Document Type
Article
Publication Date
5-2018
Abstract
In the decades before the Civil War which began in 1861, the Second Great Awakening was the most powerful social movement in America. It inspired the conversion of millions of Americans to faith in Jesus Christ. And that faith motivated many of those people to attempt to transform the moral habits of the nation. Slavery was ended, consumption of alcohol reduced, women’s rights, though often opposed by people of faith, were set on a path that would result in woman’s suffrage in the early Twentieth century. A host of other reforms, too many to list, were instigated. It is not too much to say that in this era the American people - though far from morally perfect - were defined by their Christianity. As Timothy Smith, an historian of American Christianity in this period has said, “Common grace, not common sense [a reference to Enlightenment thought as personified in Thomas Paine] was the keynote of the age.”
Recommended Citation
Irish, Kerry, "The Second Great Awakening and the Making of Modern America" (2018). Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics. 78.
https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/hist_fac/78
Comments
Revised 11/19/2018 to correct minor errors.