Second Awakening Essay, Research Paper
The Second Awakening
By the 1800 , the revivalist energies of all these congregations were
combining to create the greatest surge of evangelical fervor since the first
Great Awakening sixty year before . Beginning among Presbyterians in
several Eastern colleges , the new awakening soon speard throughtout the
country , reaching its greastest heights in the Western regions . In only a few
years , a large proportionof the American people were mobilized by the
movement ; and membership in those churches embraceing the revival – most
prominently the Methodists , the Baptists , and the Persby tersian – was
mushrooming .
The Second Great Awakening was not entirely uniform , but its basic
thrust was clear . Individuals must readmit God and Christ into their daily
lives , must embrace a fervent , active piety , and must reject the skeptical
rational beliefs . Yet the wave of revivalism did not serve to restore the
religion of the past . Few denominations any longer accepted the idea of
predestination ; and the belief that a person could effect his or her own
destiny , rather than encouraging irreligion as many had feared , added
intensity to the individual s search for salvation . Nor did the awakening
work to reestablish old institutionalforms of religion . Instead , it reinforced
the spread of different sects and denominations and helped to create a
general public acceptance of the idea that people could belong to defferent
Protestant churches and still be committed to essentially the same Christian
faith .
One of the striking features of the awakening was the perponderance
of women involved in it . Young women , in particular , were drawn to
<revivalism ; and female converts far outnumbered males . In some areas ,
church membership became overwhelming female as a result . One reason
for this was that women were more numerous than men in regions during
this ear .
The Second Awakening also had significant effects on black
Americans and on relations between the races . In many areas evivals were
open to people of all races ; and many blacks not only attended , but ardently
embraced the new religious fervor . Out of these revivals , in fact , emerged
a substaintial gourp of black preachers , who became important figures
within the slave community . Some of them translated the apparently
egalitarian religious message of the awakening – that salvation was available
to all – into a similarly egalitarrian message for blacks in the present world .
The Second Awakening also had effects , of course , on the rational
freethinker , whose skeptical philosophies had done so much to produce it
. They did not disappear after 1800, but their influence rapidly declined ; and
for many years to come they remained a distinct and defensive minority
within American Christianity . Instead , the dominant religious characteristic
of the new nation was a fervent revivalism , which would survive well into
the mid-nineteenth century .
The new religious enthusiasm meshed with the cultural and political optimism of the early
republic . Many Americans were coming to believe that their nation had a special destiny :
that its political system would serve as a model to the world , that its culture would
become a beacon to mankind . Now there were voices arguing that the United States had
a religious mission as well : that American revivalism would lead to the of the entire