The Second Great Awakening
The U.S.’s Second Great Awakening was a Protestant revival period in the early 19th century, named after the First Great Awakening, which took place in the mid-1700’s. While during the First Great Awakening, a lot of the religious fervor originated across the Atlantic (the revival was also prominent in Germany, England, and Scotland), this subsequent revival was focused primarily in the United States. At the inception of this period, the revival was based mainly in meetings called camp meetings where people would come from miles around to hear others preach for three or four days at a time. These meetings consisted of prayer, singing, and even weddings and baptisms among parishioners, most of whom came from settlements that were “unchurched.” Though the set-up for the meetings only consisted of tents and log benches, the social hierarchy was quite elaborate.
“...it reenacted within the bounds of the campground the roles that prevailed within society and the church. The social stratification that divided male and female, black and white, saint and sinner, clergy and laity was honored in the camp. In most cases, men and women sat on opposite sides of the aisle, blacks held meeting behind the preacher’s stand, and clergy sat elevated above the people.1”
Around 1810, the Second Great Awakening was heavily influenced by theologians such as Lyman Beecher, who stood for both emancipation of women and antislavery. This made the movement not only a religious one, but one that impacted moral and philanthropic ideals as well. Though much of this change in ideals was progressive, the middle of the Second Great Awakening proved a bit more conservative due to the Temperance movement, which was devoted to abstinence from alcohol. In addition, another theologian, Timothy Dwight, managed to evangelize most of the prominent Yale University during this time. When he was elected president of the university, “there were no professing Christians among the student body; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Tom Paine reigned supreme. By the time of his death in 1817, after three revivals, the vast majority had been thoroughly evangelized."2
An engraving of a Methodist camp meeting in 1819
The third phase of the Second Great Awakening was spearheaded by evangelist Charles Grandison Finney. His revivalist activities started in western New York, but eventually spread to large cities across the country and even in Britain. These revival meetings were focused on both Christian perfectionism, which was the idea that humanity had the innate ability to reform itself and the concept of freedom, which was not the agency to do whatever one wants, but an internal phenomenon meaning freedom from temptation. Perfectionism was not well-accepted by immigrants from Ireland and Germany on the East coast, who were mostly Catholic, but for the Protestants in the area, these ideals were very attractive because of their personal nature. Finney was originally studying to be a lawyer, but after moving to Oneida, New York and joining the congregation of George Washington Gale, the founder of Galesburg, he had a life-changing religious experience and became a minister, mentored by Gale himself. Gale was a Presbyterian minister who did not agree with the secularism of modern higher education, but also did not agree with the exclusionism of higher education either. This prompted Gale to be a large supporter of the idea of manual labor colleges in the East because they
“equalized opportunities for students of all backgrounds without the “evil of charity,” and built upon the self-reliance and “health and bodily vigor” that was sometimes lost when students were dedicated exclusively to studies to the neglect of physical exercise. Thus it was that Gale saw the potential for manual labor, conjoined with religion, to “furnish the laborers” who would spread the gospel.3”
These ideals were the foundation for the forming of Galesburg and Knox as we know it today. Many of Gale’s followers from Oneida were the first settlers of Galesburg, having moved west to make Gale’s vision a reality when he decided to found a labor college in Illinois. This institution was called Prairie College, which would later become Knox.
By Emily DiBenedetto
1 Roger Robins, “Vernacular American Landscape: Methodists, Camp Meetings, and Social Respectability,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 4, no. 2 (Summer, 1994): 170.
2 Rev. Timothy Dwight, Jr.,” Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, Yale University, accessed May 25, 2021, https://caas.yale.edu/our-founders/rev-timothy-dwight-jr.
3 “The Origins of Knox College,” Knox College, accessed May 25, 2021, https://www.knox.edu/about-knox/our-history/perspectives-on-knox-history/origins-of-knox-college
Image: An engraving of a Methodist camp meeting in 1819 (Library of Congress). Jacques Gérard Milbert (1766-1840) - Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-USZ62-2497)