During the early to mid-nineteenth century, a wave of revivals, often referred to collectively as the Second Great Awakening, swept the eastern seaboard and were especially powerful in the "burnt over district" of upstate New York around Rochester. Writing in 1841 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "In the history of the world, the doctrine of reform has never had such hope as it does at the present hour." In the wake of "awakening" movements many reformists founded utopian communities in the Ohio River Valley and upstate New York. Zoar, Ohio, for example, was a religious community founded by the Shakers, which had a following of around 5,000 people and stretched from Maine to Kentucky. This group believed in equality of the sexes based on the duality of God as both male and female. However, they also believed in religious virginity and grew their numbers mostly through adoption. The Oneida Community of upstate New York is another example, which banned monogamy and encouraged communal harmony among followers to achieve perfect sinlessness. A group of intellectuals founded Brook Farm, a utopian settlement outside of Boston, based on the premise that scholarly pursuits and manual labor could produce a perfect community. There were many other similar settlements and movements along the East Coast. While many were religiously oriented, they all shared the common belief that the industrialization of the American economy brought about by the marketplace revolution had deteriorated religious/social values.

Many of these communities looked to an idealized version of Puritan settlement during the seventeenth century, which they believed was a also a movement against worldliness of the period. Romanticizing the Puritan "errand into the wilderness," they adopted traditional Puritan names which were largely drawn from the Old Testament. Other communities preached a return to scholarly interpretation of the Bible and so biblical names were more broadly circulated.

For further reading on the subject I'd suggest:

Paul E. Johnson's A Shopkeeper's Millennium

Eric Foner's textbook Give Me Liberty Chapter 12

Daniel Howe's What Hath God Wrought

John L. Thomas, "Romantic Reform in America," from the WMQ vol 17, 1965.

**Side note: Some historians strongly disagree with the use of the terms "First and Second Great Awakenings" for a variety of reasons and I would tend to agree with them. However, I figured this thread was not the acceptable place to digress into such a discussion.