The Second Great Awakening and the New England Social Order

Abstract

“Only the shell of orthodoxy was left.” Such was the considered judgment of Henry Adams on the condition of the inherited socioreligious order of New England by the year 1800.1 The image of the shell of a gourd with loose seeds rattling within is a good one to convey the dissociation between the purposes of the society and the real beliefs of individuals that had come to pass by the end of the eighteenth century. And it presents a notable contrast to the close congruence of individual belief and the social aims of the first generation of New England Puritans.

Connecticut Ministers and Slavery, 1790–1795

“…36 The clergy's lack of rapport with Connecticut's laymen was a symptom of a more serious malady afflicting the New England social order, a symptom of what Richard D. Birdsall has described as "the dissociation between die purposes of the society and die real beliefs of individuals that had come to pass by die end of die eighteenth century." 37 Birdsall has argued that the Second Great Awakening revitalized the New England social order by ending the "crisis of faith," and by enlarging the individual's sense of participation in community life. But those showers of religious blessing were not to fall across New England until the late 1790s, and in the meantime Connecticut's Congregational ministers had to cope with the difficulties before them.…”