Christianity Spreads

2nd Great Awakening

By Everett Williams

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The 2nd Great Awakening (1790s- Early 1800s)

• Charles Finney conducted his own revivals in the mid 1820s and early 1830s

• He rejected the Calvinist doctrine of predestination 

  • adopted ideas of free will and salvation to all

• Really popularized the new form of revival

Charles Finney

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Charles Finney and the Conversion Experience

• New form of revival

  • Meeting night after night to build excitement

  • Praying for sinners by name

  • Encouraging women to testify in public

  • Placing those struggling with conversion on the “anxious bench” at the front of the church 

Multiple Choice

Which of these did NOT occur at these revivals?

• Meet night after night

• Made nervous believers sit on the front bench

• Encouraged women to confess

• Required people to pay the church in money

Second Great Awakening 

• As a result of the Second Great Awakening (a series of revivals in the 1790s-early 1800s), the dominant form of Christianity in America became evangelical Protestantism

  • Membership in the major Protestant churches—Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist—soared

  • By 1840 an estimated half of the adult population was connected to some church, with the Methodists emerging as the largest denomination in both the North and the South

Multiple Choice

Which became the dominant form of Christianity because of the revivals?

• Puritanism

• Evangelical Protestantism

• Catholicism

• Judaism

Revivalism and the Social Order

• Society during this expansion era was undergoing deep and rapid change

  • The revolution in markets brought both economic expansion and periodic depressions. 

• To combat this uncertainty reformers sought stability and order in religion

  • Religion provided a means of social control in a disordered society

  • Churchgoers embraced the values of hard work, punctuality, and sobriety

  • Revivals brought unity and strength          and a sense of peace

Multiple Choice

True/False: Because of the revivals brought a sense of unity, strength, and a sense of peace.

• True

• False

Burned Over District

• Burned over district in Western NY got its name from a “wild fire of new religions”

  • Gave birth to Seventh Day Adventists

    • The Millerites believed the 2nd coming of Christ would occur on October 22, 1843

    • Members sold belongings, bought white robes for the ascension into heaven

    • Believers formed new church on October 23rd 

• Like 1st, 2nd Awakening widened gaps between classes and religions

Open Ended

Explain what the "Burned Over District" mean.

• Revivalism also spread to the African American community

• The Second Great Awakening has been called the "central and defining event in the development of Afro-Christianity“

• During these revivals Baptists and Methodists converted large numbers of blacks ​

The Rise of African American Churches

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• This led to the formation of all-black Methodist and Baptist churches, primarily in the North

• African Methodist Episcopal (A. M. E.) had over 17,000 members by 1846

Open Ended

Explain in a few sentences: How would the rise of Christian values challenge the issue of slavery?