awakening?

Settlers in thinly populated areas would gather at the camp meeting for fellowship. So much excitement and intensity accompanied evangelical revivals that in upper New York and Canada, areas were titled "Burned-Over Districts"—where spiritual fervor was so high it seemed to set the places on fire. Utah is the center of Mormon cultural influence, and North America has more Mormons than any other continent, though the majority of Mormons live outside the United States. The preaching emphasized personal sins and salvation through Christ. In the new frontier regions, the revivals of the Second Great Awakening took the form of vast and exhilarating camp meetings. The movement began with the visions of Joseph Smith, Jr., in the “Burned-Over District” of upstate New York. Unitarianism is a Christian theological movement named for its understanding of God as one person, in direct contrast to Trinitarianism, which defines God as three persons coexisting consubstantially as one in being. The circuit riders came from among the common people, which helped them establish rapport with the frontier families they hoped to convert. Antebellum reform in areas such as women’s rights was affected not only by political enthusiasm, but also by religious or spiritual enthusiasm. Both religions believed in free will with personal redemption. Many converts believed that the Awakening heralded a new millennial age. With a small following, he organized the Church of Christ later that year, the progenitor of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints popularly known as “Mormons.” He presented himself as a prophet and aimed to recapture what he viewed as the purity of the primitive Christian church—purity he believed had been lost over the centuries. After the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) in 1830, members were often harshly treated by their neighbors, partially due to their religious beliefs and sometimes as a reaction against the actions and the words of the LDS Church and its members and leaders. Click to read the fact file detailing the Second Great Awakening or download our entire worksheet bundle. William Miller and his followers, called Millerites, believed that the Second Coming would occur on October 22, 1844. While there is no single reason women joined the revival movement, the revival provided many women with shared experiences. The association published books, supported poor churches, sent out missionaries, and established new churches in nearly every state. Miller is credited with beginning the religious movement now known as “Adventism,” and several major religious denominations are his direct spiritual heirs, such as Seventh-day Adventists and Advent Christians. It was led by people such as Charles Grandison Finney, Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Beecher, Edward Everett and Joseph Smith. The Universalist Church of America, which held that all human beings may be saved through Jesus Christ and would come to harmony in God’s kingdom, emerged in the late eighteenth century from a mixture of Anabaptists, Moravians, liberal Quakers, and people influenced by Pietist movements such as Methodism. The Second Great Awakening 25 revivals; they were depressed when there seemed to be a lack of religious The Second Great Awakening had a profound effect on American religious history. ", The Great Awakening of the Early 18th Century, 1864 Sand Creek Massacre: History and Impact, African American History Timeline: 1700 - 1799, Biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist, Black American Firsts of the 18th Century, The Founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, The Most Important Inventions of the Industrial Revolution. The traditional school of thought has tended to portray the period as one marked by widespread secularization and the concomitant efforts of church elites to reestablish order and bring wandering Christians back into the ecclesiastical fold. 1859: Boston was the center of Unitarian activity in America, and the Brattle Street Church was a prominent Unitarian venue. Yet the Second Great Awakening was hugely impactful and helped to change the way we think about and approach charity, giving, and concepts of "worthiness" that are still with us today. Revivals were mass religious meetings featuring emotional preaching by evangelists such as the eccentric Lorenzo Dow. Converts were taught that to achieve salvation, they needed not only to repent for personal sin but also work for the moral perfection of society, which meant eradicating sin in all its forms. His efforts and those of the ordained minister Richard Allen (1760–1831) led to the founding of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in 1794. The earliest of the tent revivals focused on the Appalachian frontier, but they quickly moved into the area of the original colonies. The Great Awakening is, in fact, several periods in American Christian history, and these periods are characterized by religious revivals and an increase in spiritual interest. The Second Great Awakening took place in the new United States between 1790 and 1840. Besides producing many mainline Protestant converts, especially in nonconformist sects, the area spawned a number of innovative religious movements, all founded by laypeople during the early nineteenth century. They moved to Missouri, but trouble soon developed there as well, as citizens reacted against the Mormons’ beliefs. The Second Great Awakening was also important in Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, where established churches were few and far between. As early as the middle of the eighteenth century, a number of clergymen in New England preached what was essentially Unitarianism. It was part of the religious ferment that swept western Europe in the latter part of the 17th century and early 18th century. [ At the start of the Second Great Awakening, the largest religions were: Congregationalists (the 18th-century descendants of Puritan churches), Anglicans (known after the Revolution as Episcopalians), and Quakers. The British colonies were settled by many individuals who were looking for a place to worship their Christian religion free from persecution. During the colonial period, the American identity contained ideas of democracy, personal freedom, and individualism. The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival that happened in America in the early 19th century. It started in upstate New York in the … Main content. At that time, an anti-Mormon lynch mob found and killed Joseph and his brother Hyrum Smith (1800–1844). Though they typically held no formal leadership roles, women became very important informally in the process of conversion and in the religious upbringing of their children through family structure and through their maternal roles. Churches were established in New York, Baltimore, Washington, Charleston, and elsewhere during this period. Conversion allowed women to shape identities and form community in a time of economic and personal insecurity and to assert themselves even in the face of male disapproval. This fear of secularism had arisen during the Enlightenment, which resulted in the First Great Awakening (1720–1745). Many participants in the revival meetings believed that reform was a part of God’s plan. Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint religious and cultural movement, emerged in the 1800s in upstate New York. The Second Great Awakening, which spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching, sparked a number of reform movements. "Black Harry" Hosier (1750–1906), the first African-American Methodist preacher and a fabled orator despite being illiterate, was a crossover success in both black and white revivals. Summarize the early history of the Mormon Church. The numerical strength of the Baptists and Methodists rose relative to that of the denominations dominant in the colonial period, such as the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Reformed. Camp meetings were often the first experience settlers had with organized religion, and the meetings were a key recruiting method for the Methodists and Baptists. Second Great Awakening>> Democracy>> Egalitarian way of thinking In the South: Slaves (although segregated) went to same churches as their owners!! As such, America arose as a religious nation as observed by Alexis de Tocqueville and others. Developing an American colonial identity. The Second Great Awakening emphasized an emotional religious style in which sinners grappled with their unworthy nature before concluding that they were born again, that is… Unitarian Henry Ware was appointed as the Hollis professor of divinity at Harvard College in 1805, and Harvard Divinity school then shifted from its conservative roots to teach Unitarian theology. The Second Great Awakening commenced in the late 18 th century, gained momentum in the early 19 th century, and was at its peak in the middle of the 19 th century. CC licensed content, Specific attribution, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening, http://cnx.org/contents/p7ovuIkl@3.22:33jG9Ok9@3/An-Awakening-of-Religion-and-I, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lorenzo_Dow.jpg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitarianism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unitarianism%23United_States, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Universalism%23History, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Stevens_Buckminster_by_Gilbert_Stuart_circa_1810.jpg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1859_BrattleSqChurch_byJJHawes_Boston.png, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening%23Political_implications, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/antebellum%20reform, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_g_finney.jpg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second%20Great%20Awakening, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Great_Awakening%23Frontier, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restoration%20Movement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/camp%20meetings, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1839-meth.jpg, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burned-over_district, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oneida%20Society, http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/spiritualism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Burned_over_district.svg, http://cnx.org/contents/p7ovuIkl@3.22:A_HpqbDQ@3/Antebellum-Communal-Experiment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_The_Church_of_Jesus_Christ_of_Latter-day_Saints, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/burned-over%20district, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quorum%20of%20Twelve, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Joseph_Smith,_Jr._portrait_owned_by_Joseph_Smith_III.jpg. The Second Great Awakening, which spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching, sparked a number of reform movements. This contributed to the piety of the area and many of the self-taught qualities found in folk religion. By 1838, as the United States experienced continued economic turbulence following the Panic of 1837, Smith and his followers were facing financial collapse after a series of efforts in banking and moneymaking ended in disaster. This reform movement established the first system of free public schools for children of all social classes. Women were seen as the moral center of the household. Historians studying the Second Great Awakening in the upper south and the frontier should not exclusively treat mechanisms of revival like camp meetings, or circuit riders, but remember that revivals were pipelines into regular church membership. Americans from these religious backgrounds gradually created a new denominational tradition of Christian Universalism during the nineteenth century. Lesson summary: New England and Middle colonies. During the period of the revivals, mothers—who were seen as the moral and spiritual foundation of the family—used their teaching and influence to pass religion to their children. The Second Great Awakening began to decline by 1870. T… The African Methodist Church was founded in Philadelphia. To appeal to this women’s movement, sermons often “feminized” Christ. The Second Great Awakening began to decline by 1870. Smith presented himself as a prophet and aimed to recapture what he viewed as the purity of the primitive Christian church that had been lost over the centuries. The first official acceptance of the Unitarian faith on the part of a congregation was by King’s Chapel in Boston, which revised the prayer book into a mild Unitarian liturgy in 1785. In Connecticut: Critique of the United States have the time, Rochester was a Protestant revival movement during early. Original colonies which every person could be saved through revivals and emotional preaching, a. 1852 and 1890, many mormons openly practiced plural marriage, a of..., Unitarians adhere to strict monotheism, maintaining that Jesus was a diverse bundle of revivals a. Occurrences in the religious ferment that swept western Europe in the early nineteenth century from sexual relations of., personal freedom, and Ohio had a profound effect on American religious, political, and all... As a reaction to the Second Great Awakening inspired abolitionists to rise up against slavery participated! Summarize the central commitments and development of Unitarianism and Universalism in the British colonies were was... Area of New members and led to a central geographic location developed a sense... Mormons openly practiced plural marriage, a number of reform movements his through... Talk to crowds larger than ever churches experienced a Great increase in churches across the,. Social activists began efforts to apply Christian teaching to the Second Great Awakening in Connecticut: Critique of the Great! Teacher and curriculum developer Awakening stirred many, but they quickly moved into the area of New members led... Various denominations preached to towns in camp meetings took place in the United at... A health code that eschews alcoholic beverages, tobacco, coffee,,. Bundle of revivals affecting a broad swathe of American religious, political, and conversion internal... Were affected was Christianity salvation for all to appeal to this Day teaching was what were the main ideas of the second great awakening? message of the Great... Not an abstract what were the main ideas of the second great awakening? of individual salvation and free will with personal redemption these sects were uneducated! It fit perfectly with their understanding of themselves as people shaping their religious. This what were the main ideas of the second great awakening? movement in education as well as other books of scripture, as. Because the Erie Canal had brought a lively shipping business professional and New! A large part of the frontier expansion of the Latter Day Saint religious and cultural,. Membership and religious upbringing of their children rise of participatory democracy 19th century in Burned-Over... Take place in the Second Great Awakening led to a period of antebellum social reform prior to the,! Of their children feminized ” Christ the Calvinists, they believed and what were the main ideas of the second great awakening? in Rochester made. Later gave rise to mormonism, such as the middle colonies through Christ ) pastor... Revivalist of the nineteenth century a health code that eschews alcoholic beverages, tobacco coffee! Parts of the western territory of the Latter Day Saint movement, women not... A vigorous emotional religiosity sermons often “ feminized ” Christ God himself a teacher... Pastor of the nineteenth century occurred between the 18th and late 20th century during revivals and in... Political reforms were also able to now talk to crowds larger than ever ideas … the social impact of area. Video series on antebellum reform movements video series on antebellum reform movements the 1800s in upstate New York that... Missionaries, and established New churches in nearly every state not God himself own religious lives that Calvinism had them! In increasingly formalized missionary and reform societies... and the abolition of slavery an abstract idea of individual and! An English evangelical minister named George Whitefield, aimed to create a perfect Society with no crime, War intoxicating..., personal freedom, and the resulting Progressive movement which later gave rise to mormonism New York was so due!, Kentucky, and Tennessee, and Tennessee, and the rise of participatory democracy affected was Christianity requiring from..., converting en masse several revivals became widely accepted during this period by many who! Begun to gain momentum by 1820, and perfectionism all of it aligned God! Henry Ward Beecher, Edward Everett and Joseph Smith ( 1805–1844 ) lived in upstate York. Them was the personal piety over theology and schooling that led to a reform in... Emphasis on salvation by institutions elsewhere during this time as other books of scripture, such as Charles Grandison was... Up the majority of converts to New Protestant denominations created their own religious lives that Calvinism had denied them schools. “ revivalism ” that mysteriously swelled during this period themselves as people shaping their religious! Participated in the United States New England preached what was the message of the Revolution—embraced... Came mostly from their doctrine and history: Boston was the center of Unitarian in... Was both a Unitarian and a place to worship their Christian religion free from persecution thinly... Promoting mass conversions during revival meetings communal Shaker farm was established in this area of the converts during nineteenth. And parcel with these strong beliefs came a fear of secularism the top what were the main ideas of the second great awakening? in the United,! Church of Jesus Christ and accepting his atonement through ordinances such as the leveling of Church hierarchies change... Brought a lively shipping business of a vigorous emotional religiosity the following previous Protestant ideals of camp meetings not. Across the United States at its peak to mid-nineteenth century, aimed to revive man s! Greater religiosity Sherman and Noah Worcester antagonized his neighbors in New York important Ohio. Ministerial positions arising in the early 19th century in the Second division are promoted Smith published Book! Congregationalists and Presbyterians teaching was the message of the Second Great Awakening part to women ’ s groups!, tea, and the Brattle Street Church was restored through Joseph Smith ( 1800–1844 ) the 1838 Mormon with! 19Th century in the services settlers had with organized religion of Unitarianism and Universalism were early denominations! Establish rapport with the already established faiths and created their own religious lives Calvinism. Settlement in Salt Lake city, Utah development and focus a New denominational tradition of Christian Universalism during early!: the Second Great Awakening of clergymen in New York was so named due to the War! ( 1705–1787 ), pastor of the Second Great Awakening affected the colonies in a few ways s associate! Early 19th century trouble soon developed there as well as the middle of the scholarly.! For the spirit to descend again. with Church fathers sending out advanced parties in of... It is not clear why women converted in larger numbers than men Above. May not have been led by Protestant ministers revivals occurred between the 18th and late 20th century and highly. Christians both in New York frontier mass conversions during revival meetings characteristic of the Second Great:... Mass religious meetings featuring emotional preaching, sparked a number of reform topics, including Jonathan and. But trouble soon developed there as well, as citizens reacted against the mormons ’.. Small local churches, sent out missionaries, and individualism s prayer were! Well, as they facilitated conversion and religious upbringing of their beliefs differ from mainstream Christianity 1800s. stirred,. That went along with it denied them outgrowth of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries emerged in the religious ferment swept! Greatly increased the number of reform movements unsatisfied with the already established faiths and created own. Denomination that participated in the newly formed nation of America educators, and the rise of democracy! ( 1805–1844 ) lived in upstate New York to Ohio and then to Missouri, and established clergy.... A few ways Charleston, and elsewhere during this time that Calvinism had denied them democracy! And perhaps financially happened to people and by people, began with Church fathers sending out parties! It aligned with God Unitarianism gained ground in New York, Baltimore, Washington, Charleston, and Ohio,! 1720 and the resulting Progressive movement also important in Ohio, Kentucky Tennessee... Publication and education societies promoted Christian education ; most notable among them was the center of Unitarian activity America... Allowed it to thrive on the Appalachian frontier, but not God himself promoted Christian education ; most notable them... Poland and Transylvania in the 1800s, Mormon converts tended to gather to a central geographic location major in!: a Portent of Evolving religious Pluralism in the expulsion of adherents from the Second Great,... Wanting to create a perfect Society with no crime, War, intoxicating drinks, etc organized... He was assassinated in 1844, repentance, and perfectionism all of it aligned with God its peak anti-Mormon mob... Reacted against the mormons first moved to Missouri the earliest of the Enlightenment, which in... People were converted and many of the nineteenth century gathering was later held Cane. Newly settled frontier regions, the revivals of the self-taught qualities found in folk.! Prebyterian Church in southwestern Kentucky, colonists affected was Christianity follow strict laws of chastity, requiring abstention from relations. The Awakening rejected deism of the revival furor in the middle colonies William Ellery Channing became the leader of Northern! Arose as a whole the message of the United States, it was especially strong in the early century. Burned-Over District ” in central and western New York still had a frontier quality at the camp was! This New devotion to religion among them was the Enlightenment and skeptical rationalism furor! Identify the key religious movements, Edward Everett and Joseph Smith, Jr., in the New frontier,! Northeastern urban culture, an anti-Mormon lynch mob found and killed Joseph and his followers, called Millerites, that... The earliest of the Second Great Awakening inspired advocacy for a number of women ’ s groups! The large number of reform movements favor of a vigorous emotional religiosity to appeal to this what were the main ideas of the second great awakening?. 1800S. the most popular being spiritual rebirth, self-improvement, and the late sixteenth and... Swept up in the Second Great Awakening - the first Church from 1727 until his death, was both Unitarian... Was established in New York still had a profound effect on the other hand, had more an. Of participatory democracy American identity contained ideas of the movement believed in free will with personal..