Revivals and American Identity
By Denis Mueller

America was breaking apart while the social fabric of the country was becoming unraveled. It is said that there was a moral crisis in the country and we faced a grim future. The years from 1815-1837 were troubling times for the United States. The young country was facing a dilemma because the increasing population, coupled with the need for jobs, left many people with nowhere to go. Farms in the New England area could not be divided into enough lots to include new members of the family.

This caused people to move west and, with improvements in transportation, through the developments of canals, new areas like Rochester, New York became the new outposts of the young country. This caused problems. At first people lived as lodgers with their employers and the new industries, like the grain mills of western New York, caused tensions to increase. At the time, the use of liquor was widespread. People drank heavily back then and it was considered all right to do so. But this caused problems and, when employers began to live apart from their employees and no longer held power over them, the situation grew worse.

Something else was going on at the time: a revival in religion. The Puritans believed in pre-destination. This meant that one was destined, from birth, to either go to heaven or hell. But there was an emerging challenge to this notion and it would shape the culture and history of the United States as much as any other occurrence in our history. The Great Awakening was about to change the entire future of the United States. Evangelists, like Charles Finney, called for a revolution when he said, "God has made man a moral free agent."

The meaning of this was crucial. Evil was not an innate trait of human beings, but choices which were made by mortal men and women, were open to people. This means that people had the power to reach heaven by their own accord. All of this caused a wave of conversions to Christianity throughout the country. Think for second and ask yourself how liberating this must have been. People could now control their own destiny. The conversions were centered on the newly emerging middle class who flocked to the movement in droves.

It was a match, pardon the pun, made in heaven. These changes caused people to try to remake American society in God's name. It had a profound effect on the development of the abolitionist movement. The movement against slavery can be directly traced to this new religious movement, as can the women's movement. This also helped bring into being the capitalist system, as we know it, and was greatly responsible in creating an obedient population. It also allowed masters of the population to deny the human interdependence of society. So for better, or for worse, the new revivals brought into being a new world and helped shape the culture of America.

Source: Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium

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