The Role of Women in The Second Great Awakening

Introduction to the Second Great Awakening

In the United States, a period from the late 18th century to around 1840 is marked as the Second Great Awakening. Moral and religious regeneration were considered important by many Americans during this time. There seemed to be some changes in the doctrines of churches seeking moral and material improvement, and emotional appeal was increased in the religious approach. Prevailing Presbyterian and Congregational churches were unable to cope with the growth of the American population. There was a feeling of religious destitution at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. To combat this destitution came the reaction called the Second Great Awakening, which lasted up to around 1840. The revived concern helped to accommodate urban working-class families. The role of women in the Second Great Awakening seemed to be very significant. The female subordination continued, and the change in the behavior of women also affected educational ideals in society. Nurturing and teaching children to become model citizens were significant changes made by women. They were held responsible for prayers, song leading, and escaping from damnation. There was an independent female sphere, and gradually it became a social phenomenon. The role of women pointed towards their disengagement from the communal affairs of the church. Reform movements were considered successful in the United States mainly because women had the opportunity to enter into the public sphere during times of crisis.

Women's Participation in Religious Revivalism

The Second Great Awakening, which blossomed during the first half of the 19th century, also set the stage for several significant reform movements. In the process, women of a diverse population moved their public activities in new directions as they found ways to affect the course of events. Common folk, as well as the upper classes, exhibited forms of worldliness that did not speak well for the relationship between religious profession and everyday life. Drink, disorder, lack of commitment, and insufficient concern for others troubled everyone. Revival declaimers spoke of two natures within the human person and warned against giving the animal nature control over individual conduct and spiritual allegiance. Enthusiasts warned against trusting human reason; only a heart warmed by the divine spirit could produce right action.

In the process, women found new modes of evangelizing and discovered their unique gifts. They preached, exhorted, and prophesied. If their audiences consisted of women only, they might speak with some boldness from public platforms. Women became agents of heaven to work out the regeneration of a ruined and wicked world. In the process, strength flowed into women's souls. A woman called to public service found a material transformation, as an insipid or different female slumbering at one of life's back outlets is wrought into instant rectitude and delicate attractiveness. Such transformations made a woman an object of regard, not necessarily as an inhabitant of the earth, but as a messenger of mercy. The Second Great Awakening opened the door to wider religious activity for many men and women. The joining together for mutual support and physical recovery in various religious societies gave broader, more public opportunities for women's leadership and action.

Impact of Women in Shaping Social and Political Movements

In the United States in the early part of the 19th century, women played an important role in shaping social and political movements such as the antislavery movement, the temperance movement, and the reform of prisons and asylums. A common factor in most of these movements was the idea that society needed to be reformed in any number of ways, a notion that was inspired by a wave of religious evangelism in the early 1800s which became known as the Second Great Awakening. The story of the democratization of religion, the story of the rise of mass-based political parties, the story of the emergence of a role for women in shaping American society, are all themes that revolve around the unity of that period of American history at the turn of the 19th century. It has been said that the Second Great Awakening gave American women an excuse to be women who shape society. It was an era of intense religious enthusiasm and moral activism. All over America, the stress was on personal and social improvement, urging temperance, women's rights, humane treatment of the underprivileged, education, prison reform, and harmony between opposing sections of the country.

Challenges and Opposition Faced by Women in the Second Great Awakening

The institution of the early nineteenth-century United States was not one in which women could easily claim a public voice. In some states, it was difficult, if not impossible, for a female to speak in public. When given to the martial, the regulations of society put aside the female's claims to a different kind of knowledge and foresight, challenging the traditional realm of male discourse within the hierarchy of the values of society. Powerless, unheard, secluded, held under iron surveillance and never worn; behind high walls was a truly wretched existence. A major breach in the walls arose when women began to speak publicly in the Great Revivals of the early nineteenth century. The Great Revivals had the role of the player who starts a landslide; soon the revolution in women's rights, abolition, and other movements began.

When women preached, they had a special angle from which to approach antebellum American society. Not only did they face the problems of organization and effecting a positive social program, they also met the opposition of a society to the intrusion of the female. This society was without a biblical command and at a loss over the issue. The society of the first half of the nineteenth century did not lay a simple biblical injunction to the side in not allowing women to speak publicly. Since females were not allowed to speak, problems of determining a public arena for allowing, supervising, and chaperoning women speakers, and making their appeals acceptable arose. The tension that gradually emerged from this opposition and the exhortations of the millennial expectation of the revivals do make an engaging study.