Second Great Awakening

The Second Great Awakening was a wave of Protestant religious revivalism that spread across the United States from roughly the 1790s to the 1840s. Reacting against Enlightenment rationalism and deism, revival preachers emphasized emotional conversion, free will, and the idea that salvation was available to anyone who chose it — a democratic theology that matched the spirit of the young republic.

The movement spread through camp meetings — large outdoor revivals lasting days — and the preaching of figures like Charles Grandison Finney, who found such success in western New York that the region became known as the burned-over district. Methodist and Baptist churches grew explosively, and the era also produced new religious movements, including the Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

The Awakening's most lasting impact was the reform impulse it unleashed. Believing society could be perfected, converts poured into temperance societies, abolitionism, prison and asylum reform, and public education campaigns. Women filled a central role in revival and reform activity, an experience that helped seed the early women's rights movement, including the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention.

On the AP US History exam, the Second Great Awakening is a key Period 4 (1800–1848) topic. Expect questions connecting revivalism to antebellum reform movements, to the market revolution's social changes, and to continuity and change in American religious life since the First Great Awakening.