Why a Second Awakening
Four causes, listed together
- The rise of democratic and individualistic beliefs, a response to rationalism, and changes to society caused by the market revolution, along with greater social and geographical mobility, contributed to a Second Great Awakening among Protestants.
- Four causes: beliefs, a reaction against rationalism, economic change, and mobility.
- Contributed to is a modest verb — none of the four is claimed as sufficient on its own.
Select all four causes the CED lists.
'Contributed to' — none is sufficient alone.
Democratic and individualistic beliefs
- 4.7's suffrage expansion made ordinary men political actors; a religion of individual conversion makes them spiritual ones.
- The two developments share a premise: authority is validated by the individual, not by inherited standing.
- So the Awakening is not a retreat from the era's politics but an expression of the same assumption.
Suffrage expansion and a religion of individual conversion share the premise that...
So the Awakening is not a retreat from the era's politics.
A response to rationalism
- A response to rationalism places the Awakening in the same argument European history calls Romanticism.
- The claim in both cases is that reason alone does not exhaust what a person needs or knows.
- 4.9's Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility is the same intellectual current, arriving in religion.
Select both kinds of mobility the CED names.
Moving between ranks, and moving between places.
"Contributed to" is a modest verb, and none of the four causes is claimed as sufficient. The CED lists democratic and individualistic beliefs, a response to rationalism, changes caused by the market revolution and greater social and geographical mobility together — an answer resting on one of them has overstated it.
Which of the four causes?
Sort each element into the cause it belongs to.
'A response to rationalism' places the Awakening in the same argument as...
4.9's Romantic beliefs are the same current, arriving in religion.
Mobility, of two kinds
- Greater social and geographical mobility names two different things: moving between ranks, and moving between places.
- Both loosen inherited community ties, and a person whose community is new must choose a congregation rather than inherit one.
- So mobility does not merely allow revival; it creates the demand that revival meets.
Match each cause to what it supplied.
Four sentences, and the CED wrote all four causes.
Explaining a cause
- The objective is simply the causes of the Second Great Awakening, so the whole answer is the four-part list plus mechanism.
- For each cause, say what it made possible or necessary — beliefs supplied the form, rationalism the target, the market the disruption, mobility the need.
- Four sentences, and the CED wrote all four causes for you.
A person who has moved twice in ten years does not inherit a congregation; they must be persuaded into one. Multiply that by a generation on the move and preaching becomes the most competitive activity in the country.
The rise of democratic and individualistic beliefs, a response to rationalism, and changes to society caused by the market revolution, along with greater social and geographical mobility, contributed to a Second Great Awakening among Protestants. Four causes, none sufficient alone: beliefs supplied the form, rationalism the target, the market the disruption, and mobility the need.