Second Great Awakening
[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.
Postmillennialists believed that Christ will return to earth after the "Millennium", which could entail either a literal 1,000 years or a figurative "long period" of peace and happiness.
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.
[7] Beginning in the 1820s, Western New York State experienced a series of popular religious revivals that would later earn this region the nickname "the burned-over district," which implied the area was set ablaze with spiritual fervor.
Linda K. Pritchard used 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.
[11] More recent works, however, have argued that these revivals in Western New York had a unique and lasting impact upon the religious and social life of the entire nation.
[12][13][14] 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.
These outdoor religious gatherings originated from field meetings and the Scottish Presbyterians' "Holy Fairs", which were brought to America in the mid-eighteenth century from Ireland, Scotland, and Britain's border counties.
[15] 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.
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 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.
The revivals also followed an arc of great emotional power, with an emphasis on the individual's sins and need to turn to Christ, and a sense of restoring personal salvation.
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.
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.
[25] Cane Ridge was also instrumental in fostering what became known as the Restoration Movement, which consisted of non-denominational churches committed to what they viewed as the original, fundamental Christianity of the New Testament.
As a result, the numerical strength of the Baptists and Methodists rose relative to that of the denominations dominant in the colonial period—the Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists.
[30]: 89–94 This desire to restore a purer form of Christianity without an elaborate hierarchy contributed to the development of many groups during the Second Great Awakening, including the Latter Day Saints and Shakers.
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.
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.
[37] Despite being called the "greatest orator in America" by Benjamin Rush[38] and one of the best in the world by Bishop Thomas Coke,[37] Hosier was repeatedly passed over for ordination and permitted no vote during his attendance at the Christmas Conference that formally established American Methodism.
Richard Allen, the other black attendee, was ordained by the Methodists in 1799, but his congregation of free African Americans in Philadelphia left the church there because of its discrimination.
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.
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.
During the period of revival, mothers were seen as the moral and spiritual foundation of the family, and were thus tasked with instructing children in matters of religion and ethics.
In an effort to give sermons that would resonate with the congregation, ministers stressed Christ's humility and forgiveness, in what the historian Barbara Welter calls a "feminization" of Christianity.
[49] In the midst of shifts in theology and church polity, American Christians began progressive movements to reform society during this period.
As a result, local churches saw their roles in society in purifying the world through the individuals to whom they could bring salvation, and through changes in the law and the creation of institutions.
