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:
America not a “Christian nation”; separation of church and state
• Disestablishment’s
slow progress elsewhere
– Vermont
1807; Connecticut 1818; New Hampshire 1819; Massachusetts 1833
• Baptists and the
First Amendment, 1790
– “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
• Jefferson’s victory
in 1800
– Official atheism?
Revivalism returns
• Presbyterians on the
Kentucky frontier
• Cane Ridge, 1801:
“America’s Pentecost”
– First
large camp-meeting
– Perhaps
20,000 attend
Methodism
• John Wesley
(1703-1791)
• Success of the
circuit rider
• Methodist meetings
– Arminian
theology (anti-Calvinist)
– Emotional
religion
– Dreams
and visions
– Miraculous
healings, speaking in tongues
• Methodists
embrace camp-meetings
• Methodist
Camp-Meeting Plan, 1809
• Methodist
Camp-Meeting, 1819
• Methodist
Camp Meeting, 1839
Camp Meetings
• Lorenzo Dow and the
“jerking exercise”
• Presbyterians recoil
from Cane Ridge
• Baptists grow
reluctant
African Americans &
Revival
• Attraction of
emotional spirituality
• African elements
– Ring
shouts
– Call
and response hymns
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
• New expectations of
Second Coming
– Finney:
evangelize the world in 3 years
Millennialism
• 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
• Ministers: From
office to profession
• Feminization of
Christianity
• Christianization of
the nation
– Association
of nation with Protestantism