The Second Great Awakening And The Transcendentalism

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The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalism The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalism is a book written by Barry Hankins in 2014. The main idea that the book reflects is that the Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalism reinforced Americans beliefs in the individual’s importance and support even as it helped to bring a sense of community to a highly nomadic masses. The Second Great Awakening movement transformed the American religion and society in a number of ways. The best way to show that is by highlighting the change in the Protestantism in 1850 and compare it to 1700s. By 1850, most of the Protestant groups had accepted form of Arminianism, the impression that God presents an opportunity of salvation to anyone …show more content…
The book is very well organized , the author had written this book in a cause and effect method with the first two chapters provide an overview of the Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalism while the rest of the chapter provide a profound impact that there spiritual movements had on the antebellum time period politically, socially, and gender matters. Hankins uses a variety of both primary and secondary sources. The book is very effective in portraying the information and gives a very detailed account of the subject as well as a balanced area of opinions to show the readers the diversity of opinions as well as show the readers what the people thought or felt about the movements going on during the time period as well us give us an insight of the language of the time period. There are also twenty-four informative biographical sketches which provide us with the glimpses into the lives of key figures from the period like, the transcendentalist Amos Alcott, and Feminist Susan B. Anthony and other. Although most of the views of the book are balanced, Hankins seems to be a little biased towards the Protestant theological movement in the 1850 than the transcendentalism movement in 1836, he uses some negative connotation to describe some parts of the transcendentalism movement, whereas Hankins uses positive connotation to describe the Protestant movement. The book overall is very effective at conveying the knowledge of the subject matter, but at times it is very confusing and goes around the same idea. Ultimately, Hankins provides a very good overview of the Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalism and show the effect it has

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