The Second Great
Awakening &
Antebellum Reform
Movements
HIS 103
Threats to Protestantism

Elites abandoned orthodox Christianity
 Most Founding Fathers were Enlightenment Deists
• Believed in creator God
• Rejected divinity of Jesus & miracles
• Believed man’s reason could figure everything out

Unitarians split Congregational establishment in New
England
• Took control of Harvard & wealthiest urban churches
• Est. American Unitarian Association in 1826
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Catholic & Lutheran immigrants practiced different forms
of Christianity
Transcendentalism emphasized individualism &
emotion/intuition over reason
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau (Walden, Civil Disobedience)
Colonial Protestant
Establishment Unable to Meet
Changing Conditions

Insistence on educated clergy worked against needs of the
frontier communities
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Clergy tended to have middle-class disdain for uncouth frontier life
Calvinist theology too complex & restrictive for uneducated poor
people
Disestablishment & 1st Amendment created competition
among denominations
Only by using non-seminary-trained ministers could
demand be supplied
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1775: 1,800 ministers (1:1,500)
1845: 40,000 ministers (1:500)
Revivalists used democratic rhetoric to attack “aristocratic”
religious elites
Second Great Awakening:
Methodists

Methodism came over to America after
successfully transforming Great Britain in the
late 1700s
 John & Charles Wesley began reform
movement within the Anglican Church –
later became Methodist Episcopal Church
 Francis Asbury was 1st Methodist Bishop
in the U.S.
 Peter Cartwright was leading circuit rider
 preached salvation as a free gift to all
 Set up Sunday Schools & bible studies
John Wesley
Francis Asbury
The Spread of Methodism
Methodist Camp Meeting
Second Great Awakening:
Baptists

Baptists also spread rapidly
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Both groups used popular mass culture
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Rejected Calvinist roots
John Leland combined Jeffersonian
democracy with Christian morality
Took advantage of cheap printing to
produce Bibles, tracts, Sunday School
curricula, etc.
Took popular songs and wrote new lyrics
Created interdenominational
organizations:
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American Bible Society
American Sunday School Union
American Tract Society
Leland Cheese Monument
Cheshire, Mass.
Challenging Race & Gender
Conventions

Initially preached racial & gender
equality

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Richard Allen
Mother Bethel AME Church

Women & blacks allowed to preach
Later backed off due to concern for
respectability
Richard Allen founded Bethel
African Methodist Episcopal
Church (A.M.E.) after whites tried
to segregate St. George’s Methodist
Church in Philadelphia
Revival Preaching
Congregationalists &
Presbyterians

Charles G. Finney
Presbyterians &
Congregationalists adopted
methods by 1830s-40s, bringing
revival to Northeast
 Lyman Beecher traveled
around preaching conversion
 Charles G. Finney developed
system for revival, deliberately
playing on emotions
 Converted 100,000 people in
Rochester, NY in 1839
Come-Outer Sects:
Mormons

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
(Mormons)
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Joseph Smith, Jr. saw angel Moroni & found
in gold tablets in 1823
Book of Mormon published in 1830
Established utopian communities:
Joseph Smith, Jr.
• Kirtland, OH 1831-38
• Nauvoo, IL 1839-45

Hierarchical, male-dominated church
• Polygamy encouraged

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Smith killed by mob in Nauvoo, Illinois in 1844
Brigham Young led migration to Deseret
(Utah) in 1846-48
Brigham Young
Hill Cumorah, Palmyra, NY
Reconstructed Temple
Nauvoo, Illinois
Mormon Temple
Salt Lake City, Utah
Come-Outer Sects:
Shakers

United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second
Appearing (Shakers) started in England in 1747
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Mother Ann Lee Stanley claimed to be 2nd, female
incarnation of Jesus Christ
Came to America with 8 disciples in 1774
Established 19 communities between 1783-1836
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4,000 – 5,000 members at peak
Lived communally & practiced celibacy
Danced & experienced ecstasies in worship
Embraced modern technology
Shaker Dance
Round Barn (1826)
Hancock Shaker Village
Mill Powered by Water Turbine
Hancock Shaker Village
Weave Shop
Hancock Shaker Village
Elders’ Bedroom
Hancock Shaker Village
Oneida Community
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Oneida Community founded
by John Humphrey Noyes in
1848
Noyes had been converted by
Finney, but became an
antinomian
“Complex marriage” came to
be eugenic breeding program
Noyes fled to Canada in 1879
to avoid adultery charge
Community became a jointstock company in 1881
John Humphrey Noyes
Oneida Community Mansion
Antebellum Reform Movements:
Abolition

American Colonization Society (1817)
favored gradual, compensated
manumission & “returning” freed blacks
to Africa
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Liberia founded in 1821
6,000 immigrants, 1817-67
William Lloyd Garrison
American Antislavery Society (1833)
demanded immediate, uncompensated
emancipation & black citizenship
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William Lloyd Garrison began publishing
The Liberator in 1831
Frederick Douglass was escaped slave
who became eloquent spokesman
Frederick Douglass
Antebellum Reform Movements:
Temperance

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Temperance movement combated
widespread evils of alcholism
American Temperance Society &
Washington Temperance Society led
voluntary individual reform efforts
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Parades featured water wagons
Teetotalers pledged total abstinence
Per capita consumption drastically reduced
by 1850
Neal Dow got 13 states to pass “Maine
laws,” 1851-55
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Prohibited manufacture & sale of
intoxicating liquor
Did not apply to beer, wine or cider
Antebellum Reform Movements:
Women’s Rights
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Women’s Rights movement
grew out of other reform
movements
Many, like Susan B. Anthony,
were Quakers
Elizabeth Cady Stanton began
as temperance advocate &
abolitionist
Seneca Falls Convention (1848)
issued Women’s Declaration of
Independence
Antebellum Reform Movements:
Penitentiaries & Asylums
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Criminals, poor, etc. seen as result of
societal failure
Penitentiaries designed to remove
criminals from corrupting influences &
provide discipline through labor
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Dorothea Dix

Auburn (1819-23)
Ossining (1825)
Asylums isolated patients from outside
influences in order to cure them
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Mental illness viewed as result of stress
Asylums were utopias