Great Awakening and the Spirit of Reform

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Great Awakening and the Spirit of Reform
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Second Great Awakening

• 1800-50 (peaked in 1830s)
• No. of Americans who belonged to churches doubled
• 1/8 by 1835
• Fueled a host of new sects
• Had impact far beyond the realm of religion
• Abetted the emergence of a new industrial order
• Contributed to a whole host of reform movements

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Background

• Great Awakening (1730s-70s)
• Established the precedent of revivalism
• Belief in the need for complete surrender to God
• Emphasis on emotionally wrenching conversion
• These religious experiences frequently occurred
  outside of established churches--in camp grounds,
  under tents
• Pointed to diminishing power of the old
  ministerial elite
• Appealed to the women, the poor, blacks
• Contributed to the emergence of new sects
• Methodists and Baptists

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Characteristics of the SGA

• Similar to the FGA in many respects, but grew out
  of different anxieties, promoted different ends
• Reaction to the rationalism associated with
  Enlightenment thought
• Core precepts
• Belief in human progress
• Rejection of predestination
• Belief in universal salvation
• Millennialism
• Belief that it was possible to achieve heaven on
  earth

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Regional differences

• South
• Revival functioned more as a civilizing
  force--helped to bind together widely settled
  population
• Came to be identified with support for the social
  order
• Did not lead naturally to reform movements
• Major denominations split before the nation
• Southern Methodists (1844)
• Founded after the General Conference voted to
  remove a bishop unless he freed his slaves
• Southern Baptists (1845)

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Historical interpretations

• Completing explanations
• Some historians emphasize social control others
  stress the anti-authoritarian character of
  revivalism
• Prior to the 1820s, revivals in newly settled
  areas reflected a hunger for community
• In the 1820s 30s, revivals acquired a more
  middle-class character

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Middle-class formation

• By the 1830s, a distinctive MC culture began take
  shape in the North
• Class defined itself in moral and cultural rather
  than strictly economic terms
• Who constituted the MC?
• By 1850s, half of all white males were
  property-less, while the top 5 owned close to
  60 of all property
• MC were the people in between farmers,
  businessmen, professional and independent artisans

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MC concerned about instability

• Geographic mobility
• Antebellum towns/cities have rapid turnover
• Immigration
• Huge surge in immigration after 1830
• Catholics (Germany, Irish)
• MC culture emphasized the need for internal
  controls
• Ideal of the self-regulated individual,
  responsible for his moral and economic fate
• Evangelical religion promoted the idea moral and
  social order could be achieved through individual
  reform

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Perfectionism

• Charles G. Finney
• Preached that Christians could become as perfect
  as God
• Predicted the complete reformation of the whole
  world through mass conversion

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Temperance movement

• American Society for the Promotion of Temperance
  (founded 1826)
• Largest antebellum reform organization
• Used revival methods to urge men to give up drink
• Why was temperance so popular?
• Alcohol consumption had doubled between 1790-1830
• People drank twice as much as they do today
• Special appeal for women, who felt threatened by
  alcohol consumption
• Changing work patterns new MC found the older
  habits of drinking-on-the job unacceptable

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Temperance Certificate
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A Temperance Tale
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Temperance, cont.

• Who favored temperance?
• Whigs
• MC, entrepreneurial types
• Who opposed?
• Democrats, Whigs
• After 1837, temperance movement began to gain WC
  adherents
• Movement achieved real successes
• By mid-1840s, alcohol consumption had been more
  than halved
• By 1855, 14 states (all in the North) had banned
  the sale and manufacture of alcohol

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Per Capita Consumption of Alcohol, 18001860