Eighth Grade Social Studies: The Second Great Awakening & Reform Impulses
During the first half of the nineteenth century, an extraordinary spiritual and moral earthquake swept across the United States known as the Second Great Awakening. Beginning on the rugged western frontier of Kentucky and spreading rapidly through the booming canal towns of upstate New York, this massive Protestant evangelical revival transformed the religious landscape of America. Unlike the first Great Awakening of the 1740s, which emphasized Calvinist predestination and human helplessness before an angry God, the Second Great Awakening democratized salvation, preaching free will, individual moral agency, and human perfectibility. Convinced that true Christians had a sacred moral duty to actively eliminate sin from the world to prepare for Christ's millennial reign, awakened men and women poured their religious fervor into a crusade of social reform movements—combatting alcoholism, reforming prisons, building public schools, abolishing human slavery, and creating radical utopian communal experiments.
The Theological Revolution: From Predestination to Free Will
The Second Great Awakening emerged as an emotional, egalitarian reaction against the cold rationalism of the Enlightenment and the traditional, fatalistic theology of strict Calvinism.
The Great Theological Transformation
Traditional 18th-Century Calvinism: The Second Great Awakening (1820s-1840s):
* Strict Predestination (The "Elect"). * Universal Free Will and Individual Choice!
* Human Beings are Inherently Helpless. * Anyone Can Choose Salvation and Repentance!
* God Grants Salvation to Only a Few. * "Perfectionism": Human Beings Can Perfect
* Cold Intellectual Theological Dogma. Themselves and Eradicate Sin from Society!
Under classical Calvinism, human destiny was rigidly predestined: God had determined before the creation of the world who would be saved (the "elect") and who would be damned, and human effort or good deeds could do nothing to alter that divine decree.
The preachers of the Second Great Awakening shattered this doctrine. They proclaimed that salvation was a free, universal choice available to every human being—regardless of wealth, race, or gender. God did not doom anyone to hell; rather, individuals held free moral agency to reject sin, experience heartfelt spiritual conversion, and choose salvation.
Even more radically, revivalists preached the doctrine of perfectionism—the theological belief that human beings, assisted by divine grace, could not only eliminate sin from their personal lives, but could also reform and perfect society itself. This theology transformed Christianity from a passive expectation of eternity into an energetic, activist engine of social change.
The Camp Meetings of the Western Frontier
The revival ignited in the summer of 1801 on the western frontier of Kentucky at the legendary Cane Ridge Camp Meeting.
The Spectacle of Cane Ridge, Kentucky (August 1801)
Tens of Thousands of Pioneer Families Travel in Wagons to Forest Clearings
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Open-Air Preaching by Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian Ministers Day & Night
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Intense Physical Manifestations of the Holy Spirit:
* "The Jerks" : Uncontrollable shaking and jerking of the head and body.
* "The Barks" : Dropping to all fours, barking like dogs to tree the devil.
* "The Falling Exercise" : Hundreds fainting and swooning into the dirt.
An estimated twenty to twenty-five thousand people—nearly ten percent of the entire population of Kentucky—converged in a forested clearing around a small log Presbyterian meetinghouse. Because there were no buildings large enough to hold such crowds, ministers preached from tree stumps, fallen logs, and the backs of open farm wagons.
Multiple ministers—Methodist circuit riders, Baptist evangelists, and Presbyterian preachers—preached simultaneously day and night under the glow of pine-knot campfires. The meetings were characterized by intense emotional and physical manifestations of religious ecstasy known as "the exercises." Hundreds of people collapsed into the mud in spiritual trances ("the falling exercise"), were seized by violent shaking of the neck and torso ("the jerks"), wept loudly, danced, and shouted "the holy bark."
The frontier camp meeting democratized American religion. The Methodist and Baptist denominations grew exponentially, utilizing uneducated, itinerant "circuit riders" who rode thousands of miles on horseback to preach to isolated pioneer cabins. These egalitarian churches rejected aristocratic hierarchies, practiced democratic congregational governance, and welcomed poor frontiersmen and enslaved African Americans into spiritual fellowship.
Charles Grandison Finney and the "Burned-Over District"
In the late 1820s, the epic center of the revival shifted eastward to the booming corridor of the Erie Canal in central and western New York, led by a charismatic former lawyer named Charles Grandison Finney.
The Revival Machinery of Charles Grandison Finney
Innovative Evangelistic Techniques:
* The "Anxious Bench" : A front-row pew where sinners sat under intense public prayer.
* Protracted Meetings : Revival services held nightly for weeks at a time.
* Direct Everyday Language : Preached like a trial lawyer arguing a case to a jury.
* Female Leadership : Encouraged women to pray and speak publicly in mixed assemblies.
Finney rejected traditional sermon reading in favor of dramatic, extemporaneous oratory. Speaking directly to his listeners using everyday street language, Finney argued with sinners like a prosecutor before a jury, demanding immediate, active repentance.
Finney introduced innovative evangelistic methods: the "anxious bench," a special pew placed at the very front of the church where convicted sinners sat under the intense gaze of the entire congregation while the minister prayed over them; "protracted meetings" that ran every evening for weeks until the entire town was converted; and the inclusion of women, whom Finney encouraged to pray and speak openly before mixed audiences of men and women.
The "Burned-Over District"
Upstate New York experienced such recurring, intense waves of revivalist religious excitement that historians named the region the "Burned-Over District," comparing the spiritual fervor to a roaring forest fire that swept through the population so frequently that there was no "fuel" (unconverted souls) left to burn.
The Burned-Over District was the fertile religious soil that gave birth to several of the most influential new religious movements in American history:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons): Founded in Palmyra, New York, in 1830 by Joseph Smith, who published the Book of Mormon, which he testified was translated from golden plates revealed to him by the angel Moroni. Facing intense violent persecution for their unique theology and later practice of plural marriage, the Mormons migrated across Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois (where Smith was assassinated by an armed mob in 1844), before Brigham Young led fifteen thousand pioneers across the Great Plains to establish a flourishing religious commonwealth in the Great Salt Lake Basin of Utah in 1847.
The Millerites and Seventh-day Adventists: Led by William Miller in upstate New York, who mathematically calculated that Jesus Christ would physically return to Earth on October 22, 1844. When the day passed without the second coming—an event remembered as the "Great Disappointment"—followers reorganized to establish the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Spiritualism: Founded near Rochester, New York, in 1848 by the Fox Sisters (Kate and Margaret), who claimed to communicate with the spirits of the dead through mysterious rapping noises, launching a global craze of séances, spirit mediums, and table-turning.
From Personal Salvation to Social Perfection: The Reform Impulses
The true revolutionary significance of the Second Great Awakening was not merely personal piety; it was its transformative social activism. Finney preached that conversion was only the beginning of a Christian life: a truly saved soul was commanded to enlist in the "benevolent empire" of reform.
The Benevolent Empire of Social Reform
The Second Great Awakening
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[ The Temperance Movement ] [ Public Asylum Reform ] [ The Abolitionist Crusade ]
War Against the "Demon Rum"; Dorothea Dix: Humane Immediate, Uncompensated
American Temperance Society. Mental Health Asylums. Emancipation: Garrison.
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[ Education Reform ] [ Prison Reform ] [ Women's Rights ]
Horace Mann: Free Public Auburn / Penn Systems: Seneca Falls Convention (1848):
Universal Common Schools. Rehabilitation vs. Torture. Suffrage & Equality.
Thousands of awakened men and women, particularly middle-class women who formed the backbone of revival congregations, organized a sprawling network of voluntary reform societies known as the Benevolent Empire. Convinced that drunkenness, ignorance, mental illness, and human enslavement were moral sins obstructing Christ's kingdom, these reformers threw themselves into crusades to remake American society.
Utopian Communal Experiments: Alternative Visions of Society
While mainstream reformers sought to improve existing society, radical idealists concluded that modern industrial capitalism—with its competitive greed, wage exploitation, and individual selfishness—was beyond reform. They chose to withdraw from mainstream America entirely to build cooperative, communal utopian societies ("pocket paradises") designed to model the ideal human community for the world.
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| Major Antebellum Utopian Communal Societies |
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| The Shakers | Celibacy; complete gender and racial |
| (Mother Ann Lee) | equality; communal property; famous wooden |
| | furniture and ecstatic dancing in worship. |
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| The Oneida | "Complex Marriage"; communal child-rearing; |
| Community (Noyes) | perfectionism; manufactured famous silverware|
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| New Harmony | Secular socialist utopia; eliminated |
| (Robert Owen) | private property, currency, and religion; |
| | collapsed due to internal squabbling. |
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| Brook Farm | Transcendentalist agrarian cooperative; |
| (George Ripley) | combined physical labor with high intellect;|
| | inspired Hawthorne's *Blithedale Romance*. |
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The Shakers: Celibacy and Divine Craftsmanship
Founded in England by Ann Lee ("Mother Ann Lee"), who emigrated to America in 1774, the United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing became famous as the Shakers. Mother Ann taught that God possessed a dual nature—both male and female—and that she was the female manifestation of Christ on Earth.
By the 1830s, the Shakers had established over twenty communal villages across New England, New York, Ohio, and Kentucky, with nearly six thousand members. Shakers practiced strict celibacy (complete abstinence from sexual relations) and total communal ownership of all property. Men and women lived as spiritual brothers and sisters in absolute gender equality, sharing leadership equally.
In worship, Shakers engaged in joyful, coordinated marching, singing, and shaking their bodies to shake sin out of their flesh, earning them their nickname. Because they were celibate, they relied entirely on conversions and adopting orphans to replenish their ranks. Shakers believed that labor was a sacred form of worship, famously stating: "Hands to work, and hearts to God." They became world-renowned for their exceptional, minimalist wooden furniture, architectural design, and agricultural innovations.
The Oneida Community: Radical Perfectionism
In 1848, John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida Community in upstate New York. Noyes preached a radical theology of absolute Christian perfectionism, claiming that Christ had already returned to Earth, meaning that true believers could achieve total freedom from sin.
Noyes eliminated traditional monogamous marriage, viewing the nuclear family as a selfish, possessive institution that divided human brotherhood. Instead, Oneida practiced "complex marriage," in which every adult woman was considered married to every adult man in the commune, with sexual relations regulated by community elders. The community practiced mutual criticism sessions and communal child-rearing. Economically, Oneida was exceptionally prosperous: they manufactured animal traps and high-quality silver-plated silverware. Facing outside legal prosecution for adultery, the community dissolved its complex marriage system in 1879, reorganizing as a joint-stock silverware corporation that thrives today as Oneida Limited.
New Harmony: Secular Socialism
Not all utopian experiments were religious. In 1825, Robert Owen, a wealthy Scottish industrialist and socialist reformer, purchased thirty thousand acres on the Wabash River in Indiana to establish New Harmony.
Owen sought to prove that human character was shaped entirely by environment. He abolished private property, personal currency, and organized religion, establishing a cooperative society where all members shared labor, housing, and food equally. However, New Harmony collapsed within two years amid bitter factional infighting: without religious faith or work requirements, the commune was overrun by theorists, loafers, and visionaries who spent their days arguing philosophy while the crops rotted in the fields.
Despite their frequent failures, these utopian communities demonstrated the profound, creative restlessness of the antebellum American spirit—a radical conviction that human beings possessed the moral capacity to reshape human civilization from its foundations.
Chapter Exercises
Exercise 1: Contrast the theological doctrines of the Second Great Awakening with eighteenth-century traditional Calvinism. How did the shift from predestination to free will and "perfectionism" provide the moral engine for antebellum social reform movements?
Exercise 2: Describe the characteristics and historical significance of the "Burned-Over District" in western New York. Identify two distinct religious movements that originated within this region during the 1830s and 1840s.
Exercise 3: Analyze the social and economic organization of either the Shakers or the Oneida Community. How did their radical rejection of traditional Victorian family structures and private property reflect alternative visions of the ideal human community?
Solutions and Explanations
Solution 1: The Second Great Awakening represented a profound theological revolution against traditional eighteenth-century Calvinism. Calvinism held that human beings were completely depraved and helpless, with eternal salvation strictly predestined by God for a select "elect," meaning that human actions could do nothing to earn or change salvation. Revivalists like Charles Grandison Finney shattered this fatalism, preaching universal free will: salvation was a free, individual choice offered to all people, empowering humans as moral agents capable of choosing righteousness. Crucially, revivalists preached "perfectionism"—the belief that through divine grace and human dedication, individuals could not only eradicate sin from their own lives, but could also reform, purify, and perfect human society. This theology transformed faith into social activism: if sin was a voluntary human choice, then social evils like drunkenness, slavery, ignorance, and domestic violence were sins that Christians had a moral duty to actively abolish, sparking the sprawling "Benevolent Empire" of reform.
Solution 2: The "Burned-Over District" refers to the western and central region of New York along the Erie Canal, so named because it was swept by such recurring, fiery waves of religious revival and spiritual excitement that historians compared it to a burned-over forest where no unconverted souls remained. The rapid construction of the Erie Canal had brought explosive economic growth, urbanization, and social dislocation, making communities receptive to spiritual renewal. Two major American religious movements emerged directly from this district: First, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons), founded in Palmyra in 1830 by Joseph Smith following his translation of the Book of Mormon, which eventually migrated west under Brigham Young to establish Utah. Second, the Millerites (later Seventh-day Adventists), founded by William Miller, who gathered thousands of followers in the early 1840s based on his calculation that Jesus Christ would return on October 22, 1844, alongside the emergence of modern Spiritualism pioneered by the Fox Sisters in 1848.
Solution 3: The Shakers (The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing), founded by Mother Ann Lee, established an alternative social and economic order by fundamentally rejecting traditional family structures and private property. In their twenty communal villages, Shakers practiced strict lifelong celibacy, eliminating biological nuclear families and gender-based marital domination. Men and women lived as spiritual equals under absolute gender parity, sharing administrative, religious, and economic leadership. They eliminated private property, holding all land, buildings, and food in common. Work was viewed as a sacred form of prayer, resulting in exceptional craftsmanship, innovative agricultural methods, and functional, minimalist furniture. The Shakers demonstrated an alternative vision of human civilization: a peaceful, nonviolent, egalitarian commonwealth where gender equality and communal brotherhood replaced the competitive greed and inequality of industrial capitalism.