The quintessential model for all subsequent camp meeting revivals was the Cane Ridge (Kentucky) meeting of 1801. Attended by crowds between 10,000 and 25,000 people, the meeting became characterized by shouting, prostrations, singing, laughing, emotional fits, and even barking.7 Camp meetings spread from Cane Ridge throughout the rural frontier. James White suggests that a new liturgical structure—a “tripartite . . . service of the Word”—emerged from these camp meetings that has come to characterize American evangelical worship ever since.

For the past several weeks, I have been tracing what influences formed what today we might call “Evangelical worship,” including German Pietism, American Revival, and the Wesleys. Developments in nineteenth-century America also had considerable influence.

The nineteenth century in America was a critical time in its cultural, political, and religious development. The nation was still reeling from its Revolution near the end of the previous century, the new government was expanding the political system, and the citizens were enjoying their first tastes of democratic freedom.

Democratic liberty especially significantly shaped both the religious dynamic and—very much related—the cultural tides of the United States. In the southern colonies in particular, the Great Awakening had “forged new and aggressive religious forces in the Baptists and the Methodists and started them on their amazing development, which was to make them the most numerous religious bodies in the new nation. In other words it marks the real beginning of the democratizing of religion in America.”1

Both Nathan O. Hatch2 and Mark A. Noll3 have shown how America’s democracy altered Christianity considerably, and this is perhaps no more evident than in its worship. Americans became known for a kind of “rugged individualism” and distrust of systems of authority or anything that resembled class distinctions. Individuals expected to have a say in how they lived and what they believed, and these sentiments contributed to the development of American culture as well, especially in the church.

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