Up, up and away!

It's so different reading Cullen now after we've read all the articles and had all those discussions on the 2nd Great Awakening. Even in places he never explicitly talks about the movement we can see sings of it and gain better understanding of other historical events now that we understand more about it. I know for me it was easier to understand how the home-town hero, rough and rugged Andrew Jackson was elected into office in 1824. He was in the public eye and in office right around the time the 2nd Great Awakening was getting under way with "common people" all over the country rising up to to things "common people" had never done before. To think about it in this sense is really quiet amazing. Today we think of America as a place where "anyone can make it" but before the 2nd Great Awakening this wasn't always true. It was the educated and the wealthy who were able to take charge of America and make a difference.

Another point of Cullen's I was able to better understand from our previous discussions was upward mobility. We know from earlier that the 2nd Great Awakening really got underway because people were tired of the rigid and melancholic religious doctrines. I can't say I blame them. Not only is it difficult to listen to someone, such as the Puritans,say that no matter what you do your fate is set and you have no choice in religion. Not is it difficult to accept, its even more so when you realize it doesn't fit in with the young America's ideas of freedom, democracy and upward mobility. It's impossible to live in the paradox the two present and is perfectly clear why the 2nd Great Awakening took off when it did and how the faces of these movements changed from what America was used to in the past.