8.1 Religion Sparks Reform Objectives: To describe the new religious movements that swept through the United States after 1790. To describe a new philosophy that offered an alternative to traditional religion To explain the reforms demanded in education, mental hospitals and prisons To characterize the nature of the utopian communities

What was the Impact??? African Americans Rejected: Predetermination of Calvinists and Puritans Embraced: Democratic and Individualistic Ideals of the Revolution. Unitarians Thoughts that conversion was gradual Relied more on reason and morality Wealthy African Americans Many joined churches, became social, cultural and political centers Why were African Americans excited by this idea of salvation?

Second Great Awakening Revivals were the site of impassioned preaching, usually in tents or halls, to awaken faith and spark conversion.

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Transcendentalists (1830’s) Philosophical and literary movement Individualism, Self-reliance, Self-Discipline Ralph Waldo Emerson, essayist  Henry David Thoreau Walden Civil Disobedience  “Trust Thyself.” - R.W.E. “I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that is one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours….If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” - H.D.T.

School and Prison Reform Jacksonian Democracy expansion of public schooling Why??  Dorothea Dix – Reforms prisons & asylums Reformed care of mentally ill in South 1845-1852 Alexis De Tocqueville -1831, criticizes U.S. prisons, spurs reforms. Reform, not Punish. Horace Mann – “If we do not prepare children to become good citizens,…if we do not enrich their minds with knowledge, then our republic must go down to destruction, as others have gone before it.”

Utopian Communities, 1800-1845 Utopian Community – experimental groups that lived together to create a “utopia” or perfect place. Brook Farm – Founded 1841 Destroyed by fire in 1845.

TERMS TERMS OBJECTIVES Charles G. Finney Second Great Awakening Revival Ralph Waldo Emerson Transcendentalism Henry David Thoreau Dorothea Dix To describe the new religious movements that swept through the United States after 1790. To describe a new philosophy that offered an alternative to traditional religion To explain the reforms demanded in education, mental hospitals and prisons To characterize the nature of the utopian communities