The Beginning of the Second Great Awakening

Religion became the new "craze" as the nineteenth century began. The outcome of this craze, known as the Second Great Awakening, lasted into the 1830s. This is also where the concept of evangelicalism originated. Evangelicalism is the belief that one who is saved is required to share the message of salvation with others. "Evangelical ministers feared for the nation because so many westerns were unchurched (Ayers, 227)." The Presbyterians began another series of revivals known as the great western revivals of 1800-1815. Their first camp meeting took place in August, 1801 at Cane Ridge Kentucky where people from all denominations came, numbering to about 20,000. Religion was also important to black Americans, whether they remained enslaved or had achieved freedom.

The period around 1800 witnessed the expansion of several dissenting sects: The Shakers, the Society of the Public Universal Friend, and the Universalists. They are called sects, rather than denominations because they were new and fairly small. They held distinctive beliefs that set them apart from mainstream religions, yet had a significant influence on intellectual and scial movement of their time. The Shakers were the most influential sect. They left England to escape mob attacks and imprisonment. The sect offered an avenue for people who had been spiritually reborn in the Awakening and sought a distinctive way to represent that rebirth in their lives. Prominent amongst them was Mother Lee. Mother Lee Believed she embodied Christ's Second Coming. She was also called the Mother of New Creation. She preached the Shaker's beliefs of achievement of salvation was on by that of confession of sin, equality regardless of sex or race, opposition to slavery and war, and assistance to the poor. Men and woman slept, ate and worked separately to abstain form sexual intercourse. In a large open space without pulpit or pews, worshipers dances, shouted and sang. The Shakers influenced other groups to organize communal Utopian experiments during the years after 1815.