Second Great Awakening

With the development of a civilized society in America during the 1700s and 1800s, the role religion played in an everyday person's life was becoming more and more diminished. To combat this, a series of religious revivals were set in motion: The Great Awakenings. These were a series of large, sweeping religious, social, and political changes that sought to use the basis of religion to revive faith in a neglected belief, bring about numerous social reforms, and use political factions to great effect upon society's mentality. Although most view the First Great Awakening as the ‘first' and ‘greatest' religious, social, and political influence to American society, the second Great Awakening can be considered far more influential in its religious,
As a result, the different groups of opinion, more specifically the different religious groups that were present, formed into separate, politically-oriented church denominations, each subtly different in its message of religion. As the revivals of the First Great Awakening spread, it brought together many colonists, including Native Americans and African Americans into actual Christian church factions for the first time, challenging the authority of the establish churches (Danzer, 38). Some went so far as to even abandon their old church establishments for the newer, independent denominations (Danzer, 38.) A few examples of these new dominations include the Baptists, the Methodists, the Mormons, and the Seventh Day Adventists (www.wikipedia.org). In Jonathan Edward's case, those who followed his message and were attracted to it called themselves the "New Lights," and those who did not were called the "Old Lights" (www.wikipedia.org). The numerous universities and places of scholarly thought that they set up are examples of the dispute that these factions had. Of these particular two, we know of Columbia University, then called Kings College, and Princeton University (www.wikipedia.org). With the coming of the Second Great Awakening, we see that religious revivals and church denominations have become methods of gaining power. The new denominations of Christianity, most prominently the Presbyterian, Baptist, and Methodists, used the camp meetings in more ways than one. The very first camp meeting occurred at Gasper River Church in Kentucky, July 1800, and this is where the idea sparked that religious meetings can be used as a form of organized revival, as a major mode of church expansion (www.wikipedia.org). This allowed for opinionated