8-1 Religion Sparks Reform

1. 8-1 Religion Sparks Reform Pgs. 224 - 228

2. The Second Great Awakening • The 18th Century belief that God determined one’s salvation or damnation was thrown out. • Emphasis on individual responsibility for seeking salvation and insisted that people could improve themselves and society. • Held revival meetings where audiences of 25,000 or more would attend. • Charles Grandison Finney inspired and preached at revivals.

3. Revivalism • Revivals were religious gatherings designed to awaken religious faith through impassioned preaching. • Could last a week or more. • Day: study Bible and examine souls • Night: heard emotional preaching that could make them cry out, burst into tears, or tremble with fear. • Even got into the frontier... Not just an upperclass city movement. • New York had the most well known revivals. • Brought more people to the church

4. The Unitarian Movement • Faith in the individual • Didn’t agree with revivals for public emotionalism • Emphasized reason and appeals to conscience as paths to perfection. • Attracted a wealthy and educated following. • Believed conversion was a gradual process …not something that could happen overnight. • Felt individual and social reform were both possible and important.

5. The African-American Church • Slaveholders feared that enslaved African Americans might use the message of individual salvation to attack slavery. • Slaves in the rural South were allowed to worship in the same churches as whites. • In the East many freed African Americans attended their own Churches. • Richard Allen’s Bethel African Church in Philadelphia • Center for abolitionist meetings. • Provided schools and other services denied to blacks.

6. Transcendentalism • Ralph Waldo Emerson • Stressed people should develop unique and emotional forms of expression. • Developed a belief in transcendentalism – philosophical and literary movement that emphasized living a simple life and celebrated the truth found in nature and in personal emotion and imagination, rather than in any organized system of belief. • Fought for humanitarian reforms such as the abolition of slavery and improved conditions in prisons. • Spawned a literary movement that stressed American ideals of optimism, freedom, and self-reliance. • Henry David Thoreau – Emerson's friend who put self-reliance into practice.

7. Improving Education • Before the 1850’s, no uniform educational policy • School attendance was not mandatory • Classrooms were not divided by grade • Few children continued education after the age of 10. • In 1830’s Americans began to demand tax-supported public schools. • Rich parents who sent their children to private schools protested because they didn’t see why they had to pay for two schools. • By the 1850’s, every state had provided for a system of public elementary schools.

8. Reforming Asylums and Prisons • Dorothea Dix was a social reformer. • She was visiting a Massachusetts house of correction and noticed that jails housed mentally ill people. • “chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience” • 1843 sent a letter of her findings to the Massachusetts legislature which passed a law aimed at improving conditions. • 1845-1852 Dix persuaded 9 Southern states to set up public hospitals for the mentally ill.

9. Reforming Asylums and Prisons • French writer Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831. • Wanted to observe its prison system. • Found that it was so antiquated and that prisoners were beaten and punished. • Said that even though the United States was advanced government wise…it was antiquated in their prisons.

10. Americans Form Utopian Communities • Utopian communities – a perfect place that shared common goals such as self-sufficiency. • Didn’t work because couldn’t agree on one specific goal.