The Second Great Awakening The changes that began to rapidly take place in the North, in the 1800’s were extremely diversified, and “the cumulative effect of these changes was to very significantly widen the gap between the modernizing northern states and the more traditional southern states”(Harrell.2005. 296). The industrial movement was underway, and immigrant populations were increasing in massive numbers as well.
It was in this time of change that the second awakening, called a “spiritual quickening” (311), began. Compared to the first awakening it was much less organized, and saw the formation of many diverse religious reform movements. In the first great awakening a specific time period was involved, and the movement had specific goals it wished to attain. In comparison, the reason there is disagreement over the second awakening being classified as a movement was because it involved far too many monumental events, and issues.
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Some of these were changes within society, the industrial revolution, and women’s rights movements, education reform, and of course slavery for example, it was therefore “really too long, too diffuse, and to diverse to accurately be subsumed under such a label”(311). Other influences which fueled the second awakening movements were realized due to the Declaration of Independence, and the writing of the Constitution, which “suggested that America’s political idealism would eventually transform the world”(315). The second awakening began on the heels of the enlightenment era, and the people involved in the new religious movements wanted to remove deism, and instill Christian beliefs and practices within the population. The focus revolved around “efforts attempting to identify and ameliorate social evils”(319).
It became a time of many confusing mixes of religious ideals and theories, with the formation, and solidification of many new sects, and religious groups. At the start religious leaders, such as Timothy Dwight championed what was considered “to be Christian orthodoxy. But as so often it happens, these defenders of the faith found it necessary to make slight adjustments in theology and application to fit changing times”(311). This may be why the period is also credited with the democratization of Christianity, as various groups would have to work together to more clearly define their visions and goals. Of the many groups that were formed, some prospered and were more popular than others.
One of these reform groups “Attacked what was called Demon rum, a generic epithet for all forms of strong drink”(316). This group started what came to be known as the Temperance movement. It began when “In 1826 Lyman Beecher preached a series of six hard hitting sermons calling not just for temperance, but for complete abstinence” (316).
This group became very popular with the middle class. The second awakening was also notable for what came to be called revivalism, mobile, spirited, moving, emotional sermons, often held in tents. Charles G Finney “exemplified both the new theology and the expanded role of the revivalist”(312). Finney was one of the reasons that the women’s rights movements came to be associated and tangled within the multi faceted framework of the Second Awakening. Finney used “organized groups of mostly middle class women”(312), to help spread the word about his sermons, thereby bringing them into the limelight so to speak, and furthering the women’s rights movements of the time. Utopianism was another phenomenon connected to the second awakening. The many diverse religious reform movements tended to group together, and “Utopian experimental communities that sprang up across the North and Mideast”, were inhabited by many of these groups. A few of these groups had already been around for some time, for example “The Shakers and the followers of John Humphrey Noyes, had longer histories, and the most successful of all, the Mormons”(p.
333). One of the most ambitious of such Utopian communities was New Harmony, established in Indiana, In 1825 by Robert Owen, A wealthy Scottish industrialist”(331). The Catholic Church also went through a period of its own reform and revivalism, “in adapting new techniques to reach the unchurched”(314), and heralded in what came to be called mission parishes.
The emphasis here was away from the strict Catholic traditions and rituals which, and towards more focus on using sermons to reach out to individuals. Reform also took place within educational perimeters, that sought to establish tax supported school system, and a lengthened school year also occurred at this time. Horace Mann was a noted advocate for the creation of public school systems.
Educational action also included the creation of schools for the deaf and the blind. Dorothy Dix championed the plight of the housing conditions and treatment of the mentally ill and insane, and saw to expansions of state hospitals for their care. Yet another reform movement of the period was the issue of slavery.
Attention was drawn to slavery as being wrong when the “Quakers, a small perfectionist and pietistic religious group, in the mid- to late eighteenth century first identified slavery as a grave moral sin afflicting the land”(320).This in turn led to the colonization movement, who’s goal was to send blacks back to freedom in Africa. The slave reform movement was particularly objectionable to the south, because the industrialization movement had delivered the cotton gin, and business was good in the Deep South. This of course led to the formation of the abolitionist movement, another reform group. Of course in the midst of such diverse reform movements, industrialization, and human rights issues, the artists and writers of the period found ample fodder for their creativity, and men like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, led what was known as the New England renaissance. They sought to examine human nature. In the course of the second awakening Changes as mundane as the invention of the graham cracker, to the creation of America as a modernized nation were realized, as “The physical landscape was changed cities grew, canals were dug, roads were built, and railroads spread out to tie the nation together”(335), took place. The second awakening years were ” creative, chaotic, contentious years, and in the northern states of this era we see the birth of modern America”(335).
References:Boles, John B. Guasted, Edwin S. Griffith, Sally Foreman. Harrell, David Edwin Jr. Miller, Randall M.
Woods, Randall B. (2005) ” Unto a Good Land: A History of the American People Volume 1: To 1900″ Edition: illustrated, Published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.