<p> The Second Great Awakening</p><p>Society during the Jacksonian era was undergoing deep and rapid changes. The revolution in markets brought both economic expansion and periodic depressions, and in the ensuing uncertainty some reformers sought stability and moral order in religious community. The bonds of unity created by a revival brought a sense of peace in the midst of a society in change. Revivals could reinforce strength and discipline, too, in an emerging industrial culture that demanded sobriety and regular working habits. Other reformers, however, sought to check the excesses of Jacksonian America by radically remaking institutions or devising utopian, experimental ways of living and working together. The drive for renewal, in other words, led reformers sometimes to preserve social institutions, other times to overturn them. It led them sometimes to liberate, other times to control. And the conflicting ways in which these dynamics operated could be seen in the electric career of Charles Grandison Finney.</p><p>Finney's New Measures and New Theology</p><p>As a young man, Finney experienced a soul-shattering conversion in 1821 that led him to give up his law practice to become an itinerant minister. Between the mid-1820s and the early 1830s he conducted a series of spectacular revivals in the booming port cities along the new Erie Canal. Like George Whitefield before him, Finney had an entrancing voice that carried great distances. His success, however, resulted as much from his use of special techniques-"the new measures." Finney held "protracted meetings" night after night to build up excitement. Speaking boldly and bluntly, he prayed for sinners by name, encouraged women to testify in public gatherings, and placed those struggling with conversion on the "anxious bench" at the front of the church. Such techniques all heightened the emotions of the conversion process. The cries of agonized prayers, groans, and uncontrolled crying often resounded through the hall. Finney's new measures had actually been used during the frontier revivals of the Second Great Awakening. His contribution was to popularize the techniques and use them systematically. "A revival is not a miracle," he coolly declared, "it is a purely scientific result of the right use of constituted means." Finney also rejected many religious doctrines of Calvinism, including predestination, which maintained that God had already determined which individuals were destined to be saved or damned, and no human effort could change this decision. But by the 1820s such a proposition seemed unreasonable to citizens of a democratic republic. Leaving the Lord little role in the drama of human deliverance, Finney embraced the doctrine of free will. All men and women who wanted to could be saved. To those anxious about their salvation, he thundered, "Do it!" With salvation within reach of every individual, what might be in store for society at large? "If the church would do her duty," Finney confidently predicted, "the millennium may come in this country in three years." By the 1830s Finney had taken to preaching not merely faith in human progress but something more, human perfectibility. Embracing this new theology of "perfectionism," he boldly asserted that all Christians should "aim at being holy and not rest satisfied until they are as perfect as God." And a true Christian would not rest until society was made perfect as well. By preaching an optimistic message of free will and salvation to all, Finney and his eager imitators transformed Protestantism. But not all clergy applauded. For Lyman Beecher, as well as many supporters of the Second Great Awakening, Finney's new measures went too far, while his theology of perfectionism verged on heresy. Undaunted by such criticism, Finney continued his revivals. As for Lyman Beecher, in 1832 he accepted the presidency of Lane Seminary in Cincinnati. By moving to the West, he planned to train the right sort of revivalists to save the frontier for true religion and to bring about the kingdom of God in America.</p><p>Religion and the Market Economy </p><p>Revival audiences responded to the call for reform partly because they were unsettled by the era's rapid social changes. In the North, evangelical religion proved strongest not in isolated backwaters but in frontier areas just entering that increasingly lived apart from employers and beyond their moral control, and a rowdy saloon culture catering to canal boatmen and other travelers. Finney preached almost daily in Rochester for six months, and assisted by local ministers, his revivals doubled church membership. Religion helped bring order to what had been a chaotic and fragmented city. Although revivals like Finney's Rochester triumph drew converts from all segments of American society, they appealed especially to the middle class. Lawyers, merchants, retailers, and manufacturers all played central roles in the larger market economy and invested in factories and railroads. The market put intense pressure on these upwardly mobile citizens: they viewed success as a reflection of moral character, yet also feared that they would lose their wealth in the next economic downturn. Workers, too, were among the converted. Among other things, joining a church reflected a desire to get ahead in the new economy by accepting moral self-discipline. To a striking degree, social mobility and church membership were linked. In Rochester two- thirds of the male workers who were church members improved their occupational status in a decade. By contrast, workers who did not join a church rarely stayed in town more than a few years, and those who stayed were likely to decline in status. Revivalists like Finney were interested in saving souls, not money, and their converts were most concerned with their spiritual state. Even so, evangelical Protestantism reinforced values needed to succeed in the new competitive economy. Churchgoers accepted the values of hard work and punctuality, self- control and sobriety. In that sense, religion was one means of social control in a disordered society.</p><p>The Significance of the Second Great Awakening </p><p>As a result of the Second Great Awakening, the dominant form of Christianity in America became Evangelical Protestantism. Membership in the major Protestant churches-Congregational, Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodist, soared during the first half of the nineteenth century. By 1840 an estimated half of the adult population was nominally connected to some church, with the Methodists emerging as the largest Protestant denomination in both the North and the South. Evangelicalism was in harmony with the basic values of early nineteenth-century Americans. Its emphasis on the ability of everyone to bring about his or her salvation upheld the American belief in individualism. By catering to a mass audience without social distinctions, the revivals reinforced the American belief in democracy and equality. Finney's invincibly optimistic doctrine of perfectionism was exactly attuned to the spirit of the age.</p>