56. Chapter 51: The Church Experiences a Second Awakening

CHAPTER 51 The Church Experiences a Second Awakening

1. America at a Low Spiritual Level As we have seen in an earlier chapter, the Great Awakening in America was followed by a sharp decline in spiritual life. This was in part the result of English Deism and French Skepticism, both of which had a deep and widespread influence on the people. Many of the leading men in America were Deists. Perhaps the most influen­tial of these was Thomas Paine, who in a pamphlet entitled "The Age of Reason" boldly swept the Christian faith aside. The last years of the eighteenth century and the first years of the nineteenth marked the lowest level of vitality in the history of the Christian Church in America. In the new western country the great mass of frontiersmen were sunk in religious ignorance. The lives of many of them reflected this lack of spiritual knowledge. Quarreling, fighting, hard drink­ing, and the most shocking pro­fanity were the order of the day. Logan County in Kentucky earned for itself the name of "Rogues’ Harbor." It was a place of refuge for escaped murderers, horse thieves, highway robbers, and counterfeiters.

2. A Second Awakening Begins in the East

It was at this time that a re­vival of religion started in the East — very quietly and gradually. People began to take a renewed interest in Christian life and faith. The membership of the churches increased, and new churches were organized. One of the influences that brought this about in New England was the coming of Meth­odism with its unique method of evangelization. In 1789 Bishop As­bury appointed the first circuit rider there, and soon all the New England States were covered with a network of circuits. In 1795 Timothy Dwight became president of Yale. He was a grand­son of the great preacher Jonathan Edwards. In a series of lectures and sermons in the college chapel Dwight showed the dangers and evils of Deism, Infidelity, and Ma­terialism. A revival started in 1802, and one third of the students were converted. Dartmouth, Am­herst, Williams, and the College of experienced similar revivals. The religious awakening in the East moved ahead without evange­lists or great emotional excitement.

3. Revivals and Camp Meetings Sweep through the New West In the new West the revivals took an altogether different course. One of the early leaders there was a Presbyterian minister by the name of James McGready. In appearance he was not an attractive man. His eyes were small and piercing, his voice coarse and trem­ulous, and his whole person ex­tremely uncouth. But he had within him the power to move his hearers. In Carolina his preaching had worked so powerfully upon the emotions of the people that he had aroused fierce opposition. His pulpit was torn out of the church and burned, and somebody sent him a threatening letter written in blood. Under these circumstances he decided in 1796 that it would be best for him to go West. There he became pastor of three Presbyte­rian churches in notorious Logan County in Kentucky. Here under his preaching the great western revival began. It became known as the Logan County or Cumberland Revival.

McGready was joined by several Presbyterian and Methodist preachers, and in 1800 the Cum­berland Revival reached its climax. In that year a meeting held on Red River was accompanied by great excitement. A Methodist preacher, John McGee, shouted and exhorted with tremendous energy. Numbers were converted. The news spread. The crowds grew larger and larger. The people brought pro­visions with them, and spent sev­eral days on the grounds. This was the beginning of the camp meet­ings which were to become a com­mon practice in American evan­gelism. One meeting lasted four days and nights and a hundred people were said to be converted.

A WESTERN CAMP MEETING IN 1819
Bettmann Archive
Lithograph The revival spread throughout Kentucky, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, western Pennsyl­vania, and Virginia. The Cain Ridge meeting held in August, 1801, was attended by a crowd of from ten to twenty-five thousand. Camp meetings were held in every section of the West. Especially at night they were a great sight. Camp fires blazed; there were long rows of tents; in the trees hung hundreds of lamps and lanterns. The preachers engaged in impas­sioned exhortations and earnest prayers. Swelling notes of music floated on the night air as the thou­sands joined in the singing of hymns. Persons under conviction of sin sobbed, shrieked, and shouted. The revivals at the beginning of the awakening in the West were largely a result of the work of Presbyterians, but in the end the Presbyterians suffered because of divisions. The Methodists and Bap­tists joined in the revival and added great numbers of converts to their membership rolls.

4. Several New Denominations Are Formed

It has been mentioned that one of the developments which should be noted in the course of Ameri­can Church history is the tendency for the Church to divide and sub­divide. In the first half of the nine­teenth century this process had al­ready begun. The Presbyterians were not agreed on the wisdom and value of revival meetings. In 1810 a group in the new West organized themselves as the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. They adopted the camp meeting as a regular method of revivalism, and also the circuit system. They preached a greatly weakened Cal­vinism, which however appealed strongly to the people of the fron­tier. Their membership grew rapidly.

Another group left the Presby­terian Church because they could not wholeheartedly accept the doc­trines of election and predestina­tion which are at the very center of Calvinism. They formed what they called the Christian Church.

Alexander Campbell, a Presby­terian minister, felt that the di­vision of Christians into many churches is all wrong. It was his wish to return to the simplicity of New Testament times when all Christians formed only one body. But his movement, started as a protest against the great number of churches, ended in 1826 in add­ing one more church to those al­ready in existence. This new church was called the Church of the Disciples. In the course of time the Chris­tian Church and the Disciples Church united. The two names were retained and are now used interchangeably.

There were divisions also among the Methodists. The first of these was a rebellion against the auto­cratic form of church government which was practised at the time. For a number of years there had been an attempt to secure the ad­mission of laymen into the Method­ist conferences. This was at first strongly opposed by the clergy. When the attempt failed to make headway, those who desired greater democracy withdrew in considerable numbers and in 1830 formed the Methodist Protestant Church.

Another body, Methodistic in spirit, came into existence under the leadership of Philip William Otterbein. He had come to America to work as missionary among the German Reformed. His pietistic leanings led him, in company with other like-minded ministers, to or­ganize in 1800 the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. In 1803 another church was or­ganized among the Germans, by Jacob Albright, an exhorter (lay preacher) in the Methodist Church. This became known as the Evangelical Church.

Up in New England the Con­gregational Church was experienc­ing a division over a very vital point of doctrine. This division had begun as early as 1785. In that year, under the leadership of James Freeman, who had given up belief in the Trinity, King’s Chapel, the oldest Episcopal church in New England, became the first Unitarian church in America. Another Unitarian leader was Wil­liam Ellery Channing. By 1819 a considerable number of Congrega­tional ministers and members in and around Boston had come to believe that God exists in only one person, not three; and the Unitari­an denomination came into being. The word unitarian comes from the Latin word unitas, meaning "oneness." The birth of the Unitarian Church with its false teachings stirred the orthodox Congregation­alists to action. As a result many new orthodox churches were or­ganized, notably Hanover Street Church in Boston, whose pastor, Lyman Beecher, was a man of out­standing ability. Later on Beecher became leader of a liberal move­ment in the Presbyterian Church.

5. Missionary Societies and Re­ligious Literature Spread the Gospel The new religious zeal aroused by the revivals led to the forma­tion of many missionary societies, the publication of many missionary magazines, and the establishment of many Christian colleges and theological seminaries. In the revivals many churches co-operated, and the missionary so­cieties which were formed were largely interdenominational. Among these was the New York Missionary Society (1796), com­posed of representatives of the Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and Baptist churches — an organ­ization which was particularly in­terested in bringing the Gospel to the Indians in the South.

Then there were the various de­nominational missionary societies. The Congregationalists established the Missionary Society of Con­necticut ( 1789 ) "to Christianize the heathen in North America, and to support and promote Christian knowledge in the new settlements within the United States." The Presbyterians organized the West­ern Missionary Society (1802) "to carry the Gospel to the Indians and the interior inhabitants." The Methodists followed with the for­mation of the Methodist Mission­ary Society (1819), for the sup­port of the Gospel in new settle­ments, to work among the Indians, and with a view to possible mis­sionary work in foreign countries. Among the Congregationalists there was also formed the Ameri­can Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (1810), which during the first thirty years of its existence sent out 694 missionaries. One of the most notable of its achievements was the Christianiza­tion of the Hawaiian Islands.

Particularly dramatic was the beginning of foreign mission or­ganization among the Baptists. It had its roots in the Congregational Church. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis­sions, the Congregational society, had sent out two missionaries to work in India, Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson. They sailed on different ships, but through dili­gent study of the Scriptures both were converted to Baptist princi­ples. Upon arriving in India they and their wives were re-baptized by immersion in the Baptist church at Calcutta. Judson remained to do missionary work in Burma, but Rice hurried back to the United States to awaken the American Baptists to their missionary re­sponsibility. He made an extended tour throughout the United States, establishing missionary societies in all the important Baptist centers. In 1814 he gathered in Philadel­phia thirty-three delegates repre­senting eleven states, to form a missionary society. This society adopted the long and laborious name, General Missionary Conven­tion of the Baptist Denomination of the United States of America for Foreign Missions.

ORDINATION OF THE FIRST AMERICAN FOREIGN MISSIONARIES
Schoenfeld Collection from Three Lions
Under the sponsorship of the American Board of Foreign Missions, five young men were ordained at Salem, Massachusetts, in February, 1812. They left soon thereafter for India.

You will notice that the first mis­sionary societies were interested almost exclusively in bringing the Gospel to the unchurched at home — the Indians and the Negroes. Next the mission activity was ex­tended beyond our national boun­daries to foreign countries. Thus arose the distinction between home missions and foreign missions.

Outstanding among the later in­terdenominational societies was the American Home Missionary Society. It was started among the 1820 they have continued as the Missionary Herald. The frontiersmen in the new and raw western country were for the most part without Bibles and re­ligious literature. To supply this want the American Bible Society was founded in 1816, and the American Tract Society in 1825. Serving a similar purpose was the Methodist Book Concern, estab­lished in 1789. The American Bap­tist Publication Society began its work in 1840. Presbyterians, Epis­copalians, Friends, and Lutherans also established publication socie­ties. These societies were an im­mense influence in America. They put out a tremendous amount of Christian reading matter, which found its way into the cabins of the settlers in the remotest back­woods. The American Bible Society carries on a tremendous program for the distri­bution of the Scriptures. Bibles are shipped to all parts of the world and are made available to people in many lands. The society employs scholars to translate the Bible into languages that have never before carried the Word of God in print. During 134 years it has distributed 395,365,426 copies of Bibles, Testa­ments, and portions of the Bible in more than 200 different languages.

Presbyterians but later many Con­gregational societies became mem­bers. It was through this organiza­tion that the Plan of Union was put into effect in 1801 (ch. 50, sec. 2). Within nine years this society had over seven hundred agents and missionaries in the field. To stimulate interest in the work of missions several missionary magazines were launched. Most of these were discontinued after a shorter or longer time. Exceptions are the Panoplist and the Massa­chusetts Missionary Magazine. The Panoplist started out in 1805 as an attempt to combat Unitarianism. After three years these two pub­lications were combined, and since 1820 they have continued as the Missionary Herald. The frontiersmen in the new and raw western country were for the most part without Bibles ana religious literature. To supply this want the American Bible Society was founded in 1816, and the American Tract Society in 1825. Serving a similar purpose was the Methodist Book Concern, established in 1789. The American Baptist Publication Society began its work in 1840. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Friends, and Lutherans also established publication societies. These societies were an immense influence in America. They put out a tremendous amount of Christian reading matter, which found its way into the cabins of the settlers in the remotest backwoods.

6. The American Sunday School Union Is Formed

Back in the colonial period there were no Sunday Schools. The Meth­odists were the ones who brought to the United States this appealing way of instructing the children and young people. They began the work in 1786, and were so suc­cessful that thirty years later Sun­day Schools were to be found in every section of the country. In 1824 the American Sunday School Union was organized. It was com­posed of men of nearly all de­nominations. The Board of Manag­ers was made up of laymen, most of whom lived in Philadelphia. The purpose of the Union was to promote the establishment of Sunday Schools, and to publish manuals for use in the Sunday Schools.

7. The Churches Establish Colleges and Seminaries The settling of the West and the Second Awakening created a grow­ing need for ministers and reli­gious leaders. To fill this need many new seminaries for the train­ing of ministers were founded. Al­most every denomination founded one or more schools during this time. The Congregationalists, whose ministers had been receiving their training at Harvard, established Andover Seminary in 1808, after a Unitarian had been appointed theological professor at Harvard. The Dutch Reformed in 1810 founded a seminary in New Bruns­wick, New Jersey. Up to that time many of their young men had gone to the Netherlands to be educated for the ministry at the University of Utrecht. In 1812 the Presbyte­rians founded their seminary in Princeton, New Jer e . The Epis­copalians, t e Baptists, the Ger­man Reformed, the Lutherans, and others as well as the Roman Catho­lics were during this period active in establishing seminaries. Be­tween 1808 and 1840 at least twenty-five such schools were founded. They were all located in the East.

Teachers and leaders also were needed in the new, rapidly growing areas. Throughout the West during this time the churches established many colleges. From these small denominational colleges learning and culture radiated in every direc­tion. Their significance for the life of our nation can hardly be over­estimated.