Final answer:
The Second Great Awakening encouraged improvement and perfection of humanity through religious reforms and individual control over salvation. It led to social reforms such as communal experiments, health movements, and the growth of Methodists and Baptists. In the North, it inspired activism in abolition, temperance, women's rights, and education.
Step-by-step explanation:
How the Second Great Awakening Sought to Reform Society
The Second Great Awakening was a potent religious revival movement that began in the 1790s and affected American society well into the 1800s. Its core message was that through religion and reform, humanity could be materially improved, and indeed perfected. The Evangelical Protestantism that characterized this revival permeated American culture during the antebellum period and fostered a belief in positive social change.
Leaders such as Charles G. Finney championed the idea that individuals had control over their own salvation, integrating this religious message with the entrepreneurial spirit birthed by the market and Industrial Revolution. This focus on spiritual success reflected the individualistic and capitalist mentality of the era.
Communal experiments, like those by Fourierists and the Mormons, were formed under the influence of the Awakening, seeking to restructure economic and social relations to create a fairer society. Meanwhile, health reformers targeted vices like alcohol, aiming to cleanse both the body and society.
The most successful denominations, the Methodists and Baptists, spread the belief in personal conversion and spiritual rebirth. Social activism also surged in the North with abolition, temperance movements, women's rights, and educational reforms tapping into the Awakening's call for individual and societal perfection.