The Second Great Awakening
The Prayer Call of 1784 and its Purpose
Like its predecessor, the Second Great Awakening also occurred when the moral and spiritual tide was once again out. It was ignited by a movement of prayer led by three Baptist ministers in the English midlands. What is now known as the Prayer Call of 1784 began with the recognition that they too needed another outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
These English ministers were inspired by a book on prayer by Jonathan Edwards in New England. Edwards’ book A Humble Attempt. This book touched the hearts of John Ryland, Andrew Fuller, and John Sutcliff, and motivated them to pray and seek God for revival. The rest, as they say, is history. These pastors were members of the local Baptist Association and in 1784, Andrew Fuller preached a sermon, and in true Baptist fashion, John Sutcliff moved a motion to challenge the members of the Association to set time aside once a month for prayer. This Prayer Call of 1784, as it was later called, began with these words:
Upon a motion being made to the ministers and messengers of the associate Baptist churches assembled at Nottingham, respecting meetings for prayer, to bewail the low estate of religion, and earnestly implore a revival of our churches, and of the general cause of our Redeemer, and for that end to wrestle with God for the effusion of his Holy Spirit, which alone can produce the blessed effect. [Emphasis added]
What they were saying in their formal 18th century English was this: our society is going down the tubes and our churches are not cutting it. We need God’s help. We need God to step down as he did 50 years previously in the First Great Awakening. In case the people didn’t get it the first time, Sutcliff went on to make his purpose abundantly clear:
The grand object of prayer is to be that the Holy Spirit may be poured down on our ministers and churches, that sinners may be converted, the saints edified, the interest of religion revived, and the name of God glorified. Prayer Call of 1784
Over the next few years, as the churches met for prayer, God began to move in a new way, turning the tide of decline in the Baptist cause. ‘There was an increase in numbers of churches. By 1798 there were 361 Baptist churches, more than double what there had been 40 years before. By 1812, the number had risen to 532’. By the time C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892) had begun his ministry, the number of churches had grown to 1400.
The Backstory: Andrew Fuller, William Carey and World Evangelism
The backstory to these events was that Andrew Fuller who himself had come to know Jesus personally, broke with the Calvinist tradition of those days and began to proclaim the gospel to those outside of the church. He reasoned that if Jesus did this, he was on safe ground theologically. What he discovered was that there were a lot of people all over who were hungry and thirsty for spiritual truth. People began to turn back to God in droves. William Carey (1761-1834) who was a local shoemaker turned pastor, and was a member of Sutcliff’s church, for a time, caught the vision for world evangelism. Carey took a one-way trip to Serampore in India at great personal cost. Today, there are an estimated 29 million Christians in India. And so, it was that as these brethren “expected great things from God and attempted great things for God”, missionaries were sent out, not only to India but Rev John Saunders was also sent to Sydney in 1832: ‘Encouraged and commissioned, though not supported, by the Baptist Missionary Society.
The Second Great Awakening in North America
The situation in North America was very much similar before they too experienced their Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s. American society was in serious decline and their churches were dying, until the same passion for prayer and calling on God resulted in a fresh move of God.
Not many people realize that in the wake of the American Revolution (following 1776-1781) there was a moral slump. Drunkenness became epidemic. Out of a population of five million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to go out at night for fear of assault. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence. J. Edwin Orr
When news of the prayer movement that had spread all over Britain reached America they too began to ask God for another Awakening. They too began concerts of prayer, and the Lord soon began to move in great power in North America.
In New England, there was a man of prayer named Isaac Backus, a Baptist pastor, who in 1794, when conditions were at their worst, addressed an urgent plea for prayer for revival to pastors of every Christian denomination in the United States. Churches knew that their backs were to the wall. All the churches adopted the plan until America, like Britain was interlaced with a network of prayer meetings, which set aside the first Monday of each month to pray. It was not long before revival came. J. Edwin Orr
The Impact of the Second Great Awakening on American Society
The Second Great Awakening impacted millions of people in the USA and this awakening had a greater impact on secular society than any other in American history. As the Gospel impacted people’s lives, it birthed a social concern to help others that changed society in a real way. In Kentucky, thousands attended Camp Meetings, and it is not too much to say that this Awakening more than anything else shaped American society in its growing and formative years.
During the first three decades of the 1800s, Lewis Tappan and many other influential Christian laypeople organized thousands of societies that touched every phase of American life. Slavery, temperance, vice, world peace, women’s rights, Sabbath observance, prison reform, profanity, education—all these and more had specific societies devoted to their betterment. Christianity Today
The impact of this Second Great Awakening in America was so profound that it impressed overseas visitors like French academic and political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville, (1805-1859). De Tocqueville visited America in 1831-1832 and was impressed by what he saw in this new Republic as he compared it with what was going on in his native France. In his best-selling and highly influential book Democracy in America, de Toqueville wrote:
I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers – and it was not there . . . in her fertile fields and boundless forests and it was not there . . . in her rich mines and her vast world commerce—and it was not there . . . in her democratic Congress and her matchless Constitution—and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. Alexis de Tocqueville
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