Set 1--Religion and the Second Great Awakening

Deism

A religious philosophy influenced by the Enlightenment that holds that a Supreme Being created the universe and its natural laws, which humans can understand through reason and observation. Deists generally rejected the idea that religious authority alone should determine truth.

Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason

A work published beginning in 1794 that criticized organized religion and the authority of the Bible, promoting religious skepticism and ideas associated with Deism.

Modern Protestant denominations

Religious groups that grew or developed new influence during the early nineteenth century, including Methodists, Baptists, and Unitarians. They differed in theology but contributed to the changing religious landscape of the United States.

Methodists

Protestants who emphasized personal conversion, emotional religious experiences, moral improvement, and spreading Christianity through traveling preachers. They gained many followers during the Second Great Awakening.

Baptists

Protestants who emphasized personal conversion, baptism following a profession of faith, and the independence of local congregations. They became especially influential in frontier and Southern communities.

Unitarians

Christians who rejected the traditional doctrine of the Trinity and emphasized God's unity, human reason, and moral responsibility.

Second Great Awakening

A major Protestant revival movement that spread through the United States from the late eighteenth into the nineteenth century. It emphasized personal conversion, salvation, and moral improvement and helped inspire reform movements such as abolitionism and temperance.

Why did the Second Great Awakening spread?

Westward expansion created new communities needing religious institutions; camp meetings attracted large crowds; traveling preachers reached rural settlements; and religious revivalism appealed to Americans who valued individual choice and moral improvement.

Camp meetings

Large outdoor religious gatherings featuring preaching, prayer, singing, and emotional expressions of faith. They helped spread evangelical Christianity, especially in frontier communities.

Peter Cartwright

A Methodist frontier preacher who traveled through western settlements, held revivals, called on sinners to repent, and helped spread Methodism among ordinary Americans.

Charles Grandison Finney

An influential revival preacher who led major revivals in Rochester and New York City around 1830–1831. He emphasized personal conversion and moral reform and opposed slavery and alcohol.

Feminization of religion

The growing prominence of women in church membership, revivalism, and religious reform during the early nineteenth century. Women's moral influence was encouraged even while their formal political rights remained limited.

Burned-Over District

A region of western New York known for repeated religious revivals and the emergence of new religious movements during the early nineteenth century.

Millerism

A religious movement associated with William Miller, who predicted Christ's return around 1843–1844. His followers expected the Second Coming on October 22, 1844.

Great Disappointment

The failure of the expected Second Coming on October 22, 1844, which disappointed Miller's followers. Some later developed or influenced Adventist movements.

How did the Second Great Awakening contribute to reform?

It encouraged the belief that individuals could improve themselves and society. Evangelicals organized campaigns addressing alcohol, slavery, education, prisons, and other perceived moral problems.

How did religion divide the North and South?

Many Northern evangelicals increasingly opposed slavery, while many Southern religious leaders defended it. Disputes over slavery contributed to divisions within Protestant denominations, including major Methodist and Baptist splits in the 1840s.

Mormonism and Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith founded the Latter-day Saint movement after reporting that an angel directed him to golden plates, which he translated into the Book of Mormon. His movement faced opposition and he was killed by a mob in Illinois in 1844.

Brigham Young

Leader who succeeded Joseph Smith as the principal leader of the main Mormon group and led its migration to the Great Salt Lake Valley beginning in 1846–1847.

Mormon migration and Utah

Mormon migration created a strong religious community in Utah. Conflicts with federal authorities involved political control and religious practices, including polygamy; Utah eventually became a state in 1896.