Unit 4.10 - The Second Great Awakening

key terms/events and significance

Causes of Religious Reform (SOC)

• Growing emphasis on democracy / politics & arts affected how people view religion / worshipers attracted to less formal services

• Rational approach to religion prompted more emotional expressions of beliefs in worship services

• Market revolution → fear that industrialization & commercialization increased greed & sin

• Disruptions by market revolution & people’s mobility → people look for worship settings outside formal churches

The Second Great Awakening (SOC)

• Began among highly educated people → Timothy Dwight motivated a generation of young men to become evangelical preachers / successful preachers: audience-centered + understood well by the uneducated → spoke about opportunity for salvation attuned with Democratic American society → establishment of new religious organization

• Charles Grandison Finney started revivals by appealing to emotion + fear of damnation → revived faith declaration

Baptists & Methodists (SOC)

• Circuit preachers travel from a location to another & delivered dramatic preaching outdoor/camp meetings

• Activated faith to many who had never belonged to a church

• Became the largest denomination in the country by 1850

Church of Latter-day Saints (SOC)

• Energizing existing denominations to foster the growth of new ones

• Formerly Mormon Church / founded by Joseph Smith in 1830 in New York / based belief on Scripture—The Book of Mormon → faced persecutions & had to move around / Smith shot a mob

• Brigham Young led members to western frontier to settle / New Zion

• Faced opposition because of polygamy → prohibited it in 1890