ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on the major leaders of antebellum Protestant social reform movements, the issues and causes they championed, and their basic theological perspectives. Prior to the Civil War, Protestant social reform activity was based on a very different theology from that which inspired the social gospel movement in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Lyman Beecher was one of the most active religiously motivated social reformers of his age. Beecher strongly advocated social reform because he believed that God had called America to a special task: leadership in the conversion of the rest of the world to Christianity. Thus, the wave of social reform which followed the Second Great Awakening was largely the result of Charles Finney's brand of perfectionist zeal. Finney's views concerning social reform in general can best be seen in his attitude toward the abolitionist movement; Finney was instrumental in the abolitionist activities of both William Lloyd Garrison and Theodore Dwight Weld.
