The Second Great awakening

[adamhovey1988]

It’s my understanding that certain religious movements, such as Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, and many others came during this time period. I would like to know what the repercussions of it are today, and what good and negative came out of it. I know restorationism was a common theme on the time, and I would like to know why some folks think that is. God bless.

 

[Rhubarb]

Um. There was a huge growth of membership in Protestant denominations. There were new churches that came about, like you mentioned, that still exist today. And women and slaves played a part in the religious movement which allowed for greater participation in public life by both groups. Especially slaves. Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner were influenced by the movement.

 

[adamhovey1988]

Um. There was a huge growth of membership in Protestant denominations. There were new churches that came about, like you mentioned, that still exist today. And women and slaves played a part in the religious movement which allowed for greater participation in public life by both groups. Especially slaves. Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner were influenced by the movement.

Alright thank you. I love learning about history it’s always been my favourite topic to discuss. I guess I’m just curious why it happened when it did.

 

[po18guy]

Well… this needs a setup. Tracing this all back to Europe in the 16th century, we find a growing, increasingly massive resistance to Church authority. Much of it was geographic and political, as well as centered on plain old money. In rejecting the Catholic Church, men assumed the authority to interpret a Catholic Church document, known as the bible. Since each individual ego saw those printed words differently, all began to disagree with each other.

What the 16th century rebellion did was grant license to man to become a nuclear church unto himself. Since the “biggies”, i.e. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Zwingli etc. quickly split from each other and provided a wide variety of novel and aberrant interpretations of God’s intent as recorded in the scriptures. This coincided with the advent of the printing press and increasing distribution of bibles for those individual egos to interpret.

This attitude, this license to re-invent God, passed to America - especially with the Puritans who were fleeing both Catholic as well as Church of England (Anglican) persecution in England. But, once they arrived, egos flared and the Puritans also split off from each other. Other denominations arrived in the US before and after and did the same.

The reformation attitude and the utter freedom/license that went with it, produced the natural result of an exponential increase in the number of denominations. For some spiritual reason (worldly spirit), 19th century America was extremely fertile soil for all manner of new thought - thought which departed even further from Christianity.

Inject ego-driven charismatic leaders of low education and instability into the mix, and you gain followings. By now, what had begun as a single, unified Church was crumbling into increasing insignificance. Non-Christian ideas appeared, such as the Swedenborgian-influenced imaginings of Joseph Smith (Mormons). It got to the point where even a brain-damaged, mercury poisoned woman began receiving “visions” and gained many believers. That is the SDA with now millions of members.

All of this, from “reformation” to American “revolution” to “reawakening” was certainly incited by a worldly spirit of division. And each and every denomination is certain of only one thing: the Catholic Church is bad, evil, or worse. It continues to this day, as we see the almost complete pulverization of the Body of Christ in America.

I am po18guy and I approve of this message.

 

[adamhovey1988]

Well… this needs a setup. Tracing this all back to Europe in the 16th century, we find a growing, increasingly massive resistance to Church authority. Much of it was geographic and political, as well as centered on plain old money. In rejecting the Catholic Church, men assumed the authority to interpret a Catholic Church document, known as the bible. Since each individual ego saw those printed words differently, all began to disagree with each other.

What the 16th century rebellion did was grant license to man to become a nuclear church unto himself. Since the “biggies”, i.e. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Zwingli etc. quickly split from each other and provided a wide variety of novel and aberrant interpretations of God’s intent as recorded in the scriptures. This coincided with the advent of the printing press and increasing distribution of bibles for those individual egos to interpret.

This attitude, this license to re-invent God, passed to America - especially with the Puritans who were fleeing both Catholic as well as Church of England (Anglican) persecution in England. But, once they arrived, egos flared and the Puritans also split off from each other. Other denominations arrived in the US before and after and did the same.

The reformation attitude and the utter freedom/license that went with it, produced the natural result of an exponential increase in the number of denominations. For some spiritual reason (worldly spirit), 19th century America was extremely fertile soil for all manner of new thought - thought which departed even further from Christianity.

Inject ego-driven charismatic leaders of low education and instability into the mix, and you gain followings. By now, what had begun as a single, unified Church was crumbling into increasing insignificance. Non-Christian ideas appeared, such as the Swedenborgian-influenced imaginings of Joseph Smith (Mormons). It got to the point where even a brain-damaged, mercury poisoned woman began receiving “visions” and gained many believers. That is the SDA with now millions of members.

All of this, from “reformation” to American “revolution” to “reawakening” was certainly incited by a worldly spirit of division. And each and every denomination is certain of only one thing: the Catholic Church is bad, evil, or worse. It continues to this day, as we see the almost complete pulverization of the Body of Christ in America.

I am po18guy and I approve of this message.

Okay, I admit, on election day, I enjoyed the end. So would it be safe to say, from your perspective, that it was a logical progression of the reformation?

 

[Rhubarb]

Alright thank you. I love learning about history it’s always been my favourite topic to discuss. I guess I’m just curious why it happened when it did.

I think it was related to the thread of western thought through the Victorian period that stepped back from the Enlightenment and looked to embrace more spiritual “irrational” thinking. I don’t mean irrational like… silly or nonsense. The distinction between the Enlightenment’s “rational thought” and the period that followed’s “irrational” is more about the focus of thinkers. The Enlightenment thinker focuses on the physical, and the empirical. The latter has a focus on what is within, and ephemeral. I prefer Nietzsche’s “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” terms. Nietzsche did not think fondly on the Apollonian rational thinker. He thought that by abandoning the spiritual, the emotional, and the internal, we lost something important.

You can see through the 1800s in philosophy, art, literature, etc. a greater interest in the things that can’t be quantified or explored through empiricism. For instance, you get art like Impressionism that doesn’t focus on photo-realism but on painting the ‘impression’ of something that is left in the mind. You get in science Freud who wrote about dreams, and the psyche - thinks that aren’t physical. In philosophy, you have Henri Bergson who wrote about the elan vital - a life-essence that we all have. And in religion you have the rise of religious denominations, but also movements like Theosophism. This was the era of seances, and interest in the occult. The movement of thinking through history is all connected. Subjects impact each other.

 

[po18guy]

Okay, I admit, on election day, I enjoyed the end. So would it be safe to say, from your perspective, that it was a logical progression of the reformation?

Without doubt. Self-apointed leaders seized authority over the very tenets of Christianity, which is a willful act of disobedience. Once that is done, the concept of entropy reigns. Spiritual and theological corrosion.

 

[RPRPsych]

Without doubt. Self-apointed leaders seized authority over the very tenets of Christianity, which is a willful act of disobedience. Once that is done, the concept of entropy reigns. Spiritual and theological corrosion.

Sad but true.

 

[adamhovey1988]

Without doubt. Self-apointed leaders seized authority over the very tenets of Christianity, which is a willful act of disobedience. Once that is done, the concept of entropy reigns. Spiritual and theological corrosion.

That’s actually quite fascinating. Where I live, I know that the first great awakening ha a lot of influence on the religious discourse here. Revivalism still plays a big role in the landscape here. “Tent revivals” are especially popular.

 

[po18guy]

That’s actually quite fascinating. Where I live, I know that the first great awakening ha a lot of influence on the religious discourse here. Revivalism still plays a big role in the landscape here. “Tent revivals” are especially popular.

Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S. J. teaches that the reformation, in essence, was an assault on the Eucharist. This was a revelation to me and its truth can be seen in the reform’s universal re-defining or complete liquidation of the Eucharist. Only the Catholic and Orthodox retain the original theology of the Eucharist.

 

[arthra]

It’s my understanding that certain religious movements, such as Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, and many others came during this time period. I would like to know what the repercussions of it are today, and what good and negative came out of it. I know restorationism was a common theme on the time, and I would like to know why some folks think that is. God bless.

I think there was an anticipation of the return of Christ in that period among Millerites and others… Swedenborgianism emerged a little earlier near the later part of the eighteenth century…

In Islam there was a parallel expectation of the Mahdi in the Shaykhi movement a school founded by Shaykh Ahmad about the same period. In the Muslim calendar this movement focused on the year 1260 AH which also happened to coincide with 1844.

See:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaykh_Ahmad