Bell Work 11-2-15 Complete your weekly calendars.

Unit 4 The Ante Bellum Period Part 11 The Second Great Awakening

1786 – The Statute for Religious Freedom in Virginia, which declared that there was no official state-sponsored church, became a model for other states & was incorporated into the 1st Amendment to the U.S. constitution. The existence of multiple denominations, chiefly Congregationalists, Episcopalians, & Quakers, also made establishing a state church impractical. Despite the supposed separation of Church & State, religion & politics have regularly mixed in the U.S.

Discuss with team for 1 minute. Table Brainstorm Where have you seen examples of religion influencing politics or the government currently? Discuss with team for 1 minute.

Beginning in the 1790’s, a resurgence of evangelical ideals spread by revivals gave a spiritual aspect to republican ideals, especially for women & blacks. New radical churches began teaching absolute spiritual equality as well as democratic ideals of absolute political equality. This movement was the Second Great Awakening.

The 2nd Great Awakening was led by the rapid growth of Baptist & evangelical Methodist congregations, especially in the South & West, & pastors of these churches became national spiritual leaders African-Americans & poor whites embraced the 2nd Great Awakening for its doctrine of absolute freedom & equality.

The Second Great Awakening not only led to the growth of Baptists & Methodists, which had already existed, but also led to the creation of radical religious sects. Many of these groups either chose to live apart from mainstream society in communes, or were forcibly segregated as a result of persecution. The Shakers, a religious group founded by Ann Lee, established communes in Massachusetts & New York before expanding west.

Joseph Smith formed the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormons, based on a revelation he claimed to have had. The Mormon church grew rapidly but were continually forced west in the face of persecution. Smith was murdered in Illinois & leadership of the Mormon church fell to Brigham Young, who moved the group to Utah.

The Unitarian Church formed & was based on the belief that God is a single entity, as opposed to the concept of trinitarianism. The Universalist Church was established based on the ideal that all people are saved, which denies the concept of Original Sin. Eventually, the Unitarian & Universalist churches merged into a single organization.

John Humphrey Noyes established the Oneida community in New York. The Oneida community was a commune based on the concept of perfectionism, gender equality & the ideal of complex marriage; that is, marriage where all members of the community are married to every other member of the community. Members also believed in the communal sharing of all property. These new denominations presented a significant challenge to traditional social & family values.

The 2nd Great Awakening led to multiple social reform movements based on evangelical ideals & the belief that religious discipline should be the primary influence in American society & culture. These social reform movements, as well as the radical new religious movements, were rooted mostly in northern urban areas & new settlements in the Midwest.

Charles Grandison Finney was a major figure of the Second Great Awakening. In addition to preaching the need of a personal relationship w/ Christ, he appealed to the middle & upper classes to form charities & missions for the poor in urban centers.

Lyman Beecher formed a society to protest the decline of the Sabbath, which he believed was leading to social ills. He demanded that the government ban all activities outside of church events on Sundays, which led to many local governments passing Blue Laws which forced businesses to close on Sunday as well as banned most non-church related activities.

The Evangelical Protestantism of the 2nd Great Awakening merged w/ capitalist economic ideals as well as republican political ideals to form a distinct American social, cultural, & religious identity.

Social Reform Movements (19th century) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t62fUZJvjOs