Second Great Awakening Part One

The Atlantic Seaboard

Population Growth in Early National America

Atlantic Seaboard

WesternFrontier

Total Population

% Frontier

1790 3.82 million 109,000 3.93 million 3%

1800 4.92 million 386,000 5.31 million 7%

1810 6.16 million 1.08 million 7.24 million 15%

1820 7.43 million 2.21 million 9.64 million 23%

1830 9.20 million 3.67 million 12.87 million 29%

The Democratization of American Christianity

First Amendment (1791)

A crisis of authority in popular culture

Awakening as social control?

Voluntaryism = religious association should be by mutual consent

Outgrowths: revivalism, religious innovation, social reform

Elias Smith (1769-1846) co-founded the Christian Connexion

Source

: ww

w.w

ikip

edia

.com

The “New Divinity” Movement

Origins of the Movement

Aim = preserve the essence of Calvinism andthe revival tradition

The Movement’s social character

New Divinity and the American Revolution

The post-Revolutionary spread of the Movement

Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) was the principal architect of the “New Divinity”

Source

: ww

w.w

ikip

edia

.com

Theological Worldview of the New Divinity

Doctrines of free will and original sin

Rejection of the Halfway Covenant

Atonement theology

“Disinterested benevolence”

Outgrowths of the New Divinity Movement

Frontspiece of Jonathan Edwards, Jr’s (1745-1801) anti-slavery treatise (1791)

Source

: ww

w.re

isenfe

ld ce

nte

r.org

Methodism in Early National America

Early lay leadership (1760s)

Wesley’s “missionaries” in North America

Impact of the American Revolution

The Christmas Conference (1784)

German-speaking “Methodists”

Early schism: The “Republican Methodists”

Francis Asbury (1745-1816) was among the first of Wesley’s

missionaries to arrive in North America

Source

: ww

w.u

mc.o

rg

African American Methodism (Philadelphia)

Richard Allen (1760-1831) led in the formation of the African

Methodist Episcopal Church (1794)

Source

: ww

w.u

mc.o

rg

The Free African Society (1787)

St. George’s Methodist Episcopal Church (1769)

Bethel African Methodist

Episcopal Church

Becomes the AME Church

(1816)

St. Thomas African Episcopal

Church

1794

African American Methodism (New York)

Source

: ww

w.d

ocso

uth

.unc.e

du

James Varick (1750-1827) established the Zion Church the first

congregation of the AME Zion

John’s Street Methodist Episcopal Church (1766)

Zion Church

Merged with others to form the African Methodist Episcopal Zion

Church (1821)

1796