The first writing in ancient Egypt was heavily criticised by people that wished to preserve storytelling and oral knowledge as they saw readers as "lazy" and "forgetful" (as they would become "dependent" on the written word).
@@zainmudassir2964 If you would like to reexamine your opinion on evolution, I highly recommend you to watch aron ra's series on evolution where he goes from inorganic matter to humans.
As an exmormon who was raised in the church in Utah, I find it really strange that I wouldn't exisit if my ancestors hadn't followed a 'prophet' into the desert. In my opinion, Utah has the strangest history of any US state (which other state can say it was founded as a theocracy in the old west?)
@Sebastian Guevara I also think Utah is beautiful state, California too. I am proud to an extent to be from Utah. I have a lot of mixed feelings about the church, but, ignoring that can of worms, there is certainly plenty of good to be said about Utahns. I stand by Utah having a very strange history, though strange is not necessarily bad
For some weird reasons, the Second Great Awakening, like the Reconstruction era, is largely overlooked in US history, when they both have a much deeper historical influence on our Culture War today.
A really great explanation.. One minor point - Beethoven, although he is primarily associated with Vienna and the Austrian Empire, was actually born in Bonn (which at the time of his birth was the capital of the Electorate of Cologne of the Holy Roman Empire, which itself encompassed both present day Germany and Austria until its dissolution during the Napoleonic Wars).
Honestly the focus on the many religious sects, religion motivated political movements and religion's major role during the 2nd great awakening and afterwords is something not covered in schools very often even if they had major ramifications on the events. This video helps give more background to the mindset of 19 century Americans and the influences of the relgious movements in that time frame that have effected even current events in this day and age. I can only really thank you for such an interesting historically relevant topic.
I read a biography of Bismark that said a wave of revivalism was hitting europe in the mid 1800s with a huge impact in Germany. Bismark went from being a wild young man to someone who reconnected with Christianity. England went through a similar thing. Great work on a fascinating topic.
The Second Great Awakening in a nutshell: Thou [Modernity] art a most wretched sinner, utterly unworthy of God’s love. A fountain of pollution is deep within thy nature; thou livest as a winter tree, unprofitable, fit only to be hewed down and burned. Stave thy life in prayer and hope that God may see fit to show mercy upon thy corrupted soul...
This perfectly describes us as a nation which never had a "Great" Awakening to our moral trespasses except we tell others rather than ourselves what's "best" when we're disobedient.
It's very easy to forget just how deeply entrenched religion was in the daily lives of people from the past. In our almost post- religious society it's a blind spot in the analysis of motivations and culture of the past that I see in many amateur analyses of the past. It's great to see a video like this highlighting the impact of religion in history, one that has largely been replaced in the West by political affiliation and nationalism. Many may laugh at the numerous excommunications that they hear about in history, but for those who got those excommunications it was often devastating. Being excommunicated was being told that you had no tribe, you were going to hell and the crimes you have committed would sentence you to an eternity of suffering and separation. American religious history is a really interesting topic. We basically get to look at the splintering of religion at the same level as early Christianity except in a relatively modern context. Many of the great works of American literature from the 19th century were steeped in religious symbolism. Moby Dick is a personal favourite and it alludes to the bible in many of its metaphors.
I recently read "Fantasyland" by Kurt Andersen and polemic as it may be the historical part of it and things like your lecture have actually opened my eyes to a whole new dimension of just how different Americans are from Europeans. We have massively different concepts of Religion and how to practise it or of spirituality, despite it having the same christianity-label. It's truly shocking!
Finally ,historical channel, wich educates about åolotical history of US, and most importantly, puts a great, emphazis, to nuance of the issues. Simply superb content. Keep up,bringing new content
Teetotalism was supposed to come from one of the leading lights in England, who suffered from a stutter. He gave a public lecture and and said "What we require is t t t total absination" It was used against him as a joke but the movement took it and used it as a badge of honour
True, via the early adventists and George Storrs, who inspired the original watchtower author. So theres a sort of linage of decent, they all had in common that they liked to study the bible in depth
I'm interested in this topic because my great-great grandfather, Joseph Tracy, wrote "The Great Awakening" in 1840 about the First Great Awakening. He was a Congregational minister, editor, and writer of conventional Trinitarian beliefs, but also was an intelligent and even-handed interpreter of the movement. I sense that the purpose of the book was to partly explain the phenomena of his current times, so a look at this resource might be of use-- it is easily available in modern editions and Kindle. The Second Great Awakening can be seen as a continuation of the First in some important ways. Just as the First Awakening brought an awareness of personal agency over the state of one's soul and loosened the bindings of the established churches (and other governing bodies-- Tracy suggests it might have contributed to the American Revolution), the Second did as well with some added innovations, namely the rise of novel religious movements and the prominence of women and black leaders.
Cinestar Productions, Because they can cover far more than he can all by himself. Besides, its always a good idea to have more than one source for your information.
A note to your Goethe and Beethoven point: Goethe wasn't part of the romaticism movement of early 19th century. Goethe's creative works can be divided into two cultural movements. The "Sturm und Drang" Period (according to wikipedia usually translated as storm and stress) and "Weimar Classic". Both cannot be counted as Romanticism. "Sturm und Drang" was a 18th century writing and musical art movement during the Age of Enlightenment. While some of the characteristic you described as akin to the Romanticism movement can be found in this culturual movement, i however lack the historical knowledge to confidently make a comparison to Romaticism or even declare it as a sort of progenitor movement. The Weimarer Classic existed as smth alongside the late Enlightenment and early Romanticism movement and could be seen as inhabiting traits of both periods. Beethoven was born in Bonn. While he lived most of his life in Vienna, Beethoven however grew up mostly in Germany, or rather the German State Bonn was part of in that time period. While we Austrians generally like to joke that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler was German, it would be rather true to say that Beehoven was a german migrant who moved to Vienna for work in his younger days. Beethoven being part of the romantic movement is also a judgement to be made with a grain of salt. He is generally considered part of the Trinity of Composers of the First Viennese School or Vienna Classic (Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven). However the difference between Haydn and Mozart is that he is generally seen as the transitorial composer between the 18th century classical period and the 19th century romantic period. So as with Goethe i'd say Beethoven can be neither truly be seen as part of the 18th Century cultural movements nor of the 19th Century but rather as leading figures who stand in both time periods.
I'm curious why the emphasis on Romanticism. Roman Catholicism and Protestantism have always had restoration movements, such as Christian monasticism, Franciscans, Anti-baptist movements, Methodism, Moravian Church, Plymouth Brethren, and many others. Primitivism is in the blood of the Christianity. Obviously, cultural movements can influence and encourage it. It seems that it only takes a nudge and not a push for the church to have another movement to focus on its roots.
A few notes on the Mormon history: The Mormons were not just persecuted because of their beliefs. They were very, very bad neighbours. At least one incident in Missouri was sparked when the Avenging Angels, out hunting an apostate, accidentally killed an eight year old boy in a barn fire. By the time they were driven out of Nauvoo, it had been church policy that stealing from "gentiles" was okay and many criminals in the area of Nauvoo were well aware that if they converted to Mormonism, the church would protect them from prosecution. During the Mormon's exodus, contemporary reports noted that you could find the Mormon train by following the corpses of cattle that they had stolen and butchered along the way. See also Nightfall at Nauvoo www.amazon.com/Nightfall-Nauvoo-Samuel-Woolley-Taylor/dp/B0006C5HDW for more context. The book is expensive because the church has gone out of it's way to acquire and destroy as many copies as possible. But to put it into even sharper perspective, Nauvoo was resettled by the Icarians, an group of atheist utopians. If Mormonism was heresy, atheism was blasphemy yet no one took any violent actions against the open atheists living in the next town over. The Icarians lived peacefully in Nauvoo from 1846 until 1857.
The rise of Unitarianism reminds me of the age-old splits and conflicts in the early Church about the nature of God. Yknow, like Monophysitism and Miaphysitism and Arianism? Instead, Unitarianism takes a *utilitarian* view and just says God is God. Took roughly 1500 years but good job theologians, you finally found a middle ground!
Beethoven wasn’t from Austria, he was born and grew up in Bonn, then in the Electorate of Cologne. He later moved to Vienna in 1792 as a young adult because of the war in France, where he later stated. He also chose Vienna because it was one of the great centers of music in Europe, and especially in the German world.
Did you and ‘Knowing Better’ corroborate or something? Literally just hopped off his channel where he was talking about the second great awakening and Mormonism. Or perhaps it’s the whole serendipitous ‘great minds think alike’ syndrome?
Deism always looked weird to me. When someone believe in miracle, at least I understand why they think God exist. These are their proof. But with deism? You go for a belief system that by definition is impossible to prove.
@@requiredparticular6831 Depends. Some people believe that choice is basically the holiest subject in all of creation, for without it, all you have are flesh puppet's set to robotic code or nothing at all, like basic matter. Taking this a step further it's somewhat taken that the interference of any force on the level of a God would be a complete sacrilege against choice, since you're being made to obey a certain way of being instead of embracing your own personal one. That comes from the concept that there is no one may of living applicable to all sentient life in reality, that benevolent to the majority or not, there exists no declaration of a proper way for all living things to experience life that doesn't ultimately end in sublimating all life and destroying individuality to make people subservient to one perspective on what's right or wrong. To the extreme of completely eliminating all meaning attainable via them no longer possessing the ability to determine what is right or wrong for themselves-called choice. Therefore, God doesn't interfere because there is nothing for him to interfere with. The only answer from the beginning was to allow reality to develop on it's own from the beginning, because anything else would've made it little more than a toy in his hands. Or less, depending on your point of view.
@@Torlik11 I think the reason why is because they think that miracles contradicts science and Deism let's you to believe in both science and god with no contradictions.
I remember reading somewhere that they might have used deism to hide their atheism, idk if that's true. Also, Jefferson owned a Quran, so I wonder what his take was on other religions.
I actually didn't know about the deism thing in regards to the founding fathers, which I find incredibly interesting since a lot of modern politics paints the founding fathers as these devout hyper evangelists or being borderline atheists, when the truth is seemingly somewhere in the middle. With that in mind, it explains a lot of the founders views on things like freedom of religion and how they intended that to be done in practice.
Also, keep in mind it's not that some of the founding fathers didn't consider themself Christian, HOWEVER, even many of the ones that did indeed held unorthodox beliefs that many Christian would shrink heresy at if not for the fact they like to conveniently ignore it. People who like Jesus but denied he was God, or the trinity or just flat out editing their own bibles (Thomas Jefferson anyone?) So any time a person tries to make the claim that the founding fathers were Christian or the country was meant to be a Christian nation that even if true on their own terms it be a Christianity that I bet they very much reject being imposed on them. Hence proving the true point of the founding fathers to keep such matters out of the affairs of politics.
My own personal theory on why Congress stop giving Jefferson Bibles in the 50’s was probably because the reason we have In God we Trust on our money basically it’s was a giant SCREW YOU SOVIET UNION.
Great lecture. I really enjoyed it. I would love to see another one about the third awakening that pretty much helped determined tha religous landscape, not only in the USA but the rest of the americas.
So...The Great Awakening centered around the Erie Canal? Strange how almost all major religous centers also are on major trade routes. Guess that's where the people are. So if you have something to sell...
For Europeans interested in why American religion is so different from European religion take a look at the first 3 great awakenings. The deregulated religious landscape produced numerous eccentric religions that, although hyper radical, still supported the freedom of religion of others and that deregulated religious landscape that produced their fringe religion in the first place. The European hyper radical religious folk were too concerned with shutting down free speech with blasphemy laws and restricting the way people could practice religion.
Tee totalism may have nothing to do with the drink, it's said that in Preston in the county of Lancashire in England Richard Turner advocated the giving up of alcohol in the 1830's. Unfortunately he is supposed to have a stutter so "total abstinence" became "Tee total". It is even inscribed on his gravestone.
Im surprised you didn't Mention, William Wilberforce. His book Practical View of Christianity was a best seller in the US during the 2nd Great awakening and his views of course were a driving force for northern Christians not just unitarians.
John Fea mentioned to Phil Vischer and Skye Jethani on episode 438 of The Holy Post that understanding the 2nd Great Awakening is vital in understanding the current Evangelical movement.
Okay so there are a few hard facts that you got wrong there, regarding Germany: 1. Beethoven was not an Austrian, he was German and just worked in Vienna, among other places. 2. Goethe was not a Romanticist at all, he was THE peak of the German (Weimar) classicism. He was a pantheist, discussing with Kant, and devoted much of his life to the natural sciences in which he had some notable success. He was much closer the the founding fathers of the US, for sure. If you you for Romanticism, which was indeed s strong movement here, even though it did not topple the enlightenment, There are writers like Eichendorff or Novalis. Goethe wrote a few things that could be reagrded pre-romanticism in a way in his youth but it is usually put together with other writers from that phase, like Schiller, into a different category, called "Sturm und Drang", a very germany-specific thing to do with the politics. And the ones with the folk-tales were the Brothers Grimm, not Goethe. Please check your sources about Goethe, there must be a bad apple in them.
Thank you for the Mormon documentary in the middle, Ive always wanted to learn the history of by we were prosecuted in the mid to late 1800s but now I kinda get it. Not that it was cool but it isn't like the church teaches us that we just wanted to practice but people hated us, no we gave good reasons to be at least suspicious of us. Thank you again for teaching the true history of Mormonism in the United States cause its not know at all.
Very good lecture. I have a minor point as a person who had to read a lot on German romanticism during his formative years. (4 year Bachelor on German philology) And that Romanticism was a little bit simplified as reject of modernity, which was not exactly not. In fact many romantics embraced modernity and popular revolutions to a wide extent. Boiling a very complex aspect down, German romanticism started first in the Jena circle around Jena university and in principle the philosophy was more university trying to access some universal truth by the mixing of different disciplines and ideas, from such different fields like dreams, mysticism, folk tales, philosophy and science and working a lot through fragmentary texts (which is kind of precursor to surrealism) Then that experimentar y romanticism gave away to more or less schools of thought in German romanticism, ones which were more revolutionary and universal, like Heinrich Heine or more nationalistic and reactionary like Cheautebriand or late Schlegel. Both had as the ideal the free individual, the importance of the subjective and reaction to the "propriety" of Illustration, but were very different from a political perspective. In fact in many ways Romanticism was a natural evolution of some Illustrated values like sentimentalism or personal freedom as a rejection of Illustration in general.
Another important piece during this time is David Walker's appeal. You could literally do an entire episode on that alone. Most Americans have never heard of him or the appeal, (it's been purposely left out of American historical education)
Excellent lecturer! Not to upset others, but I find it amusing how these groups say they want to get back to "primitive church" but they never consider the catholic, eastern, or desert fathers. "I have a revelation that is new!" That contradicts seeking the primitive or original teaching. At any rate, please continue with your wonderful videos!
For after all the great religions have been preached and expounded, or have been revealed by brilliant scholars, or have been written in fine books and embellished in fine language with finer covers, man, -all man- is still confronted by the Great Mystery. -Chief Luther Standing Bear, Lakota I'm cynical too...also in agreement with Standing Bear and the Lakotas. Regards from Kanata AKA-Canada (;
One thing I also noticed is that John brown the man responsible for the attack on harpers ferry in virginia was greatly influenced from the 2nd great awakening religious movement in America. 2nd great awakening help spark the American civil war.
6:26 Correction: Beethoven was born in Bonn, part of the Rhineland in West Germany. He was trained in Austria, but he was definitely born in what is today Germany
@@CynicalHistorian Thank you for posting this it was very interesting, I hope you will do the same for more of your lectures. But, and I am very sorry to point this out, the Mormons fled to the "deseret" in your slide. I hope you don't mind me pointing it out. I know how easy it is to look at your work to get every fact correct and miss a spelling error. Please excuse me if you have already noticed this.
@@tedrex8959 Mormon here. I can confirm that Mormons escaping to the west called the place they settled "Deseret" (pronounced DEZ-r-ET). It's a word from the Book of Mormon, meaning honeybee and symbolizing energetic participation in an enterprise greater than yourself.
Fun fact, Miller was a Deist before he started analyzing the Bible. He found a pattern that matched with the shirt if clockwork analogy that deists were fond of, and issued a challenge to God; if His have him the opportunity soon, he would, after years of silence, share this pattern with others. As the story goes, the opportunity knocked on his door half an hour later.
Beethoven was born in Germany but lived most of his live in Austria - both in modern understanding. We tried to exchange him with Hitler but historians are mercyless.
This was a great lecture, one minor criticism though. Since you have a lot to say on this topic, it might help for elaborations sake to break up some of the points on your slides to be their own slides. This would allow for your elaborations to be seen by those watching and not feel as if they have a ton of information thrown at them. Great lecture like I said, but the slides could have been broken up a bit more.
"the enlightenment were destroying America" thats really funny. Its like saying that the enlightenment was destroying revolutionary france. Didn't it occur to them that America became America because of the enlightenment?
This may be a difficult question, because events are both current and still playing out, but do you think that America is experiencing something like a Great Awakening today? (Very interested in your thoughts.)
I would argue that we went through something of a Great Awakening sometime in the 90s, when we had people like televangelists talking about the "degradation of culture", big out crys against the increasing acceptance of gay marriage, etc in response to the more relaxed morals of 90s youth. That also arguably went into the early 2000s with the massive conservative response to "SJWs" at the time, although I feel that these cultural reactions and counter reactions have become less religiously based over time, and focus increasingly more on "rational" thought where people try to position themselves as some sort of scientific or historical Authority regardless of how valid that actually is.
@@ashrafmourad2901 Your second statement/question seems right, when combining it with Cypher's and Penny's statement. It's basically like a 'christian' (rather evangelical) storm that built up long ago in the ocean and the waves come in crashing since Reagan.
I think you know why it is problematic to speak of Germany before 1870, but my main point is: 6:20 Beethoven was born in Bonn, stayed there until he was a young adult and migrated to Vienna (Austria) to start his musical career. As far as I know Mozart was much more of an Austrian than Beethoven.
Your right about Mozart and Beethoven, BUT it's not 'problematic' to talk about Germany before '70 at all. Different unions of German states existed all the way since the the creation of the 'Holy Roman Empire'. 1871 meant only the creation of the new Kaiserreich.
Just watched your video on Citizen Kane a few days ago. Regarding Rosebud writer director Joseph Mankiewicz said his brother Herman had a bicycle which had the name Rosebud on it. So I wonder who came up with the story about Marion Davies' anatomy which I doubt is true.
May well have been called 'Ignorance: the sequel' it really gives perspective to Ayn Rand calling her works Romantic; in the classical sense. Adding to that exclusionary nationalism the exploitative system of capitalism as a partner in ignorance.
Me, a Calvinist: Wowowow, were not complicated. You're simple! Okno. Just joking. Great lecture. I would love something like that but for mexican evangelism
Some Americans may have reacted to the destructive power of industrial technology by returning to "old time religion", but in Upstate New York a group decided to harness it for themselves and create a machine that would give them fully automated luxury communism! They called it The New Motive Power.
Would a better word for "Deist" be "Newtonian?" Newton mapped out the fundamental laws of physics. Adam Smith applied that to economics (it's better for the government not to interfere in natural law). Deists universalized the concept into a (sort of religion).
Not necessarily, being a "naturalist" or "philosopher" in their historic meanings hasn't kept people from religious leanings (even Kant was Lutheran (leaving university opening sermons before the preaching because "nothing diminishes faith like teaching it"... which is why you need to be "open for Devine aid" to actually do good while the "categorical imperative" keeps anyone (idiots) from doing bad)).
