- The Second Great Awakening was one of the most
important social, religious, and cultural
aspects of the early 19th century in the United States.
In fact, I might even make the argument that
it's impossible to understand the early 19th century
without understanding The Second Great Awakening
because as you can see here,
it's kind of connected with everything,
so what was The Second Great Awakening
and why was it such a big deal?
The Second Great Awakening was a period of religious revival
in the United States
where church membership really soared.
A lot of people had conversion experiences,
meaning that they had a moment where they
came to understand their personal relationship with God
and want to change their ways to become a more
religious individual and give up their ways as sinners.
So church membership really soared
and lots of new people joined churches, particularly women.
Now, you'll note that this is called
The Second Great Awakening because there was,
in fact, a First Great Awakening,
which happened in the 1730s, 1740s
and that was the era of Jonathan Edwards
and sinners in the hands of an angry God.
It was very localized in New England
and specifically, with Calvinism
or Puritan religious awakenings,
so that was a separate event
that happened about 100 years before
and The Second Great Awakening,
as I have drawn here, generally,
historians say it lasted from about 1790 to 1850,
but I would say that the real heyday
of The Second Great Awakening would be
from about 1820 to 1840.
Those are hazy dates, but that's kind of
the hot period of The Second Great Awakening.
In this series of videos, I wanna explore
some of the aspects that led to The Second Great Awakening,
particularly the market revolution
and a bunch of other social, political, cultural,
and even religious changes that were happening beforehand
and then also explore some of the
consequences of The Second Great Awakening.
What parts of early 19th century American culture
are really tied up with this wave in religiosity?
So what was The Second Great Awakening like?
Well, here's a painting of what I would call
kind of the central aspect of The Second Great Awakening,
which were camp meetings.
So unlike The First Great Awakening,
which was definitely a New England thing,
The Second Great Awakening took place
largely more on the Western part of the United States.
Now, when we're talking about Western part,
we're talking about Western part circa 1820,
which is gonna be Western New York,
Kentucky, around Appalachia.
These were places that didn't have
the kind of strong established church religion
that you might have found in a place like Massachusetts
and so preachers would set up camp meetings.
They'd have a big stage.
People would come in tents
and they would listen to these preachers
and these preachers would attempt to convert
the audiences to a more active
and particularly, evangelical form of Christianity.
Evangelical Christianity comes from this word,
evangelical, evangelist,
like the four evangelists of the Bible,
who were the men who wrote the gospels
and the idea of evangelical Christianity
was a real strong attachment to the Bible
and an attempt to make kind of heaven on Earth,
so to make the world below
the same as heaven above.
So they're kind of trying to bring about
a terrestrial paradise, if you will
and many of the religious movements that come out of this
are particularly concerned with
what we would call, really, the apocalypse
or in more contemporary terms,
sort of millennialism or millenarianism.
I know this is a big word, but more or less,
the idea that they want Jesus Christ
to return to Earth and rule for 1,000 years
over a perfect earthly paradise.
Now, when you and I think of the apocalypse,
we usually think that's a bad thing,
but most evangelical Christians in this time period
really wanted the apocalypse to happen
because it meant that heaven would happen on Earth.
Now, these camp meetings were really interesting.
You know, they're happening kind of out on the frontier,
so it's kinda the coolest show in town,
to go see this itinerant preacher.
They're often called circuit riders,
so that is a preacher who literally rides around on a horse
because he does not have an
established congregation of his own,
so he goes from town to town, setting up meetings,
preaching, and hopefully converting people
to evangelical Christianity,
but the camp meetings of The Second Great Awakening
were characterized by a really
emotional response from individuals.
People who were having conversion experiences
and you can see it here in this painting.
They would kinda go into fits.
They might fall over and shake or bark like a dog
because they had been so overcome
by this religious spirit.
So you can imagine how camp meetings like this,
as people heard about them,
would've really affected the general populous.
If you heard about a story where your friend
went off to this camp meeting and they had
this incredible conversion experience
where they realized how important it was
to give up sin and devote one's life to Christianity
and working to bring heaven on Earth,
you might go check it out yourself.
So two of the most famous preachers
of The Second Great Awakening were Lyman Beecher,
who was based out of Ohio later in his life,
and you might be familiar with this name, Beecher,
because Lyman Beecher was the father of
Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin.
One of Beecher's concerns was
just that society in general in the United States
was becoming more secular and taking a very
rational approach to religion,
as opposed to an emotional approach to religion.
He wanted people to feel religion very deeply.
He was kind of working toward a period of religious revival
and got one in The Second Great Awakening.
The other really famous preacher from this time period
was Charles Grandison Finney
and Finney traveled around
and drew just crowds in the thousands.
20,000, 30,000 people might gather to hear him preach
and you can notice here that I have
Finney and Beecher facing away from each other
'cause they didn't entirely get along.
One of the reasons they didn't get along
was because Finney approved of women preaching in public,
which was definitely a no-no for the time period.
So what was unique and new about the theology
of The Second Great Awakening?
Well, let me give myself a little bit more space here.
Well, I've already mentioned some things here.
One that, it's taking place out on the frontier
in huge ecstatic camp meetings
where people were behaving in a way
that would have been very strange in a Puritan church,
falling down, shaking, shouting aloud
and also that it was concerned with
this idea of millenarianism
or trying to create heaven on Earth
to bring about the rapture,
to bring about the return of Jesus Christ
to Earth for 1,000-year reign.
Also, that it served to inspire
many converts to be better people,
to do good on Earth,
to try to bring about this heaven on Earth.
Now, contrast this with some of the religious establishment
in the United States, specifically the Puritans.
Right, Puritans were Calvinists,
which meant that they followed the doctrine of John Calvin,
which meant that they believed in predestination.
Predestination is the idea that before you're born,
God already knows and has decided
whether or not you are saved, one of the elect
or whether you are damned and going to hell,
so there's really nothing you can do
because either you are one of these elect
or you're one of the damned,
so your personal actions make no difference
in whether or not you're going to get into heaven.
The Second Great Awakening really kinda rejects this notion.
You can see that in kinda two different ways.
One, they do think that it matters if you do good, right?
So your time on Earth is not just kind of
wading through a veil of tears,
waiting until you get to heaven or don't,
depending on what your status is,
so doing good works,
trying to improve the world around you
does make a difference in your salvation
and we'll see as this goes forward
how that really animates people toward
all kinds of social reforms in this time period.
The other thing this does is really democratizes religion.
Right, if the world isn't already separated
into the elect and the damned,
then anyone has a chance of salvation
and you see that in many aspects
of The Second Great Awakening.
They allow women to preach.
Women become really strong members,
influential members of these communities of faith.
They preach to whites, blacks,
free, and enslaved people alike,
so all races are eligible for salvation
and you also don't have to be a wealthy church father
to be influential in religion.
You know, people like Lyman Beecher and Charles Finney.
They weren't born wealthy.
They weren't born as the scions of,
say, the Mather family in Massachusetts,
which had been one of the most important
religious families in Massachusetts,
so The Second Great Awakening really attracted
lots of poor people, people on the frontier.
It wasn't a religion of the elite.
Now you don't have to be educated
at the seminaries of Harvard or Yale
to have a Christian conversion experience.
So this is the essence of The Second Great Awakening
and in the next video, I'll talk a little bit more
about the social forces that caused
The Second Great Awakening and the consequences
of its proliferation in early 19th century America.