They did not stem entirely from the Second Great Awakening, but the revivalist doctrine and the expectation that one's conversion would lead to personal action accelerated the role of women's social benevolence work. "Black Harry" Hosier, an illiterate freedman who drove Francis Asbury on his circuits, proved to be able to memorize large passages of the Bible verbatim and became a cross-over success, as popular among white audiences as the black ones Asbury had originally intended for him to minister. While it occurred in all parts of the United States, it was especially strong in the Northeast and the Midwest. Converts were taught that to achieve salvation they needed not just to repent personal sin but also work for the moral perfection of society, which meant eradicating sin in all its forms. It was at this point in … The first phase (1795–1810) was associated with frontier camp meetings conducted by American preachers James McGready, John McGee, and Barton W. Stone in Kentucky and Tennessee. An explosion in religious revivalism rocked both England and the American colonies in the eighteenth century. Be on the lookout for your Britannica newsletter to get trusted stories delivered right to your inbox. "The Communion Sermons of James Mcgready: Sacramental Theology and Scots-Irish Piety on the Kentucky Frontier", Meyer, Neil. Subsequent meetings followed at the nearby Gasper River and Muddy River congregations. A revival known as the Second Great Awakening began in New England in the 1790s. Varel, David A. Most of the Scots-Irish immigrants before the American Revolutionary War settled in the backcountry of Pennsylvania and down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains in present-day Maryland and Virginia, where Presbyterian emigrants and Baptists held large outdoor gatherings in the years prior to the war. The circuit riders came from among the common people, which helped them establish rapport with the frontier families they hoped to convert. [35] Women also took crucial roles in the conversion and religious upbringing of children. 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. In 1800, out of African-American revival meetings in Virginia, a plan for slave rebellion was devised by Gabriel Prosser, although the rebellion was discovered and crushed before it started. The Second Great Awakening occurred in several episodes and over different denominations; however, the revivals were very similar. Revivalism is a strand within the evangelical tradition. [28] Social activism influenced abolition groups and supporters of the Temperance movement. By the early 19th century, independent African-American congregations numbered in the several hundreds in some cities of the South, such as Charleston, South Carolina, and Richmond and Petersburg, Virginia. Around the same time, the concepts of Jacksonian democracy was becoming increasingly more well known. Generally less emotional than the Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening led to the founding of colleges and seminaries and to the organization of mission societies.… This differed from the Calvinists' belief in predestination as outlined in the Westminster Confession of Faith, which emphasized the inability of men to save themselves and decreed that the only way to be saved was by God's electing grace. Soon after, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church (AME Zion) was founded as another denomination in New York City. "The Frontier Camp Meeting: Contemporary and Historical Appraisals, 1805–1840". Ordinary people were encouraged to make a personal connection with God, instead of relying on a minister. The Great Awakening, which occurred from about 1720 to 1780, was a series of revivals that sparked a move away from formal, outward, official religion to experiential, inward, personal religion. [6] The movement quickly spread throughout Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, and southern Ohio, as well as other regions of the United States and Canada. [43], The religious enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening was echoed by the new political enthusiasm of the Second Party System. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. The idea of restoring a "primitive" form of Christianity grew in popularity in the U.S. after the American Revolution. [12], The denominations that encouraged the revivals were based on an interpretation of man's spiritual equality before God, which led them to recruit members and preachers from a wide range of classes and all races. [8][9] Charles Finney, a leading revivalist active in the area, coined the term. The Second Great Awakening laid the foundations of the development of present-day religious beliefs and establishments, moral views, and democratic ideals in the United States. There would be more Great Awakenings. The awakening brought comfort in the face of uncertainty as a result of the socio-political changes in America. Indeed, as historian Donald Mathews has pointed out, the Second Great Awakening was an innovative and highly effective organizing process. (A Second Great Awakening would take place in the 1800s.) [11], On the American frontier, evangelical denominations, especially Methodists and Baptists, sent missionary preachers and exhorters to meet the people in the backcountry in an effort to support the growth of church membership and the formation of new congregations. The Age of the Second Great Awakening: 111: 6: Kentucky: 1800: 143: 7: The Emergence of Revivalism: 161: 8: Five Leaders in the Northeast: 191: 9 ‘New Measures’ and Old Revivals? [21], The Advent Movement emerged in the 1830s and 1840s in North America, and was preached by ministers such as William Miller, whose followers became known as Millerites. An age of reform. Great Awakening Crowds - the people came "en mass". Religious recruitment was intensely local, a species of grass-roots organizing designed to draw people into local congregations. Leaders such as Charles Finney saw women's public prayer as a crucial aspect in preparing a community for revival and improving their efficacy in conversion. Both the First and Second Great Awakenings were transatlantic. Conversion was compelled by a set ofclear ideas about the innate sinfulness of humans after Adam'sfall, the omnipotence of God--his awful power and his mercy--and,finally, the promise of salvation for fallen humankindthrough Christ's death on the cross as the atonement forhuman sin. By the late 1840s, however, the great day had receded to the distant future, and postmillennialism became a more passive religious dimension of the wider middle-class pursuit of reform and progress. [24]: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, the revivals contributed to the development of the other major branch, led by Barton W. The revival also inspired slaves to demand freedom. This idea stressed the importance of the common individual. Husbands, especially in the South, sometimes disapproved of their wives' conversion, forcing women to choose between submission to God or their spouses. The elite ministers in British America were firmly Old Lights, and they censured the new revivalism as … The Second Great Awakening - reform and religious movements. Due to the efforts of such leaders as Stone and Alexander Campbell (1788–1866), the camp meeting revival spread religious enthusiasm and became a major mode of church expansion, especially for the Methodists and Baptists. These organizations were primarily sponsored by affluent women. The Second Great Awakening followed from the first one half a century earlier. Johnson, Charles A. The Second Great Awakening can be divided into three phases. They founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) in Philadelphia. The Second Great Awakening marked a reemergence of religious enthusiasm, as millions of Americans were "born again" in emotionally-charged revival meetings. Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity. Postmillennialist theology dominated American Protestantism in the first half of the 19th century. [10] Linda K. Pritchard uses statistical data to show that compared to the rest of New York State, the Ohio River Valley in the lower Midwest, and the country as a whole, the religiosity of the Burned-over District was typical rather than exceptional. [14] Upon their return home, most converts joined or created small local churches, which grew rapidly. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1981. The first informal camp meeting began in June, when people began camping on the grounds of the Red River Meeting House. 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. [24]: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. "The Invention of the Great Awakening, 1795–1842". Stone. Second Great Awakening As a result of the Second Great Awakening (a series of revivals in the 1790s-early 1800s), the dominant form of Christianity in America became evangelical Protestantism Membership in the major Protestant churches—Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist—soared Toward the end of the 18th century another revival, known as the Second Great Awakening ( c. 1795–1835), began in the United States. The First Awakening was a progression of Christian revivals that spread through Britain and the Thirteen Colonies between the 1730's and 1740's.The revival movement permanently influenced Protestantism as followers strove to renew religious devotion. The spirit of evangelical humanitarian reforms was carried on in the antebellum Whig party. Revivals were a key part of the movement and attracted hundreds of converts to new Protestant denominations. [19][20], The converts during the Second Great Awakening were predominantly female. Mathews, Donald G. "The Second Great Awakening as an organizing process, 1780–1830: An hypothesis". While it occurred in all parts of the United States, it was especially strong in the Northeast and the Midwest. Despite being called the "greatest orator in America" by Benjamin Rush[31] and one of the best in the world by Bishop Thomas Coke,[30] Hosier was repeatedly passed over for ordination and permitted no vote during his attendance at the Christmas Conference that formally established American Methodism. The Second Great Awakening, which spread religion through revivals and emotional preaching, sparked a number of reform movements. The Second Great Awakening (sometimes known simply as "the Great Awakening") was a religious revival that occurred in the United States beginning in the late eighteenth century and lasting until the middle of the nineteenth century. Various scholarly theories attribute the discrepancy to a reaction to the perceived sinfulness of youthful frivolity, an inherent greater sense of religiosity in women, a communal reaction to economic insecurity, or an assertion of the self in the face of patriarchal rule. The six-day gathering attracting perhaps as many as 20,000 people, although the exact number of attendees was not formally recorded. The Great Awakening caused a split between those who followed the evangelical message (the “New Lights”) and those who rejected it (the “Old Lights”). Women's prayer groups were an early and socially acceptable form of women's organization. This page was last edited on 4 March 2021, at 14:54. The Methodist Church used circuit riders to reach people in frontier locations. Each denomination had assets that allowed it to thrive on the frontier. The Second Great Awakening was a U.S. religious revival that began in the late eighteenth century and lasted until the middle of the nineteenth century. Bratt, James D. "Religious Anti-revivalism in Antebellum America", Carwardine, Richard J. They began efforts to reform prisons and care for the handicapped and mentally ill. Daniel Walker Howe, "The Evangelical Movement and Political Culture in the North During the Second Party System", The Journal of American History 77, no. Newer denominations, such as Methodists and Baptists, grew quickly. Settlers in thinly populated areas gathered at the camp meeting for fellowship as well as worship. Moreover, under Finney’s aegis a rationale for carefully contrived revival techniques evolved. Griffin, Clifford S. "Religious Benevolence as Social Control, 1815–1860". [citation needed] Another key component of the revivalists' techniques was the camp meeting. The camp meeting was a religious service of several days' length with preachers. These often provided the first encounter for some settlers with organized religion, and they were important as social venues. [29] His sermon at Thomas Chapel in Chapeltown, Delaware, in 1784 was the first to be delivered by a black preacher directly to a white congregation.[30]. However, women took other public roles; for example, relaying testimonials about their conversion experience, or assisting sinners (both male and female) through the conversion process. In the Second Great Awakening, Finney seemed to have been angered by the criticism that came from his contemporaries. [2] It rejected the skepticism, deism, Unitarianism, and rationalism left over from the American Enlightenment,[3] about the same time that similar movements flourished in Europe. Douglas Allen Foster and Anthony L. Dunnavant, Elizabeth J.Clapp, and Julie Roy Jeffrey, ed., Women, Dissent and Anti-slavery in Britain and America, 1790–1865, (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2011): 13–14, Barbara Welter, "The Feminization of American Religion: 1800–1860," in Clio's Consciousness Raised, edited by Mary S. Hartman and Lois Banner. C)It affected all sections of the country. [45], Historians stress the common understanding among participants of reform as being a part of God's plan. 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. These revivals are not exclusive to America. AP.USH: ARC (Theme), KC‑2.2.I.A (KC), Unit 2: Learning Objective H. An explosion in religious revivalism rocked both England and … 1.The popularity of the revivalism movement during the Second Great Awakening garnered the nickname the "burned-over district" for which of the following areas? While a myriad of viewpoints exist, it is generally recognized that the Second Great Awakening began as a rural movement in the 1790’s and achieved notoriety in the Cane Ridge Revival (1801) led by Barton Stone in the south and the Yale College revival (1802) led by Timothy Dwight in the north. Known commonly as antebellum reform, this phenomenon included reforms against the consumption of alcohol, for women's rights and abolition of slavery, and a multitude of other issues faced by society. Although mainstream Protestants tended to dismiss these George Whitefield, an Anglican evangelist and friend of John and Charles Wesley, not only traveled throughout Britain bringing the gospel of Christ, but he also made seven trips to America between 1738 and 1770.He was probably the most well-traveled man in the colonies and drew large crowds wherever he spoke. Baptists and Methodist revivals were successful in some parts of the Tidewater South, where an increasing number of common planters, plain folk, and slaves were converted. The Immediacy of Salvation in the Second Great Awakening: How Revivalism Redefined Evangelicalism. Shiels, Richard D. "The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut: Critique of the Traditional Interpretation". [24]:368 Publication and education societies promoted Christian education; most notable among them was the American Bible Society, founded in 1816. Knowledge of the "First Great Awakening" in the 18th Century with men such as Count von Zinzendorf, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, and then the "Second Great Awakening… [26] The Female Missionary Society and the Maternal Association, both active in Utica, NY, were highly organized and financially sophisticated women's organizations responsible for many of the evangelical converts of the New York frontier.[27]. Evangelists often directly addressed issues such as slavery, greed, and poverty, laying the groundwork for later reform movements. Christians thus had a duty to purify society in preparation for that return. The mid-eighteenth century witnessed a wave of evangelism without precedent in America, England, Scotland, and Germany. The Methodists had an efficient organization that depended on itinerant ministers, known as "circuit riders", who sought out people in remote frontier locations. [44] More active participation in politics by more segments of the population brought religious and moral issues into the political sphere. Second Great Awakening, Protestant religious revival in the United States from about 1795 to 1835. The Second Great Awakening has been called the "central and defining event in the development of Afro-Christianity." While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. The Urban Threshold and the Second Great Awakening: Revivalism in New York State, 1825-1835 Richard Lee Rogers Department of Social Sciences Southern Wesleyan University Generally regarded as a rural phenomenon, the spread of religious revivalism in the Second Great Awakening may have also been associated with urbanization and early industrialism. Beginning around 1825, there was the Second Great Awakening, with Charles Grandison 01Finney at the epicentre. [25], Congregationalists set up missionary societies to evangelize the western territory of the northern tier. Conversions and congregations started with the First Great Awakening, resulting in Baptist and Methodist preachers being authorized among slaves and free African Americans more than a decade before 1800. During these revivals Baptists and Methodists converted large numbers of blacks. The Second and Third Awakenings were part of a much larger Romantic religious movement that was sweeping across England, Scotland, and Germany.[1]. The Second Great Awakening - influence of the Market Revolution. It emphasized emotion and enthusiasm, but also democracy: new religious denominations emerged that restructured churches to allow for more people involved in leadership, an emphasis on man's equality before god, and personal relationships with Christ (meaning less authority on the part of … 4 (March 1991), p. 1218 and 1237. 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This article was most recently revised and updated by, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Great-Awakening, National Humanities Center - TeacherServe - Evangelicalism, Revivalism, and the Second Great Awakening, UShistory.org - Religious Transformation and the Second Great Awakening. Historians sometimes divide up American church history by different times of revival or awakening. Long, Kimberly Bracken. The Great Awakening, the most important event in American religion during the eighteenth century, was a series of emotional religious revivals that spread across the American colonies in the late 1730s and 1740s. The Presbyterians and Methodists sponsored similar gatherings on a regular basis after the Revolution. A primitive faith based on the Bible alone promised a way to sidestep the competing claims of the many denominations available and for congregations to find assurance of being right without the security of an established national church. To immigrants in the early 19th century, the land in the United States 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. In every southern state, religious leaders voiced their fears and distress. [37] Through women's positions in these organizations, women gained influence outside of the private sphere. [41] The influence of the Awakening continued in the form of more secular movements. A year later, in August 1801, an even larger sacrament occasion that is generally considered to be America's first camp meeting was held at Cane Ridge in Bourbon County, Kentucky, under Barton W. Stone (1772–1844) with numerous Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist ministers participating in the services. Church membership and religious activity gave women peer support and place for meaningful activity outside the home, providing many women with communal identity and shared experiences. [40], Revivals and perfectionist hopes of improving individuals and society continued to increase from 1840 to 1865 across all major denominations, especially in urban areas. The Great Awakening notably altered the religious climate in the American colonies. Corrections? R. Patrick Reeves. [15], The Revival of 1800 in Logan County, Kentucky, began as a traditional Presbyterian sacramental occasion. To a lesser extent the Presbyterians also gained members, particularly with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in sparsely settled areas. Although many American Protestants lost interest in revivalism in the first half of the 20th century, tent revivals as well as annual revivals in churches in the South and Midwest continued to be an important feature of Protestant church life. They believed in the perfectibility of people and were highly moralistic in their endeavors. With the later arrival of great numbers, the situation did not improve. "The Second Great Awakening in the Urban Centers: An Examination of Methodism and the 'New Measures, Cott, Nancy F. "Young Women in the Second Great Awakening in New England,". [33] Despite white attempts to control independent African-American congregations, especially after the Nat Turner uprising of 1831, a number of African-American congregations managed to maintain their separation as independent congregations in Baptist associations. Its central figure, George Whitefield , was a traveling Anglican preacher from England who cooperated with Protestants of every sort to gain converts. Young people (those under 25) also converted in greater numbers, and were the first to convert. passed laws requiring them always to have a white man present at their worship meetings. During the Second Great Awakening revivalistic theology in many denominations shifted from Calvinism to a practical Arminianism as preachers emphasized the ability of sinners to make an immediate decision for their salvation; theological differences almost disappeared among evangelical churches. Historians named the Second Great Awakening in the context of the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1750s and of the Third Great Awakening of the late 1850s to early 1900s. The outpouring of religious fervor and revival began in Kentucky and Tennessee in the 1790s and early 1800s among the Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists. Churches with roots in this movement include the Churches of Christ, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the Evangelical Christian Church in Canada. "Falling for the Lord: Shame, Revivalism, and the Origins of the Second Great Awakening.". [32], Women, who made up the majority of converts during the Awakening, played a crucial role in its development and focus. During the eighteenth century, the British Atlantic experienced an outburst of Protestant revivalism known as the First Great Awakening. After first submitting to oversight by the established Methodist bishops, several AME congregations finally left to form the first independent African-American denomination in the United States in 1816.
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