AP United States History

## Learning Outcomes

- Explain why the Second Great Awakening grew in the early republic and antebellum era
- Identify how disestablishment after the American Revolution encouraged revivalism
- Understand how frontier conditions and westward migration helped spread camp-meeting religion
- Explain how the Market Revolution and social change created demand for evangelical religion
- Distinguish the Second Great Awakening from the First Great Awakening
- Use specific evidence such as **Cane Ridge (1801)**, the **Burned-Over District**, and **Charles Grandison Finney**

## AP United States History Syllabus

For the AP United States History, you are expected to understand the causes of the Second Great Awakening, with a focus on the following syllabus points:

- Know that the **Second Great Awakening** developed mainly in the early **1800s** and was strongest in the **1820s** and **1830s**
- Identify how **disestablishment** weakened older state-supported churches and increased religious competition
- Explain how the **Market Revolution**, migration, and early urban growth created uncertainty that encouraged revival religion
- Understand why **frontier settlement** favored **camp meetings**, itinerant preaching, and denominations such as **Methodists** and **Baptists**
- Know the significance of the **Cane Ridge Revival (1801)** in Kentucky
- Recognise the importance of the **Burned-Over District** in western New York
- Understand the shift from stricter **Calvinist predestination** toward greater emphasis on **free will**, conversion, and human agency
- Identify **Charles Grandison Finney** as a leading revivalist associated with later growth of the movement

## Test Your Knowledge

_Attempt these questions before reading this article. If you find some difficult or cannot remember the answers, look more closely at that area during your revision._

1. Why did the Second Great Awakening grow after the American Revolution rather than before it?
2. How did frontier conditions help create camp-meeting religion?
3. What role did the Market Revolution play in the rise of revivalism?
4. Why did Methodists and Baptists benefit more than older, formal churches?
5. What is the significance of **Cane Ridge** and the **Burned-Over District**?

## Introduction

The Second Great Awakening was a major Protestant revival movement of the early republic. For APUSH, the key point is that it did not appear for just one reason. It grew because the United States was changing quickly after independence. Old church systems weakened, settlers moved west, markets expanded, towns grew, and many Americans faced uncertainty in daily life. Revival religion offered certainty, community, and a message that ordinary people could take control of their spiritual future.

This topic matters because AP questions often ask you to explain causation, not just identify the movement. Strong answers show that the Second Great Awakening was tied to broad Period 4 developments: **democratization**, **migration and settlement**, **work, exchange, and technology**, and changing ideas about authority in the early republic.

> **Key Term: Second Great Awakening**
> A Protestant revival movement in the early 1800s that emphasized emotional conversion, individual salvation, and the ability of ordinary people to choose religious commitment.

### Disestablishment and the democratization of religion

One major cause of the Second Great Awakening was the political and religious change that followed the American Revolution. Before independence, some colonies had established churches that enjoyed official support and public authority. After the Revolution, many Americans became suspicious of inherited privilege and top-down authority, including in religion. If monarchy and aristocracy could be challenged in politics, old religious hierarchies could be challenged too.

> **Key Term: disestablishment**
> The ending of official state support for a church, creating greater separation between church and state and more competition among denominations.

Disestablishment changed religion in a practical way. Churches could no longer rely as much on government backing, taxes, or inherited status. They had to attract followers. That pushed ministers and denominations into a more competitive religious world. In that setting, revivalism worked well because it was active, emotional, and direct. It did not wait for people to come to church out of habit. It went out to recruit them.

This helps explain why the Second Great Awakening fit the democratic spirit of the early republic. Americans increasingly celebrated the common man in politics, especially by the Jacksonian era. Revivalists preached a similar message in religion: salvation was not reserved for a small elect or controlled only by learned clergy. It was open to ordinary people.

That was a significant shift from older Calvinist ideas that stressed predestination. Earlier traditions often taught that God had already determined who would be saved. Revival preachers in the Second Great Awakening placed much more weight on choice, repentance, and personal conversion. That message matched a society that increasingly valued individual agency.

> **Key Term: democratization of religion**
> The process by which religious participation and authority became more accessible to ordinary people rather than remaining mainly with established elites.

Why does this matter for APUSH? Because it links religion to politics and culture. The same nation that expanded political participation among white men also saw a form of religion that told ordinary people they could shape their own spiritual future. That is a direct connection between religion and broader early republic ideology.

> **Test Tip:** If an APUSH question asks for a cause of the Second Great Awakening, do not jump straight to abolitionism or temperance. Those are mainly effects. Start with disestablishment, democratic culture, and the weakening of older religious authority.

### Social change, the Market Revolution, and the search for order

A second major cause was rapid social and economic change. The early 1800s saw the rise of the **Market Revolution**: improvements in transportation, expanding trade, more wage labor, new commercial links, and growing towns and cities. These developments increased opportunity, but they also created insecurity.

> **Key Term: Market Revolution**
> The 19th-century expansion of transportation, commerce, and production that shifted the United States toward a more connected market economy.

For many Americans, older patterns of life became less stable. Families moved away from familiar communities. Farmers became more tied to markets and price swings. Urban growth brought crowding, poverty, and weaker local ties. In this setting, revival religion answered emotional and moral needs. It offered belonging in a fast-changing world. It also gave people a way to interpret hardship: rather than seeing change as random, revivalists framed life in moral and spiritual terms.

This is why AP explanations often use phrases like uncertainty and anxiety. The point is not that people simply became frightened and ran to religion. The stronger explanation is that economic and social change disrupted older networks of authority and community. Revival movements filled that gap by creating new communities and a moral framework.

The message itself also fit the age. Preachers emphasized self-improvement, discipline, and moral reform. In a market society, people were increasingly told that individual effort mattered. Revival religion echoed that logic in spiritual form: you were not helpless; you could repent, convert, and live a better life. That overlap helps explain the appeal.

In places touched by fast commercial growth, revivalism often flourished. Western New York is a strong example. The region was transformed by migration, land speculation, and transportation links such as the **Erie Canal**, completed in **1825**. The area became famous for repeated revivals and religious experimentation.

> **Key Term: Burned-Over District**
> A region of western and central New York known for intense revival activity in the 1820s and 1830s.

The name matters because it suggests not one isolated revival, but repeated waves of religious intensity. AP questions sometimes use the Burned-Over District as evidence that the Second Great Awakening was not just a frontier event. It was also tied to commercial expansion and boomtown culture.

This is also why **Charles Grandison Finney** became so important. He worked especially in western New York and showed how revivalism adapted to a society in motion. Finney stressed immediate decision and personal responsibility, which fit a culture that prized action and choice.

> **Key Term: Charles Grandison Finney**
> A leading revivalist preacher of the Second Great Awakening who emphasized immediate conversion, free will, and organized revival methods.

Finney is best used as evidence for intensification, not origin. He did not cause the Second Great Awakening by himself. Instead, he shows how existing trends became more organized and influential by the 1820s and 1830s.

### Frontier settlement, camp meetings, and evangelical growth

A third major cause was westward migration. As settlers moved into trans-Appalachian regions, they often lived far from established towns, schools, and churches. Frontier life scattered people across large areas. That made traditional parish-based religion difficult to maintain.

The solution was revivalism designed for frontier conditions. Ministers traveled from place to place, and large outdoor gatherings drew people together for preaching, prayer, and conversion. These meetings served both religious and social purposes. On the frontier, where people were isolated, a camp meeting could also function as a rare moment of community.

> **Key Term: camp meeting**
> A large outdoor religious gathering, often lasting several days, where preachers led emotional revival services for dispersed frontier populations.

The best example is the **Cane Ridge Revival** in **Kentucky** in **1801**. It became one of the most famous revival events of the era and symbolized the style of frontier evangelicalism.

> **Key Term: Cane Ridge Revival**
> A famous 1801 camp meeting in Kentucky that became a symbol of frontier revivalism during the Second Great Awakening.

Cane Ridge matters because it shows how geography shaped religion. On the frontier, formal church buildings were scarce. Trained clergy were few. Populations were mobile. A multi-day outdoor revival solved all three problems at once: it gathered scattered settlers, relied on dramatic preaching rather than elaborate church structure, and encouraged immediate religious response.

Methodists and Baptists gained the most from these conditions. Their organization was flexible, their preaching was direct, and they did not depend as heavily on elite, highly educated clergy or fixed church institutions. Methodist **circuit riders** could travel to scattered communities. Baptist preaching also fit frontier expectations: plain speech, emotional force, and local participation.

That explains why older formal denominations often struggled more in frontier settings. A church that needed stable funding, educated clergy, and long-settled communities had a harder time growing in newly settled regions. By contrast, revivalist groups could move with the people.

This is also where theology matters again. Frontier audiences were often more responsive to a message that stressed the possibility of immediate conversion rather than inherited church membership or predestination. Revivalists told people that they could choose faith now. That sense of urgency was powerful.

Finney later expanded these methods with what were called “new measures,” such as extended meetings and more public calls for conversion. Again, he did not invent the movement, but he sharpened techniques that matched the revival culture already taking shape.

> **Test Tip:** When writing about frontier causes, explain why camp meetings developed. Do not just define them. Link them to sparse settlement, lack of formal churches, itinerant ministers, and the need to gather isolated communities.

### Reaction against rational religion and the appeal of emotional conversion

A final cause was dissatisfaction with cooler, more rational approaches to religion. In the late 1700s, Enlightenment ideas encouraged reason, skepticism, and in some circles deism. That did not eliminate religion, but it did weaken the hold of older emotional revival traditions for some Americans.

The Second Great Awakening partly grew as a reaction. Many believers wanted religion that felt immediate and personal, not distant or abstract. Revivalists offered “heart religion”: emotional sermons, public repentance, conversion experiences, and intense group worship.

This does not mean Americans rejected reason altogether. The stronger point is contrast. In a culture where some educated elites emphasized rational religion, revival preachers made emotional certainty attractive again. For ordinary listeners, that form of religion could feel more direct and useful than theological debate.

This helps distinguish the Second Great Awakening from the First Great Awakening. Both were revival movements, and both reacted against cooler religious tendencies. But the Second Great Awakening operated in a different national setting: after the Revolution, during expansion, democratization, and the Market Revolution. It was shaped by a republic on the move.

That is why strong APUSH answers treat the movement as a product of multiple causes working together:

- weakened established churches after the Revolution
- expanded democratic ideals
- economic and social instability
- frontier settlement and migration
- dissatisfaction with rational, formal religion

Students often miss that these causes reinforced one another. Frontier settlement encouraged camp meetings. Democratic culture encouraged accessible preaching. Market change created uncertainty. Disestablishment forced denominations to compete. Put together, these conditions made revivalism especially powerful in Period 4.

## Key Point Checklist

_This article has covered the following key knowledge points:_

- The Second Great Awakening developed mainly in the early 1800s and was strongest in the 1820s and 1830s
- It was caused by several linked changes, not by one event alone
- Disestablishment after the American Revolution weakened old state-supported churches
- Churches had to compete for followers, which encouraged revivalism
- Democratic culture made religion more accessible to ordinary people
- Revival preaching shifted away from strict predestination toward greater emphasis on free will and conversion
- The Market Revolution, migration, and urban growth created uncertainty and demand for community and moral order
- Frontier conditions helped produce camp meetings and itinerant preaching
- The Cane Ridge Revival of 1801 is the key example of frontier revivalism
- Methodists and Baptists grew rapidly because their style fit frontier and democratic conditions
- The Burned-Over District in western New York shows the link between revivalism and rapid social change
- Charles Grandison Finney is important as a leading revivalist who intensified the movement, especially in the 1820s and 1830s

## Key Terms and Concepts

- Second Great Awakening
- disestablishment
- democratization of religion
- Market Revolution
- Burned-Over District
- Charles Grandison Finney
- camp meeting
- Cane Ridge Revival


The Second Great Awakening - Causes of the Second Great Awakening