As far back as the 1790s, the first decade of the new Republic, it appeared as if Christianity might be resolving itself simply into a civic religion serving to provide a moral foundation and discipline for the emerging United States as a distinct society. Certainly that was how the intellectuals, especially the Deists among them (most all intellectuals at that point), understood things. But such civic religion did not fill churches, for it resided solely in the independent thinking and behavior of citizens as they went about their daily routines.  It did not need pulpits to show the people how to go about doing such things. Human logic itself seemed pretty good at constructing such moral-intellectual systems.

Part of this developing religious dynamic of Christianity as principally a civic religion was the result of the way that the war and the consequent independence of American society had a tremendous impact on the religious character of America. The Church of England, well beloved by the Tories particularly numerous in the American South, was devastated by the war.  Eventually it was able to service Anglican loyalists in America by establishing its own Episcopal authority, and thus be able to carry on as before, but independent of England itself in doing so.⁵

As for the Calvinist Congregationalists in New England and Presbyterians in the Middle Colonies that had been active in leading the independence movement, post-war America had been expanding in population at a far greater rate than the slow process of producing seminary-trained pastors could meet the demand for new churches and individuals to pastor them.  Also the very logical character of Congregationalist and Presbyterian theology, especially among the more highly educated of the membership (including, importantly, pastors), caused many to be quite comfortable in the Deist camp, leading some of them even to switch their loyalties to the growing (for the time being anyway) Unitarian movement.

Baptists and Methodists however did not have this same problem, being open to the recruiting of lay pastors (not seminary trained but simply called out of general society to Christian ministry).  These individuals had been led to take up their calls not by academic logic, but by a highly personal, and most frequently highly emotional, sense of personal judgment, moral cleansing and new purpose to their lives, a purpose calling them into full service to the very process that had personally saved them out of a world of sin.  They were on fire to bring others to this same spiritual renewal or revival that they themselves had gone through personally. And they were willing to face all sorts of obstacles, both by nature and by man, in order to bring (especially to the frontier where churches were virtually non-existent) the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ to hungry hearts there.  This was not mere civic religion.  This was religion of a very personal spiritual nature.

Behind all this religious activity was something very much part of the spirit of the Jacksonian times.  As Tocqueville had noticed, Americans had a strong sense of personal destiny, an urgency to accomplish some greater work, to move forward, to fulfill some nobler purpose in life.  Life was viewed as a challenge, one faced with many obstacles, many of them deficiencies in the people themselves, personal deficiencies or sins that needed cleansing, ones that required some act of purification which would clear the way for them to gain some personal victory. Christian revivals offered exactly just such an opportunity for getting things right with God.

Empowering this activity was an abiding sense that history was about to find completion in the form of the second coming of Christ and his final judgment of all people, saints and sinners, a widespread sentiment of the times due in part to the horrible 1837–1841 Depression which undercut severely the American belief that life moved forward along largely logical lines.  Surely this grand catastrophe pointed to the ultimate and thus final judgment of God in the form of the long-awaited coming of Christ as the ultimate judge of life on earth.

Consequently, many Americans came easily to the conclusion that they were approaching the millennium described in Scripture (Revelation) in which all must be made perfect in preparation for that final coming of Christ.  Sinful behavior needed to be corrected, both for society as well as the individual. Perfectionism or social reform was thus urgent.  The institution of slavery in particular needed to be abolished – immediately.  Alcoholism, which was rampant on the Frontier and in the workshops back East, also needed to be curbed.  Caring for the poor became a priority. Injustices of whatever variety needed to be addressed, the treatment of women being one of the issues taken up by a new generation of feminists.  Social experiments accompanied this mood, in which varieties of utopian programs were put in place to answer the challenge of the times.  Most of these failed miserably, but failure did not seem to discourage others from trying.

Sadly, the quest for perfection usually set one group against another, even splitting groups time and again as perfectionists understood faults in the others, even small faults, to be the work of the devil in his attempt to stop the arrival of the millennium.  It got confusing, and at times it became very bizarre in the routes such perfectionism took this rather primitive religious instinct so endearing to the American frontiersmen.  But it made those simple souls, those who had moved to the frontier because their lives back East amounted to so little, now understand how special they were, even how royal they were, their purity of conscience bringing them into a very special relationship with God.  On this sentiment they were very ready to build a new world.

⁵In the years between the 1st Great Awakening and America's war for independence, the Church of England's Society for the Propagation of the Gospel not only sought to bring the unchurched of America to Christ, but more importantly, it set out to bring non-Anglican Christians to leave their Congregational, Presbyterian, Quaker churches and join the Church of England, being far more active in setting up Anglican churches in coastal New England and the Middle Colonies than along the American frontier.  As we have already noted, this assault on highly independent American Protestantism was another one of the ways that England had infuriated the colonies and driven them to want full independence from the mother country!

⁶A belief that the coming of Christ will usher in a 1,000-year Golden Age, a long period of time prior to the Day of Judgment, and the establishment of a New Heaven and a New Earth.

Highly empowered by this national mood was the rising body of Methodists. Earlier, Methodism's actual founder, John Wesley, had originally been very opposed to the American rebellion against English royal authority.  Consequently almost all of the preachers Wesley had sent to the colonies returned to England when the war first broke out.  But Francis Asbury stayed behind, to organize Methodist lay preachers to help nurture American hearts during the dark days of the war.  After the war, Wesley agreed to ordain American Methodist pastors – including Asbury, whom he named as one of his two Methodist superintendents in America, authorized to supervise those pastors – in order to bring the Methodists into some kind of proper or apostolic communion with the English Methodists.  Thus it was Asbury and his lay preachers in America who would push Methodism forward, preachers who fit more closely the democratic mood of the times, able to relate better to life on the frontier.  Estimates are that Asbury himself, in order to preach on virtually a daily basis, traveled thousands of unimaginably horrible miles each year in hunger, cold, wet or heat, frequent loneliness and extreme exhaustion, for a possible total as much as 275,000 miles in order to deliver a total of 16,000 sermons!  During his time of leadership (1784–1816) the Methodists grew in number from 1,200 to 214,000 members, with 700 ordained preachers to pastor the flock.

Also playing a key role in this development were the Methodist circuit riders, formed from that same adventurous spirit of the frontier culture, who had answered a call from God to head out alone on horseback into the Western wilderness.  Here they faced storms, hunger and hostile Indians – to bring the comfort of the Christian religion to scattered settlements and cabins that dotted the wilderness.  Their offerings were not just the assurance that God was with these settlers but that they were also somehow still connected with the rest of society, which was also with them.  The way the circuit riders helped settlers to keep body and soul together was thus enormously appreciated on the Western frontier, where the Methodist church – or at least the Methodist movement – grew rapidly, soon to become the largest of the Christian denominations in America.  By 1840 some 3,500 circuit riders and some nearly 6,000 pastors were supporting the faith of 750,000 Methodists!

The Methodists were officially opposed to slavery from the beginning of the denomination's entry onto the America scene in the 1760s.  Asbury was hotly opposed to the practice, but learned that to reach Black audiences held in bondage as well as Whites, he would have to tone down his rhetoric on the subject. Otherwise he would send slaveholders off into fellowship with Baptists and Presbyterians, which at the time took no such position on the subject.  But the Methodist position did not go unnoticed by free Blacks, and Methodism would have a tremendous impact in getting their Christian world organized and up and running.

Richard Allen was a Black slave who was able to work to pay for his freedom from his Philadelphia master.  In earlier years he had been very attentive to the Methodist circuit riders who had come to his plantation, and even before securing his freedom he had become active in encouraging fellow slaves with the gospel message.  Once free he continued this activity, forming one small society and then another, until in 1816, in association with another free Black pastor, Daniel Coker, five newly developed congregations in Philadelphia were able to hold their first Methodist General Conference.  Taking up the spiritual disciplines of Wesley's Methodists, they took the identity as the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, the beginning of what would eventually turn into another of one of America's larger denominations.

Meanwhile in New York City in 1800 another group came together to form the Zion Church which grew significantly, until in 1821 they were able to constitute themselves as the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church under Bishop or Superintendent James Varick.  The AME Zion Church too spread across the country among free Blacks.  Both Methodist churches would compete in eventually playing a leading role in shaping the religious lives of newly freed slaves after the Civil War.

Meanwhile, off on the American frontier, the highly individualistic but also highly isolated life on the part of those Americans that lived well away from the comforts of the East produced among Westerners a hunger for personal meaning within the context of community, membership in larger society being a rare but well-appreciated commodity.  Most frequently this took the form of huge gatherings whenever a local Christian revivalist appeared in the region.  Thousands would turn out to spend a week at an improvised encampment listening to an array of preachers, singing and dancing, shouting and fainting, and having a thoroughly good time.

Taking a more structured (and thus "logical") approach to revivalism was the lawyer-turned-Presbyterian-minister Charles Grandison Finney.  Though a Presbyterian, a denomination which traditionally viewed salvation as solely a matter of God's graceful election (and thus not really a personal work or achievement of man himself), Finney fit better the spirit of the Baptist and Methodist revivalists.  He was required to appear before a Presbyterian board to examine his views on faith versus works, an issue which has caused considerable controversy since almost the founding of Christianity.  In the end he satisfied the board that he preached a doctrine of grace rather than works, although his revivals' goal of cultivating immediate repentance and renewal had something of the quality of works before grace.⁷  His careful structuring of his revivals, taking place in the period 1825 to 1835 in both the rural setting of up-state New York and the urban setting of New York City, became a model that other revivalists would follow.  It helped not only tone down (somewhat) the emotional level of these revivals, it also put them on steadier religious foundations.

⁷But this is a subject that no Christian has ever satisfactorily resolved by mere logic or precise theological argument!

Another New York revivalist who played big on these instincts was the farmer and Baptist lay-preacher William Miller, who in 1833 predicted (on the basis of calculations he drew up from the Book of Daniel) that the long-awaited event of Jesus Christ's return to earth was going to take place sometime in the period 1843–1844, the accompanying rapture also ending life on this planet.  His views began to gain wider acceptance as the 1840s loomed into view, his prophecy even taken up by followers in England, Norway and Chile.  Ultimately in 1844 he and his followers gathered on hilltops and rooftops in March, again in April and finally in October in anticipation of the rapture.  But instead a Great Disappointment occurred when Jesus failed to show up on schedule, causing his following to break up.

Surprisingly, however, this was not the end of his massive religious movement. Others picked up Miller's vision (particularly its millennialist perspective), importantly the female prophet Ellen G. White, who cultivated a huge group of followers that would eventually take the name Seventh-Day Adventists.  They took up perfectionist ways in the avoidance of alcohol, meat, and other foods, advocating instead vegetarianism.  From this group would eventually come such famous breakfast food producers as Kellogg and Post.⁸

One of the places that seemed to be particularly active in this new religious dynamic was the "burned-over district" of Western New York.  Here wave after wave of millennialist revivals occurred, producing some of the most notable elements of the Second Great Awakening.  The Millerites were very numerous in this region. Shakers were also numerous in this part of the state.¹⁰  The utopian Oneida Society was also established there to practice the idea of social communalism.

⁸Vegetarianism was a common trend among the millennialists, who believed that meat-eating made man a brutal beast.

⁹The term "burned-over district" was assigned by Finney to this region because it had held so many revivals that Finney was certain that there could be no one there left to convert.

¹⁰The Shakers, as the Quakers before them, were noted for the shaking of their bodies when they entered into a rapturous union with the Spirit of God. They were notable also in that they believed that sex was bestial behavior and thus they did not have offspring of their own, forcing them to keep the community going through converts. Their religion required all property to be held jointly; the equality of the sexes; children (brought in from the outside world) belonging to the whole community; the profits of workmanship shared communally, etc.

Certainly the most amazing phenomenon to come out of all this millennialism, and in this case even this same burned-over district of Western New York, were the Latter-day Saints or Mormons, a group that followed the prophecies and teachings of Joseph Smith, Jr.

As a teenager, Smith claimed that he had a number of visions, the most important being a visit by the Angel Moroni in 1827, who directed him to a place where he reportedly uncovered a book of golden plates on which were written in some form of reformed Egyptian the story of the ancient Jews and of Christ and his visit to America.  Using a special technique, he translated what he saw written there by ancient authors (Mormon being chief among them), which in 1830 Smith published in English translation as the Book of Mormon.¹¹  That same year he formed his first congregation as the Church of Christ, teaching his followers the new doctrines, and then sending them west to spread the new revelation as Latter-day Saints.

His ultimate goal was to establish a new Zion, a community of the Latter-day Saints, to prepare the way for the coming of Christ.  At first he thought it would be in Ohio, where in 1831 a large group of his followers assembled. But then some of his followers moved on to Missouri, planning to establish his New Jerusalem or Zion there.  But they ran into trouble when the local citizens reacted to the Mormons pouring into their area.  Smith ran into the resistance of the local Missouri militia when he arrived in Missouri to try to secure the land for his followers, and thus he decided to build his temple in Ohio.  But a major bank failure (resulting from the panic of 1837) undermined the harmony of his followers and Smith migrated with those who still remained with him back to Missouri.  Once again he faced stiff resistance there, except this time organized by the governor of Missouri, who in 1838 was determined to drive the Mormons from his state.  Thus some eight thousand Mormons followed Smith to Nauvoo, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River.

For the next few years he was able to proceed in the building of his temple, until the citizens of Illinois – seeing the land being overrun by these Mormons and shocked at the practice of polygamy taken up by Smith in 1843, a practice that seemed now so central to Mormon social organization – thus also began to take up arms against the Mormons.  Then in June of 1844 Smith and his brother Hyrum were killed by an angry mob, throwing the Mormon community into confusion as to who was then to lead them.

At this point a number of Smith's colleagues stepped forward to claim succession. Brigham Young took the lead, although other individuals also claimed the title and led their followers off to form their own separate Mormon communities.  But after two years of trying to make things work out for them in Illinois, Young decided in 1846 to take his thirty-five wives and hundreds of followers West, all the way to the Utah territory in 1847 where they hoped to be able to build their community in peace.  There indeed they found just such security – at least for a decade – and from there began to send out missionaries to the larger world around them, to build the new faith in anticipation of the coming millennium.

¹¹The book states that tribes of Israel (the Ten Lost Tribes?) had managed to get themselves to the New World – as well as Jesus himself, who appeared to the Indians soon after his Resurrection, producing several centuries of exceptional peace among the Indians. Indeed, the book claims that the Indians were in fact descendants of these migrating Israelites.

All of this highly emotional spiritual adventure impacting the young Republic was having the effect of splitting the old Calvinist religions (Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Dutch Reformed) between two camps: the New School group, supporting the revivalist trend, and the Old School group opposing it.  Once again, similar to the earlier Great Awakening of the 1740s, the highly emotional character of these revivals seemed to Old School conservatives to be a most undignified way to bring people to Christ and also very shallow in how it might develop Christian life over the long-term in comparison to well-thought-through traditional Christian understanding.  Worse, New School revivalism seemed to support the Arminian (or Methodist) idea that man was somehow able on his own to rise above his state of moral or self-focused depravity and elect or choose entirely on his own his personal salvation.  Also, of course, the very idea that a person was not properly aligned with God without having one of these highly emotional moments of conversion seemed highly offensive to those raised since their youth to follow the lines of the faith as best as they could, understanding that they were indeed sinners, but always throughout their lives as faithful Christians sensitive to the need to keep themselves open to the judgments of God.  For this latter group of Old School or Christian conservatives the suggestion that the path they were on was not sufficient because it had never arrived at an emotional crisis point of decision was outrageously ridiculous.

However, the Second Great Awakening did not in fact somehow leave the Old School churches out of the religious developments of the early 1800s.  On the contrary, there were some very significant developments that took place among these older denominations.  Although they did not take on the colorful features of New School revivalism, they went a long way in developing the religious character of the young Republic.

What is being described here is the birth in the 1810s and 1820s of a large number of interdenominational Christian societies that sought to set Christianity to the task of taking on a number of social problems, blemishes that embarrassed good Christians.  These Old School Christians also believed strongly that America had a vital role to play as a model of Christian virtue to the larger world.  These new societies were thus set up to provide Christian demonstrations as to how such issues as poverty, illiteracy, and just plain ignorance of the Christian gospel were to be taken on by the faithful.

Working across denominational lines (Baptist, Methodist, Congregationalist, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, etc.), Americans were very active in forming such groups as the American Bible Society (to help every American family find itself in possession of a Bible), the American Sunday School Union (to develop Biblical literacy among the children of all social classes), the American Tract Society (to put in the hands of everyone the simplest explanation of and call to Christianity), the American Anti-Slavery Society, and the American Temperance League (both fighting particular social evils).  Then there was the inter-faith (Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed) American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABDFM) created in 1810, which sent missionaries to the Cherokee (and other American Indians) and ultimately overseas to Hawaii, China, India, the Middle East and finally Africa.  These volunteer organizations became a vital part of the American social-cultural dynamic that developed in accompaniment with America's spread across the North American continent, and soon across the world.

Christian colleges. As we have already noted, from the time of the Puritans' early settlement in America, higher education was a matter of vital necessity, not only in training the pastors who would be expected to lead the Christian communities the Puritans were establishing but in training in other areas such as the law, business, finance, and teacher training – all so vital to the life of their communities.  Thus Christian America founded Harvard, Yale, William and Mary, King's (Columbia), Georgetown, the College of New Jersey (Princeton), New Brunswick and Andover Theological Seminaries, as well as colleges such as Mount Holyoke, designed to give women the same opportunity at a higher education.  In fact, in the period between the founding of the colonies and the mid–1800s, over 500 colleges were founded by America's various denominations.  This too was a key part of Christian America's larger mission to be a Light to the Nations.

And then there was the compelling voice of a Connecticut pastor calling for interdenominational compromise, a spirit of Christian unity ... and in doing so would greatly impact his times (and continue to do so even through the rest of the 1800s): the persuasive voice of Horace Bushnell.  He took a unique position that aligned him exactly with none of the contending Christian groups, yet found value in all of them.  With respect to the Old School Christians, he was quite respectful of the way traditional Calvinist Christianity was able to shape from a person's very early life, even childhood, key Christian understandings that helped direct a person (elected purely by the grace of God to the privilege of being born into full Christian fellowship of Christian family and church) toward a long-term and deeply faithful Christian life.  This understanding was clearly laid out in his very popular book, Christian Nurture (1847).  At the same time, he was highly supportive of the Unitarian (and Arminian or Wesleyan or Methodist) viewpoint that man did have the responsibility (and thus the choice in the matter) of disciplining or ordering his own thoughts and actions as part of the mature Christian life.  And for a period of time he was quite supportive of the Transcendentalists' mystical approach to God, seeing such a higher reach of the soul as vital to a strong personal relationship with God.  However, in early 1848 he found himself decisively back in the support of the idea of God, not in the form of the Transcendentalists' Universalist Deity, but rather in the traditional Trinitarian view of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  But even in this retreat, he continued to believe that although emotional revivalism was not necessary for everyone to reach God, it certainly served very well those who had become quite lost in their journey in life and was an authentic way of bringing such lost but spiritually hungry souls to Christ – provided that such revival always was followed up by on-going fellowship with a worshiping community, in order to make the salvation-event a lasting transformation.

Although he would draw criticism from all the communities for his less than full embrace of their respective positions, his ability to see Christianity above these divisions would come to be of great value to American Christianity in the days ahead.