16 The Pursuit of Perfection: Religious Revival and Social Reform Movements

1. The Wild America of the 1820s-40s

Very different from Concord Massachusetts in 1746. Political, cultural, social change.

1. Reform Movements

Many groups dedicated to getting a handle on the chaos, and reforming American society. Small but intense groups of committed people. Education, mental health, temperance (anti alcohol), industrial capitalism. They want to make America the City on the Hill again, a model for the world to emulate. Feminism, new Christian sects, anti slavery. They want things to be more humane.

1. Why?

Antebellum (before the civil war)

1.                                          i.    Middle-class anxieties about market capitalism, industrialism

Reformers are almost always middle class white people, professionals, educated, doctors, ministers, etc. They benefit the most form the new industrial capitalist America. They have lots of anxieties, some of the prejudicial. There is a fear of the lower classes and the poor that are growing immensely. Fear of Irish immigrant, low class, Catholic, alcoholic, potentially violent mobs.

1.                                         ii.    The Second Great Awakening

Reformers are almost all revivalist. There is an explosion of evangelical protestant religion, primarily in the north. Lots of tent revivals, and traveling ministries.

1. A Fallen World

Everyone is equally sinful, but everyone can change their ways. Charles Finney.

1. “Sinner, change your ways!”

Turn your back on evil, and your own sin, and become born again.

1. Why so popular?
   1. Needs of the frontier

In the country side, the population is dispersed and thin, not very many churches. When circuit riders do come, people are hungry for religion and people roll in in droves. There is massive popularity.

1. Boredom with established churches

The established churches were boring. Revivals pump new life into drab services.

1. Resonance with republican values

Mainly the Awakening is so popular because it resonant with the political and social values of the time.

1.                                                                                          i.    The common man, the rejection of authority, equality before God

Very personal, you and god, no hierarchy, your individuality, importance of the local congregation, no elitism.

1. Hope in an uncertain age

The world is changing quickly, and change is scary. Religion is their rock to stand on. It offers then order in the chaos, and their individual ideas matter, a refuge.

1. The Birth of the Reform Urge

Tense middle class Americans are anxious, and have had a religious conversion. They carry their religion out into the world to take action, with the conviction that a sinful country should also improve its ways.

1. Applying evangelism to social problems

All of our problems, our sins, can be alleviated through effort, materialism, greed, alcohol abuse, prostitution. Criminals, mentally ill, and children can be molded into good citizens.

1.                                          i.    Underlying tensions

No matter how sincere reformers are, there is still elitism, the idea that “you should be more like me.” While reformers are genuinely concerned with people involved, they also have contempt for them. Drunken Irish, mentally ill, need help because they can’t figure out how to help themselves.

1. Reform in Action
   1. Temperance

To help them, teach them the virtues of an alcohol free lifestyle. Alcohol consumption in 1800 is 6 gallons a year per person. Alcoholism is a rampant problem, especially among poor and working class. There is an issue with domestic violence, drinking away incomes, ruining children (Dad is supposed to set a good example).

 

There are many groups dedicated to banning of alcohol (Cold Water Army, American Temperance Society). Around a million people involved in the temperance movement. Hard liquor consumption by 1840 is cut in half.

 

More concern and contempt, and cultural prejudice (Anti Catholicism).

1. Education

Reformation of education system. A lot of people don’t go to school, or they have limited education. Wealthy people send their kids to be educated in Europe. Establish a state education system, where kids can be molded into a good citizens. Contempt: some parents aren’t doing a good job (Irish). Schools will fill in where the parents are failing, industriousness, punctuality, sobriety, maturity. School as a vehicle to produce citizens in a certain mold (American middle class). Propaganda factory, cookie cutter archetype. School can save you from sin – Jacksonian idea.

1. Criminal/mental health reform
   We have prisons today thanks to antebellum reform. Criminals are like sinners, they are fixable if you do it right. Labor teaches discipline and sobriety, fixes them for society. Solitary confinement, minimal contact with other people long term reflection on what you did, produces a kind of conversion experience.

 

Rules for prison. Any kind of crime is subjected to the same discipline (writing bad checks, murder).

1.                                          i.    Prison as school
2.                                         ii.    The “discovery of the asylum”

Didn’t understand difference in crimes, or in mental illness.

Reformers want to “help” mentally ill with structure, discipline, and control. Respectable, clean, uplifting physical conditions will improve mental. Severe discipline, rigor, control, punishment.

1. Women and Reform
   1. The vital role of women

One of the only places women can exorcise power in this time period. “Republican motherhood” as a reference, extended to society in general. Society as our “home”, it’s natural for women to want to nurture society. “Municipal Housekeeping”

1.                                          i.    Hospital, prison and mental health reform
   1. Dorothea Dix (1802-87)

Involved in lunacy reform, education reform, teaching Sunday school to women in prison. She pushes for legislation from states to improve education asylums.

1.                                         ii.    Educational reforms: moral development, good public schools, extended year, standards, well-educated teachers, phys ed. Women as ideal teachers, etc.
   1. Catherine Beecher (1800-78)

A family of reformers and ministers. Length of school (180 days), private schools.

1.                                        iii.    Moral Reform” preserving “girl’s virtue”

Concerned about sexuality, sexual violence, domestic violence, prostitution. Institutions formed to help remove these women from circumstances. Holding prayer sessions in brothels. Age of consent was raised (7 years old in Delaware), seduction (statutory rape) made illegal.

1.                                       iv.    Women’s Rights

Viewing the rights of disempowered people makes women realize that they are suffering as well. American can be improved by helping women. Feminist and suffragists want expansion of women’s rights, not extremists. Not arguing for absolute equality, marriage, or motherhood, not the equivalent of men, but that they are special.

1. Defending property rights

When married, you lose property “civil death”. Less need of someone to take care of you if you have property.

1. the Seneca Falls convention (1848)

30 men and 70 women get together to talk about women’s rights, “Declaration of Sentiments”. A word for word comparison to the Declaration of Independence. Same ideas of revolution, democracy, and rights and spinning them in different directions.

1. The suffrage campaign

Work and push for gender reform, more power in churches and in schools.

1. Other Reforms
   1. Utopian communities: Shakers, Oneidans, Mormons

Reformers, sometimes give up, retreat from society and live in their own world. Explosion of utopian communities. Intensely religious reformers create mini societies, radically different from typical towns. Communistic, sharing property, reject money, alcohol, sex.

 

Shakers in Ohio, spread by a woman, Mother Ann. They lived communally, sharing resources, no marriages and are celibate (must recruit), no right of property, renounce, politics, and try to reduce difference between men and women. There are only 3 shakers left today (really old ladies).

 

Oneidans had mass marriage, complex ideas about sex, and children. Withholding orgasm as a spiritual control.

 

Mormons start out as one of these groups of the period. Polygamy, no property rights, considered radical enough that they were chased out of NY and MO, all the way to Utah.

1. “Self-help” movements: debate clubs, book clubs, lecture clubs

As a reformist, a last ditch effort, if you really give up, is to turn to self-help, and sometimes the next life.

 

Reformers believe that America is a sinful place and needs to be purged. The major sin is slavery. Many involved in abolition.