The Second Great Awakening was extraordinary time in the Protestant movement full of emotion, devotion and conversion. It started out in New England and wasn’t sparked by anti-intellectual connotations like other movements, catching the attention of some of the biggest theologians of this time. It was branded by engulfing oneself in the ideas of Jesus, the notion of loving your neighbor which would come under fire later. One of the key characteristics was individualism, individuals working towards a better more personal relationship with Christ. In the text it discussed how many societies formed at this time with the goal of making the gospel well known. Gonzales discusses in more detail about these societies, “American Bible Society, founded in 1816, and the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, founded six years earlier. The latter was the result of a covenant made by a group of students meeting on a haystack, who vowed to devote themselves to foreign missions” (Gonzales). These mission trips were focused many things like social causes such as slavery, women, and the spreading of the gospel to insure everybody had the opportunity to live their life as Jesus did. As touched on briefly above Women were a key characteristic, playing a big role in this period. The rate of conversions was the highest amongst women, women were creating societies and leading the charge amongst many social issues. The characteristic of individualism and its effect on women played a huge role in the placement of The Second Great Awakening in history.

Charles Finney has a stern personality that cast a large amount of judgment on mankind. He says that “religion is the work of man. It is something for man to do. It consists in obeying God with and from the heart. It is man’s duty” (Placher). Finney is judging man of all these, human nature, humanity’s normal relationship with God, and the mainstream efforts by churches to bring people to God. He judges and criticizes man because of the fact that man gets caught up in the scripture, interpreting and preaching to many people creating revival after revival causing “man” to really lose touch with God. God did not create man to go out and revive, revive, and revive, as Finney states “God is a sovereign, and it is very wrong for you to attempt to get up a revival, just because you think a revival is needed” (Placher).  He goes on to back revivalism in how it should be. If God wants to revive anything he will do it and he will pick somebody to carry out that act but its not going to be everybody and its not going to be a trend amongst men. This sums up Finney, he is degusted with man’s obsession of forming their own opinions, bringing people to God with that opinion, and forming these revivals because to him man must obey God and work towards God not be selfish and work against God.