DISCUSIÓN 1 Estructura y tamaño de la población

One of the most important legacies of the General Awakening was the system of “new measures” introduced by Charles Finney. His Lectures on Revival have been used by generations of preachers as a handbook for encouraging revival and successful evangelism. He approached revival from an Arminian perspective: that is, he believed that if people properly prepared themselves using “new measures,” God would send revival. This was in

contrast to the Calvinistic perspective of the First Great Awakening that revival was a sovereign manifestation of God.

In addition to Finney’s new methods, the Methodists refined their use of camp meetings-a strategy that had grown out of the Second Great Awakening-as the key to reaching people for Christ. Methodist bishop Francis Asbury instructed his Methodist preachers, “We must attend to camp meetings; they make our harvest time.”

By perfecting new methods of evangelism and revival-Methodists got their name from their methods-the Methodist Episcopal Church grew rapidly during the awakening of the 1830s, doubling its membership by 1840. Baptists also experienced significant growth during the General Awakening, establishing churches pastored by local farmers in rural communities. A network of Baptist associations developed a Home Mission outreach in 1832.

Transatlantic Cooperation

Another significant result of the General Awakening was a new season of international collaboration among Christians. After the revivals of the 1830s and 1840s, a cooperative spirit characterized evangelical churches on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1846, for example, an Evangelical Alliance was formed by church leaders in Britain and America. This union of sorts was built around a common doctrinal statement that became the basis of the “faith missions” movement born in a later revival. The following eight articles of faith were, in fact, held by most Protestants throughout the nineteenth century:

1. The divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures, and the right and duty of private judgment in the interpretation thereof.

2. The unity of the Godhead, and the Trinity of Persons therein. 3. The utter depravity of human nature, in consequence of the Fall.

4. The incarnation of the Son of God, his work of atonement for sinners of mankind, and his mediatorial intercession and reign.

5. The justification of the sinner by faith alone.

6. The work of the Holy Spirit in the conversion and sanctification of the sinner. 7. The resurrection of the body, the judgment of the world by the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal blessedness of the righteous, and the eternal punishment of the wicked.

8. The divine institution of the Christian ministry and the obligation and perpetuity of the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

With these articles of faith as a foundation, evangelical Christians from a number of denominations were able to find common ground for action.

Sunday Schools

Finally, the great Sunday school movement that swept England during the Second Great Awakening swept the United States during the General Awakening and left lasting fruit throughout the young nation. The American Sunday School Union, founded in 1816 in Philadelphia, received great impetus in 1829 when its president, Francis Scott Key (author of the American national anthem), challenged its annual convention with a vision of the “Mississippi Valley Enterprise.” He reported that there were four million unconverted souls between Pittsburgh and Denver.

Key called for eighty Sunday school missionaries to go establish a Sunday school in every hamlet, to reach the Midwest for Christ. He asked for a budget of $17,000 to get the job done. Over the next fifty years, the Mississippi Valley Enterprise founded 61,299 Sunday schools, with 407,242 teachers instructing 2,650,784 pupils, using more than a million books placed in Sunday school libraries. A total of $2,133,364-a remarkable sum in those days-was ultimately invested in this project.

Most of those Sunday schools became Methodist and Baptist churches. To this day, they account for the conservative bent of America’s Midwest. The greatest influence of the General Awakening was thus on individuals and churches as they continued to grow and spread into new areas that were being populated.

Sunday school missionary John McCullough took up an offering for a Sunday school library in Cumberland, Kentucky, in 1836. The small offering didn’t add up to the $10.00 needed to buy one hundred books to start a library. A young girl named Rebecca Thomas, who was present for the collection, handed him a small gold ring as he left.

“My mother gave me this ring and I prize it very much,” she said. “Buy Sunday school books with it.”

McCullough reluctantly accepted the ring, but a Christian gentleman gave him a ten-dollar gold piece, saying, “Return the ring and purchase the books.”

When the missionary tried to return the ring to Rebecca, she hung her head. “I gave the ring to Jesus,” she said, “so other boys and girls could learn to read. It wouldn’t be right to take it back.”

In the days to come, McCullough told the story and showed the ring hundreds of times. Over $14,000 was raised. Rebecca’s gift reflects an important spiritual reality of the Sunday school movement, captured in the Scripture verse: “A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation” (Isa. 60:22).