The Second Great Awakening refers to the Protestant revival movement that took place in the 19 th century. The movement started way back in 1790, and it ended in the 1870s after the formation of the new denominations. The main objective of the movement was to awaken the conscious of people, mainly through the transformation of beliefs and lifestyle of various religious followers. Supporters of the Second Great Awakening used the movement encouraged people to adopt new virtues like temperance and the ethics of hard work, including caring for the vulnerable and less fortunate in the society ( Varel, 2011) . One of the main effects of the movement was the emergence of new denominations such as Methodists and Baptists that changed the religious perceptions and beliefs of many people.
The two significant denominations that dominated the world before the Second Great Awakening were Catholic and Anglican. However, at the beginning of the 19 th century, new denominations such as Methodists and Baptists were increasingly becoming dominant ( Stone, 2009) . At the same time, they were the fasted growing denominations in the world, primarily due to their egalitarian approach to religious beliefs and practices. Unlike Catholic and Anglican practices that emphasized that people could only be saved through the grace of God, Baptist and Methodist denominations made people believe that they had the power to change their situations (Severance, 2010). Besides, the Second Great Awakening that is associated with rapid development of Baptists and Methodists emphasized that people had the fee will on choosing on whether to be saved or not, leading to an optimistic view of life and human conditions. The new denominations that emerged during the movement significantly changed religious beliefs and practices. Hence, the primary effect of the Second Great Awakening was the emergence of new denominations, especially Baptists and Methodist that substantially transformed religious beliefs.
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References
Severance, D. (2010). The Second Great Awakening . Retrieved from https://www.christianity.com/church/the-2nd-great-awakening-11630336.html
Stone, G. R. (2009). The Second Great Awakening: A Christian Nation. Georgia State University Law Review, 26(4) , 1305-1333.
Varel, D. A. (2011). The Historiography of the Second Great Awakening and the Problem of Historical Causation, 1945-2005. Madison Historical Review , 8 (4).
