Final answer:
The Quakers, or the Society of Friends, are historically at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement, founding the first antislavery society in 1775, with the Second Great Awakening further inspiring various religious abolitionists to promote immediate emancipation through moral suasion.
Step-by-step explanation:
The religious group that played a pivotal role at the forefront of the anti-slavery movement was the Quakers, also known as the Society of Friends. Their pacifist beliefs and conviction that God dwells within all humans led them to see slavery as a grave immorality. The Quakers founded the world's first antislavery society in 1775 in Philadelphia, influencing others and setting a precedent for future abolitionist efforts. In the nineteenth century, the Second Great Awakening mobilized many other religious groups and individuals, including Baptists like William Lloyd Garrison, Congregational revivalists such as Arthur and Lewis Tappan and Theodore Dwight Weld, and radical Quakers such as Lucretia Mott and John Greenleaf Whittier. These groups used a strategy of 'moral suasion' to promote immediate emancipation and to appeal to the Christian conscience of the nation for the abolition of slavery.