Question

Religion has played a major role in American society since 1619. Consider the Second Great Awakening and transcendentalism; in what ways did they reflect antebellum society’s concerns? What was the Second Great Awakening’s influence on abolition, women’s status, and the poor?

Answer 1

The reform efforts of the antebellum era sprang from the Protestant revival fervor that found expression in what historians refer to as the Second Great Awakening.The Second Great Awakening emphasized an emotional religious style in which sinners grappled with their unworthy nature before concluding that they were born again, that is, turning away from their sinful past and devoting themselves to living a righteous, Christ-centered life. This emphasis on personal salvation, with its rejection of predestination (the Calvinist concept that God selected only a chosen few for salvation), was the religious embodiment of the Jacksonian celebration of the individual. Itinerant ministers preached the message of the awakening to hundreds of listeners at outdoors revival meetings.
And at the beginning of 1820s, a new intellectual movement known as transcendentalism began to grow in the Northeast. In this context, to transcend means to go beyond the ordinary sensory world to grasp personal insights and gain appreciation of a deeper reality, and transcendentalists believed that all people could attain an understanding of the world that surpassed rational, sensory experience.

During the antebellum period, the Second Great Awakening inspired advocacy for a number of reform topics, including women's rights. Antebellum reform in areas such as women's rights was affected not only by political enthusiasm, but also by religious or spiritual enthusiasm and Second Great Awakening inspired abolitionists to rise up against slavery. This Protestant revival encouraged the concept of adopting renewed morals, which centered around the idea that all men are created equal in the eyes of God.