There is a long-standing belief that the United States of America was founded on the principles and doctrinal views of Protestantism. Early modern Christians have analyzed historical documents in an attempt to provide evidence of a Judeo-Christian foundation in the republican framework of the nation. Likewise, their opponents have written long dissertations and argued through various media that the Christian conclusions are unfounded. Yet despite their endless debate, religion, particularly Christianity, has and continues to play a critical part of the cultural, social, and political makeup of America. The Second Great Awakening, the religious revivalist movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, sparked not only a religious revolution that transformed the American landscape, but also developed and cemented the individualist ideologies that guided American thought in subsequent generations . Fundamentally, the Second Great Awakening was a religious response to the uncertainty of the period. The nation at the time was redrawing its borders westward to accommodate the booming population. The established Protestant denominations of the time, the Congregationalists and the Anglicans, had failed to create their longed-for religious utopias and there was widespread discontent with their traditional beliefs. Through the means of renewed religious enthusiasm, a movement spread throughout the young nation seeking to reverse the situation. spiritual apathy that he had instilled in many of his Christian adherents. With the growing diversity of American settlers on the frontier and within the states, the charismatic leaders of the Second Great Awakening turned to the common man. Although there is no specific date indicating the beginning of... middle of the document ......rary.org/catalogues/1792ff/finley.html.Finney, Charles Grandison. Conferences on the revival of religion. New York: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, 2009. Accessed April 21, 2014. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/finney/revivals.toc.html.Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Howe, Daniel Walker. What God Has Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.Wayland, Francis. “The Duties of an American Citizen: Two Speeches, Delivered at the First Baptist Meeting of Boston, Thursday, April 7, 1825, the Day of the Public Fast.” Accessed April 21, 2014. http://goo.gl/ikC8tC.Weld, Theodore Dwight. “American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses.” Documenting the American South. Accessed April 22, 2014. http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html.