Church History · About 1790 to 1840

The Second Great Awakening

From about 1790 to 1840, waves of revival swept the young United States. Huge camp meetings like Cane Ridge in 1801, preachers like Charles Finney, and fast growing Baptist and Methodist churches changed American faith and fueled reforms like the fight against slavery.

Read it in the Bible: Habakkuk 3:2 Isaiah 1:17 Acts 2:47 Joel 2:28

The Second Great Awakening was a series of revivals in the United States from about 1790 to 1840. It brought outdoor camp meetings to the frontier, made the Baptists and Methodists the largest churches in the country, and launched movements to end slavery, fight drunkenness and spread the Bible. Its most famous moment came at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in August 1801, and its most famous preacher was Charles Finney. Many historians say it shaped American Christianity more than any event since the colonies were founded.

What Was the Second Great Awakening?

After the Revolution, church attendance in America was low. Many leaders admired the cool reason of the Enlightenment, and the frontier had few churches. Then revival started to break out in many places at once, in colleges like Yale, in New England towns and in the backwoods of Kentucky and Tennessee.

The first Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740s, with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, was mostly about colonial towns. This second wave moved west with the settlers. It reached farmers, enslaved people, women and the poor, not just the educated. It moved beyond the educated elite to people who were less wealthy and less educated.

What Happened at the Cane Ridge Revival in 1801?

Cane Ridge was a Presbyterian church about 20 miles east of Lexington, Kentucky. Its pastor, Barton W. Stone, planned a communion service for August 6, 1801. Word spread, and people came by wagon and on horseback. Estimates of the crowd run from 10,000 to 25,000, at a time when Lexington had fewer than 2,000 people.

Presbyterian and Methodist preachers spoke from stumps and wagons all at once. The meeting ran for about a week. Witnesses described people weeping, shouting, falling to the ground and shaking with what they called "the jerks." Critics called it disorder. Supporters called it the Holy Spirit. Either way, Cane Ridge became the model for the American camp meeting.

Who Was Charles Finney?

Charles Grandison Finney was a lawyer in upstate New York who came to faith in 1821. He became the best known revival preacher of the age. His meetings in towns along the Erie Canal were so frequent that the region was nicknamed the Burned over District, because it had been "burned over" by revival fires so many times.

Finney used what people called new measures. He held meetings for many nights in a row, let women pray out loud in mixed groups, and set an "anxious bench" up front where seekers could sit and be prayed for. His revival in Rochester in 1830 and 1831 is often called his greatest. In 1835 he published Lectures on Revivals of Religion, and he later served as president of Oberlin College, which admitted women and Black students.

Finney taught that a revival is not a miracle that falls from the sky but the result of using the right means, like prayer and preaching for a decision. Supporters say he simply took personal response to the gospel seriously. Critics, including some fellow revivalists, worried that his methods could pressure people and that he moved away from the older Calvinist teaching that salvation is all God's work. That debate is still alive in churches today.

Why Did Baptists and Methodists Grow So Fast?

The Methodists had circuit riders, preachers on horseback who covered huge areas and preached wherever people gathered. Bishop Francis Asbury rode an estimated 270,000 miles in his lifetime, so his horse deserves a mention too. The Baptists let any called farmer preach without a seminary degree. Both groups used simple language and lively hymns.

The result was explosive growth. At the Revolution, Methodists were a small group. By the middle of the 1800s, they were the largest church in America, with Baptists close behind. Black Christians also formed their own churches, including the African Methodist Episcopal Church, organized under Richard Allen in Philadelphia in 1816.

Revival also stirred up new movements. The Restoration Movement of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, the Latter Day Saints, and the Millerites who led to the Seventh day Adventists all grew in this time. You can read about each on this site.

How Did the Awakening Change America?

Revival preachers told converts that faith should change how they live. That led to a wave of Christian reform. The American Bible Society began in 1816 to put a Bible in every home. Sunday schools taught children to read. Missionary societies sent Americans overseas.

The biggest reform was the fight against slavery. Many leaders of the abolition movement, such as Theodore Weld, came to faith in Finney's revivals. Christians also led the temperance movement against heavy drinking, and some women who worked against slavery began to speak up for their own rights too. Not every Christian agreed, and churches in the South mostly defended slavery, which later split Baptists and Methodists in the 1840s.

Learn to do right; seek justice and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless and plead the case of the widow. Isaiah 1:17

Why It Matters for You Today

The Second Great Awakening is why so many American churches have altar calls, revival weeks, camp meetings and a strong focus on a personal decision for Jesus. It also shows that real revival does not stay inside the church building. It reaches out to the poor and the oppressed.

O Yahweh, I have heard the report of You; I stand in awe, O Yahweh, of Your deeds. Revive them in these years; make them known in these years. In Your wrath, remember mercy! Habakkuk 3:2

Every revival in history started with ordinary people praying. That is still the best place to start.

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Questions People Ask

What was the Second Great Awakening?

It was a wave of Christian revivals in the United States from about 1790 to 1840. It featured camp meetings, emotional preaching and calls for personal conversion. It led to huge growth among Baptists and Methodists and to reform movements like abolition.

What happened at Cane Ridge in 1801?

Barton W. Stone hosted a Presbyterian communion service at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, starting August 6, 1801. Between 10,000 and 25,000 people came, and many preachers spoke at once for about a week. It became the model for American camp meetings.

Who was Charles Finney?

Charles Finney was a lawyer turned evangelist and the leading revival preacher of the 1820s and 1830s. He used new measures like the anxious bench and protracted meetings. He wrote Lectures on Revivals of Religion in 1835 and later led Oberlin College.

What was the Burned over District?

It was the area of western and central New York where revivals happened so often that people said it had been burned over by spiritual fire. It produced many revivals and several new religious movements in the early 1800s.

How did the Second Great Awakening affect slavery?

Many abolitionists were converted or inspired in the revivals and saw slavery as a sin. Christians in the North formed antislavery societies. Southern churches mostly disagreed, and the issue split the Methodists and Baptists in the 1840s.

Sources

← William Carey and the Modern Missions Movement The Jefferson Bible →

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