In Part I, we noted the ebb tide of religious fervor and an increase in secularism and irreligion following the American Revolution, especially in the decade of 1790s. The Constitution creating the United States of America had just been ratified in 1787 and the Bill of Rights was added in 1791. Washington was President and there was an air of optimism regarding the nation’s future. But, at the same time morality at all levels of society was spiraling downward and threatened the survival of the young nation.

Following years of moral decline, the shameful debacle of the presidential campaign of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson illustrated the threat to the nation’s survival. Both candidates were vilified and slandered by their political opponents and operatives. Jefferson was accused of swindling clients as a young lawyer and charged with cowardice during his time as governor of Virginia. Pamphlets and newspapers called Jefferson a “…hopeless visionary, a weakling, an intriguer, intoxicated with French philosophy, more a Frenchman than an American…carried on with slave women…a howling atheist…” Adams was portrayed as being “…old, addled, and toothless…procuring mistresses… a vain Yankee scold, and, if truth be known, ‘quite mad’.” [McCullough, pp. 543-544.] Such was the political and immoral atmosphere that permeated the nation at the close of the century.

A society cannot avoid destruction if political ties are relaxed without a corresponding tightening of moral ties. [Tocqueville, p. 344.] The Political ties so painfully forged over a quarter century were in danger of permanently unraveling in the campaign wars of 1800 between the Federalist and anti-Federalist partisans. Destruction of the new nation was imminently possible without a corresponding tightening of moral ties. The republic had to be saved.

Thirty-one years following the end of the eighteenth century, a young Frenchman of the aristocracy traveled extensively in America and subsequently wrote of his impressions. Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America has been called one of the most influential political texts ever written about America.

Americans so completely identify the spirit of Christianity with freedom in their minds that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive the one without the other…

On my arrival in the United States, it was the religious atmosphere which first struck me. As I extended my stay, I could observe the political consequences which flowed from this novel situation.

In France I had seen the spirit of religion moving in the opposite direction to that of the spirit of freedom. In America, I found them intimately linked together in joint reign over the same land. [Tocqueville, pp. 343, 345.]

How do we reconcile these two disparate pictures of America? Here we have a nation sinking into immorality—a cesspool of secularism, irreligion, political expediency, and debauchery following the Revolutionary War through the end of the century. Thirty-one years later Tocqueville described America as having a highly religious atmosphere in which the spirit of religion and freedom are inextricably entwined. Something must have happened to dramatically alter the course of the nation. We call that happening the Second Great Awakening.

In 1791, through the Union of Prayer that was begun with the efforts of William Carey, Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliffe, and other church leaders, the Second Great Awakening began sweeping Great Britain. It was a New England Baptist pastor named Isaac Backus that played a pivotal role in igniting the Second Great Awakening in America. Backus was both a product of and participant in the Great Awakening led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Born in 1724, he began preaching in 1746, initially as a Congregationalist. Struggling with the issue of the incompatibility of infant baptism and salvation through grace, Backus and a number of his church members organized a Baptist church in 1756 at which he was the pastor for fifty years until his death in 1806. [McClymond, pp. 43-44; Johnson, p. 410.]

With spiritual conditions in America at their worst in 1794, Backus sent an urgent plea to pastors of all churches of every Christian denomination in America. His plea for prayer for revival was widely adopted, and a network of prayer meetings on the first Monday of each month soon led to revival. By 1800, revival had reached the western extremities of civilization in Logan County, Kentucky, if the wild and irreligious people of Rogue’s Harbour (as it was known) could be called civilized. Lawlessness was so rampant that local citizens formed themselves into regiments of vigilantes that fought outlaws, often unsuccessfully, to establish a measure of law and order for the settlements. It was here that Presbyterian minister James McCready settled and became pastor of three small churches. All through the winter of 1799, McCready and several of his congregants joined the national monthly Monday meetings to pray for revival as well as holding weekly Saturday evening to Sunday morning prayer meetings. Following months of prayer, revival came in the summer of 1800. The spiritual hunger was so great that eleven thousand came to a communion service. Overwhelmed, McCready called for help from all denominations. [Orr; Johnson, p. 410.]

Next came the famous Cane Ridge camp meeting in southern Kentucky during the summer of 1801. Six or seven ministers preached simultaneously from various points to reach crowds that were estimated to exceed 10,000. To give perspective to the significant size of the crowds, the largest city in Kentucky at the time was Lexington with a population of only 2,000. [Fishwick, p. 19; Johnson, p. 410.]

The Second Great Awakening provided spiritual and moral regeneration and initiated other civilizing influences on the young nation. These influences included popular education, Bible Societies, Sunday schools, the modern missionary movement, and ultimately sowed and nurtured the seeds that led to the abolition of slavery. [Orr; Johnson, pp. 410-411.] Just as the Great Awakening was the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible, it is also fair to say that the Second Great Awakening was the stabilizing moment that saved the new nation from political and moral destruction.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

David McCullough, John Adams, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 543-544.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 343-345.

Michael McClymond, ed., Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, Vol. 1, A-Z, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp. 43-44

J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival,” ochristian.com. http://articles.ochristian.com/ article8330.shtml (accessed November 26, 2010).

Marshall W. Fishwick, Great Awakenings, (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995), p. 19.

“No country on earth was ever founded on deeper religious foundations,” wrote Sherwood Eddy in his 1941 The Kingdom of God and the American Dream. The persecuted refugees from Europe landed on the shores of a vast wilderness and established thirteen colonies, practically all on strong religious foundations, during the first decades of the seventeenth century to the first decades of the eighteenth century. The tremendous hardships, deprivations, and loss of life did not diminish their religious zeal and quest for religious freedom. They were the followers of Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Puritans and non-Puritans, Anglicans, separatists, Baptists, Quakers, and many others groups seeking religious freedom. The fruit of their efforts was a “priceless heritage” which they left for the Founders of America. In 1765, John Adams recognized this heritage when he wrote of the settlement of America, “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” [Eddy, pp. 76-77, 147.]

By the end of the 1600s and beginning of the 1700s, interest in the colonists’ hard-won religious legacy was eroding due to a decline of religious fervor and to a lesser extent because of the assault by the forces of deism and French rationalism. However, the decline of religious life in the colonies was dramatically reversed as new religious forces exploded on the scene in the 1730s. This formative event became known as the Great Awakening and was a major influence that crafted the worldview of the founding generation. [Larry Johnson, pp. 123-124.] Paul Johnson captures the importance of the Great Awakening in the founding of America.

…There was a spiritual event in the first half of the 18th century in America, and it proved to be of vast significance, both in religion and politics…The Great Awakening was the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible…The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background. The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event.” [Paul Johnson, pp. 109-110, 116-117.]

However, many any if not almost all of the early historians of the American Revolution gave little credit to religion’s role preceding and during the Revolution. Expanding on that assumption, many present-day historians generally believe that religion was displaced by politics as lawyers replaced the clergy as leaders which effectively “…secularized the intellectual character of the culture.” However, it was the dislocations caused by the war that affected the colonists’ church attendance, and it was natural that publications devoted to religious matters would be reduced considerably during the Revolutionary years as the pressing discourse on the war and political matters would take precedence and therefore gave an appearance that religious interest and fervor had subsided. With the decline of religion in the public arena during the revolution, historians have leaped to the conclusion that the American people were significantly less religious. This is a blatant misreading of the mood and character of Americans in the Revolutionary period. Protestantism in whatever form it took remained the principle means by which Americans perceived and explained the world and ordered their lives. [Wood, pp. 174-175; Larry Johnson, p. 131.]

A brief look at the growth in the number of churches during 1760-1790 refutes historians’ assertions that religion declined during the Revolutionary period. It is true that state-oriented churches declined or failed to gain during this period as the total number of all congregations doubled between 1770 and 1790. The Church of England-Anglican in the South and Puritan churches in New England accounted for more than forty percent of all American congregations in 1760 but declined to less than twenty-five percent by 1790. New denominations spawned by the Great Awakening were alive and well and growing—popular people’s churches including Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. The Baptists grew from ninety-four congregations in 1760 to 858 by 1790. During the same time period the Methodists grew from no adherents to over seven hundred congregations. Gordon Wood wrote of this period, “The revolution released more religious energy and fragmented Christendom to a greater degree than had been seen since the upheavals of seventeenth century England or perhaps since the Reformation.” Others would call the period a “…Revolutionary Revival.” [Wood, pp. 185-188; Eddy, p. 147; Larry Johnson, p. 132.]

History has proven that the years following protracted wars are generally periods of significant moral decline. This was true of the remaining years of the eighteenth century following the Revolutionary War (1776-1781). All denominations began to feel the effects of the war years, especially during the last decade of the century. [Larry Johnson, p. 132.]

The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennos, Massachusetts, in sixteen years had not taken one young person in fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York…quit functioning; he had confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever to be redeemed.”…Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.” [Orr]

The churches had become almost totally irrelevant in curbing the nation’s downward spiral into immorality. During the last decade of the century, out of a population of five million Americans, six percent were confirmed drunkards. Crime had grown to such an extent that bank robberies were a daily occurrence and women did not go out at night for fear of assault. [Orr]

Christianity at the universities was just as destitute. Students at Harvard were polled, and not one Christian was found. Two admitted to being Christians at Princeton while only five members of the student body were not members of the filthy speech movement of the times. Few if any campuses escaped the denigration of Christianity and general mayhem. Anti-Christian plays were presented at Dartmouth, a Bible taken from a local church was burned in a public bonfire, students burned Nassau Hall at Princeton, and students forced the resignation of Harvard’s president. Christians on college campuses in the 1790s were so few “…that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.” [Orr]

Yet, the last decade of the eighteenth century also saw the planting of seeds destined to flower as the Second Great Awakening.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), pp. 76-77, 147.

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), pp. 123-124, 131-132.

Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp. 109-110, 116-117.

Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 174-175, 185-188.

J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival, ochristian.com. “http://articles.ochristian.com/article 8330.shtml (accessed November 26, 2010).