Religion and Reform
Miller Morris, Charles Glassford, and Kean Devine
Thesis
• Religion and reform in Pre-Civil War America
encouraged a stronger form of democracy by
advocating religious tolerance, abolitionism, women’s
rights, and the rise of individual thought.
Religion in the North
• 1830-1: religious reform in Rochester, New York by Presbyterian
Evangelicalism Charles G. Finney
•
•
People can choose their own fate
New York was in economic distress and in need of new hope, therefore the
reform was more succesful there
• Converts in the Middle Class
•
•
•
•
Most converts were poor
Businessmen and families rejected alcohol and went to church more
frequently
Rochester’s elite class unified when the standards of “proper behavior”
changed“
Protestantism provided the middle class with a stronger sense of identity
and purpose” (318).
• People saw religion as a way to combat humans’ “collective sins”:
liquor traffic, war, slavery, and government
The Second Great
Awakening - 1801
• Second Great Awakening in the South and in the West
• Highly emotional
• Primarily Methodist or Baptist
• Uneducated farmers gained license to preach to
community
• To get baptized or married, one must attend a camp
meeting
• Encouraged temperance but shied away from social
reform
• Little to outlaw slavery did little social good
• Church growing population skyrocketed because it
encouraged a sense of community in rural areas
• sense of community in rural areas
The second Great
Awakening - 1801
• Second Great Awakening in the North
• Based around revivalism and social reform
• Mostly Congregationalists and Presbyterians
• Influence from Puritan traditions
• Medium-sized towns and meetings; meetings were smaller
• Meetings less emotional
• Defending Calvinists
• Timothy Dwight: God is more of an architect than an allpowerful God (Unitarian view)
• Lyman Beecher: promoted revival of Congregational Churches
in New York (a “seedbed for religious enthusiasts”)
• Charles Finney becomes more radical – claims that redeemed
Christians could become just as holy as God himself
Religion and Women
• The Cult of Domesticity
• Cult of “True Womanhood”
• Encouraged women as the
spiritual guide in the home
• Encouraged “feminine” values
(love and self-sacrifice for family)
• Campaign for Education
• Catharine Beecher (Lyman’s
daughter) wanted to make school
teaching a woman’s profession
• Saw it as an opportunity to spread
Christian values to young children
in a motherly way
Religion and Reform
• Centered more in Northern cities
• New England: Lyman Beecher and evangelicals established missionary
societies
• Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions sent missionaries to India
• Tried to stop “indulgent behavior”, especially on the Sabbath (drinking,
gambling)
• Temperance Movement
• Lead by Beecher
• Outlawed alcohol, especially since whiskey had gained popularity
• Alcohol seen as a “threat to public morality” (322).
• Women greatly involved
• American Temperance Society
abolition
• William Lloyd Garrison
•
The Liberator- Called for immediate and unconditional emancipation
•
“I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice…I am in earnest-I will
not equivocate-I will not excuse-I will not retreat a single inch-And I WILL BE
HEARD!”
• 1833- foundation of the American Anti-Slavery Society
•
•
“We shall send forth agents to lift up the voice of remonstrance, of warning, of
entreaty, and of rebuke” (Declaration of Sentiments)
People began to join the ranks of abolitionists. (more northerners)
• Theodore Dwight Weld- toured Ohio and New York preaching
abolitionism.
• Black Abolitionists
•
•
•
Fredrick Douglass- Wrote about realities of bondage.
An independent crusade, separate from white abolitionists
Freedom’s Journal-Black Newspaper spread to provide outlet for black writers
abolition
• “It brought slavery issue to the forefront of public
consciousness and convinced a substantial and
growing segment of the northern population that the
South’s peculiar institution was morally wrong and
potentially dangerous to the American way of life”
(Brands 355)
abolition
Women’s Rights
• Abolitionism lead to
women’s right movement
• Seneca Falls Convention
•
Declaration of Sentiments
• Demanded Right to Vote for
all women
• Married women were to be
freed from unjust laws giving
husbands control of their
property, persons, and
children.
• Rejected the Cult of
Domesticity with its doctrine
of separate spheres
•
No change in women’s right to vote.
•
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/
mod/senecafalls.html
Women’s Rights
• Domestic Changes
• Cult of Domesticity
• Women became equal to me, but only within their duty to maintain
their home and children
• Cult of “True Womanhood”
• Encouraged women as the spiritual guide in the home
• Encouraged “feminine” values (love and self-sacrifice for family)
• Women’s magazines
• Similar to modern home magazines
• Gave helpful tips on better ways to furnish the home, raise children,
and gave women writers a place to be heard
• Women’s education
• All women’s school began after 1790 including Emma Willard and
Mary Lyon
Transcendentalism
• What the movement stood for
• Individualistic Mysticism
•
•
•
God could be found anywhere, not just
in church
God was not a separate being, but part of
everyone
Live close to nature to be close with
God, not a community
• The Writers
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803- 1882)
•
Wrote Nature, The Transcendentalist, and
Self- Reliance
• Henry David Thoreau (1817- 1862)
•
•
Wrote Walden and Civil Disobedience
A vocal abolitionist
Philosophical
reform
• Most reform had to do with Transcendentalism
• Pragmatism began to rise- 1870’s
• Rejected any “given” information about the world
• For something to be true, it had to be provable in the real world
• 3 Main Philosophers
•
•
•
Charles Pierce
• Made up the word “Pragmatic”
• Worked a lot with logic and science
• Beliefs must be tested by those who want to know the truth of the matter
William James
• Did more to make Pragmatic thought public than Pierce
• Main point of work was to say that most of the things people wondered
about had no practical purpose in the world
John Dewey
• Wrote more on social and political philosophy than fellow Pragmatists
• Thought nothing was certain, and facts were only temporary
Sources
•
http://blog.luciolepress.com/2009/03/06/poem-prayerby-henry-david-thoreau.aspx
•
http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/themes/slavery.html
•
http://www.constitutioncenter.org/timeline/html/cw04
_11985.html
•
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Drunkar
d%27s_Progress_-_Color.jpg
•
http://www.mccordmuseum.qc.ca/en/keys/webtours/tourID/VQ_P1_6_E
N
•
http://www.iep.utm.edu/american/#SH3a
•
http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/roots/l
egacy/19trans.html
•
http://english.sxu.edu/~kolich/transcendentalism.html
•
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3narr2.html
•
http://www.mlfhs.org.uk/images/abolition.gif
•
Mr. Chanaca’s Notes
•
AP United States History 2004 Scoring Guidelines (form
B)