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thesis entitled
FROM BACKWOODS PREACHER TO CELEBRATED REVIVALIST:

CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY AND THE PURSUIT OF FAME
presented by
MARK ALAN BOWDEN
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FROM BACKWOODS PREACHER TO CELEBRATED REVIVALIST:
CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY AND THE PURSUIT OF FAME

BY

Mark Alan Bowden

A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History

1991

 

ABSTRACT

FROM BACKWOODS PREACHER TO CELEBRATED REVIVALIST:
CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY AND THE PURSUIT OF FAME

BY

Mark Alan Bowden

This thesis will examine the changing nature of the
ministerial office in New England and the western frontier
region of New York during the first half of the nineteenth
century with a primary focus on the early evangelistic
career of Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875). The
evangelical emphasis upon the personal qualities of the
minister as a regenerated Christian and the determination
of his value which stressed his success in soul-winning
efforts, granted opportunities to openly strive for
prominent pulpits that would permit him, ostensibly at
least, not only great chances to do good but also a visible
position from where the whole nation might observe his
grand accomplishments. It is the purpose of this thesis to
examine how Finney epitomized this new type of clergyman--a
man of opportunity seeking the pulpit of high visibility

from where he could display his soul- saving talents.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to extend my sincerest thanks to Professor David
Bailey. His apt and insightful comments proved extremely
helpful. Most inspiring were the hours we spent discussing

this project.

iii

TABLBIQFCXMHBNTS

Introduction: The Changing Contours of the
New England Ministry

God will Raise up a Prophet....and You shall
Listen to Him
Success and Controversy

Creating a Legacy: The Revivalist Turns
Educator

Conclusion: The Burden of Renown
Endnotes

Bibliography

iv

22

48

68
83
94

112

1
Introduction:
The Changing Contours of the New England Ministry

Any analysis attempting to discover the reasons why
Charles Finney's career sky-rocketed in the late 18205, must
examine the man, his message, and his methods. But, first,
it will be most useful to begin looking at the historical
context. Within this context, demographic and economic
changes linked with a concurrent restructuring of the
ministerial office to create a favorable atmosphere for

Finney to thrive.

The New England ministry experienced a transformation
during the nineteenth century which has been elucidated by
Daniel Calhoun, Sidney Mead, and Donald Scott.1 Each
analysis details the transmutations of the nature and range
of clerical authority. This transformation of the ministry
created new opportunities for ministerial advancement on a
national, rather than a solely local, scale. These
opportunities, in turn, generated competition among
ministers which allowed for more open and conscious striving

for those pulpits and positions in national societies with

2
the greatest prestige and most visibility. In the early
decades of the nineteenth century, there seems to have been
a widespread concern throughout the ministerial "profession"
of increasing pride and ambition. The evidence for these
concerns becomes apparent when one examines ordination
sermons which serve as good indicators of what problems
worried the ministry.2
The Reverend Titus Strong delivered an ordination

sermon in 1819 warning of devious ministers who "have used
their offices as an engine of power, and a cloak for
corruption." These same ministers, Strong continues, have
sought worldly accouterments-—"the splendor of wealth, the
celebrity of fame, and the influence of power," and they
have exhibited "the same devotedness to worldly vanities,
[as] those who have made no profession of godliness."3 In
another ordination sermon from 1810 the Reverend Ambrose
Hough felt compelled to express the following poetic caveat,
about the temptations of greed and pride in light of the
minister's role of disinterested service to God and
humankind, to David Haskel:

Oh, popular applause! what heart of man

Is proof against thy sweet seducing charms?

The wisest and the best feel urgent need

Of all their caution in thy gentle'st gales -

Praise from the rivel'd lyrs of toothless, bald

Decrepitudes; and in the looks of lean

And craving poverty, and in the bow

Respectful of the smutch'd artificer;

Is oft too welcome, and may much disturb

The bias of the purpose.

These installation sermons which evince a concern

3

about the ambitious motives of many of the ministry's new
members during the early nineteenth century was a recent
development. Throughout the eighteenth century, the ideas
that "a ministerial career was something a young man
consciously forged or that eminence was something for which
he strove were largely unknown, and if admitted, totally
unacceptable."5

The clergyman of eighteenth-century New England was an
integral part of the ruling elite of the town. He stood
within the upper echelon of an organic and hierarchically
structured community. The minister's stature and authority
"derived from his occupancy of office and from social
standing, from his possession of the social stature that
town leaders possessed whether they had earned or were born
to it. The deference and obedience due nature and divine
ordinance to all legitimately conferred authority was
especially due to the pastor."6

The minister exercised a broad scope of power (with the
implied consent of the congregation) by administering public
rituals--funeral sermons, fasts, jeremiads, etc. . .--and
enforcing the community's moral values by admonishing
unacceptable behavior and serving as an arbiter of personal
disputes. This ubiquitous influence within the daily life
of the townspeople "gave such significance to permanence and
such social importance to the office, for, symbolically, if

not always actually, the presence of a good minister,

4

permanently installed and bound to a town and church,
transformed a mere settlement into a genuine, organic
community."7

Scott notes that in the early nineteenth century, the
number of ministers and the method of recruitment changed.
The number of people entering the ministerial profession had
risen dramatically and out of proportion with the general
population by 1840. In contrast, recruitment in the
eighteenth century conducted by the local church and city
fathers moved at a careful, deliberate pace in search of men
of the highest piety, talent, and intellect. Increasingly,
however, the dramatic revivals of the first decades of the
nineteenth century garnered the lion's share of new
ministers and converts. The western revivals and camp
meetings in Kentucky and Tennessee greatly increased the
membership of the Baptists and Methodists. Meanwhile, the
dominant churches of the colonial period--Congregational,
Presbyterian, and Episcopal--experienced a slower rate of
growth in the west and Old Northwest. The problem of
frontier expansion, especially for the Presbyterians, was
their commitment to education and instruction within its
dogmatic tradition. The doctrinal structure built around
the Westminster Confession proved difficult to simplify for
frontier preaching. Furthermore, the older eastern
Presbyterian churches, appalled by the reported excesses of

the western revivals viz., dancing jerking, and barking

5
etc. . ., disciplined its Western members for any
involvement in these revival aberrations. Soon, however,
the Presbyterians experienced conflict and schism which also

8 Those

limited their effectiveness on the frontier.
ministers who decided to embrace the challenge of

evangelizing the nation realized the consequent need to

expand the ministry. The elitist and expensive colleges

such as Harvard and Yale would be unable to supply a high I
demand of clergy. New England church leaders therefore,

began actively to recruit promising young men and help

provide them with the means necessary to receive a

ministerial education. They built schools like Amherst,

Williams, Bowdoin, and Hamilton to educate the aspiring

9 Many of these young men who now considered

ministers.
entering the ministry after their conversion were men of
little or no monetary means and also lacked any solid
educational background.10 With the growth of the new
provincial colleges and theological seminaries these new
aspirants to the ministry could be accommodated. Such new
conditions removed the decision making process from the
local community, which knew the ministerial candidate well,
and placed it in the control of outside recruiters who
procured candidates from throughout the entire region.11
Scott attributes this shift in ministerial procurement

to several factors. Economic hard times forced many young

men to look beyond the family farm and local community to

6
the ministry as a possible livelihood. This conscious
desire to enter the ministry for "worldly motives" rather
than for "sanctified motives to do God's will,"
distinguishes an important change in the ministry from a
"calling" to a "profession."12 Also, the revival fervor
which swept through the northeastern section of the nation
led many to the calling of the ministry. Finally, the
ministry itself deliberately sought to expand its numbers by
creating new institutions for recruitment such as Andover
Theological Society founded in 1808.13 The catalyst that
drove the demand for more ministers higher, was the
perceived barbarism and godlessness of the West, which
evangelicals such as Lyman Beecher saw as the key to success
for America's future: "The West is a young empire of mind,
and power, and wealth, and free institutions, rushing up to
a giant manhood with a rapidity and a power never witnessed
below the sum. And if she carries with her the elements of
her preservation, the experiment will be glorious."“ This
popularly held concept of the importance of the West to the
nation's future progress, necessitated a determined effort
of dedicated New Englanders to civilize the region.15 The
new methods of recruitment and education contrasted with
those of the eighteenth century by removing candidates from
local influences. The new educational facilities
"contained little that fostered the traditional organic and

"16

hierarchical social sensibility. Furthermore, the new

7
schools offered a wide ranging educational opportunity, not
to prepare the minister to assume the intellectual
leadership of his community, but in order that he stand
adequately armed to repel the assaults of the local skeptics

W Consequently, the new ministers of the

and heretics.
first half of the nineteenth century remained relatively
oblivious to notions of their social status as ministers.
And although "their sense of their role and its social
importance remained unchanged... their identity as
ministers was now informed far more by their sense of
belonging to a professional community than by a sense of
their place in the status system of the local community."18

This new professional consciousness, along with the
proliferation of evangelical and benevolent societies
transformed the local scope of the clergyman's
responsibilities to envelope assorted duties outside the
local community. Opportunities ranged from pastorates to
missionary posts, education positions, administrators,
revivalists, and other capacities which were all viewed as
valid components of church ministry.19 The societies
created many new opportunities which diminished the appeal
of local pulpits and "introduced ways of ranking
pastorates."20

In the eighteenth century ministers had sought stable

pastorates in which they could (and usually did) remain for

life unless formally requested to leave by a council of

8
churches. This changed, however, as churches and ministers
negotiated contracts from one to five years in duration and
which stipulated that either side may terminate the

a Pastorates were soon

agreement before its completion.
viewed as useful tools in the greater evangelical cause.
The best pulpits were those that offered opportunities for
writing and activism and which allowed easy access to major
cities that were headquarters for the national benevolent

2’ The explosive growth of the cities during the

societies.
first half of the nineteenth century as a major force
driving the revival furor must not be overlooked. In the
West, by 1820, Cincinnati and New Orleans were important
cities. Pittsburgh, Rochester, Buffalo, Louisville, and St.
Louis had become flourishing cities by 1830. Cleveland,
Detroit, Milwaukee, and Chicago had reached big city status
by 1840. Therefore, the revivals of the first half of the
nineteenth century sought not only to convert and
reinvigorate people in the West but also in the East; both
of these goals "were closely interrelated and can be
understood only as part of a single surge of new religious
life and activity."23
The most efficient method of evangelization which could
reach the people in these far-flung cities employed
itinerant ministers who could quickly cover many miles of

territory. One of the most mobile of clergymen, Charles

Grandison Finney, traveled from Massachusetts to Ohio to

9

Pennsylvania. His lack of a permanent pastorate offered him
a broader and more cosmopolitan view of Protestantism in the
United States. Of course, the precedent for such a highly
mobile ministry was established in the late eighteenth
century by the Methodist "circuit system" which helped swell
the number of Methodists by providing a way to reach the new
wave of migrants settling new frontier communities beyond
the mountains.“

Lacking a contractual obligation to a specific church,
Finney could view the whole nation as his congregation.25
Furthermore, Finney contributed to the emerging translocal
ministry by stressing evangelical themes, rather than
subjects such as baptism that often led to dissension.
Finney advocated the direct reading of the Bible to sustain
his theological beliefs; this practice avoided appeals to
church dogma and rested upon authority all Protestants
recognized. Finally, Finney, throughout his evangelical
career, minimized and often ignored denominational lines.
His ministry sought cooperation with other Protestants as
brothers and sisters in Christ.“’ It is clear, therefore,
that "Finney symbolized those forces which were giving
ministers a translocal perspective and making them agents of
a common culture."n'

There was more, however, to the lack of ministerial

permanency than just the developing professional

consciousness of ministers; there also existed an economic

10

aspect. Conflicts sometimes flared between a minister and
the congregation concerning his salary. The back country of
New England suffered an economic decline, and communities
had increasingly difficulty adequately supporting the local
minister. Meanwhile, other regions prospered and the
minister saw an opportunity to improve the economic
conditions for himself and his family. Therefore, the
decline of local economies, in part, spawned an increase in
the frequency and intensity of salary disputes and further
contributed to the erosion of pastoral permanency.28

At this point ambition for fame and prominence
intersect with the new clerical structure. A "prestige
ladder" had been created which had "undercut the sanctity of
ordination bonds and eroded the tradition of pastoral

'3’ Dissatisfied with the security and local

permanence.‘
esteem offered by the community, the new clergymen actively
sought the prestige that once had been assumed and "began to
envision a career in the modern, technical sense - an
occupational course composed of a sequence of steps upward
to positions of greater prestige and influence.“m During
the eighteenth century, the belief that fame (i.e. wide
acclaim and recognition) was the reserve of people of great
achievement had been supplanted by the notion that fame
itself was the only worthy goal. The new political and

social forces unleashed by the English Industrial Revolution

and the American Revolution helped undermined traditional

11

hierarchical authority and transformed fame into its modern
meaning, "as a way of defining oneself, making oneself
known, beyond the limitations of class and family.
Economic, social, and political revolution had produced so
many new ways of naming oneself that what had been an urge
in few, in many became a frenzy."31

We can see how this battle of piety versus ambition
tortured the soul of Lyman Beecher (1775-1863).:32 Beecher
was the great promoter and organizer of the wave of revivals
which swept through New England during the first decade of
the nineteenth century. He attended Yale and studied under
its president Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) and Ezra Stiles
(1727-1795). Beecher graduated from Yale in 1797 and in
1798, as an unordained minister, he practiced preaching.
During this period, Beecher expressed to his fiancee,
Roxanna Foote, the growing despair over the state of his
soulfi” He felt motivated by feelings of ambition which
strangled the sincerity and enthusiasm of his religious
emotions. Distraught and anxious about his continuing
doubts, he explained to Roxanna that mankind was created to
"give God the glory" and resolved that his ministry would
serve that end.“

Shortly thereafter, in 1799, Beecher was ordained over
the church at East Hampton, Long Island. Beecher expected
this appointment to be permanent. But eleven years later as

he achieved a fair amount of public recognition through his

12

published sermons, especially "The Remedy for Duelling"
(1806), Beecher entered a vast arena of contacts and
activities which led him far beyond his local pastorate.35
These outside distractions left the East Hampton
congregation feeling neglected and friction increased
between the minister and his parish. Beecher, assuming the
differences would not be reconciled, leaked information that
he may soon be available to fulfill any vacant pulpit.
Beecher made this announcement while preaching in a vacant
pulpit at Litchfield, Connecticut. Many people in East
Hampton charged Beecher with ambition. They believed he was
searching for a larger and more visible pastorate. Although
Beecher was aware that he had outgrown East Hampton, he had
done so by accident and not by deliberate effort. After an
investigation by the Long Island Presbytery, Beecher was
permitted to leave East Hampton and accept the offer
extended at Litchfield. Donald Scott aptly states the
consequence of this episode not only for Beecher but also
for the New England ministry: "In leading Beecher to a
pastorate that was better attuned to the more recent
contours of his career, his eminence became less something
to be passively accepted than the unwitting means to a new
kind of ministerial mobility.““

As the career of Beecher suggests that ministers were
becoming more mobile, there also exists limited evidence

drawn from the Presbyterian and Congregational churches of

13
New Hampshire which shows that by 1830 larger towns
consistently preferred younger ministers than their small

7 The larger towns containing

town counterparts.3
proportionately more churches with larger memberships and
thus more money could, one assumes, recruit the type of
minister it wanted. pAnd they desired young men in their
thirties which was often younger than the leading laymen.
Calhoun states that this seems to sustain one of the most
subjective, biased complaints that ministers made
during the middle years of the nineteenth century:
that churches in looking for new ministers pre-
ferred, not the man of maturity and profundity,
but the novelty, the fresh personality, and--
often the specific complaint--the young man
it raises especially the question of whether the
democracy of midcentury preferred superficial
values and mere novelty as such.
Calhoun's analysis seems consistent with that of the
Reverend Leonard Withington who, in the Trumpet and
Universalist Magazine of July 1836, described the religious
atmosphere as one of "superficial tendencies," where people
remain "asleep and retrograde, if they are not riding at the
swiftest speed of the whirlwind." This shallow age,
Withington continued, fosters a fickle church that sustains
itself "on the circumstances of religion, not its essence
. . . Like a vessel, now riding on the summit of a
mountainous wave, they are diving into the yawning gulf,
they are always above the proper level, or below it." Such
people have a diseased spiritual life whose "whole moral

existence is a fever or a sleep.“39

14

Of course, "personality-centered" religion can be
traced at least as far back as the Reformation, which
elevated the preaching of the Word over the priestly
function in Catholicism of administering the sacraments.
This emphasis on preaching coupled with the development of
voluntaryism among American churches fostered the proper
conditions for an increased emphasis "on the personality of

'”0 Beyond this emphasis on the personality or

the preacher.
charisma of the individual minister, is a dialectic between
the preacher or religious leader and his followers that
exists during periods of revivalism when, as William
McLoughlin argues, a revitalization of culture is
necessary.“1 Revitalization is necessary when the values of
a society have lost their relevance within the context of
ordinary life. This failure generates much fear and
trepidation among people as they find themselves unable to
adequately cope with unstable social, political, economic,
and demographic forces. When the established authorities
and institutions fail to provide relief for the pressures of
everyday existence, inevitably new voices arise and proclaim
new solutions or reinterpretations of older answers. These
prophets of hope validate their authority to overrule
existing leaders by claiming divine favor. The claim
itself, however, is not sufficient to gain a large

following. The claims must be confirmed by positive changes

in the prophets life and in the success his message achieves

15

among his followers. The dialectical process, therefore, is
a method by which the followers select a leader based on the
effectiveness of his message which relieves their anxieties.
Therefore, "in America, revivalism is the process by which
the people sort out from among their prophets those whom
they consider legitimate voices of supernatural authority
and power.“2

Although Americans may have been "favorably disposed

"“ there remained among a small portion

toward new prophets,
of the populace a fear of novelty and superficiality that
characterized the new leaders and which betrayed the trust
of the people by placing private desires for power or
notoriety above the needs of their devoted followers. The
fear of novelty and superficiality, however, extended beyond
the realm of religion to include social, political, and
economic factors. A change in the understanding of the
concept of fame supports the idea that Americans
increasingly overlooked an individual's achievement in favor
of novelty. Before the Industrial Revolution fame was
attained through great achievements. This changed, however,
with the advent of enormous population growth, increased
literacy, wider political participation, less expensive
methods of printing and engraving, and the overthrow of
monarchism in the American and French revolutions. In these

circumstances the opportunities for self-promotion abounded

and fame itself, rather than achievement, became the

16

principle end.44

Daniel Boorstin describes, in his book The Image: A
guide to Pseudo-Events in America, a similar alteration of
fame. He frames his discussion by distinguishing between
the hero and the celebrity."5 The hero rises to acclaim
upon some great achievement. His reputation grows with the
passage of time and with each succeeding generation he is
reinterpreted as new virtues and adventures are ascribed to
him. Furthermore, because heroes of the traditional mold
lack a precisely defined face or image this vagueness

‘“ As the hero is idealized

enhances their heroic stature.
and immortalized he loses his real identity and many of his
flaws.

Conversely, the celebrity is a creation of publicity in
magazines, newspapers, movies, and television. This
notoriety is fleeting and quite often the celebrity is

[’7 The

reduced to oblivion with the passage of time.
celebrity's descent into anonymity contains no tragedy as he
returns to his proper place. The celebrity is returned by
the advance of time to the more banal existence of his
origin, unlike the tragic hero who falls from the heights of
greatness because of a tragic flaw. While heroes were
enhanced by an absence of an accurate and well defined
image, celebrities, on the other hand, became vividly
recognizable figures, too individualized to become

48

idealizations. Celebrities are often identified by

17

personality traits and idiosyncrasies, and thus another term
for celebrity is "personality." At the most fundamental
level, heroes make themselves while celebrities are created
by the public which "can at will . . . make a man or woman
well known; but we [i.e. the public] cannot make him great.
We can make a celebrity, but we can never make a hero . . .
all heroes are self-made."“

Boorstin, echoing Braudy, links the celebrity concept of
fame to changing social and political elements. Both
authors cite the overthrow of monarchism and the
establishment of democracy as major factors. The rhetoric of
equality and the rising stature of the common people

w While democracy

entailed a distrust of heroic greatness.
tended to denigrate the traditional heroic mold, it
simultaneously uplifted the more mundane existence of
everyday life.

In partial agreement with Braudy, Boorstin points out
that the celebrity "is usually nothing greater than a more
publicized version of us."51 Boorstin continues by adding
that our most cherished heroes like Washington, Franklin,
and Lincoln are admired because in them we see a part of
ourselves. They "are revered not because they possess
charisma, divine favor, a grace or talent granted them by
God, but because they embody popular virtues. We admire
them, not because they reveal God, but because they reveal

"52

and elevate ourselves. These same sentiments are echoed

18
by Constance Rourke who wrote that leaders like Lyman
Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry Ward Beecher, Horace
Greeley, and P. T. Barnum were "nothing less than the
vicarious crowd, registering much that is essential and
otherwise obscure in social history, hopes and joys and
conflicts and aspirations which may be crude and transitory,
but none the less are the stuff out of which the foundations

of social life are made."53

As we shall see, in the case of
the premiere revivalist of the second quarter of the
nineteenth century, Charles Grandison Finney's strongest
appeal was among farmers, small businessmen, mechanics, and
lawyers. Bernard Weisberger characterized Finney as
"plain-talking, respectful of solid rural achievement, but
distrustful of ostentation, he belonged entirely to the
people who made his reputation . . . the folkways of the
frontier lingered in him."“

Yet the modern democratic hero, while often a
reflection of ourselves, in some cases still stands for
something beyond ourselves. One of the best examples of
such a hero is Andrew Jackson. John W. Ward's classic study
of Jackson's symbolic significance clearly details how much
of Jackson's popularity was "because his countrymen saw
their image and spirit in Andrew Jackson" and, therefore,
"they bestowed their honor and admiration upon him."55 But

for many Americans Jackson's successful military and

political career provided evidence of his role as God's

 

19

chosen instrument to lead the nation to its unique destiny.
This belief in divine sanction, Ward believes, served to
enhance the success of the American people as their
experiment in democratic government pressed onward. Yet the
notion of a chosen race bestowed with providential blessings
undermines fundamental assumptions of the democratic
foundation: "Although the democratic principle was
constantly given divine sanction by making the voice of the
people the voice of God, a different inference was always
possible: the leader might maintain that as God's select
instrument he knew the proper course to be pursued despite
the will of the people."56

The claims upon divine sanction which proved useful in
a political context were also advantageous in a religious
context. Like Jackson's military and political
achievements, Finney's success in converting souls was cited
as evidence of divine sanction and, therefore, a
justification of his forthright preaching style. This
ability to motivate people to new heights of religious
fervor became extremely valuable in American churches at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. After the American
Revolution active state support of churches began quickly to
disintegrate; churches now relied upon their own initiative
to replenish and bolster their membership.yr The churches
also constantly attempted to reinvigorate many of its

lackadaisical brethren. The most effective instrument in

20
achieving these ends proved to be the revival. From Cane

Ridge, Kentucky in 1801 to Rochester, New York thirty years

 

later, revivals dominated the American religious landscape.
With the fanaticism and emotional excesses of James
Davenport, whose rantings tainted the First Great Awakening
in the 17405, still a vivid memory many revivalists in the
early nineteenth century, such as Lyman Beecher and Asahel
Nettleton, emphasized calm and orderly conduct in their
revivals. Their tightly controlled meetings precluded
excessive outbursts and rampant confusion. Their own
comportment was one of restraint and reserved enthusiasm.
Neither man gesticulated too vigorously nor spoke in a loud
or offensive manner. They were proud of the dignity with
which their revivals proceeded.

By the mid-18205 news received from western New York
reported of a revivalist who was converting a record number
of souls. Charles Grandison Finney swept eastward with his
passionate style of preaching which some believed was as
dangerous to the present revivals as Davenport's had been to
the earlier awakening. Finney stands as the premiere
evangelist of the first half of the nineteenth century. This
is true not due to his forceful style of exhortation but

because

he was the most American of them [the revivalists]
all, in vigor, in mind, in ruthlessness,

passion . . . Finney's pre-eminence lies in his
embracing the Revival out of no academic
theological training, but fully imbued with the
spirit of the nineteenth century . . . the most

21
demonic of the whole fraternity, possessed of the
shrewdness that enabled him to win such battles
for the Lord as no other could match, Finney among
the evangelicals was a Napoleon among his
marshals . 58
Finney was a man possessed of great dreams and tremendous
ambition. It is the purpose of this thesis to examine how
Finney epitomized this new type of clergyman--a man of
opportunity always seeking the pulpit of high visibility
from where he could display his soul-saving talents. In

Finney we will see the nexus where ambition for fame and the

desire to serve as the Lord's humble servant collide.

God will Raise up a Prophet....and You shall Listen to
Him (Deuteronomy 18.15)
The death of Charles Grandison Finney on Monday, 16

August 1875, was noted by newspapers throughout the
country.1 Yet it is startling to discover how little
print-space was given to the "Moody of his day" by the
newspapers.2 Typical was the terse obituary printed in the
Atlanta Constitution: "Charles G. Finney, for many years
president of Oberlin College, died suddenly from heart

'5 Little or nothing was said of Finney's career as

disease.
America's pre-eminent revivalist in the first half of the
nineteenth century. One of the most extensive printed
accounts of his controversial and stormy rise to national
prominence came, not surprisingly, in the New York Times:
"He began his career as an evangelist in 1824 and met
everywhere with notable success. He was the Moody of his
day, and great revivals followed his efforts."‘ The
accounts are notably short and often found in the back
pages. The newspapers remember the "venerable ex-President

"5

of Oberlin College, yet have almost completely forgotten

the greatest evangelist of his day.

22

23

Finney's earliest revivals of western New York in
1824-25, comprise his initial evangelical labors which would
soon bring him wide-spread attention and thrust him
center-stage in the controversy over New School
Presbyterianism. But before Finney became the renowned
evangelist, he began as an unknown country preacher. How
did Finney acquire fame and what was the source of his
growing reputation? The source was a power to inspire hope
in people and motivate them to seize God's grace by
undergoing spiritual conversion. Through these soul-saving
efforts Finney achieved substantial eminence. In order to
discover how Finney rose to prominence we must first uncover
a young evangelist full of doubt and unsure of his preaching
style and reveal the moment when the pulpit manner which
brought him initial success became a conscious means of
manipulation, one which could compel people to publicly
commit themselves to Christ. This deliberate attempt to
instigate revivals exposes clearly the early wranglings
within the Presbyterian church (hostilities did not erupt
publicly until 1828 when Nathaniel W. Taylor published his
sermon Concio Ad Clerum ["Advice to the Clergy"] which
insisted sinning is an act of man's own free will)--between
the Old School notion of revivals as miracles begun by God
to save only a select few, and the New School notion that
revivals require human agency and that God's grace is

available to all who are willing to open their hearts and

24
accept salvation freely given--which reached denouement in

the division of 1837.

The area of New York west of the Adirondack and
Catskills Mountains became known as the "burned-over
district" because of the many enthusiasms and crusades which
inundated the entire area. Many of the people who led these
movements came from New England and travelled to New York to
alleviate the stress of the area's population explosion and

6 While most of these movements did not

social tension.
achieve fruition until the second quarter of the nineteenth
century, the seeds were planted during the earliest
settlements.

The reasons for western New York's susceptibility to
these sometimes strange enthusiasms must include a study of
the economic and demographic changes wrought by the
construction of the Erie Canal. The canal, completed in
1825, links Buffalo with Albany, and consequently to New
York City by way of the Hudson River. The enormous labor
necessary to build the Erie Canal attracted thousands of
workers into the area, many of whom settled not only along
the course of the canal, but also eventually moved into the
unsettled lands of Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. New York,
like the rest of the nation, experienced unprecedented

expansion which made delivery of goods to market especially

difficult before 1825. The Erie Canal was designed to

25

rectify this problem by creating a cheap and efficient mode
of exchange between farm produce and manufactured goods.
Soon cities and towns with factories, packing houses, and
mills sprung up along the canal. The population continued
to swell with bankers, businessmen, factory workers, and
unskilled laborers.7

This tremendous socio-economic upheaval with its
growing corporate economy eroded the traditional mode of
family production and exposed "the generational ties of the
home economy [as] most vulnerable to the corrosive power of
commerce." This effect had much to do with the growth of
enthusiasms which served in one aspect as "new methods of

'J But the causes of

securing these familial ties...
revivals attributed to the growth of capitalism in the early
nineteenth century and which resulted in the disintegration
of the family, the weakening of the hierarchical social
structure, unrestrained greed, isolation, and cultural
confusion has been challenged by Paul E. Johnson. The
Rochester revival, Johnson contends, "had little to do with
ruthlessness, isolation, and anomie," but, instead, it
"reaffirmed the moral unity shared throughout the 18205 and

9 Revivals

18305" by both farmers and business leaders.
served as social controls that during the initial stages of
industrialism offered the middle class "a means of imposing

new standards of work discipline and personal comportment

upon themselves and the men who worked for them."10 While

26
Johnson rejects the suggestion that the Rochester revival
was simply a "capitalist plot," he steadfastly maintains
that it was a critical element in the development of free

labor.11

Whatever their causes, the enthusiasms which
excited western New York ranged from anti—Masonry, to
Mormonism, Spiritualism, millennialism, and perfectionism.
The result of all this activity was years of "social
ferment, sometimes a little mad, a little confused about
directions, but always full of optimism, of growth, and of
positive affirmation."12

Within this atmosphere of religious excitement and
experimentation, Charles Finney grew to adulthood. On 29
August 1792, Charles Grandison Finney began life as the
seventh child of Sylvester (1759-1842) and Rebecca
(1759-1836) Finney of Warren Connecticut. The Finneys
eventually had nine children. About 1794 Sylvester moved
his family to a 109 acre farm in Brothertown, Oneida County,
New York. Sylvester was among those New England farmers who
were poor or dissatisfied with the outlook in their own
locality and so moved to central New York in search of more
sanguine prospects.13 Western New York during the 17905
still retained frontier conditions with rudimentary
economic and political structures. The individual household

u The family,

remained the primary locus of production.
however, was bought out by the state of New York which

needed the land for Indian resettlement.15 Once again on 22

27

September 1798 Sylvester Finney moved his family seven miles
north: this time to the small settlement of Hanover, near
the town of Kirkland.“

Although there is some doubt,it is generally believed
that Finney attended Hamilton Oneida Academy at Clinton, a
few miles from Hanover, for two years beginning in 1806.17
While at Hamilton Oneida Academy, Finney's desire for
education was stimulated by the principal Seth Norton and
Finney's lifelong passion for music began when L. Nelson
Nichols encouraged Finney to play the violin and the bass
viol.

The Finneys remained at Hanover until Charles was
sixteen years old. In 1808 the family finally settled in
Henderson, Jefferson County which stands on the shore of

w The people at

Lake Ontario, near Sackett's Harbor.
Henderson chose sixteen year old Charles to teach school for
four years. The students became infatuated with the
charismatic and energetic young man. The athletic Finney
participated in their sports and enjoyed sailing, swimming,
wrestling, and rowing. He became his student's "idol."
Finney's playful persona, however, quickly changed in the
classroom: "He was very dignified and kept perfect order.
Should any boy attempt to create a disturbance, one flash of
Mr. Finney's eye would quell the sinner at once. Oh, I tell

you, they all loved and worshipped him, and all felt that

some day he would be a great man."19

28

In his Memoirs Finney described his early religious
life as bleak, stating that neither of his parents were
"professors of religion" and further recalling the
"ignorance" of the itinerant preachers he heard which "was
so great that the people would return from meeting and spend
a considerable time in irrepressible laughter, in view of
the strange mistakes which had been made and absurdities

go

which had been advanced.’ Finney characterized himself as

a "young man who neither knew or cared anything about
religion."21

In 1812 Finney returned to Warren, Connecticut to live
with an uncle and attend a local academy. While at Warren,
Finney regularly attended the Congregational church of Peter
Starr (1744-1829). Starr's stiff preaching style, with its
meticulous adherence to carefully scribed notes and lack of
dynamism, Finney found numbingly tedious and dull. He
stated that Starr "read his sermons in a manner that left no
impression whatever on my mind. He had a monotonous,
humdrum way of reading what he had probably written many
years before."22 The methodical and insipid prose of Starr
which Finney disdained comes through in Starr's published
sermon entitled, "The Nature and Importance of Covenanting
with God":

The nature of this covenant is to be considered.
A covenant is a certain compact or agreement,
between two or more parties, wherein certain
conditions are proposed, with which there is a
mutual compliance. Thus men often covenant with
one another. The infinite Jehovah hath been

29

pleased to treat with men, in a covenant way;

in which he promiseth the bestowment of favors,

on condition of certain things to be performed on

their part.23
Finney's later denunciations of the dry and uninspiring
sermons typical of many ministers was primarily a response
to Starr's poorly delivered homilies.

While at Warren, Finney asked his teacher about his
prospects for attending Yale. The teacher, for whatever
reasons, told Finney that he need not attend Yale as he
believed Finney could complete the four year program in two
years on his own. Finney did acquire some knowledge of
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Yet, even toward the end of his
life Finney remained consciously aware of his educational
short-comings: "But I was never a classical scholar, & never
possessed so much knowledge of the dead languages as to
think myself capable of independently criticizing our
english translations of the bible. I have seldom ventured to
attempt it when I was not sustained by the most respectable

"a In this unusually revealing passage, Finney

authority.
expressed some insecurity which must have been exacerbated
by the scrutiny of the public eye which fame entails. The
normally buoyant Finney occasionally offered such brief
glimpses of his anxiety which suggests an underlying concern
for the discomfiting affects of tremendous success that he

never openly revealed.

Finney left Connecticut in 1814 and taught in the New

30

Jersey public schools. But he returned home to Henderson,
New York in 1818 because of his mother's failing health.
Finney had been gone for six years and while Jefferson
County still remained a fairly primitive place culturally,
its religious life had improved. Several denominations had
started churches in the surrounding area. Furthermore, in
1815 a revival moved through the area. Whereas the Finneys
previously had virtually no religious inclinations, by 1818
Charles discovered that his youngest brother had been
converted.25

At age twenty-six Finney was an affable and handsome
man. Self-confident almost to the point of arrogance,
Finney possessed piercing blue eyes and a powerful voice.
In later years his ability to draw people to him and command
their allegiance was due, in part, to his striking
appearance and his verbal potency. His rugged good looks,
congenial personality, musical ability (which included
singing), and his athletic skills made him popular among
young people, especially the women who considered him one of
Henderson's most eligible bachelors.26

Finney left the unstable and poorly remunerative
teaching profession and pursued a career in the legal
profession. The law offered more prestige and greater
financial prosperity. Moreover, Finney's logical mind and
persuasive abilities could lead him to the top of his

profession and might even extend to the arena of power

31
politics. Finney began his study in 1818 under the tutelage
of Benjamin Wright, of the law office of Wright and Wardell,
in the town of Adams, New York. For the next three years
Finney remained an apprentice to Wright.

But suddenly, on Wednesday, 10 October 1821, Finney
converted to Christ, gave up his pursuit of a law career,
and focused his energies on evangelizing the nation for
God's millennial kingdom. Although Finney always attributed
his conversion to the grace of God, there seems to have been
a number of other factors which may have also contributed to
his spiritual rebirth.

In his study of the law, Finney came across references
to the Bible, especially the Mosaic law. These biblical
quotes, Finney wrote, "excited my curiosity so much that I
went and purchased a Bible, the first one I had ever owned
. . . This soon led to my taking a new interest in the
Bible, and I read and meditated on it much more than I had
ever done before in my life."fi' Moreover, Finney's study of
the law brought him into contact with the commentaries of
Blackstone, whose concepts of guilt and punishment rested
heavily upon individual free will. Blackstone asserted that
punishment was justifiable only if the guilty party had
freely chosen to act criminally. This assumption of moral
free will Finney absorbed and, not surprisingly, when he
discovered the determinism of the Westminster Confession

which denied the freedom of the human will, he rejected the

32

doctrine. This doctrine, Finney believed, wrongly absolved
human responsibility for good or evil acts.28

While at Adams studying law, Finney, for reasons he
never details, began attending the local Presbyterian
church. His attendance may have been connected with his
musical ability as Finney became the choir director. Finney
also developed a frank and friendly relationship with the
minister, George W. Gale (1789-1861). Gale graduated from
Union College and Princeton Theological Seminary. He later
founded Galesburg Illinois and Knox College. Gale, like
Peter Starr at Warren, preached Calvinism which emphasized
God's sovereignty, predestination, and human inability to
affect one's salvation. Finney often chided Gale for
filtering the Scriptures through Calvinist dogma rather
than making conclusions based on direct study of the
Bible.”’ The lively discussions between Gale and Finney
that ensued over these Calvinist doctrines may have also

:m Although a more

nudged Finney closer to conversion.
compelling speaker than Starr, Gale's reserved and calm
pulpit style annoyed Finney. Gale's serene preaching style
seemed dull and uninspiring. As a law student, Finney
learned that direct address and enthusiastic delivery helped
significantly convince juries of the merits of his case. A
church is like a jury and, therefore, "a minister ought to

do as a lawyer does when he wants to make a jury understand

him perfectly. He uses a style perfectly colloquial. This

33

lofty, swelling style will do no good."31

Two other circumstances which may have propelled Finney
towards conversion were the prayers of Lydia Andrews and the
special interest Gale took in Finney. Lydia, Finney's
future wife, often travelled from Whitestown to visit her
sister in Adams where Charles was one of the most sought
after bachelors by the towns unmarried women. As Lydia and
Charles' relationship blossomed, Lydia, a very pious woman,
prayed for Finney's conversionf32

Gale often stopped by the law office to visit Finney
and discuss his Sunday sermon or other theological topics.
These visits may have been part of Gale's attempt to convert
Finney and many of the local youth. Many of the young
people thought highly of the unregenerate Finney (in this
sense, he already has a bit of local fame) and, therefore,
Gale viewed him as a major obstacle in his attempts to
convert the young people. But as Finney records, maybe
Gale's pastoral patience expired. Shortly after his
conversion Finney was informed by church members that Gale
was disheartened because the young people "were so much
under my [i.e. Finney] influence that he did not believe,
while I remained in Adams, that they ever would be

8” Gale had discouraged members of the church

converted.’
from praying for Finney's soul as Gale believed that Finney
was a lost cause. Yet after learning of Finney's

transformation Gale apologized to the church for his lack of

34

faith in discouraging others to pray for Finney.34

On Sunday, 7 October 1821, Finney determined to make
his "peace with God" and secure the salvation of his soul.
For the next two days while he poured over the Scriptures,
he also avoided Gale and the other church elders because he
felt embarrassed about his seeking salvation and, also, he
feared that the church would wrongly counsel him.”5

Finney's agony soon turned him toward depression but,
two days later, on Wednesday morning his depression lifted
as he realized that Christ's atonement was a mutual trust
between the sinner and Christ: "Salvation, it seemed to me,
instead of being a thing to be wrought out by my own works,
was a thing to be ground entirely in the Lord Jesus Christ,
who presented himself before me to be accepted as my God and
my Savior."36 On his way to the office that morning, Finney
took a detour to a wooded area about a half a mile north of
Adams where "I will give my heart to God, or I never will
come down from there." But try as he might, Finney could
not offer a sincere, heartfelt prayer: "I then reproached
myself for having promised to give my heart to God before I
left the woods. I thought I had made a rash promise, that I
should be obliged to break." At this moment Finney became
so dismayed that he nearly collapsed.y'

Suddenly, however, Finney's spiritual crisis was

resolved. The spirit of God came over him and Finney

became painfully aware of his sinfulness. The Spirit

35

revealed to Finney that faith in God's promises and God's
offer of salvation, consisted of a voluntary faith rather
than an intellectual state. Before he knew it, Finney was
off his knees and back on his feet walking toward town as an
inner peace and tranquility overwhelmed him. Shortly past
noon, Finney arrived at Wright's empty law office. He took
down his bass viol and began to sing hymns but was soon
overcome with tears. When Wright had returned from lunch,
the two men spent the afternoon rearranging furniture and
books. After Wright left for the evening, Jesus Christ
appeared to Finney whereupon Finney again broke down and
cried. Soon after he composed himself, Finney received a
baptism of the Holy Spirit which seemed like "the breath of
God. "38

Having made his peace with God, Finney fell asleep.
The next morning he explained to Wright the events of the
previous day. Shortly thereafter, Wright left the office
and Deacon Barney visited Finney and asked him if he was
ready to present his case in court that morning. Finney
answered, "Deacon Barney, I have a retainer from the Lord
Jesus Christ to plead his cause, and I cannot plead yours."
The confused Deacon asked Finney what he meant and Finney
replied "I told him in a few words_that I had enlisted in
the cause of Christ; and then repeated that I had a
retainer form the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause, and

that he must go and get somebody else to attend his

36

law-suit, - I could not do it.":39

The most striking characteristic of Finney's conversion
account was his deliberate, conscious, and voluntary effort
to secure his own salvation. William James, one of
America's greatest philosophers, described Finney's
conversion as the "volitional type" in which "the
regenerative change is usually gradual, and consists in the
building up, piece by piece, of a new set of moral and
spiritual habits. But there are always critical points here
at which the movement forward seems much more rapid.“0 For
several days Finney struggled fiercely to gain salvation but
grew increasingly frustrated as his efforts proved
fruitless. Then, as Finney recounted, came the crucial
moment when the terrible void between eternal life and
eternal damnation was traversed and the Spirit revealed to
him that faith in God was the key to salvation. With his
spiritual life in order, Finney now pledged complete
allegiance to the cause of Christ which would consume all

his energy for the remainder of his years.

After his conversion, Finney presented himself to the
St. Lawrence Presbytery as a candidate for the ministry.
His pastor, George W. Gale, was appointed to supervise his
studies. An extremely independent thinker, Finney adamantly
opposed Gale's views of the atonement on the basis of his

own understanding of the Bible. Repudiating Gale's position

37
that salvation was only for the elect, Finney insisted that
it was made for all men who could either accept or reject
God's offer. How could Finney be sure? "I had read nothing
on the subject except my bible, & what I had there found
upon the subject I had interpreted as I would have
understood the same or like passages in a law book.""1 While
other ministers might have their degrees, Finney felt
confident that he had God's revealed word.

During this period of study with Gale, Bernard
Weisberger declares that Finney began to develop a unique
type of evangelism with a distinctly American character."2
First, Finney spurned formal ministerial education. He was
an ordained layman and no revivalist who followed him would
graduate from a prestigious seminary or university.

Further, Finney's brand of revivalism rested upon a strictly
literal reading of the Bible which diametrically opposed any
form of textual analysis. Also, Finney's outright rejection
of the Calvinist notion of man's inability to effect his
salvation meant that a sinner had the ability and a duty to
repent. With tremendous confidence, therefore, "he could
cast his net for sinners and expect it to return full every
time. ""3

Finney's labors as an evangelist commenced in 1824 in
the small towns and villages of Jefferson and st. Lawrence

counties in western New York. Licensed to preach in

December of 1823 by the Presbytery of St. Lawrence, Finney

38

then accepted on 17 March 1824 the commission of the Female
Missionary Society of the Western District based in Utica,
New York, to serve three months as a missionary to Jefferson
County, New York.“’ Yet by the time the Presbytery of St.
Lawrence ordained Finney as an evangelist in July of 1824“,
he had already gained some local prominence as an
evangelist. In Evans Mills, LeRaysville, Rutland and
throughout Jefferson County, Finney heightened religious
interest, ignited revivals, and increased church membership.
Simultaneously, however, reports of Finney's coarse, direct
preaching style offended several ministers.“6 At his
ordination, the presbytery asked Finney to deliver a sermon.
Finney's delivery of the sermon (based on the text "Without
holiness no man shall see the Lord") failed to impress some
of the ministers. They criticized Finney for being too
direct in his address to sinners, saying "you" instead of
"they": that he said "hell" only to shock the congregation;
and that he repeated himself to the point of possibly
offending the more educated members of his congregation."‘7
Although some reservations may have existed about ordaining
Finney because of his colloquial and churlish style, the
presbytery unanimously approved his ordination because of
his "already handsome reputation for conducting revivals.“8

Finney's early success resulted, in part, because he
audaciously and enthusiastically exhorted sinners to

convert. He exuded confidence-~based upon his firmly held

39

belief that he was God's instrument--which attracted people
to him. He recognized God's hand in his work as he stated
in his Memoirs that "it has pleased God in some measure to
connect my name and labors with an extensive movement of the
church of Christ, regarded by some as a new era in its
progress. Especially has this been supposed to be true in
respect to revivals of religion.""’9

In his own conversion, Finney clearly saw the power of
God at work. At the time of his conversion Finney asked
Gale if he "did not feel the house tremble while we
kneeled,"“’(Gale recalled no such event). In another
instance, again in Gale's company, Finney stated that the
"glory of God shone upon and around about me, in a manner
most marvellous . . . I think I knew something them, by
actual experience, of that light that prostrated Paul on his
way to Damascus."51

Despite his pervasive self-confidence, Finney also had

initial doubts about his abilities as a clergyman. Finney
was often attacked by other ministers on the grounds that he
had not undergone a proper education in one of the eastern
seminaries. Finney was well aware of this supposed
short-coming which made him somewhat self-conscious: "And
so conscious had I been all along that I lacked those
qualifications that would make me acceptable, especially to
ministers, and I feared to the people in populous places,

that I had never had any higher ambition or purpose than to

40
go into the new settlements and places where they did not

"a Yet this temporary lapse in self-

enjoy the gospel.
confidence was overcome by a conviction of the rightness and
usefulness of his revival methods. As Finney explained,
"the more experience I had; the more I saw the results of my
method of preaching . . . the more I was confirmed in the
fact that God had led me, had taught me, had given me right
conceptions in regard to the best manner of winning

'53 In light of his educational deficiencies, it is

souls.
quite tenable that Finney's unusual revival techniques
served as compensation for his lack of theological
sophistication.

Furthermore, Finney had no desire to attend one of the
established seminaries as he told the St. Lawrence
Presbytery: "Still I refused to go; and when urged to give
my reasons, I plainly told them that I would not put myself
under such an influence as they had been under; that I was
confident they had been wrongly educated, and they were not
ministers that met my ideal of what a minister of Christ
should be."“’ But Finney's account neglects to mention that
he had been rejected by Andover, Princeton, and Auburn.55
Finney's sour-grapes recollection seems even more dubious
when one tries to imagine the clergy of the presbytery
accepting the bold and arrogant tone of the young man's
explanation.

Finney also attributed his success to his instruction

41
given him directly by God. With the greatest confidence,
and no less indignation, Finney responded to those who
denounced him because he lacked a seminary education: "God
taught me; and I know it must have been so, for surely I
never had obtained these notions from man . . . I was not
taught the Gospel by man but by the Spirit of Christ
himself. .And [therefore] no arguments of my ministerial
brethren, with which I was plied so often and so long, had
the least weight with me."“’ Moreover, he gained strength
and stamina to ward off his detractors from his conviction
that God was on his side. Every victory against his fellow
minister's attacks served to buttress the confidence of a
man already supremely convinced of the righteousness of his
mission.

In one of his first stops at Evans Mills, Finney
displayed some of the dramatic flare and bravado in the
pulpit that brought him much success and popularity with the
hearty western settlers. Evans Mills, which rests in the
northern section of Jefferson County, had only a
Congregational and a Baptist church. The two churches
alternated Sunday worship services in a large brick
schoolhouse, thus allowing Finney to preach every other
Sunday at the Congregational service. Within the school
walls, Finney's preaching raised the hopes of some church
members that there might be a revival. In general, however,

Finney's sermons, by his own admission, failed to inspire

42

”I A revivalist of lesser confidence

widespread conviction.
may have been shattered by this less than enthusiastic
response. Yet with his own sense of divine mission and

his perceptive instinct about how to motivate an audience
through psychological pressure, Finney averted failure

and instead achieved a stunning success. He boldly
challenged them with the following ultimatum: "You who

now are willing to pledge to me and Christ that you will
immediately make your peace with God, please to rise up. On
the contrary, you that mean that I should understand that
you are committed to remain in your present attitude, not to
accept Christ--please, those of you that are of this mind,
to sit still."58 After a moment of silent disbelief

during which no member stood up, Finney admonished them
stating "You have rejected Christ and his Gospel . . . you
have thus publicly committed yourselves against the Savior .

."fi' As the people angrily left the schoolhouse, Finney

told them he would preach to them once more on the following
evening. Knowing that such an inflammatory approach would
offend many in the school that evening, Finney also knew
that his words would compel many other listeners to
reexamine their present religious state and wonder if, in
faCt, they had not rejected their Saviour. The first step
in a Finney revival was to realize that you were a

sinner in need of redemption and that salvation was offered

for you to accept. Finney calculated that his

43

verbal brazenness would stir controversy and attract many
townsfolk to the next meeting. He was not disappointed;
the schoolhouse was filled to its capacity.

Finney launched immediately into a powerful sermon and
a general conviction overtook the congregation. In his
Memgirg, Finney describes with a blend of piety and ambition
how "the Spirit of God came upon me with such power . . .
the Word of God came through me to them in a manner that I
could see was carrying all before it. It was a fire and a
hammer breaking the rock; and as the sword that was piercing
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit."60 While
acknowledging God's role in the conversion process, Finney
does not neglect to remind us of his role as God's chosen
instrument. Such a passage reveals something about why
Finney became a revivalist and why he enjoyed tremendous
success. Finney gave up a career as a lawyer and became a
revivalist because he thrived on the exhilaration which
comes from having a tremendous influence on people. This
suggestion is not necessarily intended to question Finney's
sincerity, but to emphasize that the potential for acquiring
a vast influence over people could only have made a career
in revivalism that much more attractive to the ambitious
Finney.

Finney, throughout his Memoirs, relays accounts of his
revival labors. While he almost never fails to give God the

credit and glory for his victories in converting many people

44

to Christ and assumes an air of humility, Finney often
presents his role as the primary catalyst behind the
successful revival and seems to revel in his honored
position as a kind of intermediary between God and humanity.

After leaving Evans Mills Finney traveled about
eighteen miles north to the small village of Antwerp where
he stayed from April to October of 1824. Although Antwerp
had a Presbyterian church, few of the townspeople attended.
By the time Finney arrived, he claimed that services had

a After contacting some of the more

ceased altogether.
religiously minded people in Antwerp, Finney secured the use
of the school building to conduct a Sunday service. The
next day a notice was passed around town alerting people to
the meeting on Sunday. Finney preached a powerful sermon
that morning bringing himself and many others to tears. At
the afternoon service, Finney relates that the Lord let him
"loose" and at this point in his narrative we see how much
he relishes his role as God's prophet with the power to
"rain hail and love upon them at the same time; or in other
words, that I could rain upon them hail in love. . . . I
felt like rebuking them with all my heart, and yet with a

"62 Finney ' s

compassion which they could not mistake.
emotional and compelling sermon not only converted many in
the town, but also brought him some local recognition: "From
that day, appoint a meeting when and where I would in that

neighborhood anywhere round about, and the people would

45

'“3 Finney was certainly humbled by his

throng to hear.
faith in God, but this humility rested upon the conviction
of being God's instrument. Finney's modesty was based on
this concept of his special relationship to God which
granted him the unique power to break down the sinner's
hardened heart and enable the sinner to seize God's gift of
grace.

The concept of fame stands solidly based upon the
foundation of publicity and power. Leo Braudy, in the
Frenzy of Renown, states that "in great part the history of
fame is the history of the changing ways by which
individuals have sought to bring themselves to the attention
of others and, not incidentally, have thereby gained power

"“’ Through various modes of communication -

over them.
e.g. literature, theater, monuments, paintings, and, in
Finney's case, revivals - people come to live under the
public eye.

Such seemingly contradictory motivations of ambition
and piety, however, were not unique to Finney. Lois Banner
believes that such motives drove men like William Lloyd
Garrison, Theodore Dwight Weld, and a host of other
anti-slavery activists. These were devoutly religious
young men of talent and ambition who rejected business,
politics, and the professions as too worldly but found in

their reform efforts "a way of achieving aspirations of

influence and leadership without violating ideals."65

 

46
Although the reformer understood he probably would never
accumulate vast wealth, "he could achieve a great measure of

"“’ The quest for widespread

personal fame and influence.
recognition as a way to transcend social and economic
boundaries and to define oneself sparked the urge for fame,
once the reserve of the few, in the many.“'

While Garrison and Weld chose to emphasize reform
through modification of social institutions, Finney believed
true social change could only occur when the heart of
individuals underwent a conversion which allowed the needs
of others to take precedence over self-interest.68 Although
they differed in their tactical approaches to social ills,
Garrison, Weld, and Finney were a part of the
post-Revolutionary generation who were instructed that "an
active practical beneficence, a spirit of doing good" was a

69 4A5 the antislavery activist,

noble and fulfilling career.
Lydia Maria Child, realized, "There is something in mere
success which interests us--because it is a stimulus which
the human mind spontaneously seeks, and without which it
cannot long retain its energies."70

Finney's initial success involved more than just his
own belief that he was a special instrument of God; for
those who heard Finney's powerful sermons and were
mesmerized, they also became convinced that God worked

through him. Finney was a dynamic leader and his success

was due not to an original theology or novel methods of

 

47
revivalism, but in his uniquely effective presentation of a

message and method already established by others.

success and controversy

As Finney continued his successful labors in Jefferson
and St. Lawrence Counties larger towns began to invite him
to lead revivals. Oneida County lies just south of
Jefferson and St. Lawrence Counties and included the towns
of Western, Rome, and Utica. In 1825 Finney began the
Oneida County revivals which marked a significant turning
point in his career as a revivalist. This area, located
near the Erie Canal, held bright prospects for growth and
offered a wider sphere of publicity. The churches in these
towns were larger than those up north; their ministers more
eminent; and their congregations more sophisticated and
better educated. The next eighteen months transformed
Finney into a "figure of national repute, and severed his
ties to the crossroads hamlet forever."1

While laboring in Western, a rather insignificant
village, Finney attracted attention from the Reverend Moses
Gillet, the minister of the Congregational church at Rome.
Rome, with a population of approximately 4000, was the first

‘major town in which Finney labored.2 ‘Within the church and

48

 

49
particularly among Presbyterian and Congregational ministers
and laymen, Finney was achieving significant name
recognition. His fame grew as news of his wildly successful
revivals in western New York spread rapidly. This extension
of Finney's influence becomes apparent with a cursory
perusal of his correspondence which reveals a multitude of
requests from both ministers and laymen for Finney to come
to their church to ignite a revival.

During the next several weeks, Finney and Gillet
preached and held prayer meetings for the anxious inquirers
in Rome. Finney met with little opposition in Rome and
found the town generally prepared for a revival. The
overall harmony with which the revival proceeded was
exemplified by the closing of business and conversion of
town leaders:

Merchant's and mechanic's shops were many of them
closed in the evening, that all might attend
meeting . . . Many who had regularly attended
public worship for twenty years, and lived through
revivals unmoved, were now made to tremble and bow
to the cross. Four lawyers, four physicians, all
the merchants who were not professors before, and
men of the first respectability in the place, are
hopeful converts.

News of the success of the revival in Rome moved
quickly to the nearby communities and Finney began to visit
these areas to spread the revival.‘ Ministers themselves
"came in from neighboring towns, and expressed great
astonishment at what they saw and heard, as well they

«5

might. The relative calm and peace which accompanied this

 

50

 

revival was emphasized by Finney: ". . . the greatest order
and solemnity prevailed, and the utmost pains were taken to
guard against everything that was to be deplored. The
Spirit's work was so spontaneous, so powerful, and so
overwhelming, as to render it necessary to exercise the
greatest caution . . . to prevent an undesirable outburst of

"6

feeling . . . and brought about a reaction. Finney was in

the process of developing his techniques as he moved to the

more populous areas.7

He had not yet employed all of the
"new measures" that would soon cause much furor. Finney at
this time stated the only means used were prayer, preaching,
private conversation, visitation, and inquiry meetings.8
Finney, however, did mention previously in his account of
the revival at Evans Mills that occasionally he would call
people forward at the end of his sermon to engage them in
private conversation. From this practice would develop the
anxious bench.9

By January 1826 the contagion of Finney's revival in
Rome spread rapidly throughout the surrounding countryside.
All the churches - Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, and
Congregationalists - garnered new members and Gillet
surmised that by autumn the total of new converts approached
five hundred.10 The Reverend Ira Manley, pastor at the
Presbyterian church in Boonville, New York, attested to the

favorable spread of the revival in Rome:

About this time, also, I received an account of
the revival at Rome, from two of our young men,

51
who had been on a visit, and had become hopeful
subject of grace. Their warmth and zeal were a
blessing to me. The next evening, in meeting, I
gave an account of the revival in Rome. It was
attended with a divine impulse. From that time
our meetings increased, till they were full to
overflowing. Presbyterians, Baptists and
Methodists, rushed together, and seemed to
participate of the same spirit. We endeavoured to
avoid exciting any party feeling . . . Ministers
from abroad preached with much engagedness.
Conversions became frequent... Sixty-seven have
been added to the Presbyterian church . . . The_
whole number of converts is probably towards one
hundred.

The loyalty and influence which Finney had gained among
his youthful companions carried over into his career as an
evangelist. In a letter Gillet and his wife warned Finney
against'some opposition to his revivals in Rome. The Gillets
offered Finney words of encouragement and reassurance that
back west in Oneida county there are "not only hundreds but
thousands who would fight for him to the last moment."12
One historian, Keith Hardman, notes that Finney's success in
Rome must have boOsted his already high self-esteem. Finney
"had proved that his abilities were superior to those of the
ordinary backwoods exhorter, and that he possessed the
precise formula for revivalistic work in more urbane areas.
His hopes and motivations kindled by success, his stature as
an evangelist had grown in his own eyes and in those of his

"B Elizabeth Thomson, daughter,of

many colleagues.
Reverend Israel Brainerd of Verona, remarking on Finney's
growing public persona, recalled that during those revivals

"at first all stood amazed and glorified God. At length

 

52
persons of ill-balanced minds and scanty knowledge of Bible
truth, began to glorify Mr. Finney. To them it was plain he

'“4 For

had caused the revival, he had converted souls...
many ministers who came to disapprove of Finney's brand of
revivalism, it was, among other reasons, this kind of
fanatical devotion to Finney which they vehemently opposed.
From February 1826 to April 1827 Finney preached in
Utica, Auburn, and Troy. During this period, Finney
moderated his style as he moved eastward to the more
populous areas and solidified his national
reputation--gaining supporters as well as detractors. The
ensuing conflict between Finney and his opponents represents
the larger conflagration within the Presbyterian church over
theology and methods of revivalism between the Old and New

Schools. Finally, the conflict culminated in a convention

between the factions in New Lebanon, New York.

The early accounts of Finney by friend and foe alike
agree that he was a man of tremendous zeal who spoke with
utmost frankness and resolute persuasiveness. At the
invitation of the Reverend Nathaniel S. S. Beman, pastor of
the First Presbyterian Church of Troy, Finney initiated a
series of evangelistic meetings in the fall of 1826. Soon
afterwards there developed a strain of opposition to Finney
and Beman. In one particularly vitriolic diatribe the

writer stated that the "notorious" Finney "must be too well

53
known to require any illustration from us; and as we shall
be compelled to make some allusions to him, we shall treat
him with but little more ceremony than an acknowledged

outlaw."1s

This disdainful attitude toward Finney, the
writer claimed, resulted from "his shocking blasphemies, his
novel and repulsive sentiments, and his theatrical and
frantic gesticulations, [which] struck horror into those who
entertained any reverence either for religion or decency."16
~The writer continued by levelling many serious charges
against Finney, the most serious being his use of crude and
vulgar language. As evidence the writer related the story
of Finney and Beman asking a women if she loved God. The
women answered "I think I do." But Finney retorted "You
lie! . . . You ought to go to hell, and you must repent."
The woman said she could not convert immediately, but Finney
insisted she could. Yet the women remained convinced
otherwise, and Finney, exasperated, said "You ought to be
damned.""’ Finney's colloquialism was part of a larger
trend of Americanizing the English language.18 In the
political realm the declamatory speeches of Daniel Webster,
Henry Clay, and John Calhoun parallel the impassioned
sermons of Finney. Daniel Boorstin writes that "American
religious leaders——like their political and educational
counterparts-~were noted less for their writing than for
n9

their speech.‘

Many attacks on Finney were prompted by guilt by

54

association. As Finney's success and popularity grew so did
the number of preachers who tried to emulate Finney's
methods and thus his success. Many assumed the excesses and
perversions of Finney imitators, such as Horatio Foote,
Augustus Littlejohn, and Luther Myrick, were also those
practiced by Finney himself; at the veryleast, Finney
opened the door for such excesses to occur. The New York
Eyeggeliet noted that some revivalists endeavored "to ape or
imitate other ministers of more eminence and celebrity, in
their voice, style, phrases, and whole manner." The
consequences of such irresponsible behavior is that it
"always defeats its purpose, and destroys the efficacy of
what is said, however pertinent and proper."20 The
imitators never achieved the same success as Finney because
they mimicked his most unpleasant characteristics and lacked
the graces which compensated for Finney's crudity: "They
could shout and denounce as he did on occasion, but they
lacked that deep tenderness and broad human sympathy which
assured the listener that all that was said was for his own
good."21

Finney's blunt and often harsh style of preaching
depended on the "spirit" in which it was said. Finney was a
great motivator and recognized the dynamics of human
psychology. While he knew his harsh rebukes of sinners may
outrage them, if "it is said in the spirit of love . .

[and] is coming right home to them to save them

55

individually,--there are very few people that will continue
to resent this . . . [then] the conviction is upon them that
they needed it, and it will surely ultimately do them great
good."RI Finney expressed adoration for the late Reverend
James PattersOn of Philadelphia whom, Finney stated, "always
opposed sin with a most remarkable spirit-~a spirit of
inflexible decision and yet of great mellowness and
tenderness. While he was saying the most severe things in
the most decided language, you might see the big tears
rolling down his cheeks."23

Yet Finney also gradually adjusted to the criticism.
His earlier pulpit crudities were giving way to a more
refined and sophisticated style. The moderating influence
of certain New School ministers may have been responsible
for Finney's tamer public actions. In particular, Samuel
Aiken, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Utica,
seemed to have had a moderating influence on Finney while

24

Finney stayed with him. In a letter addressed to Lyman

Beecher, Aiken commented on Finney's change:

When I first became acquainted with him, I think
he used too frequently the word "devil," and harsh
expressions; but he is greatly reformed, and I
apprehend that reading those very quotations which
you make from Edwards on Revivals was the means of
his reformation. Until he came to my house he had
never read the book, and here it was frequently

in his hands during the revival; also other
volumes of the great writer; and he often spoke of
them with rapture.

This modification of Finney's approach was also noted

by his detractors. The Trumpet and Universaliet Magazine

56
contained an article in which the writer compared Finney's
style between his Troy and Boston revivals:

Before Trojans his language was bold, daring,

and blasphemous--but before Bostonians, it is
simple, puerile, and ridiculously childish. In
Troy he told sinners--"Why sinners, I tell you,
if you could climb to heaven, you would hurl God
from his throne; oh yes, if you could get there,
you would cut God's throat! Yes, you would cut
God's throat!" . . . So much for the pious Mr.
Finney in Troy . . . But in Boston Mr. Finney is
quite mild--says nothing about cutting God's
throat--but here tells sinners that they do not
love to read the "whole parcel of letters"
contained in the Bible--and that they do not love
long meetings, because they "interfere with their
dinners." We presume Mr. Finney learned from Dr.
Beecher, Dr. Weisner and others, that his Troy
maneuvering would not answer in this region, and
we think his childish performances will be little
likely to please.

The accuracy of this account may be questioned but it does
underscore Finney's transformation from a linguistically
crude and venomous back woods preacher to a somewhat more
genteel and urbane man of God.

Was Finney's developing transformation a sincere
attempt to reach his new audience or was it an attempt to
further enhance his growing stature among his increasingly
sophisticated constituents and colleagues? Or both? The
person who acquires fame is often considered different by
most members of society, yet they are not so different that
people cannot relate to them. Finney almost certainly
sensed that his new audience required a modification of his
style if he was to effectively communicate with them. A

famous person, according to Leo Braudy, must "be a socially

57
acceptable individualist, different enough to be
interesting, yet similar enough not to be threatening or

destructive. The change in Finney might very well have

been his attempt to "balance thinking about oneself with the
obligations of belonging to a society."28
Instead of brow beating and hammering sinners into
repentance as he did in the villages of western New York,
Finney realized that the cities, with their wealthier and
more educated constituents, required a subtler and more
logical approach preparing them for salvation. This change
of style could be viewed as a cynical attempt by Finney to
mainstream his appeal, thus helping to fulfill his personal
ambition for fame. This View, however, must be tempered by
an understanding of Finney's philosophy of evangelism.
Evangelism's primary objective is to convert souls to Christ
and as a revivalist Finney believed that this was his sacred
mission bestowed upon him by God.”’ Nothing was more
important than regaining God's lost children and,
therefore, far be it from any thing like a matter of style
to hinder a sinners reconciliation with God. Finney was
certainly no dogmatist; rather he was very
practical--whatever methods hindered his message was
dropped, conversely, whatever proved useful in awakening
souls was kept even if it was controversial.

Finney made several public pronouncements on the

subject of ministerial sincerity. In his Lecturee to

58

Pzgfessing Christians he condemned ministers who "are more
jealous for their own fame than for God's glory," as selfish
men who "serve their own gods.W” Elsewhere Finney
explained that "some ministers dare not preach what they
know is true . . . lest they should offend some whose good
opinion they seek to retain. . . . Too many Gospel ministers
are so troubled by it that their time-serving policy is
virtually renouncing Christ and serving the world."31

Yet despite his public pronouncements against the
dangers of pride, it seemed to many, especially close
associates, that Finney himself was vulnerable to the sin of
hubris. By 1829 Finney had achieved great successes. His
revivals throughout western New York had brought him much
recognition, which was evident by not only the enormous
increase in the number of churches pleading for his presence
to spark a revival, but also by the increased frequency and
intensity of attacks against his methods by church leaders
in the east who felt threatened by his growing authority.
Even the most humble servant of God would at times find it
difficult to keep his ego sufficiently in check--especially
a young man who only a few short years before was an
agnostic lawyer and now was at the pinnacle of the
ministerial profession. So in a letter from Theodore Dwight
Weld, the antislavery activist and himself a Finney convert,
it is not surprising that Finney is queried as to what he is

striving for: is it the completion of God's work which he

59
has been assigned or, Weld seems to worry, is it personal
recognition. The warning from Weld is especially
interesting in light of Weld's own reaction to fame--as I
will discuss more fully later--in which he retreated from a
life of public acclaim as America's premiere anti-slavery
spokesman:

Dear brother do tell me what mark you are pressing
towards? The same that Paul did? Perfect
sinlessness? Have you resolved thro [sic] Christ
to reach it? And do expect to reach it? You see
from day to day that you are nearing it? My dear
father in Jesus you are in such a maddening whirl,
care, responsibility, and toil, I do dreadfully
fear thatiyou neglect the culture of personal
holiness.3

With Finney's increasing occupation with his own career and
stature, it seemed to have had a deadening effect on the
power of his revivals. Furthermore, Weld suggests that
Finney appeared disinterested or just plain bored by
revivals: '

I thought I saw when at Stephentown . . . that
revivals have become with you matters of such
every day commonness as scarcely to throw over
you the least tinge of solemnity. I fear they
are fast becoming with you a sort of trade, to
be worked at so many hours every day and then
laid aside. Dear brother do you not find
yourself running into formality, a round of
formality in the management of revivals? I
mean of feeling. The machinery all moves on,
every wheel and spring and chord in its place:
but isn't the mein spring waxing weaker?3

Weld was not alone in his concern for Finney. There
were other letters which expressed concern about the effects
the spotlight of the big cities and the opposition they

unleashed, were having on Finney. Finney is warned against

60
arrogance in a letter from Joshua Leavitt who pleads with
him to "look a little immediately at your inside, and see
what makes you want all the ministers in the city to take
off their hats to you, and ask you to come and help them,
and promise to support you in every thing you do."“’ Once
again, Weld admonishes his close friend and spiritual father
to "dip not your pen in the gall of sarcasm, but dip it in
tears and write with a trembling hand and a soul of

sorrow."35

At the heart of_the opposition to Finney were the
so-called "new measures." Exactly what the new measures
included was never altogether clear. However, among the
most frequently cited measures were the following: allowing
women to pray in public; protracted meetings during which
all-church members devoted themselves entirely to prayer
meetings and preaching services; colloquial language used by
the preacher to impress people with the need for total
submission to God; the anxious seat which was a designated
area near the pulpit where those troubled over the state of
their souls would meet at the conclusion of the sermon:
anxious meetings held in houses or church basements that
involved ministers and laymen praying personally with those
people anxious abOut salvation; praying for people publicly
36

by name; and immediate church membership for converts.

The new limits to which Finney pushed existing

61

parameters, not his methods per se, bothered many
detractors. Richard Carwardine demonstrates quite
convincingly that the new measures had deep roots in
Methodism which predated Finney. The new measures "were
involved in Methodist revivals in urban areas long before
the Calvinist denominations in the East came to theological
and personal blows over their propriety."y' John Frost, a
Presbyterian minister in Whitesboro, New York and a friend
of Finney, offered the besieged revivalist some advice
directing Finney to "say what is true, that you have
introduced no new measures but have followed such as you
found in the church when you entered it."338

The cause of friction between Finney and the eastern
establishment, represented by Asahel Nettleton (1783-1844)
and Lyman Beecher, involved more than just the new measures;
ultimately it was a struggle for the leadership of the
Presbyterian and Congregational evangelical effort to usher

1” Beecher embarked on a two-pronged

in God's Kingdom.
strategy to forge an internal alliance of orthodox
groups-~i.e. Old and New School Presbyterians--to halt the
threat of the dangerously liberal Unitarians. Beecher's
main strategy to thwart the Unitarian threat sought to
broaden the appeal of Calvinist theology by incorporating
Nathaniel William Taylor's New Haven theology. Taylor
(1786-1858), who studied under the distinguished Yale

president Timothy Dwight, became professor of theology at

62

Yale Divinity School from where he authored his Concio ad
glexum in 1828. The Concio ad Clerum challenged the strict
Edwardeanism of the Old School. The New Haven Theology or
Taylorism~became the theological foundation of the New
School. Both Beecher and Finney adhered to Taylor's
"rationalistic .revival theology." Taylor insisted that
human nature is not innately sinful; God created each person
as a free, rational, and moral being who always had the
"power to the contrary." Taylor's formulations became
important justifications of revivals as a cooperative effort
between God, minister, and sinner, rather than "mighty acts
of God."""0 Many old Calvinists hesitated to join Taylor and
Beecher's liberalized orthodoxy, but acquiesced when the Old
School revivalist, Asahel Nettleton, joined Beecher. Both
sides were willing to overlook their differences in the face
of the Unitarian threat."1

Upon receiving the first reports of the western
revivals Beecher was optimistic stating that "Christians
should be instant in prayer and fervent in their
supplications at the throne of mercy that the blessing may
be continued and extended."“ Beecher's initial enthusiasm
was not unlike that of other coalition members. In fact,
several reports stated that Finney's revival techniques
differed not in substance from already established norms but
rather by Finney's unique style: "Beyond some unaffected,

yet striking peculiarities of voice and manner there is

63

nothing to attract curiosity, or offend even the most
fastidious . . . sense of propriety.W“ What bothered
Beecher the most was that while Finney was bringing new
members into the church, he was also cultivating loyalty to
himself among the clergy and other ecclesiastical leaders.
Especially bothersome to Beecher was the creation of the
Oneida Evangelical Association by Finney, George W. Gale,
Daniel Nash, Herman Norton, and Nathaniel Smith. The
Association solicited funds for the purpose of sending forth
evangelists to preach God's Word. Moreover, Finney was also
able to establish friendships with established ministers
like Moses Gillet in Rome, Samuel Aiken in Utica, John
Frost in Whitesboro, Noah Coe in New Hartford, Dirck C.
Lansing in Auburn, and Nathaniel S.S. Beman in Troy.“
After failing to convince Finney to join his coalition,
Beecher saw Finney as a threat to "not only the unity of
Presbyterian and Congregational churches but also the
eventual assimilation of all Protestants under the banner of
Beecherism. Beecher had originally hoped to have a reformed
Finney serving as his energetic subordinate . . . but this
didn't happen and Beecher turned bitter.“5

By early 1827 Beecher sought to crush Finney. The
extent of Beecher's disdain for Finney at this time was
evident in a letter he addressed to Nettleton, dated 30
January 1827 and which was later printed in the ggiee

Mggggige. Finney had become so dangerous that he threatened

64

to destroy the foundation of God's kingdom on earth--i.e.

the church:

We are on the confines of universal misrule and
moral desolation . . . The fear of opposing a work
of God, if it prevails, will ruin us; for if it
were in its commencement a work of God and is now
the occasion of some conversions, it is rapidly
changing its character and will become soon, one
of the most powerful and successful assaults which
satan ever made in the church . . .46

The ominous threat

posed by Finney and his consorts must be

met, Beecher advised, with a united wall of defense manned

by the ecclesiastical leadership:

There must be immediately an extensive
correspondence and concert formed; ministers must
come together and consult, and churches must be
instructed and prepared to resist the beginnings
of evil--the mark must be torn off from satan,
coming among the sons of God and transforming
himself into an angel of light. In the mean time,

no pains
brothers

should be spared to save if possible
Finney and Beman, both on account of the

great evil they will not fail to do on lawless
converts; and the great good they may,do, if

they can

The ministers

the help of Beman,
group of ministers
18 July 1827. The

England included:

be kept within their orbit.

finally did come together. Beecher, with
organized the New Lebanon Convention. A
met at Dr. Betts' home in New Lebanon on
ministers who came with Beecher from New

Heman Humphrey president of Amherst

College; Asahel Nettleton, evangelist from Connecticut;

Justin Edwards, of

Andover, Massachusetts; Caleb J. Tenney,

of Wethersfield, Connecticut; and Joel Hawes of Hartford.

In addition, Beecher also invited Henry Weed, of Albany, New

York; Asahel Norton, of Clinton, New York; and William R.

65

Weeks, of Paris Hill, New York. Those who came from the
West along with Finney were Beman, of Troy; Moses Gillet, of
Rome; Dirck Lansing of Auburn; John Frost, of Whitesboro;
George W. Gale, of Western; Samuel C. Aiken, of Utica; Henry
Smith, of Camden, New York; and the host pastor, Silas
Churchill . ‘8

The convention at New Lebanon was an informal gathering
of ministers which had no official sanction by the
presbytery or any other denominational authority. This
series of meetings had been organized simply to discuss
certain concerns that each side wished to express directly

4w Ostensibly, these concerns centered

to one another.
around the propriety of Finney's new measures and "was not
in any sense an ecclesiastical court . . . [Finney] was not

.m Yet, the final outcome

in any sense on trial.‘
concerning the measures so closely associated with Finney
would have a definite effect on Finney's future career. If
the new measures were denounced Finney's future as a
revivalist might be irrevocably damaged. Clearly, if the
convention ended in denunciating the new measures, "that
could well signal Finney's many enemies that the time was
ripe, and sufficient support could be found to proceed to
formal church court proceedings."51
The convention lasted several days and the

participants debated and discussed their differences. That

both sides were in fundamental agreement was evidenced by

66
the unanimous approval of the following resolution: "The
idea that God ordinarily works independently of human
instrumentality, or without reference to the adaptation of
means to ends, is unscriptural."52 Asahel Nettleton,
however, remained intransigent and Finney refused to
acquiesce. The convention settled very little and neither
side made any significant compromise. Nettleton eventually
parted company with Beecher and soon allied himself with the
orthodox Presbyterians at Princeton. Beecher and Finney, on
the other hand, finally came to a mutual understanding later
that year in Philadelphia where an agreement was signed to

” Beecher

end all public discussion of their differences.
signed the agreement because he believed that to persist in
public contention with Finney over revival methods "would
tend to keep up a party in the Church who, identified with
their leader, might in self-defense be embodied to defend
him and might introduce controversy in the Presbyterian
Church . . ." Appeasement with Finney was necessary
because the time would arrive when it "might be dangerous to

"“ Furthermore, a few years later, Finney

oppose him.
labored in Boston with Beecher's complete support.55

The publicity which the convention attracted in the
newspapers served to enhance Finney's reputation among the
ecclesiastical establishment in the east.%’ Finney had held

.his own against two of the most prominent ministers from the

least.and therefore, even if begrudgingly, the eastern

67

ecclesiastical leadership had to recognize him as a new
force within the Presbyterian ministry. No longer confined
to the hamlets and villages of western New York, New Lebanon
established Finney as a minister of the same stature as
Beecher "the great gun at Boston." Assured that God had
vindicated his methods at New Lebanon, Finney confidently
strode eastward toward the cities where he presumed the
results of his labors would further reveal God's spirit at

work within his ministry.57

 

Creating a Legacy: The Revivalist Turns Educator

In the aftermath of New Lebanon, Finney prepared to
forge eastward and confront the challenges of the large
towns and cities. But the post New Lebanon Finney stands in
contrast to the passionate and combative revivalist of an
earlier day. He softened and refined his once rude and
jagged manner and reached his high-water mark as an
evangelist in the calm, dignified revival in Rochester, New
York. With his reputation as America's premiere evangelist
undeniably established, Finney came under tremendous

demands, and the implications of encroaching fame become

evident.

By 1830, Rochester flourished with a population of
about ten thousand. The flour mill industry thrived on the
Genesee Valley wheat and the Erie Canal, built five years
earlier, provided cheap transportation to the east coast
market. Within Rochester three Presbyterian churches had
been established.1 The Third Presbyterian Church pulpit had

been vacated in 1830 by its pastor Joel Parker, a new

68

69

measures minister, who had assumed the pastorate of the
First Presbyterian Church in New York City. Finney came to
Rochester in September to fulfill Parker's pulpit and to
revivalize the Presbyterian churches.2

Finney preached from 10 September 1830 to 6 March 1831
in Rochester and converted several hundred people.3 This
revival was widely reported by several newspapers and, as
William McLoughlin notes, "deserves to be compared to the

'” Unlike some of

urban revivals of the post-Civil War era.
his previous revivals, Finney's Rochester revival proceeded
without emotional excess and with almost no public rancor.
Finney himself, dressed in a plain gray business suit acted
"like a lawyer arguing . . . before a court and jury,"

5 This marked

speaking in a relaxed and logical manner.
contrast with Finney's earlier revivals did not go unnoticed
by contemporaries. The Rochester Observer, the local
religious newspaper, commented that "on the Sabbath no
place of worship is large enough to contain the multitude
that assembles . . . such a revival, perhaps, was never
experienced where less disorder was witnessed, or less open
opposition manifested."6 Finney now stood as the
prototypical urban evangelist of the future with an
efficient and tightly organized machine.7
Many of Finney's old friends and colleagues expressed

their concern as he prepared to preach in the more populous

eastern cities. These fears were given their fullest

70

expression in a letter written by Finney's pastor and
theological teacher in Adams, George W. Gale in 1830. Gale
warned that cities were poor places to promote revivals
because the moral atmosphere could extinguish the fiery
enthusiasm of the most committed revivalist who might become
distracted from God's work: "I do not know that it is so,
but so it would seem. Is it not a fact that good men and
good ministers of the gospel undergo a good deal of change
when exposed to the operation of such causes? . . . I have
heard the question asked will not brother Finney catch the
same fever . . . will he not have his mind turned off at
least from the business of converting souls to Christ to the
business of converting men to some peculiarity of
sentiment-~to some theory or speculation?"8 Finney's newly
refined style, many people believed, diminished his ability
to break a sinner's hardened heart. A friend lamented that
his preaching "failed to produce to the same extent those
soul saving results as formerly"; the man then offered his
analysis of what had dulled the once piercing sharpness of
Finney's message:

I fear that the peculiar circumstances in which

you have been placed have led you rather to a

discussion in your public ministrations, of

abstract subjects, than to those soul stirring

appeals to the heart and conscience by which you

gggfisbrought so many sinners down at the feet of

It seemed as though George Gale's earlier warning to Finney

to refrain from being diverted from preaching the Gospel by

71
espousing some "theory or speculation" was coming true.
Finney, however, seemed unconcerned. In his Memoirs,
Finney noted with particular pride the fact that the
revivals proceeded with much decorum among "the highest
classes of society . . . lawyers, physicians, merchants, and

no Finney

indeed all the most intelligent class of society.‘
worked diligently often preaching three times on Sunday and
three nights a week, leading prayer meetings, using the
anxious seat, employing enquiry meetings, and conducting
protracted meetings which might last from dawn until
midnight. Reports of the Rochester revival traveled far

H As early

beyond the local area to New England and Ohio.
as 1826, some church members beckoned Finney to labor in
New York City. Judge Jonas Platt and his two children,
Helen and Zephaniah, moved from Utica to New York and joined
the Second (Brick) Presbyterian Church. The Platt's relayed
favorable accounts of Finney's revivals to their
conservative pastor, Gardiner Spring. Zephaniah Platt wrote
to Finney that "some of our N.Y. churches are in readiness
for ygur preaching."12 The Platts argued that with his
young handsome figure, forceful voice, and powerful presence
Finney was more than equal to the task of revitalizing the
cities malaise.13
The Platts convinced, many of the influential laity,

including Arthur and Lewis Tappan, that Finney's labors were

needed in New York. Throughout 1829 Finney conducted a

72
number of revivals in New York City. Finney converted many
and helped establish the Union Presbyterian Church--the
first of several free Presbyterian Churches built throughout
the northeast. Moreover, in 1830 Zephaniah Platt financed
the New gork Evangelist as a voice for new measure

u Finney's successful labors in the big city

revivalism.
convinced the Tappans and "all the elders of the Free

Pres[byterian] Churches that this city is the place for you

 

to preach and-that now is the time."15

_The Tappans assured Finney that he would increase his
usefulness by reaching more people. The Tappan's argument
portrays pastorates as important primarily as buttresses of
the greater evangelical cause. The cities were
strategically important as influential centers encompassing
the surrounding villages and as places of great wealth.16
The most coveted pulpits were those which offered an array
of outlets to accommodate ministerial activism and which
situated the minister in close proximity to the urban
centers where national benevolent societies established

17

headquarters. Lewis Tappan, who recognized Finney as a

powerful force in the expansion of the benevolent empire w,

wrote to Finney explaining the importance of New York city
as a key to converting the whole nation:

This city must be converted or the nation is
lost. Do what may be done elsewhere, and leave
this city, be headquarters of Satan, and the
nation is not save. It is truly wonderful what
mighty influence New York has throughout the
country.19

73

New York needed Finney because "the ministers here do not
use the necessary means and will not."20 With Finney's
mission to win as many souls to Christ as possible, he could
hardly resist. But it took more than just utilitarian
arguments to convince Finney to venture into the big city,
it also required a calculated appeal to Finney's ego:

I do not think that powerful revival will take

place here [i.e. New York] unless you do come.

We are to rely upon God, it is true, and never

for a moment to forget his power, and our weak-

ness; but God honors instruments and chooses

spiritual weapons . . . Why not then come, and

come at once?1

Finney soon discovered that a consequence of achieving

wide public recognition was the Constant barrage of requests
demanding his immediate and undivided attention regardless
of any other issues or responsibilities that he must
consider. What complicated matters for Finney and caused
him to hesitate, however, were equally desperate pleas for
his presence out west in Ohio. These pleas came most
fervently from one of his closest and most trusted
colleagues, Theodore Weld. Weld also consciously appealed
to Finney's ego in order to convince him to leave the
eastern cities and comeback to the West. Finney received
Weld's letter dated 28 February 1832:

I tell you my dear brother, the cure, the only

cure for prejudice against you is contact. I say

contact, not a brushing contact of a single sermon

or two, but for weeks... The mere fact of your

coming into the valley would win this population

greatly. They would begin to identify you with

themselves. The obstacles here are very few.
You could command audiences of thousands. Their

74
camp meetings all over this region would afford

you immeasurably greater fields for effort than
you have ever occupied. Think of fifteen thousand

souls, and these mainly those who rarely hear the
QQ§Q_1o

But why was the west so important when the great majority of
Americans still lived back east? According to Weld the west
"is half a century behind the East. Besides, here is to be
the battlefield of the world. Here Satan's seat is. A

mighty effort must be made to dislodge him soon, or the West

 

'8’ Whereas Lewis Tappan argued that the cities

is undone.‘
stood as the key strategical centers in converting the
nation, Weld believed the exact opposite: "Don't be in too
great haste to get hold of the cities . . . Kindle hegk
fires, BACK FIRES, BACK FIRES far and wide. Let them
stretch over the interior; the while you are engaged there
the cities are preparing fast--when ripe--at the favorable
nick of time--give the word--rally your forces and in the
twinkling of an eye make a plunge--and they are a wreck."“
Finney resolved to concentrate his revival efforts in
the New York metropolis. Although he realized New York
contained formidable Old School opposition, Finney also
recognized the exciting opportunity before him to minister
to thousands of souls. Although the west could not be
neglected, Finney proved unable to resist the opportunity of
high visibility and extensive public exposure which a pulpit

in New York would allow. Through the vast number of souls

that he would convert in the metropolis, Finney believed

75

that the revival spirit would emanate throughout the rest of
the country as these new Christians would stand as living
testaments to the life-transforming quality of God's
spirit. The most spectacular way for Finney to exhibit his
prowess as a revivalist, was to establish a church in the
midst of iniquity among dance halls, saloons, and decrepit,
overcrowded buildings where sin and despair prevail.25 The
Chatham Garden Theatre, up for sale and the locus of much
evil and debauchery on Chatham Street, provided the
opportunity to establish a church in this spiritually
desolate area within the city. The theatre, which could
seat twenty-five hundred people, became the Chatham Street
Chapel after it was acquired by Lewis Tappan and his
associates. Possibly the most important factor that
convinced Finney to settle in New York City was his growing
family. Finney and his wife, Lydia, now had three children.
Further traveling would have to be without Lydia who now had
pressing domestic concerns. Besides, Finney's health
suffered and a permanent pastorate seemed most appealing.26

In May of 1832, Finney preached his first sermon in
Chatham Street and despite a raging cholera epidemic, many
people attended the meeting and underwent conversion.v'
Finney approached revivals in a more refined and subdued
manner, although he could still exhort with great emotional
impact. But Finney did not labor alone. To assist him in

the city, Finney secured the services of the Reverends

76

Herman Norton, Dirck C. Lansing, Joel Parker, and John
Ingersoll . 28

While at Chatham Street, Finney's poor health worsened
in the winter of 1833 when he contracted cholera. In the
fall of 1834, after a vacation designed to restore his
health, Finney returned to Chatham Street while entertaining
thoughts of retiring.”’ Finney seemed less than
enthusiastic about his new chapel even though it was gaining
recognition as the "'cathedral' of the new empire of

"m Not only was the chapel a huge

expanding benevolence.
place, in a poor neighborhood, which lacked any intimacy,
Finney also feared the structure might collapse under the

M Finney, however, also anticipated

weight of a full house.
prospects of greater influence as plans for the Broadway
Tabernacle were prepared. The Tabernacle would be designed
for Finney, according to his specifications. In 1836,
Finney became installed as pastor at Broadway Tabernacle
Congregational Church."’2

I The Presbyterian governance structure proved much too
burdensome and restrictive for the independent and strong
willed Finney. He not only resented the Old School theology
but also the Presbyterian penchant for ecclesiastical
bureaucracy imposed by the presbytery, synod, and general
assembly. In his Lectures on Revivals, Finney expressed his

utter contempt for the needless gatherings of his colleagues

which often diverted the energies of ministers from their

77
soul saving efforts:
These things in the Presbyterian church, their
contentions and janglings are so ridiculous, so
wicked, so outrageous, that no doubt there is a
jubilee in hell every year, about the time of the
meeting of the General Assembly. . . . Ministers
have been dragged from home, year by year, and
perhaps have left a revival in progress, and gone
to the General Assembly, and there heard debates,
and witnessed a spirit, by which their souls have
been grieved and their hearts hardened . . .33
The presbytery demanded mandatory attendance at all
meetings by ministers unless a valid reason could be
presented. From 1824-1836, Keith Hardman has stated that
Finney failed to attend approximately ninety percent of
church meetings without offering any excuses.“’ Such
blatant disregard for church authority would not have been
tolerated by a minister of lesser stature. Fame had its
privileges and Finney took advantage of them as the
presbyteries made special allowances for Finney's demanding
schedule and great prominence. Isolating himself from the
church hierarchy "he squawked mightily when it did not defer
to his wishes, and continued his high-flying, independent
ways."35 As one of the foremost clergyman in the country,
Finney discovered the limits of fame's power to sway his
colleague's opinions and, therefore, after a couple of
inconsistent decisions in disciplining church members, a
rankled Finney decided to switch to a Congregationalist
affiliation when installed at the newly completed Broadway
36

Tabernacle.

With his custom built church and large, wealthy

78
congregation, Finney appeared to be settled for the rest of
his career. However, a year before his installation at the
Broadway Church, a determined effort was under way to lure
Finney back west. In 1835 a group of students, led by
Theodore Weld, left Lane Seminary because of the ban imposed
upon their discussions of the slavery issue. 'They then
founded a college in Oberlin, Ohio with the financial
backing of Arthur Tappan. Both Tappan and Weld implored
Finney to establish a theological department. Many of the
Lane rebels wrote directly to Finney in New York City
trying to persuade him to come west:

Our eyes have for a long time been turned toward
you, as possessing peculiar qualifications to fill
a professorship in such an institution. Holding
and teaching sentiments which we believe are in
accordance with the Bible, and having been called
by God to participate more largely in the revivals
-of the last 9 years than any other man in the
church, we could not but fix our attention on you
as one whom God had designated for such a work

. . .Recognizing these truths, and having full
confidence in your qualifications, we strongly
desire to become your pupils. . . . We need more
practical preaching power-more knowledge of
revival measures than we can obtain at any
Seminary in the West, or perhaps in the country.

. . We cannot but think that the Providence of God
calls upon you to become the professor of theology
in that institution. If you should go there,
nearly or quite all the theological students

who left Lane, would place themselves at once
under your instruction.

With a minister of Finney's renown teaching at the
fledgling college, this would go a long way towards
establishing the institution's reputation and attracting

some of the best ministerial candidates throughout the

79
country. Once again, Finney faced a tough choice. New York
offered security and prestige as the center of the
Benevolent Empire. Moreover, the Broadway Tabernacle had
been constructed. Yet, there were several compelling
reasons to journey west. Many of the Lane rebels had been
converted in his revivals and the opportunity to teach them
offered much pleasure. Plus, the schedule of an educator
would be much less demanding than ministering in a pulpit at

2” Finney, possibly

the center of the New York metropolis.
in an effort to maintain his prominence in the big city
while also soothing his conscience by fulfilling the
responsibility he felt towards training these promising
young revivalists, compromised and agreed to spend six
months of the year at both New York and Oberlinfl39

The arduous journey proved too taxing not only for
himself but also for his wife and four children, while the
overwhelming pressures of holding two such important posts
exacted a heavy toll. Therefore, after two years of
laboring at both places, Finney resigned from Broadway
Tabernacle on 6 April 1837 and determined to devote himself
completely to Oberlin. Although Oberlin faced an extreme
financial crisis, inflicted by the Panic of 1837, Finney saw
an opportunity to advance God's work by training generations
of new ministers who would go forth and reform the whole

country:

I came here and saw that there was nothing to
prevent the building up of a college on the

80
principles that seemed to me not only to lie at
the foundation of all success in establishing a
college here at the West; but on principles of
reform. . . .The brethren that were here on the
ground were heartily in favor of building up a
school on radical principles of reform.

The prestige and renown of Finney may have played a
significant part in helping Oberlin survive these initial
economic storms. Oberlin's student enrollment increased
from two hundred in 1835 to five hundred in 1840 and the
number eventually reached one thousand in 1850.41 In
addition to serving as professor of theology, Finney
accepted the pastorate of the First Congregational Church of
Christ at Oberlin. Finney began a revival ministry with the
intention of converting all the students and people of the
surrounding area. To this effort he applied his customary
diligence and enthusiasm."2

As pastor at Oberlin, Finney continued to mesmerize
people with his magnetic personality and charm. Robert
Fletcher wrote that "to go to Oberlin was to hear Finney,
the great actor of the American pulpit."“ The
transformation of Finney from a harsh, controversial
backwoods preacher to a much more dignified and
sophisticated minister was now complete as "supplications
took the place of warning, tears the place of sweeping,

n 44

stabbing gestures. Finney, in a mood of heart-felt

concern and deep humility, fell down to his knees and
poured out before God and his audience

extemporaneous pleas for the sick and distressed
of the congregation, for the welfare of the

 

81
college, for the farmers, for the nation, and for
any that needed divine assistance. Such a prayer
could continue for five to seven minutes, and its
effect would be melting, persuasive. Then, the
prayer completed, Finney would rise to
his feet, announce a hymn for all to sing, which
would allow time for the transition in mood, and
then launch into a penetrating discourse that
riveted his hearers to their seats.

Retiring from the front lines of battle to convert
thousands of souls and to usher in the millennium, Charles
Finney continued his efforts primarily within the friendly
confines of Oberlin College among admiring supporters and

devoted students.

Fame, as it so often does, presented many new avenues
for increased recognition--in Finney's case, as God's
greatest soul winner. As he traveled from village, to town,
to metropolis, and finally to a western college in Ohio,
Finney envisioned ever burgeoning opportunities to affect
the destinies of countless souls. In order to succeed in
converting his widely disparate audiences, Finney found it
necessary constantly to modify his methods. What had
inspired the simple people out west, only offended the
sensibilities of the more sophisticated people in the east.
This ability of Finney's to meet his audience on their own
terms brought him unprecedented success and fame as God's
greatest soul winner.

Yet, if wide public recognition entailed prestige and

power among supporters and colleagues, it also involved

 

' 82

certain drawbacks. Harshly criticized by many detractors,
confronted with limits on his ability to meet all the
demands placed upon him by friends and co-workers, and
frustrated.with ecclesiastical bureaucracy Finney discovered
the heavy toll that fame could exact. Mounting
responsibilities at both New York and Oberlin, required more
sacrifices which often compounded the burden of his poor
health; but with the support of his friends and family he
faced his struggles with resolved“

Both the quest for personal glory and the desire to
serve God and humanity drove Finney. In his early revivals,
Finney sought to construct a reputation for himself. After
having achieved tremendous renown, Finney settled at Oberlin
to create a legacy which would inspire those who would
follow him to continue his revival labors. Within the heart
of ambitious men lies the ardent desire to live immortally
within the bosom of succeeding generations. Pericles in
"The Funeral Speech" observed that "the whole earth is the
sepulcher of famous men and their story is not graven only
on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away,

without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's

lives."

Conclusion:
The Burden of Renown

The changing contours of ministerial responsibilities
allowed for a more aggressive and overt pursuance of career
advancement. As the minister's duties stretched beyond the
local parish to the translocal evangelical and benevolent
societies, a vast array of opportunities unfolded which
summoned ministers to be evangelists, reformers,
administrators, teachers, organizers, and lecturers to

1 When ministers vacated their

address a national audience.
local pulpits some of their parishioners accused them of
pride, ambition, and vanity. Indeed, some of the ministers
themselves questioned the purity of their own motives. In
this last chapter I want to briefly explore this internal
struggle between disinterested service to God and worldly
ambitions among two other ministers and a social reformer:
Lyman Beecher, William Ellery Channing, and Theodore Dwight
Weld, respectively. Like Finney they also faced the issue
of increased recognition as it conflicted with their duty to

labor as God's humble servants, but as we shall discover

each person responded differently.

83

84

Fifteen years after graduating form Yale in 1797, Lyman
Beecher, minister of the First Congregational Church in
Litchfield, Connecticut, stood as perhaps the nation's
preeminent clergyman. In 1812 the fact that Beecher, rather
than the esteemed President of Yale, Timothy Dwight, spoke
at the inauguration of the Connecticut Society for the
Reformation of Morals and the Suppression of Vice, signified
the power and influence which he had acquired.2 But long
before he received such recognition, Beecher had agonized
over his motivations and ambitions as a minister of God.
Throughout his career, Beecher never shunned the spotlight
or avoided controversy, yet, he questioned whether his
vanity, rather than his duty to God, pressed him onward in
his ministerial labors. The painful self— scrutiny which
Beecher, and many other ministers, endured led "from
ecstasy to despair, from certainty to doubt, sometimes to
paralysis and frequently to illness."3

After graduating from Yale, Beecher began a period of
training to preach under Timothy Dwight. In his letters to
Roxanna Foote, his fiancee, Beecher confided that he seemed
to have lost his religious zeal and that he remained

4 Beecher

uncertain as to his spiritual condition.
contemplated discussing his dilemma with Dwight but fearful
and ashamed he kept his worries to himself.5 .A few days
later, Beecher delivered a sermon in West Haven.

Afterwards, his despair intensified and he wrote to Roxanna

 

85

that, "man was made to deserve but not to receive the
applause of men. Give God the glory is the rule, while self
lies humble in the dust rejoicing to be hid that God may
appear. Oh! how horrid to enter the pulpit prompted by the
desire of applause!"6

The next sentence demonstrates how the crisis was
resolved: "Oh, how does our fame dwindle into nothing when
employed to snatch immortal souls as brands from everlasting
burning."7 Beecher had convinced himself that his
motivations and actions were sanctified because, as Scott
explains, "the very abjectness of the surrender to God's
will and desire becomes... the condition for acts far

surpassing the applause of men."8

William Ellery Channing (1780-1842) achieved fame not
only as a Unitarian minister at Boston's Federal Street
Church, but also as a literary figure who - through his
public essays on Milton, Fenelon, Napoleon and his Remarks
on American Literature (1830)--inf1uenced such writers as
Emerson, Bryant, Longfellow, and Lowell. Channing became
embroiled in the "Unitarian Controversy" within the
Congregational churches. This storm had been brewing for
some time when in 1815 the orthodox Calvinists insisted on
stamping out heresy by challenging those Calvinists, like
Channing, whom they accused of Arminianism and Socinianism.

A period of furious pamphleteering ensued between the

86
orthodox and the liberal Calvinists eventually known as
Unitarians.

Initially, Channing did not want to be labeled or
limited by being designated a Unitarian. Channing wished
"to escape the narrow walls of a particular church, and to
live under the open sky, looking far and wide and seeing
with my own eyes and hearing with my own ears."9 His
free-thinking ways led Channing to reject the Calvinist
conceptions of a jealous God and an innately depraved
humanity as unscriptural. Instead, he asserted the
goodness of God, the perfectibility of mankind, and the
ability of people to act of their own free will.
Reluctantly, Channing assumed the leadership of the
Unitarians and organized in 1825 the American Unitarian
Association. The Christian Register became the unofficial
publication of the Unitarian denomination and through this
vehicle many encountered Channing's religious thought.

As a preacher, Channing was quite reserved. His sermons
were didactic yet eloquent. His charisma rested upon a calm
presence that, because of its peacefulness, appealed all the
more strongly to others. Channing's nephew described him in
the following manner: "The seriousness of his deportment,
the depth and sweetness of his voice, the pathos with which
he read the Scriptures... his humble trustful spirit of
prayer, his subdued feeling, so expressive of personal

experience, made religion a new reality; while his whole air

 

87
and look of spirituality won them to listen by its mild and

um Extremely modest, Channing

somewhat melancholy beauty.
said it grieved him to be complimented for delivering an
eloquent sermon: "If I had touched the depths of spiritual
energy, my hearers would not express admiration for my
words."11 The best preaching, Channing believed, "leads the
audience to lose sight of the speaker in the sublimity of
his themes."12 The minister must "preach the Gospel with
earnestness, with affection, with a heart warmed by his
subject, not thinking of himself, not seeking applause, but

"B Otherwise,

solicitous for the happiness of mankind.
Channing lamented, a minister "will be heard, admired,
criticized, as an actor is, for the excitement he causes."“

Channing's natural humility and constant
self-examination prevented him from being concerned and
trapped by his growing public persona. He felt "almost an
insuperable reluctance" when having to preach or visit when
"people have taken it into their heads that they are to see
or hear something like a prodigy." Channing possessed a
heart-felt "conviction which contradicts this opinion of the
world and renders their applause painful, mortifying." He
further explained that fame was not his "right" and he
prayed that it would never be his "wish and end."15

Theodore Dwight Weld (1803-1895) is the most enigmatic

and intriguing of the three men under study. He spent most

of his childhood in western New York, near Utica. Despite

88
his initial disdain and hostility towards Finney and his
brand of revivalism, Weld's aunt coaxed him into attending
one of Finney's meetings. Within the next few days, Weld
converted and became a friend and devoted worker of Finney.
As part of Finney's "holy band", Weld preached among the
young men of western New York and became a popular figure.
When he enrolled at Oneida Institute, Whitesboro, New York
to prepare for the ministry, many young men followed him.
During this time, Weld spent much energy fighting for the
cause of temperance and by the end of the 18205 he became
recognized as one of the temperance movements most effective
speakers in the West.

A close friend of Weld, Charles Stuart, persuaded Weld
to employ his speaking talents against the evil of slavery.
By 1830, Weld was consumed by anti-slavery zeal and
converted the New York philanthropists Arthur and Lewis
Tappan to the cause of abolitionism. The Tappans created
the American Anti-Slavery Society and by 1834 Weld had
gathered a group of people together and sent them out as
agents for the Anti-Slavery Society. Using Finney's
methods, they preached with great ardor against slavery.
The most passionate and effective speaker was Weld himself
who spoke as "eloquent as an angel and powerful as

thunder."16

As an abolitionist speaker, Weld achieved more
recognition in the 18305 than anyone except William Lloyd

Garrison. Weld achieved success in Rochester and Utica in

 

89

New York State and his herculean efforts led Garrison to
characterize Weld as "the lion-hearted, invincible Weld."17

Weld was a restless, tormented man often afflicted by
dark moods of brooding. Apparently trying to hide being a
son of a Congregational minister and descendent of several
prominent New England families, Weld portrayed himself as a
rustic farmer. Weld, however, owned no land, was
unmarried, and had no settled roots in a particular
community as he traveled extensively in his crusade against
slavery. Weld believed that by ending slavery, he was also
preparing the way for the Second Coming of Christ. In
fact, he referred to his modest clothes as "John the Baptist

'“8 Both as a revivalist and abolitionist, Weld's

attire.
view of himself as part of a cosmic plan served to "satisfy
his own heroic sense of self."19

Weld's grand self-image, however, seems to have been
shattered at Troy in 1836. After his anti-slavery
recruiting successes in Rochester and Utica, Weld felt
confident that he knew Westerners and that God blessed his

m But in Troy Weld encountered tremendous

labors.
opposition. Several times mobs attacked him and prevented
him from speaking. Encouraged by the mayor, the crowds

threw stones, bricks, eggs, and sticks at Weld. Twice he
was wounded and if not for the aid of friends, Weld might

not have survived. Weld loathed leaving Troy as his nature

would not allow him to concede defeat. This was a test not

90

only of his bravery but his self-image; the people of Troy
were westerners--like those of upstate New York and Ohio
where he had enjoyed success. Besides, if he continued the
fight, God would vindicate him. This fight had a cosmic
dimension because "facing the mob was to Weld the essence of
abolition, for it was in fact facing the Devil and his
forces and defeating them."21

Weld finally had to concede defeat as the mayor
threatened to have him forcibly removed out of the city.
Although personally crushed by this defeat, Weld's
reputation among abolitionists continued to surge. Indeed,
anti-slavery leaders began to implement his strategies and
granted him the authority to restructure the Anti-Slavery
Society system. Weld recruited the most talented people he
could find on a four month swing through Ohio, New York, and
New England. Weld's visible recruiting efforts further
diminished the small amount of anonymity he had left.22

In November of 1836 a convention of abolitionists in
New York convened in order to educate and create a sense of
comraderie among Weld's new recruits. As the chairman Weld
pushed himself, as was his custom, to exhaustion. By the
final day of the convention, Weld, the great speaker, could
barely peak above a whisper. This convention marked the end

a Only infrequently during

of Weld's career as an orator.
his remaining fifty-seven years would he speak publicly

again. Equally surprising, Weld, who identified himself as

91

a westerner, remained within close vicinity to New York and
Boston. Furthermore, although his revivalistic tactics
gained favor among anti-slavery advocates, Weld himself
withdrew "from revival-centered efforts toward an almost
completely noninstitutional, body-based personal piety."“

The loss of Weld's voice struck at his ability to rally
the people. -Weld did regain his voice and lived the rest of
his long life in relatively good health. So then why did he
lose his voice? Robert Abzug has argued that this
affliction fits into a pattern of physical ailments due to

25

over-exertion. For example, Weld suffered temporary

blindness at Andover and collapsed from exhaustion while
working for Finney. But why then did Weld at this point
after losing his voice withdraw from public life? Weld was
driven, in part, by a sincere conviction not only in the
anti-slavery cause but also in his own self-image as a
western yeoman. His whole self-identity existed "within

that cause and image [and] when both began to crumble, a

major reevaluation was bound to occur."“

The extent of Weld's efforts to escape into obscurity
has been noted by Benjamin Thomas:

Weld would never accept an office of authority or
honor in any anti-slavery organization. He
refused to speak at anti-slavery conventions or
anniversaries, or even attend them if he could
avoid it. He shunned the cities, and chose to
labor in the country districts, where newspapers
were few, and his activities were seldom reported
except by abolition journalsw His writings were
published anonymously and he would seldom allow
the content of his speeches or his letters to

 

92
appear in print at all.27
One of the greatest abolitionists, Weld resigned himself to

a self-imposed exile from the public arena.

The choice of these three men, while somewhat arbitrary,
provide interesting similarities and contrasts. First,
Beecher, like Finney, was an evangelical Presbyterian
minister who accepted the modified Calvinism of the New
Haven theology formulated by Nathaniel_William Taylor.
Further, similar to Finney, Beecher welcomes the spotlight;
but while the evidence only hints at the distress which
Finney may have suffered, Beecher's letters reveal the
overwhelming anxiety he confronted as he questioned his own

motives.28

Secondly, with much apprehension William Ellery
Channing accepted the mantle of leadership from the
Unitarians who emerged from the liberal wing of the
Presbyterian and Congregational churches in New England and
against whom the evangelicals, led by Beecher and Finney,
fought. Contrary to Beecher and Finney, Channing's acclaim
greatly disturbed him. Channing was aware of the trappings
of fame and sought diligently to avoid the pitfalls while
still contributing to Unitarianism. Finally, Theodore Weld,
who was converted by Finney and early in his career promoted
revivalism as part of Finney's band, gained celebrity as the

recognized leader of the anti-slavery movement of the 18305.

However, his later anonymity can be traced to his almost

93
morbid modesty. His trepidation caused him to relinquish
the reins of anti-slavery leadership to the more radical
abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison.

In each instance, the burden of fame placed these men
at odds with their Christian duty to be pure in spirit and
motive. Their struggle challenged them to reexamine their
dedication to the ideal of disinterested benevolence in
their service to God and humanity. Ironically, their roles
as revivalist, minister, and social reformer were undergoing
transformations that inadvertently had the effect of
increasing the opportunities for public recognition which
increased the temptations of vanity and avarice among

Chri5tian leaders dedicated to altruistic service.

 

Endnotes

1Daniel H. Calhoun, Professional Lives in America:

Strugppye apd Aspiration. 1750-1850 (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1965); Sydney E. Mead, "The Rise

Of the Evangelical Conception of the Ministry in America:
1607-1850," The Ministr 'n Historical Pers ective, eds. H.
Richard Niebuhr and Daniel D. Williams (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1956); Donald M. Scott, From Office to Profeeeion:

The New England Ministry. 1750-1850 (Camden, New Jersey:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978).

2Donald M. Scott, "Watchmen on the Walls of Zion:
Evangelicals and American Society, 1800-1860 (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Wisconsin, 1968), 2, n. 1.

3Reverend Titus Strong, sermon delivered in Claremont,
New Hampshire, at the installation of Reverend James B.
Howe, 15 September 1819 (Windsor, Vermont: Ide & Addrich,
1819), 5-6. _

‘Ambrose Hough, sermon preached 10 April 1810 at the
ordination of Reverend Daniel Haskel (Burlington, Vermont:
Samuel Mills, 1810), 19.

5Scott, "Watchmen," 1-2.

6Scott, Office, 11.

_7Ibid., 16.

8Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious Histopy of the
Americen People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972),
436-54.

9Scott, Office, 52.

1oMead, 234.

11Scott, Office, 56-57.

94

95
12Scott, "Watchmen," 2.

”Ibid., 54; Mead, 234.

1"Lyman Beecher, Plea fez the West (1835), quoted in
Ahlstrom, 459.

15Ahlstrom, 459; Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in

Ameriea: An Historical Account of the Development of

Whalers. 3rd ed- (New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons, 1981), 132-33.

1“Scott, Office, 53.
17Mead, 239.
‘wScott, foice, 64.

19Mead, 239; Calhoun, 94. Calhoun suggests a connection,
although tenuous, between the rise of impermanency among
Congregationalists and the growing influence of the
Methodists. The Methodists with their itinerant ministers
and lay preachers may have served as a model for other
churches as competition for converts escalated: "Even during
the stresses of the nineteenth century, traditional
hierarchic organization like that of the Episcopalians made
little appeal to the Congregationalists; it was the Baptist
and Methodist examples that offered temptation."

”Calhoun, 88.

21Ibid.

2“‘Scott, Office, 69.

23Hudson, 133-34.

“Ibid., 122—24.

25James H. Moorehead, "Charles Finney and the
Modernization of America," Journal of Presbytepian Hietorv
62 (Summer 1984), 97.

ZéIbid.

27Ibid., 98.

:nCalhoun, 159-62. Calhoun notes that two common
economic problems responsible for rising impermanency were
the loss of parish lands and inflation. The lack of land

deprived the minister from income as a part-time farmer and
thus some measure of economic stability. Once dependent

 

96
solely upon a salary, the minister became vulnerable to
periods of inflation such as in the late 18105 and middle
18305. Such economic pressure combined with inadequate
parish funds to relieve it, often led the minister to
request dismission for greener pastures (p. 113).
”Scott, Off'ce, 71.

30Iloid. , 72.

31Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Repown: Fame and its History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 13-14.

:RScott, "Watchmen," 4-5.

:nLyman Beecher, The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, ed.
Barbara Cross (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press, 1961), 1:50-67.

:“Beecher to Roxanna Foote, 2 September 1798, Ibid.,
1:58.

:fiThis paragraph is a synopsis of Scott's account in
"Watchmen," 37-51.

“Ibid., 51.
"Calhoun, 152.
”Ibid., 152 s 108.

39Rev. Leonard Withington, Trumpet and Universalist
Magegine, 30 July 1836.

‘wRichard Quebedeaux, By What Authority: The Rise of
Personality Cults in American Chrietianitv (San Francisco:

Harper & Row Publishers, 1982), 19-20.

MWilliam G. McLoughlin, "Charles Grandison Finney: The
Revivalist as Culture Hero," Journal of American Culture, 5,
No. 2 (Summer, 1982), 81.

I’ZIbid .

“Ibid.

“Braudy , 13 .

‘“Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events

ip Amepiee. Originally titled The Image: Or What Happened
te phe American Dream (New York: Atheneum, 1961; reprint,
1978), 48-9, 62-4.

 

97

“Ibid., 64.
"Ibid., 63.
“Ibid., 64.
”Ibid., 48.
50Ibid., 49; Braudy, 13.
51Ibid.,74.
52Ibid., 50.

53Constance Rourke, Trumpets of Jubilee (New York:
Harcourt, Brace, & World Inc., 1927; New York: Harbinger
Books, 1963), vii.

S"Bernard Weisberger, They Gathered at the River: The
Shory of the Great Revivalist and their Impact upon Religion

in America (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1958; reprint,
Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966), 103-104; Whitney R.
Cross, The Burned-Over Dietrict: The Social and Intellectual
Histopy of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York,
1800-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950; Cornell
PaperbaCks, 1982), 155; Paul E. Johnson, The Shopkeeper's
Millenium: Society and Revivals in Rocheeter. Neg York.
1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 102-108.

 

55Washington McCartney, "Eulogy [on the death of Andrew
Jackson]," quoted in John William Ward, Andrey Jackeon:
Symhol for an Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953),
2.

' “Ibid. , 114.

57Ahlstrom, 382-83.
E58Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America: From

the Revolution to the Civil War (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1965), 22-23.

98

1Obituaries of Finney were found in the following

newspapers: Alexandria (Va) Gazette, Atlanta Constitution,
Cleveland Leade , Detroit Free Press. Daily Louieville (Ky)

gemmercial, Memphis Daily Appeal, New York Sun Times, New
19:3 Times, New York World, and the Philadelphia Ingpirer.

All ran the obituary on 17 August 1875.

2mm, 4.
3Atlanta Constitution.
-‘New York Times, 4.

5New York Sun Times, 1.

6Whitney Cross, The Burned-Over District: The Social
ehg lntellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western
New gork, 1800-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950;
Cornell Paperbacks, 1982), 14-15.

7Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney. 1792- 1875:
Revivalist and Reformer (New York: Syracuse University
Press, 1987), 26.

8Mary P. Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Claee: The Family
in Oneida County, New York. 1790-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), 65; Cross, 84.

'9Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society

and hevivals ih Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (New York:
Hill and Wang, 1978), 36.

”Ibid., 138.
"Ibid., 141.

12Alice Felt Tyler, Freedom's Ferment: Phases of
Amepiean Social History from the Colonial Period to the

Outbpeak of the Civil War (n.p.: University of Minnesota
Press, 1944; reprint, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1962),

548.

 

13William C. Walzer, "Charles Grandison Finney and the

 

99

Presbyterian Revivals of Central and Western New York,"
(Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1944), 8.

1"Ryan, 24-25.

15Charles G. Finney, The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney,
ed. Garth Rosell and Richard A. G. Dupuis (Grand Rapids,

Mich.: Academie Books, 1989), 4, n. 14.
1"Hardman , 3 0 .

17Ibid. Hardman notes that while Finney's daughter,
Julia Finney Monroe, and his grandson, William C. Cochran,
believe he attended Hamilton, Finney never mentions it in
his hemoirs. There remains no record from the academy
proving Finney attended but this could be due to poorly kept
and incomplete records.

mG. Fredrick Wright, Charles Grandison Finney (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin, & Company, 1891), 2-3.

19William C. Cochran, "Charles G. Finney: Memorial
Address," (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1908), 17-18, quoted in
Hardman, 31.

20Finney, Memoirs, 5.
21Ibid., 9.
ZZIbid., 8.

23Peter Starr, "The Nature and Importance of Covenanting
with God, " in Sermons on Important Subjecte Collected from a
Npmhe e; of Ministers in some of the Northern States in
America (Hartford, Conn.: Hudson and Goodwin,
date--unreadable), 366.

 

2"Finney, Memoirs, 7-8.

25Hardman, 34.

2"t’Hardman , 3 6 .

27Finney, Memoirs, 10.

28’John S. Mattson, "Charles Grandison Finney and the
Emerging Tradition of 'New Measure' Revivalism," (Ph.D.

diss., Universtiy of North Carolina, 1970), passim; Hardman,
37-38.

Imperry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America from the

 

100

Reyelhpioh ho hhe Civil We; (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace,
Jovanovich, 1965), 24. -

30Hardman , 3 9 .

igFinney quoted in Miller, 32.
Hardman, 39; Wright, 37.

33Finney, Memoirs, 30.
“Ibid., 31.

”Ibid., 16-17.
“Ibid., 18.

”Ibid., 20.

38Ibid., 22-24.
”Ibid., 27.

‘mWilliam James, The Varieties of Religious Experience:
A Study in Human Nature (New York: Mentor Books, 1958),
169-70.

“Finney, Memoirs, 44.

‘QBernard A. Weisberger, They Gathered at the River: The

Stopy of the Great Revivalists and their Impact upon
Religion in America (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1958;

Chicago: Quadrangle Paperbacks, 1966), 94-5.

 

“Ibid., 95.

“Finney, Memoirs, 53, n. 41; Female Missionary Society
of the Western District of the State of New York to Finney,
17 March 1824 (Finney Papers, microfilm, roll 1).

‘wFinney, Memoirs, 77, n. 20.

“Hardman, 60.

“Finney, Memoirs, 83.

‘mCross, 159; Wright, 23.

‘9Finney , Memoirs , 1 .

50George W. Gale, Autobiography of Revepend GeorqehW.
Gale (New York: n.p., 1964), 184-5 quoted in Hardman, 49.

 

101
51Finney, hemoirs, 38-39.
5211:18., 87.
”Ibid., 87.
“Ibid., 46-47.
55Hardman, 50.
5"Finney, Memoirs, 87.
”Ibid., 64.
”Ibid., 66.
”Ibid., 66.
“Ibid., 67.
“Ibid., 98.
“Ibid., 99.
“Ibid., 100.

6("Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its Hietorv
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 3.

‘sLois Banner, "Religion and Reform: The Role of Youth,"
American Quarterly, 23 (December, 1971), 683.

“Ibid. , 683.
"Braudy, 14.
‘mFinney to Weld, 21 July 1836, Letters of Theodore

Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld, and Sarah Grimke,

1822-1844, ed. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond (New
York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1934), 1:319.

”Banner, 682 .

'mLetters from New York, First Ser.(New York: C.S.
Francis & Co., 1852), 65 quoted in Banner, 683.

 

102

 

1Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney. 1792-1875:

Reyiyelist and Reformer (New York: Syracuse University
Press, 1987), 69.

2Ibid., 72.

3Presbytery of Oneida, A Narrative of the Revival of

' on in the County of Oneida, Particularly in the Bounds

of phe Epesbytery of Oneida in the Year 1826 (Utica:
Hastings and Tracy, 1826), 7 quoted in Hardman, 74.

 

 

‘Hardman, 74.

5Charles G. Finney, The Memoirs of Charles G. Finney,
ed. Garth M. Rosell and Richard A.G. Dupuis (Grand Rapids,

Mich.: Academie Books, 1989), 162 and n. 31.

6Ibid., 167.

7Hardman, 74.

8Finney, Memoirs, 158.

9Hardman, 75.

10Pomroy Jones, Annals and Recollections of Oneida
County (Rome, New York: published by the author, 1851), 390
quoted in Hardman, 75.

11Presbytery of Oneida, Narrative, 15-16 quoted in
Hardman, 75.

12Harriet and M. Gillet to Finney and Mrs., 28 February
1827 (Finney Papers, microfilm, roll 1).

uHardman, 77.

1"Mrs. G.W. Thomson, "Early Labors of President Finney,"
New York Evangelist, 9 December 1875, 2.

15A Brief Account of the Origin and Progress of the
Divisions in the First Preebvterian Church in the city of
Troy: containing also strictures upon the new doctrines

 

12;

oac b the Rev. C.G. Finne and N.S.S. Beman with a

summapy relation 0; the trial of the lapter before the Tpoy
Bpesbypepy by a number of the lete church and congregation

(Troy, New York: Tuttle and Richards, 1827), 19-20.
“Ibid. , 20.

"Ibid. , 22 .

‘wDaniel Boorstin, The Natiepel Emperience (New York:
Random House, 1965; Vintage Books, 1967), 277.

”Ibid. , 318 .

2° e'wYork Evan elist, 8 May 1830.

21William C. Walzer, "Charles Grandison Finney and the
Presbyterian Revivals of Central and Western New York"
(Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1944), 224.

22Finney, Memoirs, 91.

‘8Charles G. Finney, Sepmons on Gospel Themes (Oberlin:
Goodrich, 1876), 365-66.

2“Finney, hemoirs, 186.

25Lyman Beecher, The Autobiography of Lyman Beecher, ed.
Barbara Cross (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press, 1961) II:67-8.

2‘sfiTi‘pmpet and Universalist Ma azine, 19 November 1831.

”Tee Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and its History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 8.

28mid. , 8 .

29Finney to Weld, 21 July 1836, Letters of Theodore

Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld and Sarah Grimke,
1822- 844, ed. Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond (New

York: Appleton-Century-Croft, 1934), I:319.

:mCharles G. Finney, Lectures to Professing Christians
(London: Milner, 1837; New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.,
1985), 22.

31Finney, Sermons on Gos e1 Themes, 365.

:uWeld to Finney, 22 April 1828 (Finney Papers,
microfilm, roll 2).

3311616.

:“Joshua Leavitt to Finney, 28 February 1831 (Finney
Papers, microfilm, roll 2). '

:”Weld to Finney, 22 April 1828.

:“William G. McLoughlin, ed., "Introduction," Lectures
en Reyiyels of Religioh, by Charles G. Finney (Cambridge,
Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960),
xxxvi-xxxvii.

”Richard Carwardine, "The Second Great Awakening in
the Urban Centers: An Examination of Methodism and the 'New

Measures,'" The Journal of American History 59 (September,
1972), 335.

Inbohn Frost to Finney, 22 March 1827 (Finney Papers,
microfilm, roll 1).

39Alexander H. Morrison, "The Finney Takeover of the
Second Great Awakening During the Oneida Reviyal of
1825-1827," New York Histopy 59 (January, 1978), 53.

‘wSydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the
hmepicen People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972),

419-20: Sidney E. Mead, Nathaniel William Taylor, 1786-1858:
A gophecticut Liberal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1942), 109-20.

“Morrison , 29 .

‘Q"Revivals in Oneida County," New York Observer, 21
January 1826. '

‘uThomas Seward, "Address: A Memorial of the
Semi-Centennial of the Founding of the Sunday School of the
First Presbyterian Church, Utica, New York," (Utica, 1867),
126-27 quoted in Morrison, 33.

'“Morrison, 35-36.
“Ibid. , 41.

“Iyman Beecher to Nettleton, 30 January 1827, printed
in the Utica Magazine, 17 March 1827.

"Ibid .

‘wMinutes published in the New York Observer, 4 August
1827; Beecher's account is in his Autobiography, 2:74-80;
Finney's is in his Memoirs, 216-25.

“Hardman, 134 .

5%3. Fredrick Wright, Qharles Grandison Finney (Boston:
Houghton, Mifflin, & Company, 1891), 84-85.

”Hardman, 134-5 .

”Mb—server. 4 August 1827.

IBRobert Samuel Fletcher, A History pf Oberlin College:
Epom ips Foundation through the Civil War (Oberlin, Ohio:

Oberlin College, 1943), 1:16, n. 29.

5"Beecher quoted in William McLoughlin, Modern

Reyivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New

York: Ronald Press Company, 1959), 45.

55Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-Over District: The

Soeial end Intellectual Histopy of Enthusiastic Religion in
Westezp New York,1800-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 1950; Cornell Paperbacks, 1982), 164.
56McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 40.

57Ibid.; Hardman, 149; Fletcher, I:16.

4

1Robert Samuel Fletcher, A History of Oberlin College:

£19m ips Eoundation through the Civil War (Oberlin, OH:
Oberlin College, 1943), 1:17.

 

2Ibid., I:18-
3Ibid., 1:20-21.

‘William G. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism: Charles

Grendison Finney to Billy Graham (New York: The Ronald Press
Co., 1959), 54.

5Whitney R. Cross, The Burhed-over Dietrict: The Social
and intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western
hey York. 1800-1850 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1950;
Cornell Paperbacks, 1982), 155.

6Rochester Observer, 24 December 1830.
7McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 55.

8George Gale to Finney, 21 January 1830 (Finney Papers,
microfilm, roll 2).

9E.W. Clarke to Finney, 23 May 1832 (Finney Papers,
microfilm, roll 3).

1oFinney, Memoirs, 307; Paul E. Johnson, A Shopkeeper's
Millennium: Society and Revivale in Rochester. Neg York.
1815-1837 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). In his study of
the Rochester revival; Johnson states that before the
economic Panic of 1837 urban workers had no independent
revivals but rather were only "adopting the religion of the
middle class . . ." and therefore "evangelicalism was a
middle class solution to problems of class, legitimacy, and
order generated in the early stages of manufacturing." And
yet "the revival was not a capitalistic plot. But it
certainly was a crucial step in the legitimation of free
labor.", 138-41.

 

11McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 57.

12Zephaniah Platt to Finney, 19 June 1826 (Finney

106

 

107
Papers, microfilm, roll 1).
13Fletcher, I:26.
“Ibid., 1:28.

15Lewis Tappan to Finney, 16 March 1832 (Finney Papers,
microfilm, roll 3). '

16Winthrop 8. Hudson, R 1 ion in America: An Historical

eceophh pf phe Development g; American Religious Life, 3rd
ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981), 153.

'"Donald M. Scott, Fpom foige to Profession: The New
England Ministry. 1750-1850 (Camden, NJ: University of

Pennsylvania Press 1978), 69.

IwKeith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney. 1792-1875:

Beyivelist ahd Reformep (New York: Syracuse University
Press, 1987), 249.

19Lewis Tappan to Finney, 16 March 1832 (Finney Papers,
microfilm, roll 3).

ImLewis Tappan to Finney quoted in Fletcher, 1:29.

21Lewis Tappan to Finney, 17 March 1831 (Finney Papers,
microfilm, roll 2).

22Weld to Finney, 28 February 1832, ed. Gilbert H.
Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, Letters of Theodore Dwight

Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld and Sarah Grimk . 1822- 1844 (New
York, 1934), I: 50.

 

23Ibid .

2l'W'eld [& M. Brayton] to Finney 19 March 1827 (Finney
Papers, microfilm, roll 1).

3Lewis Tappan in Finney, Memoirs, 354, n. 110.
26Hardman, 251.

27

Fletcher, 1:31.

28Ibid., 1:32.

”11:18.

”Hardman, 257.

”Lewis Tappan to Finney, 22 March and 11 April 1832

108
(Finney Papers, microfilm, roll 2).

32Fletcher, I : 33 .

IBCharles G. Finney, Lecphpes en Revivals of Religion,
ed. William G. McLoughlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press

of Harvard University Press, 1960), 291-92.
“Hardman, 310, n. 71.
35 i
_ Hardman, 310.

:“Hardman, 311; Finney, Memoirs, 364.
3TGeorge Whipple and Henry B. Stanton to Finney, 10
January 1835 (Finney Papers, microfilm, roll 3).

:nCharles Finney to Lydia Finney, 10 November 1834
(Finney Papers, microfilm, roll 3); Finney, Memoirs, 378-79.

39Finney, Memoirs, 379-82; Finney to the Trustees of
Oberlin College, 30 June 1835 (Finney Papers, microfilm,
roll 3).

‘wFinney, Memoirs, 396.

‘nHardman, 351; Fletcher, 1:501; G. Fredrick Wright,

Charles Grandison Finney (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, &
Company, 1891), 157-58.

‘ZHardman , 351 .
“Fletcher, II: 576 .
‘“Fletcher, 11:578.
45

Hardman, 353.

‘wLeonard 1. Sweet, The Minister's Wife: Her Role in 9th
Century American Evangelicalism (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1983), passim. Finney was married three
times and the support and comfort he received from each of
them contributed tremendously to his success. Sweet's book
provides an excellent account of how Lydia Root Andrews,
Elizabeth (Ford) Atkinson, and Rebecca (Allen) Rayl provided
beneficial assistance to his ministry.

109

1James H. Moorehead, "Charles Finney and the
Modernization of America," Journal of Presbyterian Hiepory
62 (Summer 1984), 98.

2Donald M. Scott, "Watchmen on the Walls of Zion,
Evangelicals and American Society, 1800-1860," (Ph.D. diss.,
University of Wisconsin, 1968), 2. In the first section of
his dissertation, Scott elucidates how the development of
Beecher's ministerial career reflects the significant change
which the ministry underwent: namely, from a calling to a
career which one consciously pursued.

3Ibid., 4.

‘Lyman Beecher, The Autobio ra h of L an Beecher, ed.
Barbara Cross (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press, 1962), 1:50-67. For the following account
I have followed closely Scott's analysis in "Watchmen," 4-6.

5Beecher to Roxanna Foote, Sept. 2, 1798,
Autobiography, 1:58.

6Ibid.
71bid.
8Scott,"Watchmen," 6.

9WEC quoted in Dictionary of American Biography, ed.
Allen Johnson (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1957),

1V:5.

10William Henry Channing, Memoir of William Ellemy
Channing, with Extracts from his Correspondence and
Manuscri ts, 3 vols. (Boston: Wm. Crosby and H.P. Nichols,
1848), 1:205, quoted in Jack Mendelsohn, Channing: The
Reluctant Radical (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1971), 82.

 

11Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Reminiscences of Rev. Wm;
Ellery Channinq. D.D. (Boston: Robert Brothers, 1880), 88
quoted in Mendelsohn, 10.

12William Henry Channing, 11:150-51 quoted in

 

110
Mendelsohn, 91.

13WEC, "Preaching Christ. Discourse at the Ordination of
the Rev. John Emery Abbot. Salem, 1815" quoted in Madeleine

Hook Rice, Federal Street Pastop: The Life of William Ellepy
Qhehhihg (New York: Bookman Associates, 1961), 81.

1"‘William Henry Channing, 11: 150-51 qouted in
Mendelsohn, 91.

15WEC to Susan A. Channing, 24 August 1812 (New York
City: Pierpont Morgan Library), quoted in Mendelsohn, 151.

16The quote and preceeding background material was
derived from the Dictiona of American Bio ra h , X:625-26.

IVGarrison to G.W. Benson, 27 November 1835, quoted in
Robert H. Abzug, Passionate Liberator: Theodore Dwight Weld
and the Dilemma of Reform (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1980), 5.

18Weld to Sarah & Angelina Grimke, 28 December 1837 in
Letters of Theodore Dwight Weld, Angelina Grimke Weld and
Sarah Grimke 1822-1844, ed. Gilbert H. Barnes & Dwight L.
Dumond (New York: D. Appleton-Century Company, Inc., 1934),
1:508. -

 

”Abzug, 50.
”Ibid., 147.
21Ibid., 149.
22Ibid., 151.
”Ibid., 152.
2"mid.

”Ibid., 153.
26Ibid., 154.

27Benjamin P. Thomas, Theodore Weld: Crusader for
Freedom (New York: Octagon Books, 1973), vi.

28Whether or not Finney thought through the possible
implications of his fame remains unclear. The reason for
this is the dearth of his personal writings and letters.
For a complete discussion of this problem consult the
"Sources and Selected Bibliography" section by Garth M.
Rosell and Richard A.G. Dupuis, ed., in The Memoirs of

111

5 ° ne (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academie Books,
1989), 671-77.

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PERIODICALS

A Brief Account of the Origin and Progress of the Divisions

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112

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Neg Tepk Evangelist

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