CAUSES of the SECOND Great Awakening [APUSH Review]

The Second Great Awakening

The video explains how the Second Great Awakening emerged in the United States around 1790–1840 and how it differed from the First Great Awakening.

Similarities and differences between the awakenings

• Both were widespread religious movements that gave Americans across regions a shared religious experience and vocabulary.
• Both helped create new Christian denominations and expand existing ones.
• The First Great Awakening was strongly influenced by Calvinism. Preachers such as Jonathan Edwards emphasized human sinfulness, conversion, and predestination—the belief that God had already determined who would be saved.
• The Second Great Awakening emphasized people’s capacity to choose a moral, Christian life and the possibility of salvation for all. It connected personal religious conversion to efforts to improve society.
• Many revivalists believed Christians could help bring about a more perfect, godly society. This belief encouraged the growth of voluntary organizations and reform efforts.

Causes of the Second Great Awakening

1. Expansion of democracy

   • More white men gained the right to vote, reflecting a broader belief that ordinary people should participate in public life.
   • The movement’s message that salvation was available to everyone echoed this more democratic outlook.
   • Frontier and rural revivals often took the form of camp meetings: large gatherings featuring sermons, singing, and prayer.
   • These meetings drew diverse audiences, including white and Black people—enslaved and free—as well as women. In some instances, Black and women preachers led services and attracted followers.
   • Baptist and Methodist churches grew quickly, in part because they welcomed a wider range of people. Methodist circuit riders traveled from place to place seeking converts.

2. Rise of individualistic beliefs

   • Individualism—the idea that the individual was society’s basic unit—became more influential.
   • The video connects this outlook to Transcendentalism, which encouraged people to find their own paths rather than simply submit to society’s rules and customs.
   • Revival preachers used the language of individual choice to urge people to undergo personal conversion and then use that commitment to reform society.

3. Reaction against rationalism

   • During the nation’s founding period, Enlightenment rationalism and less emotional religious beliefs gained influence.
   • Thomas Paine argued in The Age of Reason that religion and churches could restrict liberty and enforce conformity.
   • Some founders embraced deism, which viewed God as creating the universe and setting its laws but not intervening afterward. Deists therefore rejected biblical miracles.
   • Second Great Awakening preachers countered this intellectual, less emotional approach with passionate sermons influenced by the era’s broader Romantic emphasis on emotion.

Preachers and effects

• Peter Cartwright, a Methodist circuit rider, preached across the frontier, reportedly traveling around 300,000 miles over his life. His lack of formal education illustrated the movement’s more accessible, democratic character.
• Charles Grandison Finney drew large urban audiences, especially in Rochester, New York. He used emotional appeals and plain language, and urged Christians to address social problems such as drunkenness and slavery.
• The Burned-Over District of western New York gained its name because revivalists had converted so many people that the area seemed to have few people left to convert.
• The movement helped establish a foundation for later social reform efforts.

Speakers and sources

• Speaker: Heimler, the video’s narrator.
• Historical figures and sources discussed: Jonathan Edwards; George Whitefield; Thomas Paine and his book The Age of Reason; Peter Cartwright; Charles Grandison Finney.
• Other ideas and movements referenced: Calvinism, predestination, deism, Enlightenment rationalism, Romanticism, and Transcendentalism.