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Protestant evangelicalism entails an individual’s belief and an individual ’s behavior. Religious revivals cover both dimensions in terms of communicating and reinforcing evangelicalism’s religious and social intent. Periodic expressions of awakening serve to revitalize Protestantism and attract more followers to the faith. American revivalism began in the eighteenth century. The First Great Awakening spread through the British colonies, toppling liturgical and denominational authority and shifting spiritual responsibility from the church to the individual. First Awakening revivals replaced Protestantism’s earlier dependence upon form and sacrament with a call to make a personal decision to follow Jesus. Revivalism’s trajectory of individual decision and accountability continued through the Second Awakening, which occurred in the antebellum period. This Awakening took the responsibility for salvation further from God’s hands, where it had resided under Calvinist predestination, and placed it in the hearts of individual believers who became personally responsible for “choosing” their own salvation. Second Awakening respondents did not stop being Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, or Baptists, but revivalists urged each believer, regardless of his or her church loyalty, to repent, reject evil, and choose the right path. As defined by these two Awakenings, evangelical faith was not strictly defined by any institutional or church affiliation but instead had to do with an individual’s life-changing conversion that initiated a personal and ongoing relationship with Jesus Christ. The emphasis in the first two Awakenings upon individual responsibility in faith matters, however, promoted personal commitment in areas 1 Introduction that went far beyond the religious realm. Philosophy, economics, and nineteenth -century American culture all were significantly shaped by the individualism spurred by the Great Awakenings.1 “Common Sense” Morality and Political Activism In the world of philosophy, evangelicals merged their beliefs about religion with the Scottish School of Common Sense Realism and integrated their personal faith into Enlightenment principles. Common Sense proponents, primarily theologians from nineteenth-century seminaries, took the individualized spirituality of the Awakenings and molded it into a philosophical worldview, bringing together “faith, science, the Bible, morality, and civilization .” These writers argued that the empirical laws of the Enlightenment reveal spiritual reality, and that individual believers, upon reading the Bible, could know God’s Truth with their own conscience. Theorists aligned the individual, experiential side of revivalism alongside the Bible and cultural norms and legitimated revival emotions with Enlightenment rationality. The bottom line of the Common Sense philosophy was that individual conscience discerned moral choices.2 The Common Sense philosophy, at least as it was interpreted by evangelicals, affirmed in the head what revival adherents knew in their hearts: neither biblical scholars nor ministers held the edge on Truth; faith must be determined by the individual. Common Sense writers validated personal knowledge of God and upheld an individual’s ability to make both religious and behavioral choices. Realizing one’s sinfulness, believing God’s Truth, and accepting salvation are the central initiators of evangelical belief, but a believer’s actions must outwardly manifest such faith.3 Commitment to God entailed directing one’s heart and mind, then one’s actions, toward righteous living. The behavioral component of evangelical faith gave spiritual meaning to all 2 Sin in the City 1. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 280–92; Randall Balmer and Lauren F. Winner, Protestantism in America, 44–54. 2. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, “The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” 257–73; George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925, 14–21; William McLoughlin, “Pietism and the American Character,” 173; William McLoughlin, The American Evangelicals 1800–1900, 2–3; Mark A. Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, 90–96; D. H. Meyer, The Instructed Conscience: The Shaping of the American National Ethic, 35–42. 3. Noll, Scandal, 61–64. human endeavors and formed the foundation of evangelical morality. Faith cannot be left in a church pew or in the revival tabernacle; rather, conversion initiated an intentional morality that pervaded all aspects of an individual ’s life, including family, community, and nation. The idea of living out one’s faith also deeply influenced nineteenthcentury economics and politics. When it came to making money, evangelical individualism fell in line quite well with the growth of market capitalism. Evangelicals brought their faith into the nineteenth-century workplace and translated personal righteousness into economic profit. Honesty, frugality, and diligence in the work world led to commercial and capitalist success. Evangelical capitalists also found support in the less religious but equally individualistic ideas...

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