The 2nd Great Awakening, which was a period of spirituality coming back into people's lives, stemmed from people's new perspectives of religion. James Finley, although a leading religious figure, struggled with his personal Presbyterian faith. Around the same time, people moved out west in search for a better life, but many felt a sense of isolation and danger, which made them want spiritual direction due to the lack of churches on the frontier. People were putting less emphasis on spirituality and dedicated less time praying and going to church. Several religious leaders saw this new attitude as a "moral danger for [America], an infant nation." Due to their strong religious beliefs, preachers decided to establish revival meetings along the western frontier in order to allow traveling people who were immigrating to the West to listen to their powerful sermons revolving around the idea of how essential it was for people to return to their previous way of heavily devoting to their religious practices. Unlike the angry-toned sermons these people listened to in the past, these sermons that they heard during the 2nd Great Awakening convinced more people to believe in the positive aspects and qualities of God. As a result of this, people started apologizing to God for not caring as much about their religion as they should have been, and this leads to the Protestant religion becoming a more central aspect of America's society.
However, the nation's new focus on religion brought along several conflicts. When immigrants from Europe, especially the Catholic Irish, this led to religious tension due to the contrasting beliefs of the Catholics and the Protestants, which was the primary religion most Americans followed. For example, the Protestants instilled their religious beliefs in students in a forceful way. This made John Hughes, a Catholic bishop, nervous about the fact that he would lose members of Catholicism, so in order to retain as many Catholics as he could, he started to raise money to establish Catholic school system as a way of challenging religious control, but failed due to the idea's expensive costs.
Good summary! You accurately touched on the causes and conflicts of the 2nd Great Awakening, and I would like to add that a further conflict that was generated was the reform movements that stemmed from the awakening. Examples include temperance, women's rights, and abolition, and these reform movements caused controversy among many people in America. I find the controversy of temperance to be particularly interesting especially when considering that the Main Law of 1851 was passed but was also openly flouted.
ReplyDeleteThis is great in explaining the 2nd Great Awakening. I really like how you explained the conflicts that came along with it such as the education that children were receiving. It was interesting to learn from this that John Hughes failed at establishing a new school system because of money.
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