Do you understand the importance of the Second Great Awakening? Well you should! By recognizing the significance of the Second Great Awakening you’ll be one step closer to a better grasp of US history and a better score for the AP® US History Exam. The Second Great Awakening lasted from 1790 to 1840. It began as a reaction to the growth in popularity of science and rationalism. The Second Great Awakening fought the perceived moral decay of society and charged Americans to lead their fellow man to salvation.
The Second Great Awakening began when Timothy Dwight was promoted to president of Yale College. At the time, Yale College was seen as a center of secular, and therefore ungodly, thought. Timothy Dwight felt it was his duty to prevent the spread of blasphemous thinking. He supported sermons that brought religious revival to Yale College’s student body and from there, it spread like a wildfire.
The Second Great Awakening preached sermons that were much softer and kinder. Rather than portraying an angry, vengeful God, the Second Great Awakening painted God as a benevolent and compassionate ruler who only wanted the salvation of every man. After the Timothy Dwight’s success in New England, it was only a matter of time until the religious revival spread throughout the rest of the nation.
The American West and Camp Meetings
Similar to religious revival that was traveling down the Atlantic Coast, the religious fervor spread west as well. The camp meeting was the main venue where the Second Great Awakening was spread. Most pioneer families at the time lived in isolation from one another and were often concerned with the year’s harvest and maintaining their own land. But when the harvest was brought in and all the preparations were made for winter, many pioneer families would come together at camp meetings. It was there that they heard the sermons that were coming from the east. Some of these camp meetings had about 25,000 attendees, coming from vast distances to hear the messages of preachers.
The importance of the camp meeting in the Second Great Awakening cannot be understated. It was during these camp meetings that you saw people “speaking in tongues” or having convulsive fits due to religious ecstasy. These physical signs and tangible examples of conversion further fueled the religious zeal that was consuming the country.
Early Feminism and Other Reform Movements
The Second Great Awakening not only renewed America’s religious intensity but it also initiated many of the reform movements that would later seize the country, and some can even still be seen today. For example, the Second Great Awakening placed women in greater roles than before. Women were seen as the moral center of the household. They were in charge of the spiritual and moral well-being of both their children and their husband. With this in mind, it makes sense that women were drawn towards the enthusiasm of the Second Great Awakening because it emphasized their own importance to the religion instead of downplaying it. In addition, because women were often relegated to the household, they had time to pursue causes that they deemed important.
Often, these causes were subjects they had heard spoken of at religious revivals. For example, many preachers during the Second Great Awakening decried slavery and alcohol. Both these messages led to the Abolitionist and Temperance Movement of which women were active participants. It is also during this time that we see the precursor to the Feminist movement. Prior to the Second Great Awakening women did not have a very important social role, but as they organized these other reform movements, they began to see the power they truly had. Soon after the Second Great Awakening,women begun their own movement towards equality.
Charles Grandison Finney
Of all the preachers that became ubiquitous during the Second Great Awakening, there were none as popular or as well-spoken as Charles Grandison Finney. Finney typified the religious revival preacher with his fierce oratory skills and intense sermons. His greatest work as a revivalist preacher was during the period of 1826 to 1831, where he made a circuit that started in Utica and ended in New York City. His remarkable power of persuasion converted tens of thousands of people. The reason for his popularity came from the different type of homily that became popular during the religious revivals that seized the nation.
Finney preached that everyone was capable of salvation and there’s not much to do other than have faith in God and perform acts of good work. Prior to Finney, the popular denomination of Calvinism claimed that all those who had the privilege of going to heaven had already been chosen. Everyone else who was not worthy of being saved would go straight to hell. Charles Grandison Finney appealed to the masses. More people could identify with his message of an attainable heaven where you were separated from eternal salvation only by the amount of work you were willing to put in. This meshed well with the self-sufficient and sovereign spirit of the growing American people.
When studying AP® US History, it is important to take note of the Second Great Awakening. The religious movement helped to form the personality and nature of the nation that we live in today. The Second Great Awakening swelled the ranks of various Christian denominations, from Baptist to Methodist. It brought the west together when families were often alone for months at a time during the year. From the Second Great Awakening, we saw the equalizing effect of religion as it evened the gap between genders. Reform movements were born in the aftermath of the revival as anti-slavery movements, women’s suffrage, and temperance rose along with the wave of piety. It also brought to the forefront the power of the individual both in the message spread by preachers like Charles Finney and the manner in which they lived their lives, self-determining and unwavering in their resolve to save everyone’s soul. To get that perfect score in AP® US History, you need to be able to identify the impact of the Second Great Awakening.
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