01:512:104 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Oberlin College, Millerism, Golden Plates
16 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Chapter 15 - The Ferment of Reform and Culture 1790-1860
Reviving Religion
Christian Religion
• Many people (3/4 of the 23 million people pop.) still attended church regularly
• Orthodoxy softened greatly by the rationalist ideas of the French Revolution
Deism
• Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason
• All churches were "set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and
profit"
• Liberal ideas (Deism) embraced by many of the Founding Fathers
• Deism supported science and reason rather than the Bible and revelation
• Rejected concept of sin and Christ's divinity
• Believed in one Supreme Being
• Helped inspire the unitarian faith (God existed in only one person)
Second Great Awakening
• Reaction to the liberalism
• Effects of the Second Great Awakening
o Many converted souls across America
o Shattered and reorganized churches
o Many new sects
• Camp Meetings
o Thousands would gather in encampment in order to "get religion"
o Boosted church membership
o Humanitarian reforms
• Peter Cartwright
o Traveling preacher
o Converted 1000's to Methodist beliefs
o "Muscular" conversion
• Charles Grandison Finley
o Trained as a lawyer
o Pungent message
o Abolitionist and Revivalist for Oberlin College
• Feminization of Reilgion
o First and most fervent enthusiasts of revivalism
o Made up majority of new church member
Denominational Diversity
"Burned-Over District"
• Western NY, where the desendants of the New Engalnd Puritans settled
Millerites and Adventists
• Rose from Burned Over District in the 1830's
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• Interpreted (Bible) that Christ would return to Earth on 10/22/1844
• Failure of revival of Christ did not destroy the movement
Second Great Awakening
• Widened lines between classes and religions
• Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Congressionalists, & Unitarians still wealthier and more
educated
• Methodists, Baptists, and new sects were less prosperous, learned, and sprang up in the
South and West
Slavery divides churches
• Religious diversity divides churches
Desert Zion in Utah
• Joseph Smith found "golden plates," which translated into a Book of Mormon (Church of
Latter-Day Saints)
• Ohio, Missouri, Illinois all were not happy with this new religion, and Smith ended up
being murdered by a mob in 1844
• Brigham Young took up the religion leading and led the followers to Utah, where they
used irrigation to make the desert flourish
• Mormons practice polygamy, and ignored Congress's antipolygamy laws of 1862 and
1882. This delayed Utah's statehood until 1896
Free Schools for a Free People
• There were very few tax-supported primary schools, so many poor people were
uneducated
• However, higher classes began to realize that these undereducated poor would
eventually become voters
• School taxes were started so that public education was available for all
• 1825-50: and increase in # of schools, but many teachers weren't better educated than
their students and had crappy wages
• HORACE MANN: secretary of Mass. Board of Education worked towards better wages
and education for teachers
• NOAH WEBSTER: made better textbooks that promoted patriotism, and also made the
Dictionary
• WILLIAM H. MCGUFFEY: made "grade-school" readers that taught morality, patriotism,
and idealism
Higher Goals for Higher Learning
• New denominational, liberal arts colleges were academically poor, usually used to
satisfy local pride than to advance learning
• Curriculums in the new colleges included mainly
o Latin
o Greek
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