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Awaken conference salvation12/23/2023 ![]() John Williamson Nevin criticized revivalism’s subjectivism, countering with a churchly piety, grounded on the objective presence of Christ in the sacraments. High Church Episcopalians Calvin Colton and John Henry Hopkins argued for the superiority of the Episcopal Church Colton praised his church’s refusal to meddle in political affairs in the manner of revivalistic reformers, and Hopkins appealed to his church’s faithfulness to the pattern established by the “Primitive Church” of the first four centuries against the “novelties” of revivalism. The counter-revivalists in this study were not merely reactive they sought to counter revivalism by formulating alternative understandings of Christian theology and spirituality. New Divinity revivalists legitimated their revivals by the construction of an Edwardsean tradition of sober revivalism, but their definition of genuine revival was contested not only by Frontier, New Haven, and New Measures revivalists, but also by critics who questioned the underlying theological assumptions of revivalism. Several competitors vied for the right to define revivalism in the Second Great Awakening. Historians have begun to give increased attention to the role played by critics of revivalism in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century, but inadequate attention has been devoted to critics of revivalism in the Second Great Awakening of the first half of the nineteenth century. ![]() This study examines the historical context, spiritual development, and theological arguments of four Protestant critics of Second Great Awakening revivalism who published critiques from the mid-1830s to the late-1840s: Calvin Colton, John Henry Hopkins, John Williamson Nevin, and Horace Bushnell. Modern scholarship points toward the Second Great Awakening as more than a mere series of religious revivals, but also a social movement marked by a massive mobilization of volunteerism targeted at social and educational reforms that deeply impacted American society for most of the nineteenth-century and beyond. The movement was marked by great educational and social reform, culminating in the ministry and Oberlin college presidency of Charles Grandison Finney, who published one of revivalism’s most influential works, Revival Lectures, in 1835. ![]() While a myriad of viewpoints exist, it is generally recognized that the Second Great Awakening began as a rural movement in the 1790’s and achieved notoriety in the Cane Ridge Revival (1801) led by Barton Stone in the south and the Yale College revival (1802) led by Timothy Dwight in the north. Generally regarded as a second groundswell of evangelical Protestant religious interest following the Revolutionary War, the Second Great Awakening was more extensive and enduring than the Great Awakening of the 1730s-1740s. ![]()
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