Second Great Awakening
Revivalism
You previously learned about the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s with its elements of reactions against the Enlightenment and an emphasis on more personal connections with God and greater outwards displays of emotion and spirituality. In the first half of the 19th century, particularly from the 1820s through the 1840s, a Second Great Awakening rapidly spread through the burned over district of upstate New York, so called because the region witnessed such repeated religious fervor that it seemed “burned over” with spirituality and passion, and to other areas of the country, reshaping and transforming existing religious denominations, including through a renewed emphasis on revivalism, and introducing new religious denominations, the most influential ultimately being the Latter Day Saints (LDS), commonly known as the Mormons.
Key developments within the Second Great Awakening were greater emphases on being “born again” as well as on millenarianism, or postmillennialism, a belief that the millennium was fast approaching after a period of sustained societal and moral decay. William Miller and particularly Charles Grandison Finney were two of the most significant postmillennial revival preachers of the Second Great Awakening, converting and/or restoring the faith of thousands of people to evangelical postmillennial Christianity. The revivals themselves often lasted for several days or even weeks.
Charles Grandison Finney, Lectures on Revival of Religion,
Latter Day Saints
The most significant new Christian denomination to develop and grow during the Second Great Awakening, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, began in the “burned over district” of New York but would move to Ohio, Missouri and Illinois before settling primarily in the Utah Territory. In 1830, Joseph Smith published the Book of Mormon which he described as an English language translation of ancient Biblical texts inscribed on golden plates that had been revealed to him during the previous decade. Over the next 10 years, Smith and his followers would seek to establish their own version of Zion in Missouri, but after a series of increasingly hostile confrontations over polygamy as well as real estate and banking disputes with non-Mormons in Missouri, the state government of Missouri ordered the expulsion of the Mormons. After establishing a presence in Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith and the Mormons faced increasing opposition, particularly over polygamy. In the summer of 1844, with Smith, who had recently launched an independent presidential bid, his brother, and several other Mormon leaders staying in the Nauvoo jail, angry locals stormed the jail and killed Joseph Smith, his brother and other Mormon leaders. Before Joseph Smith’s murder, the Mormons had already experienced an important splinter with other prominent Mormon leaders forming a rival Mormon church.
Over the next 3 years, the fate of the Mormons remained unclear. In 1847, Brigham Young, an early convert to Mormonism, led approximately 150 Mormons into what is now Utah, then still officially part of Mexico. In less than a year, though, after military defeat, Mexico ceded hundreds of thousands of square miles of its northern territory, including all of the modern state of Utah, to the United States. While still deeply suspicious of the United States government, in 1849, Brigham Young petitioned Congress for statehood for “Deseret”, modern Utah and large areas of surrounding territories such as Arizona, Colorado and Nevada; in 1850, President Millard Fillmore, while rejecting the proposed state of “Deseret”, appointed Brigham Young governor of the Utah Territory, officially recognizing Young’s de facto governing status. Utah would eventually be admitted as the 45th state in 1896, after a series of armed clashes with the native **Ute **people as well as the American military in the 1850s and multiple clashes over “plural marriage,” the Mormon term for polygamy.