# The Great Awakening Democratized American Religion



## ABondSlaveofChristJesus (Sep 26, 2005)

Would you agree with this?


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## Puritanhead (Sep 26, 2005)

no


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## PuritanCovenanter (Sep 26, 2005)

> _Originally posted by ABondSlaveofChristJesus_
> Would you agree with this?



According to George Marsden's bio account on Edwards, The Great Awakening did fuel some of the fire for political change in both the Church and Society. They seem to have started together. The Banks started making notes which fueled the economic pursuit of many. Some of the New Light principles fueled an individualistic spirit also.

[Edited on 9-26-2005 by puritancovenanter]


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## crhoades (Sep 26, 2005)

I could see where the 2nd Great Awakening would democratize things. People getting saved, hopping on horseback and becoming instant preachers to the next group without any study... Not to mention the man-centeredness of the gospel that was preached.


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## Puritanhead (Sep 27, 2005)

Americans have historically been possessed of a rugged pioneering individualism with or without the Great Awakening... I don't know that _democratization_ is necessarily a good thing. What is democratization? If you embrace it as a sacrosanct pillar of a free civil society, define what it is.

Thanks.

[Edited on 9-27-2005 by Puritanhead]


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## WrittenFromUtopia (Sep 27, 2005)

I would say the Industrial Revolution and other historical events democratized American Religion, I don't know about the Great Awakening.


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## Michael Butterfield (Sep 28, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Puritanhead_
> no



Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989.

Great Book!


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## SolaScriptura (Sep 28, 2005)

Hey, I like democracy. And I like the Great Awakening. I also like religion. Plus, I like America. If I put them together does that mean that I have to affirm the title of this thread?


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## VirginiaHuguenot (Sep 28, 2005)

> _Originally posted by crhoades_
> I could see where the 2nd Great Awakening would democratize things. People getting saved, hopping on horseback and becoming instant preachers to the next group without any study... Not to mention the man-centeredness of the gospel that was preached.



 Most commentators that I have read have made a connection between the Second Great Awakening and the Jacksonian Democracy movement. Whereas during the American War for Independence, much of America was Presbyterian or Calvinistic, and adhered to corresponding political views which were more republican (lower case 'r') than democratic, the SGA brought with it a rejection of Calvinistic beliefs via Charles Finney and the like, and the rise of Baptists, Methodists, interdenominational missionary and Bible societies, the temperance and abolition movements all lead to a more egalitarian view of society and politics (also laying the groundwork for the womens' suffrage movement), which was consistent with democratic rather than republican political views.


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## Arch2k (Sep 29, 2005)

I have been reading The Lost Soul of American Protestantism by D.G. Hart. In this book, he traces the effects or results of democratization of America in relation to Protestantism. 

Here is a summery:




> D. G. Hart. The Lost Soul of American Protestantism. (American Intellectual Culture.) Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 2002. Pp. xxxiv, 197. $37.50.
> The common contemporary image of American Protestantism as divided between evangelicals (or fundamentalists) and modernists (or liberals) is an oversimplification, argues D. G. Hart. We need to take account of a third important category: confessional Protestants. Hart reminds us that both the evangelicals and modernists of today derive from the nineteenth-century revivalists, who emphasized the religion of the heart rather than theological rigor and judged doctrines by their practical efficacy. Hart uses the term "pietist" to refer to their kind of religion, which rose to dominance in the United States. The confessional religious bodies, by contrast, rejected nineteenth-century revivalism in favor of traditional definitions ("confessions") of faith. The nineteenth-century revivalists promoted reforms through which they intended to build the kingdom of Christ in America, ranging from antislavery and public education to temperance and sabbatarian regulations. Only around 1912 did this pietist reform impulse bifurcate into liberal and fundamentalist versions. The evangelical and modernist pietists of our own day continue to push their agendas for American society, although of course they disagree over whether to legitimate or ban abortion, homosexual behavior, and common prayer in the public schools. By contrast, confessional Christians are content to preserve their distinctive traditions in a sinful world, to save the souls of their followers by means of those traditions, and to disavow any ambition for reshaping society as a whole. According to Hart, they do not judge the validity of their doctrines as pietists do, by their practical efficacy in winning converts or improving the world. Religious confessionalists are perhaps the only true conservatives in twenty-first-century American society. The evangelical fundamentalists, declares Hart, although carelessly labeled conservative, are in fact antitraditional populists.


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## crhoades (Sep 29, 2005)

Michael Horton's Made In America is a good read on this topic.


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## turmeric (Sep 30, 2005)

Has anyone read The American Religion by Harold Bloom?


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