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In the 1790s, American Christianity was dying, especially on the frontier where America was rapidly moving.

On a trip to Tennessee in 1794, Methodist bishop Francis Asbury commented on how greed had replaced faith on the frontier: "When I reflect that not one in a hundred came here to get religion, but rather to get plenty of good land, I think it will be well if some or many do not eventually lose their souls."

Andrew Fulton, a Presbyterian missionary from Scotland, discovered in Nashville and in "all the newly formed towns in this western colony, there are few religious persons." The minutes of the frontier Transylvania Presbytery reveal deep concern about the "prevalence of vice & infidelity, the great apparent declension of true vital religion in too many places."

This was not the view of just a few pessimists; the facts backed up this analysis. In the 1790s, for example, while the population of Kentucky tripled, the Methodist Church in Kentucky lost members. Things looked bleak for the gospel in the spiritually parched West.

Cane Ridge commotion
By early 1800, word spread that strange things were happening in Logan County, Kentucky. At one annual Communion (weekend retreats ending with Communion), people had begun shouting and singing spontaneously during the preaching. Others had wept for their sins, and some fainted in ecstasy. Not what you'd expect from Presbyterians.

Wonder changed to awe when Communions at Gaspar River, Clay-lick, Little Muddy Creek, and Montgomery's Meetinghouse produced the same effects: lives were being transformed by the Spirit. Barton Stone, pastor of a dual charge at Concord and Cane Ridge, attended some of these meetings, some of which numbered in the dozens, others in the hundreds. He decided to hold a weekend Communion at his Cane Ridge church in the summer of 1801.

By Friday evening, August 6, 1801, thousands had already gathered at Cane Ridge, a church about 20 miles west of Lexington. Rain fell as people gathered to pray quietly, some throughout the night.

On Saturday, the crowd continued to grow. Morning services remained reverent, but as afternoon progressed, the preaching became more fervent. Excitement mounted, and amid the smoke of campfires and summer heat, the camp suddenly erupted in noise. Cries and shouts of the penitent pierced the air. Some swooned in spiritual excitement—some remained conscious or talkative, others went into temporary coma. Soon the campground was strewn with bodies.

Then came the "jerks." One witness recalled, "Their heads would jerk back suddenly, frequently causing them to yelp or make some other involuntary noise. … I have seen their heads fly back and forward so quickly that the hair of females would be made to crack like a carriage whip."

As dark descended, camp fires cast large shadows, and torches illumined preachers. People exhorted one another; some chanted hymns, others ecstatic hosannas. Things calmed as the evening wore on, but by Sunday morning, ecstasy was all around again.

"Sinners dropping down, shrieking, groaning, crying out for mercy, convoluted," said one witness. Most of all he noted the "raptures of joy. Some singing, some shouting, some clapping, hugging, kissing, laughing."

By the following Thursday, things had died down. Between 10,000 and 25,000 had come. More important, somewhere between 1,000 to 3,000 experienced conversion, a number equal to those who made a renewed commitment to Christ.

This event, for all its strangeness, changed frontier America, and soon "camp meetings" sprang up all over the West. Conversions and recommitments by the thousands blossomed into what historians now call the Second Great Awakening. Protestant Christianity became firmly established in the American Midwest and profoundly shaped the values of the entire nation for over a hundred years.

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