How Did The Second Great Awakening Influence American Society

The Great Awakening and Enlightenment were two very different cultural phenomena that happened during the 1700s but they both had a similar effect on colonial society. The Enlightenment was based on reason, science, rationality and progress. Benjamin Franklin, an Enlightenment thinker from Pennsylvania, believed that science could benefit society. Other Enlightenment thinkers had rational views of God and viewed him as a clockmaker that controlled the universe.

During the 1830s, an intellectual movement took place called Transcendentalism. Transcendentalism is the idea that an individual is the center of the universe and is more powerful than any institution. This way of thinking was very new to the people during that time. Even though the movement took place well over one hundred years ago, traits of Transcendentalism are still abundant in society today. For example, the movie Wall-E contains many traits of Transcendentalism.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”- Henry David Thoreau. Transcendentalism is an American philosophy that revolves around self-reliance and independence, commonly in nature, a Transcendentalist wants to find the true meaning in life. I believe that Chris McCandless was a Transcendentalist because he was able to leave his whole life behind and take on a minimalist lifestyle while having a strong relationship with god. However, I believe that I am not a Transcendentalist, but simply an adventurer.

The First Great Awakening was brought over to America from Europe in the early 1700’s, which brought Pietism, Enlightenment and Protestant faith. The Protestant faith was established in the United States during the colonial era with the first Great Awakening and grew after the War of 1812. Men were mostly of the hierarchy till the roles of the women transitioned through the war. A while later, the Second Great Awakening increased the churches to a lucrative Christian society in which preached spiritual equality and could democratically govern themselves within a hierarchy (Henretta). During the Second Great Awakening there was a substantial amount of importance for religious women in the church as they searched for a social, political and cultural

The second great awakening had a huge impact on the growing opposition to slavery in 1776 to 1852. The second great awakening was a religious revivalism that protected church morals and promoted abolition. During the second great awakening many white americans

Transcendentalism is a highly competitive world of the market revolution which strongly encouraged the identification of American freedom without any restraints on people who were seeking financial improvement and personal development. It was a world in which regional developments along with the market revolution crushed traditional and social borders. For example moving from one place to another was a common characteristic of the American life. Transcendentalism believed in individual judgment over existing social traditions and institutions.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, American society began to focus on the welfare of minority groups. Women’s suffrage and abolition were rooted as deeply as the history of America, but asylum and prison reform sprouted with the Second Great Awakening, a movement that occurred in the early 1800s. The Second Great Awakening was led by religious leaders who advocated for changes in American society through the unity of the American people (Doc. Due to the Second Great Awakening, reform movements were established between 1825 and 1850 in order to represent the changes the people sought for in the issues of slavery, suffrage, and asylum and prison reform. The social aspect of the abolition movement led to the visible democratic changes in society and politics.

According to definition, reinvention is to invent again, remodel, or revive something that already exists. Between the 16th and 19th centuries Americans has embraced the idea of reinvention through their determination to change the religion and government of their time. Since the development of the American Colonies, Americans, or in this case colonist, embraced the character of reinvention and applied it to religion. They took the ideas from Martin Luther’s 1517

1. Boston Massacre a. The Boston Massacre took place on March 5, 1770 in Boston. The Boston Massacre became a historical event because it was the start of a revolution. It all began when the British soldiers came into Boston and fired shots at the colonists for making a crowd and going against the soldiers.

By the Second Great Awakening, the concerns for slavery had increased, which led to the Civil War that ended it. There were a lot of bars, brothels, and jails closed down because they were not needed anymore. The religious movement had a great toll on people and now everyone could be saved and it didn't matter who you were. There was more concern for the poor, handicapped and the mentally ill because they believe everyone perfect or fit to be a human and should be treated like one. There were also more regards to women's rights and participations to more events that would later

The Second Great Awakening’s Impact on Abolitionism in the North The Second Great Awakening during the late 18th and 19th centuries sparked many reform movements in the United States. The new enlightenment age fostered scientific thought that often challenged traditional Christian practices. Principles of “Deism” and “Unitarianism” were religious philosophies that focused on free will, reason, and science.

The Great Awakening strived to erase the lines between religions by promoting religious pluralism and the concept that all faiths were equal. Primarily, the separation of Church and State was finally in place, which showed the opposition to allowing religion facilitate the decisions of their nation. The Awakening weakened the cultural authority of the upper class and produced a vision of a society drawn in more equal lines. Overall, the thought of finally being equal unified the colonies and created universities that were not controlled by the Church. The new universities promoted different types of curriculum which was not based on religion.

The great awakening and the enlightenment are similar in many ways but different in others. One way they are both similar is that they both defy traditional authority. Another way is that it taught them to seek truths for themselves. This shaped their beliefs. However they still had many differences.

The Great Awakening unified the diverse colonies with the belief that colonists must shift their lives’ focus from worldly matters, such as accumulating land and wealth, back to faith and the church i n order to avoid condemnation by God. Ministers, such as the passionate George Whitefield, became very influential and powerful at the time by spreading this concept along with methods for earning salvation. For example, “at Philadelphia…, many thousands flock[ed] to hear him preach the Gospel, and great numbers were converted to Christ” (VOF 78). With a large following, Whitefield’s ideas “... encouraged many colonists to trust their own views rather than those of established elites” (GME 160).

Cause and Effect Essay Although the Second Great Awakening was immediately caused by heightened religious fervor, and although it left the country with many Christian denominations, the acts of leaders such as Charles Finney had more influential causes, and reform movements had more powerful effects on the United States. The first spark of the Second Great Awakening was lit when President Thomas Jefferson, in the early 1800s, acknowledged the “wall of separation between church and state,” the budding republican ideal that politics and religion should not interlock. By coining this phrase, Jefferson was ridding the country of state-controlled established churches that expected loyalty from all citizens, thus paving the way for religious freedom. Also, Jefferson identified as a deist, which was a recent and nontraditional religious orientation that rejected divine revelation and focused on nature to reveal God’s scheme for the universe.