Social Impact Of The Second Great Awakening example essay topic

Introduction Evangelicalism did not evolve or operate in a space. It is essential to consider the ways in which members of this group participated in and changed their culture, and, conversely, to assess how its social context provided both the ideas which evangelicalism adopted or transformed and those which it actively rejected or resisted. As movements that came of age during the first half of the nineteenth century, Evangelical Protestantism can be understood most clearly in the political, economic, and religious contexts of post-revolutionary American society. Although the movement would come to effect profound changes in its society it was very much in a sense that the culture had grown ripe for its emergence. The tension between the evangelical movement and the past movements radicalism and centrism suggests that American society was still very much in transition from one era to another: the Revolution was not yet complete. History: Causes leading to Evangelicalism The fifty years following independence witnessed dramatic changes in the character of American society.

As is the case with all periods of momentous social change, the early national period generated both optimism and unease. While the Revolution had succeeded in throwing off the British, it by no means resolved the growing nation's infrastructural, political and racial problems. Rather, in the sudden absence of imperial control, Americans of all stations were confronted with the task of structuring and preserving a viable society in a time of great uncertainty and instability, when internal political discord, unstable international allegiances and the disorienting surge of capitalist enterprise shook the foundations of tradition and security that they had long relied upon. Particularly distressing was the realization that political union did not necessarily entail cultural harmony, and that conflicts between Americans could become violent, as exampled by the party warfare of the 1790's, by such eruptions of economic discontent as Shay's Rebellion, by ethnic- and class-based urban disturbances, and by the seemingly insoluble dispute over slavery.

In many ways, American society seemed to be growing more rather than less fragmented. American society began to open new channels for energies in the culture which had previously lain dormant. In the proliferation of benevolent societies, the temperance and feminist movements, reforms in education, an increasingly abolitionist corporations and other civic associations, we see the desire to create a more ordered and morally upright society. Somewhat ironically, many of these social organizations took as their immediate goal the uplifting of individuals. The focus of individual advancement and social responsibility found greatest expression, however, in a religious uprising that shook the country during the early nineteenth century. The basis of this religious transformation can be found in the longing of many people for an intensity of spiritual experience.

The Second Great Awakening and Rise of Evangelicalism Transformations in American economics, politics and intellectual culture found their parallel in a transformation of American religion in the decades following independence. As a result, the United States underwent a widespread flowering of religious sentiment and unprecedented expansion of church membership known as the Second Great Awakening. The Awakening lasted some 50 years, from the 1790's to the 1840's, and spanned the entire United States. The religious revitalization that the Awakening represented manifested itself in different ways according to the local population and church establishment, but was definitely a Protestant phenomenon. Methodist and Baptist denominations experienced a surge of membership, often at the expense of other denominations, prompting a move toward liberalization and competitiveness on the part of the Anglican, Presbyterian and Congregationalist churches. The numerical success of the Methodists and Baptists lay primarily in their reliance on itinerant preachers who actively brought the message of the church to the people, converting great numbers through emotionally charged revivals.

These revivals occurred on a scale and with a frequency previously never seen in the United States. With the maturation of revivalism and the evolution of a distinct revivalist methodology aimed at converting people en masse, the age of evangelicalism had arrived, with the Protestants leading the charge. The social impact of the Second Great Awakening may be gauged by reviewing several main thrusts of the scholarly literature. The traditional school of thought has tended to portray the period as one marked by widespread secularization and the concomitant efforts of church elites to reestablish order and bring wandering Christians back into the ecclesiastical fold. From this perspective, the Second Great Awakening appears as a process of reorientation, a reassertion of centralized religious authority, as established churches tried to co-opt Evangelical activism by dressing their old theologies in new clothes. In his influential 1969 essay, 'The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process,' Donald Mathews argued that religious revivalism represented a crucial source of stability in American society, integrating huge numbers of people under the common umbrella of Protestantism.

The Awakening, in his words, was 'more than a series of religious 'crazes' and camp meetings' and more than the reactionary efforts of New England conservatives. Rather, it was 'an organizing process that helped to give meaning and direction to people suffering in various degrees from the social strains of a nation on the move into new political, economic and geographical areas. ' In effect, Mathews's approach fused the traditional emphasis on authority and cohesion with Hatch's central model by identifying the Awakening as 'a general social movement that organized thousands of people into small groups. ' He highlighted the unifying nature of the Awakening and left open the question as to how the actual words or messages of itinerant preachers and the psychological advantages of evangelical Protestantism were instrumental in winning over so many converts. An answer to that question must begin by considering the spiritual and theological tenets of evangelical Protestantism.

It was in the transformation of Calvinist theology that the Second Great Awakening had the most profound impact on individuals and on American religious culture. In its broad strokes, the Awakening abandoned the stricter aspects of Calvinism, in particular the doctrines of predestination and innate depravity, and established as normative the Arminian belief in the possibility of universal salvation through personal faith and devotional service. Where traditional Calvinism had taught that divine grace, or election into heaven, depended on the arbitrary will of a severe God, the evangelical Protestants preached that the regeneration and salvation of the soul depended on one's inner faith. As the belief in unalterable reprobation faded, the notion of free will was correspondingly elevated. Reconciliation with God still required the continued practice of moral living and free will was understood to mean the freedom to do good. The shift that the Awakening brought about reflected the contributions of Enlightenment philosophy in moving humanity toward an ontological center, in emphasizing free will and in conceiving of God and nature as benevolent entities.

I find it not surprising that this religious philosophy found such a receptive audience in the United States, where the Calvinist doctrine of 'inability's seemed out of touch with a culture based with the ideas of universal equality and political and economic mobility. It also corresponded nicely with many Americans's elf-image as creators of a new Eden; just as the individual soul could be redeemed through the exercise of free will, a national redemption could also follow from collective efforts toward social improvement. Internal moral reform and social reform thus emerged as the two principal and parallel legacies of the Second Great Awakening. The first stirrings of the Awakening occurred in the South and sparsely populated old Southwest, with its predominantly rural economy and poorly developed infrastructure and institutions, where religious organization served the critical function of providing social stability for the general public. Here the two clearly dominant groups were the Methodists and Baptists, although other active sects included the Presbyterians, the Christians and the Disciples. The South did not produce, in Martin Marty's words, 'first-rate theological minds', but in the decades after independence Evangelical Protestantism spread like wildfire through the region, with preachers fanning the flames at camp-meetings.

Methodist circuit rider Peter Cartwright, in his autobiography, describes a typical revival: They would... erect a shed, sufficiently large to protect five thousand people from wind and rain, and cover it with boards or shingles; build a large stand, seat the shed, and here they would collect together from forty to fifty miles around, sometimes further than that. Ten, twenty, and sometimes thirty ministers, of different denominations, would come together and preach night and day, four or five days together; and, indeed, I have known these camp-meetings to last three or four weeks, and great good resulted from them. I have seen more than a hundred sinners fall like dead men under one powerful sermon, and I have seen and heard more than five hundred Christians all shouting aloud the high praises of God at once; and I will venture to assert that many happy thousands were awakened and converted to God at these camp-meetings. Donald Mathews estimates that approximately 83 percent of Southern church members in 1792 were Evangelicals, and this percentage would climb in the decades to follow. The picture was much the same in the Midwest. Here, Protestantism achieved steady gains as evangelical methodology received greater definition under the influence of Charles Grandis on Finney, who turned revivalism into a science.

In an 1834 lecture to his Presbyterian church in New York, entitled 'What a Revival of Religion Is,' Finney went further than anyone else had to date in setting out the precise methods and objectives of revivalist Evangelicalism. He stressed the importance of emotion: Men are so sluggish, there are so many things to lead their minds off from religion, and to oppose the influence of the gospel, that it is necessary to raise an excitement among them, till the tide rises so high as to sweep away the opposing obstacles. This excitement that Finney talks about is the experience of conversion. The Experience of Conversion For the Evangelicals, the importance of preaching lay, above all else, in the ability to bring about a spiritual transformation in members of the preacher's flock, to help them find the faith in Christian teaching that would lead them away from a life of ignorance and sin.

The rituals and formal preaching of established Christian churches seemed to hinder ministers' ability to accomplish this. Evangelical conception of conversion was a highly pragmatic and communal one. The Evangelicals were in the business of saving, or 'winning,' souls, and they developed a definite program to carry it off. Charles Finney had outlined the methods and goals of a revival, famously asserting that preachers should 'work up' a revival rather than 'praying it down' as a miracle from God. Over time, the Evangelicals developed a clearly defined sequence of steps toward spiritual transformation, or a 'morphology of conversion,' in which the three stages were conviction of sin, conversion, and assurance of salvation. The spiritual transformation of the individual ordinarily occurred in the social setting of a revival or camp meeting, where the other people present -- in addition to the preacher -- played an instrumental role in one's conversion, through exhortations and singing and personal accounts of their own salvation.

The first goal was to have the individual become aware of the depth of his or her sin. D. Dickson Bruce described this awareness as 'the point at which the tension between the worldly life and the religious became unbearable, the religious life being recognized as immensely desirable. ' Only in this state of conviction could the individual achieve the abject humility which turning away from sin required, and become open to conversion. Conversion depended on the active intervention of the divine spirit in the form of Christ, but this position would only take place if the self had become sufficiently alienated, through conviction of sin, from the material world. In the moment of conversion, one felt that the heart had been touched by the hand of God.

Following conversion, the third stage was that of assurance of salvation, or the belief that one's sins were forgiven and that one could, after death, enter the realm of heaven and be reunited with God and with other saved souls. The after effects of Evangelicalism have moved in other directions. Because the Evangelicals were, from the outset, intent on expanding church membership, they managed to define the daily religious life of the United States in a way that no other movement had done before, or has done since. Ever since the Second Great Awakening, the power of Evangelicalism has derived from its practical character -- its ability to distribute its message, to help guide the religious lives of its adherents, to organize its members into cohesive groups. Modern Evangelical preachers follow in their predecessors footsteps by continuing to spread the word of God -- although now they have moved beyond rural camp meetings to take advantage of the power of television.