Christianity's Impact on America, Part 4

The Semiquincentennial (250th anniversary) of the birth of the United States of America has offered this column an opportunity to examine the influences of Christianity upon this nation. Our previous three articles have considered how the Age of Exploration introduced the Christian worldview to America, how the revivals and leadership of the Great Awakening both strengthened and expanded Christianity’s influence within Britain’s American colonies and laid the foundations for the American struggle for independence, and how the establishment of the new nation was both inspired and guided by Christian ideals and principles without establishing the new country as a theocratic Christian empire.

In this article, I want to look at Christianity in the Early Republic (1783-1815), the time frame in American history that followed the Revolutionary Era. As is often the case with successive generations, the pre-revolutionary colonists who contributed to the endeavor to gain independence and the post-revolutionary citizens who inherited the results and outcomes of the American Revolution were vastly different. Moreover, the religious convictions that contributed to the thoughts of many of the Founding Fathers and other revolutionary figures appear to have been lost to the generation that followed the Revolution, resulting in a period of religious disinterest that emerged in the young nation. “The decade and a half following the close of the American Revolution,” wrote historian William Warren Sweet, “was one of spiritual deadness among all the American churches.”[i]

Post-Revolutionary Religious Decline

In the years that preceded the Revolution, the Great Awakening had placed faith at the forefront of American thought. With the onset of the Revolutionary Era, however, political concerns replaced faith as the issue of greatest interest throughout the colonies. Thus, historian Kenneth Scott Latourette noted that “the war for independence was adverse to Christianity in the United States.”[ii] There were at least four specific issues that contributed to what Latourette described as “the partially de-Christianized population” of the new country.

The War Experience — Warfare is frequently accompanied by the loosening of morals and a decline in religious involvement and commitment. In addition to being pulled away from their homes and churches, many soldiers were exposed to moral iniquities that they had never previously confronted. In his autobiography, Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) recalled how the soldiers returning home from war “brought back with them many vices almost unknown to us before.” Among these, Stone wrote, were “profane swearing, debauchery, drunkenness, gambling, quarreling and fighting.”[iii] In addition, the brutality and injustice of the war often led soldiers to question their own convictions about faith.

European Rationalism — The new American nation had barely commenced when the French Revolution began in 1789. The Enlightenment rationalism that fueled the French Revolution promoted deism as an alternative to Christianity, a view that migrated to America and gained a younger generation of ardent sympathizers. Evangelist Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) described Yale University in the 1790s as “a most ungodly state” in which the college church was nearly extinct and “most of the students were skeptical.” He further described it as “the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school,” saying, “Boys that dressed flax in the barn … read Tom Paine and believed him.” Moreover, he wrote, “most of the class before me were infidels, and called each other Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert, etc., etc.”[iv] The bleak state of American Christianity in the 1790s was not confined to the academy; it also filtered down into the churches themselves. Future Chief Justice John Marshall (1755-1835) is reported to have written a letter to the Episcopal Bishop (not the future president) James Madison (1742-1815) saying the church is “too far gone ever to be revived.”[v]

Westward Expansion — With the termination of the American Revolution and the acceptance of the Treaty of Paris that recognized America’s independence, the United States gained a substantial amount of territory that extended to the Mississippi River. The massive emigration westward in the waning years of the eighteenth century further weakened the church as pioneers both departed from organized churches in the east and relocated to the untamed western regions where few churches existed and impropriety abounded. Methodist Evangelist Peter Cartwright (1785-1872) referred to Logan County, Kentucky, as “Rogues’ Harbor,” a refuge for “murderers, horse thieves, highway robbers, and counterfeiters.”[vi] According to Sweet, “People from the East who visited the West were shocked by the swearing, fighting, gouging, Sabbath-breaking and general lawlessness which prevailed.”[vii]

American Democratization — The democratic spirit, both in society and the church, added to the weakening of religion and morality in this period. Democratization brought a new sense of freedom and independence to American society, as well as to the church. Americans no longer felt tied to any particular region’s established denomination, or to religion at all. Thus, in the words of historian J. Franklin Jameson, “the shock of revolution would necessarily loosen the bonds which bound unwilling multitudes to any church establishment with which they had no sympathies.”[viii]

Thus, the outlook for American Christianity in the late eighteenth century looked dismal, and, as Arthur Skevington Wood wrote, “Nothing less than a revival could effectively deal with the situation.”[ix]

The Approaching Revival

The earliest signs of a national revival began in the Congregationalist churches of New England in the mid to late 1790s. Yale College spearheaded the Northeastern Revival when Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), the grandson of Jonathan Edwards, became the school’s president in 1795. Dwight entered a dire religious situation at Yale (as described earlier in this article by Lyman Beecher) but confronted the deism and skepticism of the school’s students in both direct discussions and chapel services. As a result, Beecher wrote, “all infidelity skulked and hid its head.”[x] By 1802, a revival broke out at Yale that quickly spread throughout much of New England, aided by the introduction of the Methodist movement to that region.[xi]

The spirit of revival in the West, a region largely populated by Scots-Irish immigrants and their descendants, emerged around 1800 and was markedly different from the revivals of New England. While the Northern (or Eastern) revival tended to find its manifestations in the churches and focused primarily on personal conversion and moral reform, the Western revival expressed itself in large camp meetings with unbridled excitement and emotionalism. The model for the western camp meeting revivals was the Scottish Presbyterian sacramental festivals of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. These large outdoor sacramental festivals lasted for several days and included preaching, fellowship, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.[xii]

James McGready (1763-1817), a Presbyterian minister from Pennsylvania, was the initiator of the camp meeting revival. While ministering to three small Presbyterian churches—the Red River, Muddy River, and Gasper River congregations—in Logan County, Kentucky, McGready organized a communion gathering at the Red River church in June 1800. As the meeting unfolded, people traveled from long distances to attend, camping out on the grounds around the church, and making this the first camp meeting revival. Reports of enthusiastic preaching, large numbers of conversions, emotional outbursts, and sundry other activities brought significant notoriety to the revivals. McGready’s initiative attracted thousands of additional participants who traveled long distances to participate in the revivals that quickly spread to other nearby churches and beyond. Moreover, what started as a Presbyterian sacramental feast soon became an evangelical revival meeting in which Methodist and Baptist preachers also contributed.

In the spring of 1801, Barton W. Stone, a twenty-eight-year-old Presbyterian minister serving at the Cane Ridge and Concord churches in Bourbon and Nicholas Counties, Kentucky, attended one of the Logan County revival events. So deep was its impression upon Stone that the young preacher immediately returned to his churches in central Kentucky and planned similar revival meetings for them. At a “protracted meeting” at his Concord church, Stone wrote, “The whole country appeared to be in motion to the place, and multitudes of all denominations attended. All seemed heartily to unite in the work and in Christian love. Party spirit, abashed, shrank away.”[xiii] Additional plans were made for another sacramental camp-meeting revival at the Cane Ridge church beginning on August 6, 1801.

As the Cane Ridge event approached, Stone reported, “the roads were literally crowded with wagons, carriages, horsemen, and footmen, moving to the solemn camp.” Stone further reported that “it was judged, by military men on the ground, that there were between twenty and thirty thousand” in attendance, though most modern historians estimate the crowd size at between 10,000 and 20,000 participants. “Four or five preachers were frequently speaking at the same time, in different parts of the encampment, without confusion,” Stone wrote, as “the Methodist and Baptist preachers aided in the work, and all appeared cordially united in it—of one mind and one soul, and the salvation of sinners seemed to be the great object of all.”[xiv]

Along with the powerful preaching that took place at Cane Ridge, Stone described several “bodily agitations or exercises” that accompanied the revival activities. He went on to identify and describe them as the Falling exercise, the jerks, the dancing exercise, the barking exercise, and the singing exercise, though he himself did not take part in these activities.[xv] He did, however, describe the activities as being “like miracles,” and wrote, “if they were not, they had the same effects as miracles on infidels and unbelievers.” “So low had religion sunk,” Stone further said, “that I have thought that nothing common could have arrested the attention of the world; therefore, these uncommon agitations were sent for this purpose.”[xvi]

What seemed to be of greatest importance to Stone was the unity of believers from among the various denominations pursuing the salvation of souls. “We all engaged in singing the same songs of praise—all united in prayer—all preached the same things—free salvation urged upon all by faith and repentance,” said Stone, and “the numbers converted will be known only in eternity.”[xvii]

The Cane Ridge revival gained national attention around the country. Although earlier signs of revival had emerged in New England and elsewhere, the events at Cane Ridge were so prestigious that they unmistakably denoted the onset of what historians now refer to as the Second Great Awakening. Stone recorded that the “meeting continued six or seven days and nights, and would have continued longer, but provisions for such a multitude failed in the neighborhood.” He also exclaimed, “A particular description of this meeting would fill a large volume, and then the half would not be told.”[xviii]

Conclusion

The Cane Ridge revival took place 225 years ago, and only 25 years after the signing of America’s Declaration of Independence. It was a watershed event in the history of American Christianity because it reclaimed the Christian influence of America’s colonial past, while introducing a new era of dramatic Christian revivalism. Moreover, the revival at Cane Ridge accelerated the expansion of Christianity on the western frontier and profoundly impacted Barton Stone, whose revival experiences were inspirational for the beginning and goals of the Restoration Movement.

For a brief anniversary video (suitable for use in church services) of the revival and its meaning in our day, visit https://vimeo.com/1130381508/8531a2a6fe. Moreover, Kentucky Christian University will host a 225th remembrance of the great Cane Ridge revival—including re-enactments, children’s activities, hymn singing, food trucks, vendors, and more—on September 26, 2026, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. The Cane Ridge Meeting House (built in 1791) and museum are open throughout the summer and available for tours.[xix]