The central focus of chapter 3 is upward mobility -- and DeAne asks us if religious conversion could be regarded, in itself, as a sort of mobility between one state and another. While reading Cullen, I found three quotes that seemed to prove (or at least help prove) that the answer to this question is yes.
"And like other American Dreams, the power of this one lay in a sense of collective ownership: anyone can get ahead. An assertion of universal enfranchisement is routinely reaffirmed by this dream's boosters...Occasionally, it has been roundly condemned as an opiate of the people..." (Cullen 60). The idea of "anyone can get ahead" pertains both to the American Dream of being monetary successful, but also spiritually successful. Everyone is presented with the same materials from birth -- and just like Lincoln, people can come from nothing and have everything by the end of their lives. With religion, anyone can get ahead. Anyone can be more religious and devout than another. This competition created an upward mobility for Americans in the religious aspect (Second Great Awakening)...people were compelled to become more and more religious in order to fit in to society ideals.
"...in America, it was possible to make your own destiny" (101). In America, it became possible for individuals to create their own religious "destiny"... because of the Second Great Awakening, people got to choose which denomination they wanted to be a part of. The collective "common" people were all "equal" in the religious hierarchy. They had the power to be as religious as they wanted to be, and to allow their lives to take advantage of this. This translated into upward mobility -- since people could control which religious track they went on, they were able to judge how much they have "mobilized" in their lives and if this was a positive (upward) contribution to their lives.
This last quote is by Lincoln on the last page of Cullen's chapter 3: "Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away" (102). The piece about individual happiness can be related to religion -- and as long as people have the upward prosperity of spirituality, they have the potential to reach individual happiness. This can spread to help social happiness. And as long as people keep having this upward mobility ("onward and upward") of religion like they do in the Second Great Awakening, religion (specifically Christianity) will continue to be a part of American culture -- which it most definitely is even today.
Steph, Nicely done. I appreciate your consistent careful attention to the readings. Here you identify various aspects of religion from individual experience to voluntary membership. I also wonder if we might think of conversion as a movement from a less desirable to a more desirable spiritual state? LDL
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