No "Great Awakenings" in America

Meerkat92

Banned
Butterfly away the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries. How would society in America be affected? Would it affect the anti-slavery movements? Would deism like the Founders espoused become more commonplace?
 

Philip

Donor
You need to explain why they don't occur. How society develops will depend greatly on the changes that prevent the Awakenings.
 
One of the things that helped to foster the Second Great Awakening was the "Alcoholic Republic". When cities were first founded in the US, they were founded as often as possible on freshwater sources. Obviously fresh water is important. But an early and integral element of Americanism was the expansion westward. Pioneerism meant that cities in the moving West were usually not as big as those in the more established East and less likely to have available fresh water.

There is a reason sailors are infamously drunkards. Its because in the absence of good fresh water and with the sharing of common water sources, diseases are bred. The solution is to drink alcohol. Alcohol is mostly water, meaning it largely serves to hydrate while simultaneously destroys bacteria, meaning it helps to prevent disease.

Americans have always drank alcohol in favor of water, even the Puritans drank. The problem with this is obvious - it's easy to get drunk. This is why American beer is notoriously weak, it was never intended to get you drunk, but to serve as a clean substitute for water. People still got drunk often though and the early decades of the United States saw an widespread alcoholic problem (hence, the "Alcoholic Republic"). Perhaps most notably, Franklin Pierce had a drinking problem his entire life.

This predominance of alcohol and the problems it produced did a lot to inspire a strong prohibitionist movement in the US. Prohibitionists usually latched onto another near-universal aspect of early Americanism, the Bible and used that to campaign against alcohol. As a result, most prohibitionists were biblethumpers as well and helped contribute to the Second Great Awakening.
 
I doubt you will be able to really do away with an 'Great Awakenings' they also sort of happen on their own. The biggest 'culprit' may be calendars and the means we count time. We experienced our own 'Awakening' in 2000, there were a lot of religious stuff that got tied in with the Millenium. That is not even considering what is happening currently in regards to the Mayan Calendar and 2012.
 

Meerkat92

Banned
I doubt you will be able to really do away with an 'Great Awakenings' they also sort of happen on their own. The biggest 'culprit' may be calendars and the means we count time. We experienced our own 'Awakening' in 2000, there were a lot of religious stuff that got tied in with the Millenium. That is not even considering what is happening currently in regards to the Mayan Calendar and 2012.

I seriously have no idea what you're talking about. Clarify please?
 
I doubt you will be able to really do away with an 'Great Awakenings' they also sort of happen on their own. The biggest 'culprit' may be calendars and the means we count time. We experienced our own 'Awakening' in 2000, there were a lot of religious stuff that got tied in with the Millenium. That is not even considering what is happening currently in regards to the Mayan Calendar and 2012.

he speaks of the great awakening of faith in historic usa, a trend mode of new protestantism ways.
 
I seriously have no idea what you're talking about. Clarify please?

I was trying to keep my posting short - but not so short that it made no sense. Which is still entirely possible.

I've always considered the 'Great Awakenings' in American history were tied with significant dates, pretty much all those 'end times' sort of scenarios that have cropped up throughout time. Basically there are situations within a culture and society that trigger these events and cause them to manifest themselves. These could be economic bad times, etc., or just people predicting the end of the world, which is one reason I point out the similarity with the Mayan Calendar craze.

Hmm, that probably didn't explain anything.

Yes, what Ubbergeek said.
 
No secular barriers in the constitution, and the founding fathers not as big on the enlightenment as OTL.

Ironically.

If early on bible based laws and politicians promoting such things become a problem in the US, the attitude towards religion will change generally.
 
Butterfly away the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries. How would society in America be affected? Would it affect the anti-slavery movements?

Without the Great Awakenings, abolitionism and other social reform movements would be greatly weakened.
 
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