Revivalism and Reform in Antebellum America

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Revivalism and Reform in Antebellum America
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The Second Great Awakening Democratizes Salvation
A Camp Meeting

• Second Great Awakening occurred in the context of
  great migration west and a fascination with the
  lifestyle of the American wilderness
• Admission of new states west of the Appalachians
  provided opportunity for Western expansion
• Thousands of people began moving west
• This put considerable strain on religion
• Churches needed to be more flexible due to these
  socio-economic upheavals
• The parish had to be reapplied to changing
  times
• Presbyterian preacher James McGready was
  instrumental in the Second Great Awakening
• Hosted what became known as frontier camp
  meetings
• Loosely organized church meetings in which
  preachers delivered informal sermons to large,
  non-affiliated congregations
• Many conversions took place during camp meetings

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Charles Finney "What a Revival of Religion Is"

• The Second Great Awakening rethought the old
  Calvinist doctrine of predestination
• Salvation is reserved for the "elect" who are
  pre-chosen by God
• It favored of the view that man is responsible
  for both his own salvation and the moral
  condition of society at large
• Led to profound changes in the institutional
  structure of the church
• Laypeople began to transform society in God's
  image through missionary, evangelical, and
  benevolent work
• Prominent Northern evangelist Charles Finney
  defined revivalism as a human effort to catalyze
  conversion and salvation for individual souls,
  rather than a miracle bestowed by God

Charles Finney
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Anti-Slavery Protestant Voices

• Protestant dissent to slavery came to prominence
  after the Second Great Awakening
• While not exclusively anti-slavery by nature, it
  did act as a catalyst for many anti-slavery
  Protestant voices to emerge
• One such advocate of abolition was William Wilson
• In The Great American Question, he calls for an
  abolitionist movement to take the 1848 election,
  thus linking politics and religion
• Slavery, argued Wilson, goes directly against all
  that is taught in the Bible
• John Fee wrote An Anti-Slavery Manual (1851)
• Admonishes slavery providing a slightly different
  religious argument
• Argues against slavery in terms of sin
• Like Wilson, Fee felt that slavery was an affront
  to Christianity
• Asserted that slave-holders needed to abolish
  slavery for fear for their souls
• Hell awaited those that did not renounce slavery
• An argument used by many fundamentalists within
  the Christian faith

John Fee
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The Temperance Movement

• A strong reformist impulse animated religious
  life during the Second Great Awakening
• The faithful sought to remake society in God's
  image
• This extended to civic life, as illustrated by
  the formation of thousands of Temperance
  societies
• Efforts were successful in reducing the per
  capita consumption and encouraging stricter state
  regulation of alcohol
• Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher Stowe,
  was a famous social activist
• Concerned about the negative impact of alcohol on
  society
• Abraham Lincoln, in a speech to the Washington
  Temperance Society, touched on the growing
  success and popularity of the temperance
  movement, and the obstacles that lay ahead
• The 1846 constitution of the Daughters of
  Temperance illustrates such societies creation
  of a new social outlet and leadership role for
  women in Antebellum American society
• Members of Martha Washington Salem Union No. 6
  vowed to abstain from the use and sale of alcohol
  and promote temperance in their communities
• The club governed itself democratically and used
  collective resources to provide a kind of life
  insurance for members

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The Rise of "Disinterested Benevolence"

• Evangelicals strove to prepare the world for the
  coming Kingdom of God by externalizing religion
  through the proliferation of disinterested
  benevolent societies
• Formed voluntary organizations dedicated to
  various causes including temperance, slavery,
  female morality, missionary work, poverty, and
  the plight of prisoners and the insane
• The 1853 article Dedication of the Five Points
  Mission House demonstrates the link between
  religion and civil society that was nurtured
  during the Second Great Awakening
• "Letter on Prostitution" was written in 1850 by
  Caroline W.H. Dall following the 1850 Women's
  Rights Convention
• Her views and work were more radical
• Linked women's rights to social reform
  illustrating the budding notions of gender
  equality
• Reformers began to see the feminine role as
  unique and invaluable to moral purity in the
  family and society at large
• In "Memorial to the Massachusetts Legislature,"
  prominent mental facility reformer Dorothea Dix
  called attention to the deplorable treatment of
  the commonwealth's insane
• Her crusade for humane asylums for the mentally
  ill coincided with a movement to reform
  penitentiaries
• These reform efforts were a broader reflection of
  the emerging notion that the fallen could be
  rehabilitated and that Christian people ought to
  take responsibility for alleviating society's
  ills

Dorothea Dix
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Observations on Religion in Antebellum America

• Alexis de Tocqueville was a French political
  theorist who authored Democracy in America in the
  1830's after an extensive tour of the United
  States
• Emphasized the tendency of Americans to focus on
  reform in this world
• His observations of Americans' unabashed
  religiousity reflects the growing perception of
  the American character as inherently Christian
  during this time

Alexis de Tocqueville
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Multimedia Citation

• Slide 1 http//www.ilstu.edu/keciani/images/seco
  ndgreatawakening261.jpg
• Slide 2 http//www.pragmatism.org/american/second
  _awakening.jpg
• Slide 3 http//www.revival-library.org/catalogues
  /world2/finney-auto/finney.jpg
• Slide 4 http//docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/fee/feefp.jpg
  
• Slide 5 http//www.scc.rutgers.edu/njwomenshistor
  y/Period_3/daughters.htm
• Slide 6 http//www.npg.si.edu/img2/1846/7700500c.
  jpg
• Slide 7 http//amhist.ist.unomaha.edu/module_file
  s/Alexis20de20Tocqueville.jpg