The Second Great Awakening: America's Wave of Religious Revivals

A surge of emotional, evangelical Christianity that swept America from the 1790s to 1830s, reshaping faith, society, and politics.

By Garret Merkley · Explainer · Jun 2, 2026

Branched from Joseph Smith's Early Life

Quick take

The Second Great Awakening was a mass religious movement emphasizing personal conversion, emotional experience, and individual choice in faith.
Camp meetings and traveling preachers brought revival fervor to frontier communities and cities, democratizing religion across class lines.
The movement fueled the rise of new denominations, abolitionism, temperance, and other reform movements that transformed American society.
It created a template for modern evangelical Christianity and American revivalism that persists today.

The Second Great Awakening was a broad wave of religious revivals that swept across the United States roughly from the 1790s through the 1830s. Unlike the First Great Awakening of the 1740s, which was more scattered and clergy-led, the Second Awakening was larger in scale, more geographically dispersed, and emphasized emotional conversion experiences and the individual's direct relationship with God. It transformed American Christianity from a relatively formal, intellectual affair into something far more personal, passionate, and accessible to ordinary people—especially those on the frontier or in growing cities.

How Camp Meetings Spread the Revival

The most visible feature of the Second Great Awakening was the camp meeting—a multi-day outdoor gathering where preachers, musicians, and thousands of attendees camped together to pray, sing, and hear sermons. These events began around 1800 in Kentucky and Tennessee and quickly spread across the frontier. Unlike church services, camp meetings were democratic and informal. People of all classes, races, and denominations mingled. Preachers didn't need formal credentials; what mattered was the ability to move hearts. Attendees often reported intense emotional experiences—weeping, shouting, falling to the ground—which they interpreted as signs of genuine conversion and God's presence.

The most famous early camp meeting was at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, in August 1801, where an estimated 10,000 to 25,000 people gathered. Eyewitness accounts describe scenes of extraordinary religious fervor: people jerking, rolling, barking, and speaking in ecstatic utterances. While some observers saw this as authentic spiritual awakening, others—especially educated clergy—viewed it with suspicion or alarm. Nonetheless, camp meetings became a regular fixture of American religious life and proved remarkably effective at converting people and building new congregations in areas where churches were scarce.

The Role of Traveling Preachers and New Denominations

Camp meetings depended on itinerant preachers—men who traveled from town to town on horseback, preaching in schoolhouses, taverns, and open fields. The most famous was Peter Cartwright, a Methodist circuit rider who covered thousands of miles across the frontier and converted thousands. These preachers were often poorly educated by elite standards but possessed charisma, biblical knowledge, and the ability to speak in the language of common people. They also pioneered the "altar call"—inviting listeners to come forward publicly to profess faith—a practice that became standard in American evangelical churches.

The Second Great Awakening accelerated the growth of Methodist and Baptist denominations, which were better suited to frontier conditions than older, hierarchical churches like Congregationalism or Anglicanism. Methodists used their circuit-rider system to follow settlers westward; Baptists emphasized local autonomy and lay preaching, making it easy for new congregations to form. By 1830, Methodists and Baptists had become the largest Protestant denominations in America. The Awakening also sparked entirely new religious movements, including the Disciples of Christ and—indirectly—Mormonism (Joseph Smith's visions occurred during the height of revival fervor in upstate New York in the 1820s).

Why It Mattered: Religious and Social Impact

The Second Great Awakening mattered because it fundamentally changed what it meant to be Christian in America. It shifted authority from educated clergy and established institutions toward individual experience and conscience. A person's faith now depended on a personal moment of conversion, not on inherited tradition or formal membership. This democratization of religion aligned perfectly with American democratic ideals and gave ordinary people—women, enslaved people, the poor—a voice and agency in spiritual matters that they often lacked elsewhere.

The Awakening also became a catalyst for social reform. Converts believed that a transformed heart should lead to transformed behavior and society. The revival movement fueled the abolitionist movement (many early abolitionists were revivalists), the temperance crusade, prison reform, and public education. Women found new opportunities as Sunday school teachers and missionary organizers. In this sense, the Second Great Awakening wasn't just about personal salvation; it was about remaking American society according to Christian principles—for better and worse.

Key Figures and Places

Charles Grandison Finney—the most influential revival preacher of the era, known for his "new measures" (emotional appeals, altar calls, women praying aloud in public) and his revivals in Rochester, New York (1830–31).
Cane Ridge, Kentucky (1801)—the largest and most famous camp meeting, which set the template for future revivals.
Lyman Beecher—a Congregationalist minister who initially opposed revivals but eventually embraced them as a tool for social reform.
Upstate New York—the "burned-over district," so named for the intense religious fervor that swept through it repeatedly, and where Joseph Smith received his first visions.

The Controversy and Decline

Not everyone welcomed the Second Great Awakening. Educated clergy and intellectuals worried that revivals appealed to emotion over reason and that they encouraged spiritual arrogance and divisiveness. Some feared that the emphasis on individual conversion undermined church discipline and denominational order. By the 1830s and 1840s, the intensity of the Awakening began to fade, though its effects—the growth of evangelical Protestantism, the link between faith and reform, the expectation of a personal conversion experience—became permanent features of American religion.

How was the Second Great Awakening different from the First Great Awakening?

The First Great Awakening (1740s) was more localized, clergy-led, and brief. The Second was larger, lasted decades, relied on laypeople and traveling preachers, and had a more lasting institutional impact. The Second also explicitly connected revival to social reform and democratic values.

Did the Second Great Awakening actually convert people, or was it just emotional theater?

Both. Many people did experience genuine spiritual transformation and joined churches as a result. But historians also note that revivals were theatrical events designed to move emotions, and that not all conversions were permanent. The Awakening's real power lay in building new congregations, creating networks of believers, and establishing evangelical Christianity as the dominant form of American Protestantism.

Why were camp meetings so appealing to frontier people?

Frontier communities were isolated and lacked churches. Camp meetings offered religion, community, entertainment, and a sense of belonging all at once. They were also egalitarian—anyone could preach or testify—which appealed to people suspicious of elite authority. For many, a camp meeting was the social event of the year.

Did the Second Great Awakening help or hurt slavery?

Both. Northern revivalists often connected conversion to abolitionism and social reform, fueling the anti-slavery movement. But Southern revivalists sometimes used Christianity to justify slavery as a moral institution. The Awakening thus deepened the sectional divide over slavery rather than resolving it.

How did the Second Great Awakening influence modern evangelicalism?

It created the template: emphasis on a personal conversion moment, emotional worship, the altar call, lay involvement, and the connection between faith and social action. Most American evangelical churches today follow practices that originated in the Second Great Awakening.

Sources

Cane Ridge Revival (1801): documented in contemporary accounts and historical analyses by Paul K. Conkin and others.
Charles Grandison Finney's revivals and 'new measures' are extensively documented in his autobiography and revival records.
Circuit-rider system: Methodist historical records and Peter Cartwright's autobiography provide primary evidence.