The Great Revivalists in American Religion, 1740-1944
The Careers and Theology of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson
WILLIAM H. COOPER, JR.
Preface 1
1. Jonathan Edwards: Revival as the Amazing Work of God 11
II. Charles Finney: Revival as the Reasonable Acts of Men 54
III. Dwight L. Moody: Revival as Big Business 104
IV. Billy Sunday: Revival as Entertainment 128
V. Aimee Semple McPherson: Revival as Spectacle 144
Conclusion 164
Chapter Notes 175
Bibliography 179
Index 183
Part of the problem with writing a book in our current age of information is the incredible amount of resources available. One can virtually drown in the materials available on any given subject. The more one reads and researches, the more information he or she finds. Therefore the focus one takes on the topic can be as important as the topic itself. This is true about revivalism and those involved in it. I wanted to focus on American revivalism and the major figures who have shaped it throughout the years. To deal with American revivalism, one must of course begin with Jonathan Edwards and the First Great Awakening as the earlier "awakenings" were really just precursors. Here I had to make my first choice to narrow the study by not dealing with the English evangelists. My desire was to look at those unique American intellectual and social influences that made revivalism what it is today. Whitefield and Wesley operated under their own theological framework, often opposite one another, but American revivalism is really the struggle between Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney. It is in Finney that we see the great change intellectually where the center of revivalism shifts from God to man. Because it fits so well with the cultural structure being developed and Edwards' ideas do not, Finney's revivalism becomes dominant in American thought. Following this, we see the development of business-like practices applied to revivalism by D. L. Moody and the loss of a strong message. Finally we end this study with Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson who reduce revivalism to mere entertainment. McPherson is particularly interesting as she is the first female revivalist on a national stage. She also played a major part in bringing Pentecostalism into the Evangelical mainstream.
This book is the result of a course I taught at Birmingham Theological Seminary in the 1980s. The president of the young seminary, the late John McKinstrey, asked me to teach a class in church history on revivals. After doing some study, I saw that there were many fine historical studies of the events of revivalism in America but almost nothing that addressed its intellectual or theological development. The question I kept wanting to answer was, "How did the revival under Jonathan Edwards become the empty activity we see today?" I also wanted to know what changed revivalism from a mighty work of God into a series of meetings organized and planned by man. What I wanted to teach was not just another history (my students read one as an assignment) but the whys of revivalism. To see the dynamics and depths of the change from Edwards to Finney to Moody to Sunday, I began to read and teach the major writings on revivalism from the major proponents. I hope that my readers will find value in this approach as they wrestle with what a revival is (or isn't) and how it works (or doesn't). Then I noted the dimension of culture because theology is never shaped in a vacuum. Thus, when I had finished my course, I had a study on the American debate on revivalism which entailed theology, intellect, and sociology.
One thing I did find out in doing this was that while the two main proponents - Edwards and Finney - both wrote extensively and deeply about revivals (and received well-thought-out opposition), those who followed did not. After Finney, the next revivalists saw no need to write deeply or extensively about the nature of revivalism because Finney had already said everything there was to say. To say that Finney's writings defeated Edwards' is an understatement. Finney demolished Edwards in the eyes of those who followed. Add to that the fact that none of the major revivalists after Finney were the least interested in theology and I found myself without detailed sources. Thus I was forced to explain their views on revivals by looking at their words (in sermons and other writings) and their methods. This was linked with the culture of the day and a clear picture developed. The message came to be eaten up by the methods, and revivalism lost its power to change not just individuals but society as well. Yet these latter revivalists have their impact. I believe that Billy Sunday becomes the forerunner of the televangelist and McPherson of the megachurch movement.
In my class, the most common question asked was, "What about Billy Graham? Where does he fit in?" I chose, in my class and in this book, not to include Billy Graham for two reasons. First, his style of evangelism is nothing more than a return to D. L. Moody and an avoidance of the mistakes of Billy Sunday. Thus it is nothing new or different. Interestingly enough, Graham has the same problem Moody did with vanishing converts, those who make professions but never seem to make it into the local church. Second, a historian writes about history, and to do so objectively, he must have some historical distance. I will leave him for another book or a later historian.
As I am sure you know, every book is a joint work as we learn from those who came before us and are encouraged or corrected by those around us. That is true here as well. Thanks to all those who foolishly asked me what my book was about and then stood there for twenty minutes as I explained it. Each time, it became clearer in my mind. Thanks to my students at Birmingham Theological Seminary in Birmingham, Alabama, who joined in with excellent debate on every aspect of revivalism. Kathlene O'Dell was willing to read my manuscript, though the subject was not of particular interest to her. I must thank the reference and tech support librarians at the Library Center of the Springfield-Greene County Library for their help in numerous ways and the librarians at Evangel University who helped me explore writings available online and who pulled out old dusty microfilm of ancient papers and journals and finally pointed me to the Assembly of God Headquarters archives. To my boys, Will and Ben, and my friend David Lily, who encouraged me to write, write, and keep on writing, you have my deepest appreciation. Finally, to my dear wife, Regina, who read every page and offered comments and corrections, you are my greatest blessing. Without you, this book would have never been written.
"What is man that he should live out the lifetimes of his God?" asked Herman Melville in his great work Moby Dick. A similar question could also be asked of American revivalism. What happens to revivalism when the system outhves the theology of its God? Indeed, running through the heart of American revivalism is change, change started and nurtured by the culture of its day, change especially as to the nature of man and the essence of God. The character of God changes over the years from an active, involved sovereign Lord to a passive, waiting servant. The active savior becomes the anxious suitor. This is because American culture develops and changes the image of man. Theology does not occur in a vacuum. It is greatly shaped, consciously and unconsciously, by surrounding beliefs and events. Especially in the midst of the spiritual decadence of the 19th century, revivalism can be measured by the alteration in the object of belief from God-man to man-God and the corresponding shift in emphasis from belief in the salvation of man through the mercy and grace of an omnipotent God to belief in the potential power found in every man. The Jacksonian democracy of Charles Finney rejects the Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards that lies at the beginning of American revivalism and helps fashion a new God, a God more acceptable to the expanding image of man. And that image of man, broken but not fallen, damaged but not dead, is developed by later forces into those two great popular images of man, the businessman of the Gilded Age (and D.L. Moody) and the entertainer of the turn of the century (starring Billy Sunday). Then, exhausted and nearly undone, revivalism is briefly energized by the Pentecostal fervor of Aimee Semple McPherson, offering supernatural power to an America feeling more and more overwhelmed by the rapidly changing culture around it.
To fully appreciate the changes that occur during the history of Amer ican revivalism, it is helpful to sharply define what a revival is. And that is, at this time, no easy task. Revivals are mysterious events dealing with the soul of man in a manner often inscrutable to human reason. History is full of discussions as to whether a revival happened here or did not happen there. The problem of definition is not a new thing. Nor is it only an American one. In 1840, some ministers of the Church of Scotland put together a book for the sole purpose of defining a revival. And even they did not completely agree. So, what is a revival? In a broad sense, the history of revivals is the history of God's gracious dealings with man in a uniquely powerful manner. Jonathan Edwards styled revival "the history of redemption" and thus the only true history, for therein was delineated the unfolding and outworking of God's sovereign purpose. But that seems too broad. If revivalism is the outworking of God's purpose, when is there not revival? Kenneth Scott Latourette, one of the great church historians of our time, saw revival as periods of advancement following times of spiritual decline and indifference. The pattern, according to Latourette, looks like this: Revivals are preceded by a time of spiritual apathy, corporate weakness, and gross sinfulness, even among professing Christians. The majority of the church has sunk so low as to be hardly different in a substantive way from the world around them. Then, through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, usually experienced in the preaching of the Word of God in a clear and bold manner, the church is stirred and changed. As the church begins to conform more and more into the very image of Christ, people begin to respond in various ways. Some are indifferent and apathetic, wondering what all the excitement is about. Others are converted and added to the Church (this highly visible result of revival is too often seen in American circles as the whole of revivalism, though it is only one of many results). Finally, opposition arises both from within and without the church. Unbelievers ridicule, believers question, and in the midst of it all, the Evil One produces counterfeits in an effort to confuse and deceive. It becomes unclear as to what a real work of God is and what is not, what is of man and what is from the Spirit. Abuses to the system appear and grow and eventually the revival dies or is replaced by empty methodology as the Church begins to sink into indifference and the godly seek a new revival. Again this overview by Latourette is quite good but still it is only an overview of patterns and not a definition. The question remains: What is a revival?
A revival, simply defined, is an unusual manifestation of the power of God's grace in quickening and increasing the faith and piety of believers to such a degree that believers conform more to the image of Christ and careless sinners are convicted and converted. While a revival, thus defined, has two aspects of impact, on believers and non-believers, its essential nature is one and the same in both. It is the life-giving, light-imparting, regenerating, and sanctifying energy of the Holy Spirit. The problem with this definition, like all definitions, occurs when we apply it to actual events.
American revivalism is difficult to identify because it has produced so few tangible lasting results. Our revivals tend to be individualistic (because we are individualistic) and short-lived. Revivals elsewhere have produced far-reaching social, political, and even economic changes. The 18th century English revival under the Wesleys and George Whitefield, for example, played a major part in the peaceful abolition of slavery in the British Isles. The American revival under Charles Finney had a relatively small impact on slavery. We are hard put to find in America any lasting impact from our revivals except in terms of temporary increased membership and sporadic social ripples of minor effect.
Perhaps this is the reason why there is even a question in American history as to what revivals we have actually experienced. There is a real question among some as to whether the efforts of Billy Graham constitute a revival or not. Some go so far as to say that we have had only one real revival (under Edwards) and everything else was merely a vile combination of the wiles of the devil and the puny efforts of men. Most, however, seem to be in agreement on three definite periods when some element of revival can be seen in America. The First Great Awakening, extending from 1725 to about 1750, took somewhat different forms in the various sections of the colonies but was united in the person and work of George Whitefield. The leading theologian and writer of that time of awakening (and maybe the greatest American theologian of all) was Jonathan Edwards. It was both Whitefield and Edwards who gave the revival its Puritan and thus Calvinistic nature. Indeed this revival can be seen as an attempt to fulfill the Puritan hope for a "city on a hill" shining forth into the world the glory of God. In reaction to this were the writings of more liberal clergy such as Charles Chauncy, co-pastor of Boston's First Church.
Beginning with the camp meetings of Kentucky and Tennessee, the Second Great Awakening found its form through the person and work of Charles Finney. It was during this period, roughly 1795 to 1835, that the Calvinistic understanding of revival was discarded and replaced with a religious form of Jacksonian democracy. The two important works concerning revivalism during this time were Revivals of Religion by Finney himself and Lectures on Revivals, a mild Calvinistic response by W.B. Sprague. Along with these full length approaches were essays of a severe reaction mainly by the conservative facility of Princeton University. However, it soon became clear that the American religious had for the most part rejected the Puritanism and strict Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards and had moved quickly to the more democratic-friendly man-centered revivalism of Charles Finney. It was during this period that modern revivalism with all its methodology began.
If the First Great Awakening was theologically oriented and the Second Great Awakening centered on creating a methodology, then without a doubt the revivalism from 1875 to 1915 under Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday was a business par excellence. Maybe that's why no one puts a "great" in front of this period. The revivalism of this period was more the religious expression of the golden age (or, as this period is called, the Gilded Age) of American business with its bottom line orientation rather than a mighty work of a supernatural God. And like real businessmen, no one had time to write tomes of theology. Their understanding of revivalism was to be seen in their actions and in the results of their works rather than empty words on a page.
Adding to the difficulty in interpreting American revivalism is another factor as well. As the American culture shapes revivalism, it goes through not just massive theological changes (Edwards' "city on a hill" is not the same as the Jacksonian democracy of Charles Finney and miles apart from Moody's "revival as big business" and Sunday's and McPherson's "revival as entertainment") but changes as well in the very evaluation of revival itself. Essential questions arise. Is revival God-given or man-made or both? What are the distinctions between a real revival and a false one? What is the proper methodology to be employed? The failure to rightly answer these questions leads to the decline of quality in American revivalism until we end up with the embarrassing antics of a Billy Sunday or the show business of Sister McPherson. Revival becomes a term that no longer holds any special meaning whatsoever. This is the dilemma of American revivalism. We now have "revivals" all the time where nothing happens. We pass church signs proclaiming revival Monday through Friday from 7 to 9 (9:30 if the evangelist goes long). To many churches today, revival is nothing more than a synonym for special meetings. Imagine what this has done for the church's prayers for revival. Hopefully, as we examine critically the writings of Edwards and Finney in their historic context along with the practices of Moody, Sunday, and McPherson, we will see the pattern of revivalism's decline and obtain some answers that will give meaning back to the word revival and life back to the church.
It can be said that the great consistency of the American culture lies in the fact that, given enough time, it can trivialize anything. This is true and not even God Himself can escape it. But as God is reduced, something else must be inflated to fill the gap. In our culture, it was the power of man. The intellectual history of American revivalism is the story of how man gains the power of his own salvation and what he does with it. In Moby Dick, when man outhves his God, the results are madness and obsession. In the history we are about to observe, the end result seems much the same.
REVIVAL AS THE AMAZING WORK OF GOD
It must have been with a great feeling of excitement and a deep sense of spiritual calling that the early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony landed in America. Standing on the deck of the Arbella, the Puritan leader, John Winthrop, announced the great Puritan hope for this new land: "The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, for we consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." Here in the New World was the opportunity to create that holy "city on a hill" the Bible speaks of in Matthew 5:14 and Revelation 21:10. Here was an opportunity to create that city dreamed of by the Puritans casting its Christian light on all around it, witnessing both to the power and glory of God. More excitingly, this noble venture in this rough land would, if they understood correctly, be the catalyst for bringing the glorious Millennial Kingdom of the Lord Jesus. And what could be grander than the fulfillment of this? This desire was natural to the Puritans. Early American Puritanism was not only a religious creed but also a philosophy and a metaphysic as well, organizing man's whole life, emotional and intellectual. "New England, the Lord looks for more from thee than from other people," the Rev. Peter Bulkeley exhorted in a 1646 sermon preached to his newly American congregation. "He looks for more zeal for God, more love to His truth.... Thou shouldst be a special people, an only people, none like thee in all the earth."' The structure of the "New England Mind" (as Perry Miller termed it) was a reconciliation of piety (experimental Christianity) with intellect and doctrine. The Puritans were not afraid of knowledge and thinking. However, it wasn't enough to just know truth. It was crucial that biblical truth revealed itself in every aspect of daily life. This was the foundation of the Puritan existence and it shaped their hope of the Millennium - the creation of a kingdom or land where everyone lived out the Christian faith in its fullest under the watchful rule of Jesus Christ. And as the Puritans moved to this new land, they came to believe that it would be here, free from the complex past of England and European customs, that their dream would come true.
However, they would find that evil was present even in this new unspoiled world, even among the Puritans. And as good Calvinists, they expected it to be so. But the swiftness and the magnitude of the decline surprised them. By the 1650s, signs of rebellion and change grew among the younger generation. These were not expressed in frontal attacks on Puritan theology or violent arguments as to Puritan practice. They were still very rare. What happened was much more subtle, a blurring of the fine distinctions of the early beliefs. The talk, for example, continued to be of God's power in salvation but the emphasis shifted. More and more attention was given to human responsibility for good works before and after salvation, to the need to prepare for salvation by doing the right things. More and more concern was shown toward formal religious duties, less and less for inner spiritual realities. This gradual dilution of pure Puritanism was matched with a progressive cooling of religious fervor. Material opportunities replaced spiritual concerns among the proceeding generations. With increased opportunities for wealth came the temptations to snobbery, social exploitation, and self-sufficiency. These American Puritans found that they and their families were not exempt from falling. Indeed, there arose a period of increasing spiritual deadness, a religious apathy and general loss of piety that showed itself in declining church membership and increased religious formality by those who stayed. To fill their churches and thus cope with the reality of this threat to all they held dear, many of the ministers compromised the original Puritan convictions (with measures such as the "half-way covenant"), thus making religion even less important and more irrelevant to the concerns of daily life. As a result, the zeal of the forefathers disappeared, replaced with the apparent stability of formality. And with this change, the hope for the Millennial Kingdom grew less substantial. The children of these saints were more involved in conquering the physical wilderness than creating a spiritual kingdom. By 1700, the great Puritan experiment seemed over. Some noted that the affairs of the land were dominated more by tavern life than by church life. Alco holism, general lawlessness, and an insignificant, ineffective church obsessed with its own survival in whatever form necessary led the Puritan hope into a period of decline and decay.
It was during this state of affairs that Jonathan Edwards was born in 1703 in East Windsor, Connecticut. His father, the Rev. Timothy Edwards, had been called to pastor there in 1694, and by the time of the birth of his fifth child and only boy, he had well established the church there. Timothy Edwards was a compulsively precise man, well-known for his great skill in preparing boys for Harvard and Yale. Very demanding in nature, he tolerated no errors in recitations just as he sought to allow no errors in himself as well. Indeed, the senior Edwards displayed all the classic compulsive traits of order, thrift, and obstinacy admired in that day. Accepting corn in lieu of money payment on his salary, he had servant girls sweep it up very clean and then measure the sweepings. Timothy Edwards' tribute to his own father at his death ended with a list of 17 mercies attending the manner of his father's death, separated his dying words into 35 items, and then worked out six ways in which his father glorified God at his dying while proceeding to supply numbered particulars under each. Timothy was never one to yield in disputes with his congregation either. There was no room for compromise in his nature. In one instance, Edwards refused communion to the entire town for three years while a controversy raged.
Timothy Edwards' son, though far more sweepingly poetic and profound than his father, bore the marks of his training. Jonathan likewise refused to give an inch when challenged on matters of conscience, even when it cost him his church. He was also, like his father, a man of details, often focusing on arguments in an exhaustive and exhausting manner. Above all else, Timothy Edwards taught his son to cherish all truth, especially God's truth as revealed in the Scriptures. Edwards was a Calvinist in theology, exacting in its development and application. And like his father, Edwards was as precise in personal morality, seeking perfect obedience in a fallen world, as he sought to be in his theology.
As Jonathan Edwards grew, this manner of obedience began to haunt him. Near the end of his college days a case of pleurisy brought him near to death. He spoke of being shook "over the pit of hell" and grew more and more uneasy about the state of his soul. After much struggle, he broke off all ways of known outward sin. However, the inward struggles and conflicts and self-reflections continued and he made seeking his salvation the main business of his life. Finally, sometime in his eighteenth or nineteenth year, a series of gracious experiences occurred. In his diary account for Saturday, January 12, 1723, Edwards enjoyed an exhilarating moment of spiritual dedication.
I have this day solemnly renewed my baptismal covenant and self-dedication; which I renewed when I was taken into the communion of the church. I have been before God and have given myself, all that I am and have, to God; so that I am not, in any respect, my own. I can challenge no rights in this understanding, this will, these affections, which are in me. Neither have I any right to this body, or any of its members.... I have given myself clear away and have not retained any thing as my own. I gave them to God in my baptism and I have been this morning to him and told him that I gave myself wholly to him. I have given every power to him so that in the future, I'll challenge no right in myself in no respect whatsoever.2
As Edwards pictured revival as human surrender writ large, many of these same themes appeared in his revival writings.
But even that was not enough. Edwards desired to give God as perfect an obedience as humanly possible. He searched his soul again and again to be sure no room was left for his own wants. Everything was to be given to God, his soul, his heart, his will, his body. In the midst of this surrendering, Edwards came to acknowledge, even embrace, God's sovereignty in election. Objections ceased and Edwards rested easily in the assurance of divine justice. Reading Scripture filled him with a new sense of God's glory, a sense quite different from anything he had experienced before. Here he bowed his heart and knee before the great God of the Bible and in all matters, even in the matter of his own salvation, he acknowledged God to be God. As far as Edwards could tell, this was the moment of his real conversion. Influenced by this incredibly personal event, Edwards would come to see reconciliation to God's divine sovereignty as one of the most critical issue for believers.
Now the focus had changed. Rather than striving and striving in a vain attempt to gain God's unknown approval, Edwards now wanted God to permeate and change every level of his being. Edwards wrote that he wanted nothing more than to lie low before God as a little child. This humbling experience served as the basis for his understanding that revival was an amazing work of God, not created or stirred by man, but enjoyed and appreciated as a small child would receive a gift from his heavenly Father.
In 1725, Edwards moved to the congregational church in Northampton, Massachusetts, to assist his maternal grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. This was a prestigious move for Edwards as Stoddard was the dominant ecclesiastical figure in the Connecticut Valley and a powerful religious leader throughout all of New England. It was an important move for Edwards in a spiritual sense as well. Under Stoddard, Edwards learned to preach boldly (something he had already seen in his father) and more importantly to develop a heart for revival. Stoddard had in his ministry already experienced some minor revival movements and that, combined with his Puritan hope for an American millennium, had created in him an intense interest in and desire for real revival. This desire was passed on to Edwards, along with the congregation, when Stoddard died in 1729. The congregation at first responded well to Edwards' solid and careful preaching and there Edwards settled in at what he assumed to be his life's work.
During the 1720's, there had been signs that a religious stirring might be beginning. In the Raritan Valley of New Jersey, two pastors, Theodore Frelinghuysen and Gilbert Tennent, saw a renewed interest in spiritual things develop among their people. Prayer meetings grew, people began to attend the preaching services, and many young men expressed interest in the ministry and in various missionary work. This increasing concern for spiritual matters and prayer continued throughout the area and by 1733, Edwards began to notice a subtle change in his congregation. In late 1734, the response began to accelerate. By summer 1735, Edwards could number about three hundred persons added to his church due to the revival surging throughout Northampton and the surrounding areas. According to Edwards, who tended to downplay his powerful preaching, God used two events to gain the spiritual attention of His people. The first was the sudden death of two young people in nearby Pascommuck which started the community thinking about their eternal destination. This reflection on eternal things led to questions on how one could be really saved and what part man played in all this. Edwards responded with a closely reasoned sermon series on justification by faith. Everyone seemed to be seized with a deep concern about their eternal salvation. With the second event, the conversion of "the greatest company-keeper" in the whole town, revival burst out full-force. If she could be saved, it was reasoned, anyone could. Soon churches up and down the valley were reporting revival. In an unpub lished letter to the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman on May 30, 1735, Edwards rejoices in what has happened. "Everyone is seized with spiritual concerns," he writes. All their talk is about religion, especially among those who were at one time the most vain and loose in town. People were forsaking their vices and ill practices, quarrels were being settled, and there had never been such confessing of faults to one another as now. In fact, Edwards wrote, things were so good they were almost bad. People were so overwhelmed by spiritual matters that they were neglecting their worldly responsibilities. Underlying all of this was a great sense of each person's own exceeding wickedness and guiltiness in the sight of God, coupled with an awful sense of misery and utter helplessness and insufficiency to rescue themselves.
They are brought to see that they deserve no mercy of God ... and they seem to be brought to a lively sense of the excellency of Jesus Christ and His sufficiency and willingness to save sinners and to be weaned in their affections from the world and to have their hearts filled with love to God and Christ.... They seem to have given [to] them a lively conviction of the truth of the Gospel and the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures. They generally seem to be united in dear love and affection one to another.3
What was wonderful in Edwards' eyes was that this spiritual excitement expressed itself not only in inward piety but in outward changes as well. The town was overflowing with love for others and distress over sin. Many felt the Bible to be a new book to them, almost as if they had never read it before. Suddenly, preaching, the Sabbath, and worship were greatly prized by the people. Nowhere could the change in their attitude towards God be better documented in Edwards' thoughts than in their zeal for singing God's praise. In summary, there was nothing strange or odd here, Edwards could attest, nothing more than a strong and powerful work of the Lord.
However, even as Edwards wrote, all was not well. There were excesses and the revival, perhaps in response to them, was coming to an end. On June 1, 1735, two days after Edwards completed his letter, his uncle Joseph Hawley, Northampton's leading merchant in a fit of melancholy over his spiritual state committed suicide. It was a Sunday morning and the community was stunned. Edwards, in a postscript to his letter, attributed it to the "great rage of Satan against the work of God" but this proved to be the turning point in the religious fervor that had gripped the town. Two deaths had begun the revival. One ended it. The climate changed at once and by the time Edwards' letter had been expanded into the first theological manual on revival in America, the revival was history. Edwards' book A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God sought to place these miraculous events into some sort of perspective while encouraging ministers and congregations not to fall back into their former lethargy. For who knew when God would again bless His people with another outpouring of His Spirit? Indeed, if America was to become the Promised Land, the city on a hill which would ignite the Millennium, surely all this was merely a foretaste of glory divine.
God gave His people a breather for about five years to digest and understand what He could and would do. From 1735 to 1740, not much happened. Edwards reminded his congregation of the glory they had experienced, published the sermons on justification which he felt God had used, and published A Faithful Narrative to explain exactly what God had done. But most of all he prayed for more revival. Then in the fall of 1740, George Whitefield, an itinerant Calvinistic Methodist, arrived from England and soon all of New England was once again afire with a religious fervor that made 1734-1735 look like a brush fire. Whitefield landed at Newport, Rhode Island, on September 14, preached there six times in three days and then headed for Boston. The response was overwhelming. For eight days he preached, sometimes to as many as 8,000 persons. His farewell sermon to Boston on October 12 attracted more than 20,000 listeners, an enormous crowd for its time (and any time). Whitefield moved next toward Northampton preaching en route at Concord, Sudbury, Marlborough, and anywhere else that would have him. He reached Edwards' church on Friday October 17 and preached a sermon that same day. Morning, noon, and night Whitefield preached to great effect. In his journal, Whitefield wrote:
The people are equally affected; and in the afternoon the power increased yet more.... Oh, that my soul may be refreshed with the joyful news that Northampton people have recovered their first love; that the Lord has revived His work in their souls and caused them to do their first works.
They had. Zeal grew. Edwards noted with joy that these new conversions were more sensible and visible, the impressions stronger and more fruitful than ever before. By the new year, however, the revival was again starting to get out of hand and in a manner unlike the earlier renewal. Emotional outbursts in times of worship became common. Preachers, even Edwards, sometimes had to stop in mid-sermon due to the cries of distress and the weeping and sobbing. In some places, visions and trances appeared while others began to claim direct inspiration to justify bizarre behavior.
Into this pile of flammable material came the match. James Davenport, an ordained minister from Southold, Long Island, suffered from deep feelings of inferiority and possible mental illness. To compensate for his sense of failings, he tended to use extreme forms of enthusiasm in religion. Upon hearing of Whitefield's spectacular success, he gathered his startled congregation together and harangued them for 24 hours straight before collapsing. When he recovered, he began to assault other nearby parishes. On July 18, 1741, he descended upon New London, Connecticut. There was great emotion; his services were peppered with hysterics, fainting, and mass confusion. He took to judging the conversion experiences of various ministers, denouncing publicly those who failed his unknown criteria. Those who disagreed with him and his methods were obviously unconverted, nothing more than hypocrites. Those who sought to reason with him were devils incarnate seeking to divert him from God's calling. Gathering more and more people around him, mostly women, trances and visions increased, affirming the truth of his ministry. Finally with winter coming, Davenport returned to Southold, leaving behind incipient discord among followers and a rising fear among ministers that revivalism, if not false, was at best dangerous.
On September 10, 1741, a few days after Davenport had left town, Edwards entered the controversy by speaking to the faculty and students of Yale College along with an auspicious group of ministers, some of whom having the label of Davenports' "devils." Keenly aware of the debate raging around this revival, Edwards tried to give solid principles and straight talk to the whole question of revival. The first controversy of revivalism in America was to be one of manner not of method. How do we know a revival has really occurred and how do we know that people have been truly converted? Davenport may have been missing from the meeting but he had definitely set the agenda. The address, succinctly entitled "The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of The Spirit of God Applied to that Uncommon Operation that has Lately Appeared on the Minds of Many of the People of this Land: With a Particular Consideration of the Extraordinary Circumstances with which this Work is Attended," was based on 1 John 4:1 ("Beloved, believe not every spirit but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world"). After a brief introductory examination of his text, Edwards began by disarming those who would discredit the revival on the basis of its epiphenomena. He admitted to nine major flaws in the revival but argued that these excesses were actually "non-signs," extrinsic manifestations from which nothing could be judged positively or negatively. Then he cited five sure distinguishing Scriptural evidences of a genuine work of God. Finally, in his conclusion, he argued that even with all its flaws and excesses, this revival was undoubtedly a real work of God.
Edwards' Yale lecture was given with the hope of ending the controversy surrounding this latest outburst of revival but in actuality it marked the beginning of polarization in attitudes. Most of the ministers and officials, especially those burned by Davenport and his followers, were unmoved and grew even more rigid in their opposition. Several students, however, were won over to the evangelical cause. Included in this group were men like Samuel Hopkins (later to become one of Edwards's greatest disciples), Samuel Buell, and a young sophomore by the name of David Brainerd. All over New England, testing the spirits became an everyday occurrence as ministers, students, and anyone interested in spiritual matters sought to make sense of what was fast becoming a terrible mess. Unfortunately, zeal unchecked is too much like fire out of the fireplace and after the extreme efforts of a few students, Harvard too joined Yale in opposition to the revival and its young evangelicals.
Edwards' Yale lecture was published at the end of 1741 in expanded form as Distinguishing Marks but by then anti-revival forces were ready for theological warfare. To make matters even worse, the spring also released James Davenport from his winter slumbers. After his first visit to Connecticut, the colony had enacted strong laws against vagrant preaching and upon preaching in Stratford in spring 1742, Davenport was promptly arrested. After a riotous trial he was found "disturbed in the rational faculties of his mind" and forcibly returned to Southold. Three weeks later, he turned up in Boston. The clergy there denounced him. He denounced them. The authorities intervened in this spiritual name-calling and Davenport was again judged "non compos mentis" (or crazy as a loon) and once more deported to Southold, hopefully for good. But it was not to be. The following spring, 1743, Davenport once again appeared in New London. Calling on his disciples to burn all their worldly goods, he led his mob in wild dancing around a fire while shouting loud Hallelujahs and other praises to God. Even the most pro-revival persons were stunned by such a bizarre and mad demonstration of raw emotion. It even affected Davenport. When the bonfire burned out, so did the fire in his soul. Exhausted, he left New London on his own accord, returned to Southold, and slowly began to come to his senses. The next year he published his Confession and Retractions, deploring the false spirit that had overtaken him. But it was too late. He had unleashed the demons of hysteria and fanaticism all under the banner of revival and the ammunition he had furnished to the enemies of revivalism could not be recalled.
Chief among the anti-revival forces was Charles Chauncy, co-pastor of Boston's First Church and one of those attacked by Davenport. Chauncy had a reputation for being dull, liberal, and, in theology, an Arminian; a perfect example of the Old Light branch of Presbyterianism. As early as 1742 Chauncy had attacked Davenport, labeling his enthusiasm a "kind of religious frenzy" and lumping it with the great sins of antinomianism (anti-law), Catholicism, Communism, infidelity, and any other bad name he could think of. What was to be desired instead, according to Chauncy, was a practical, reasonable Christian life rooted in the Bible and devoid of all that supernatural foolishness. The following month, Chauncy wrote an anonymous letter vilifying the whole revival movement. Mentioning Gilbert Tennent, a chief supporter of the revival whom Chauncy had never liked, as an example, Chauncy found him guilty of being an unlearned, extemporaneous preacher, a maker of much noise and little content, nothing more than "an awkward imitator of Mr. Whitefield." In fact, Chauncy argued that all the revivalists were descendants of the Pharisees, hypocrites and wretches, totally intolerant (unlike himself) to those gentle people who disagreed with them on the doctrines of Calvinism. The real problem was that "they place their Religion so much in the Heat and Fervour of their Passions that they too much neglect their Reason and Judgment."
As the battle heated up, the entire religious situation in New England became sharply polarized by the end of 1742. Rather than a glorious millennium, this work of God seemed to have issued a ruinous war. The things of God were being daily discussed but with fist fights and name calling. As John Morehead, a Boston Presbyterian, wrote for many caught in the middle: "0 how Satan spews out his flood! God direct us what to do, particularly with pious zealots and cold diabolical opposers." The Old Light Presbyterians, rationalists, and humanists all flocked to Chauncy. The New Lights looked to Edwards. So in 1742, Edwards entered the fray once more. This time his desire was to make peace and reunite the New England believers. With a desire shared by all sober friends of revivalism, he searched for solid ground between "pious zealots" and "diabolical opposers." In the end, he chose to expand on the principles of discrimination he had enunciated in the Yale lecture while addressing his apology to an increasingly hostile opposition. The result was Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England, a treatise in five parts.
At the outset of this, his most ambitious work on revival, Edwards observed that the problem was not so much with the wrong-headed or the hard-hearted. Echoing ideas he would return to and expand in Religious Affections, Edwards argued that real religion must not just enlighten the mind but also raise the affections (feelings). Admitting the excesses committed in the name of revival, Edwards argued that there still had been an astonishing alteration in personal piety and social morality all over New England. People needed to step back and place the revival in the context of God's providential working in history. Then, responding to ten of the most common charges raised against the revival, Edwards rebuked those pious zealots who had brought shame on this mighty work of God. Finally, Edwards noted what should be done to promote the revival. While we cannot create revival for it is a surprising work of God, we can beseech God to continue His work with prayer and renewed obedience.
As important and judicious as this work was, it still did little to ease tensions. In May 1743, Chauncy's Old Lights took over the traditional post-election day meeting of the ministers of Boston and passed a resolution condemning the revival in toto. The resolution was harsh as these men were unwilling to concede a shred of integrity to any part of the revival. Chauncy was getting his revenge on Mr. Davenport and the like. In actuality, it was the resolution's integrity that was questionable as only 70 of the over 200 Massachusetts ministers had been present and of that only 38 voted in favor of the condemnation. Evangelicals promptly called their own convocation in July to bear a positive witness to the revival. Sixty-eight ministers signed a declaration supporting the revival with letters attached by 43 others unable to attend. Thus, the war continued over revivalism. The idea and hope of a holy city was lost in the struggle over theological issues. But Chauncy was not finished. In September, he responded to Edwards' writings with a book of his own. Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England was, like Edwards' book, a treatise in five parts. But here the similarity ended. Offering little that Edwards had not anticipated, Chauncy sought to refocus the question of whether there were imprudence and irregularities in the revival to the bigger question of whether the revival was a real work of God. Here the real heart of the difference between the sides was exposed. The issue was ultimately not revival but doctrine, specifically the doctrine of man. Chauncy's view of human nature required him to insist that Satan worked through the emotions while the Spirit worked with the reason of a person. Therefore, revivalist religion with its strong emotional context and response must be spurious. Edwards, in contrast, saw man as a whole, both reasonable and emotional. As a fallen creature, a doctrine Chauncy absolutely detested, man needed to be wholly remade. And this occurs only as God grants man a "new sense of the heart," a holy affection at the center of his being. Thus, the whole self is transformed. Ultimately, then, the real issue separating the sides was not about methods or manner or excesses but about doctrine. And because there would be no compromise there, the two factions crystallized into irreconcilable parties.
By the end of 1743, Edwards and his friends watched the revival go through an unhappy period of decline and increased opposition. In wider perspective of course, the Great Awakening continued in some form in America until about 1750. That year also marked an end for the man whose life and ministry was so intertwined with revival. By a vote of 230 to 23, Edwards was dismissed from his pulpit over a sacramental issue. After serving a short time as a missionary to the Indians, he was chosen president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) where he served until his death in 1758. By then, New England had moved on to other issues.
The importance of the Great Awakening to Jonathan Edwards and his theology cannot be overemphasized. To him, the revivals sweeping through the Connecticut Valley were the most important affairs in New England history. These revivals would determine whether America would be eternally lost or forever blessed, whether this great nation would be used by God to initiate His Millennial Kingdom or whether this would be just another brief shower of grace. "We must either conquer or be conquered," he wrote. The revival must be given room under the restraint of Godly wisdom to set this nation ablaze until the city of God, preached of by John Winthrop in 1630, is established here on earth and the world can see the city on a hill, reflecting the very greatness of God. It was good that Edwards did not live to see his beloved New England slide into Unitarianism and Transcendentalism instead of God's Kingdom. For then Edwards might have come to believe that God does set His city on a hill afire with His grace but only for a time.
A Faithful Narrative
Jonathan Edwards' first formal account of revival, the first major report on revival in America, grew out of an eight page letter written to the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman, a personal friend, describing the valley experiences. Far more than just a factual history, this was a spirited delight in the great acts of God. These sudden dramatic and often inexplicable conversions were understood as God's particular and immediate work in Northampton and surrounding areas. Writing to one who might be seen as favorable to the revival was less a defense by a clinical witness than the remarks of an amazed onlooker. Edwards' letter sought to describe - to express rather than explain, to praise rather than probe - this glorious occasion. This viewpoint is quite different from his later writings where the urgent need in the midst of controversy would be to make revivalism theologically understood and philosophically acceptable. For now, Edwards was free to just rejoice in the actuality of a dear hope.
The work itself was divided into six sections: the opening events that led to Revival, the impact of the revival in the lives of his people, the extraordinary aspects of the revival, the manner of conversion seen in the revival, two notable converts and their stories as illustrations, and concluding remarks. In the opening section, Edwards provides the setting, observing that his congregation was as sober and orderly and good as any in New England, "as rational and understanding a people as most I have been acquainted with."4 They were not emotional people given to great outbursts, just waiting for some spark to set them all afire. Rather, they were so calm towards religion that they tended toward smugness. Yet even for such people as these, three events occurred under the hand of God that shook them to the core. First was the news of two deaths in nearby Pascommuck in April 1734, one a very sudden and awful death of a young man, the other the calm and comforting passing of a young married lady recently converted. This caused a general seriousness to fall upon people as they began to think of their own spiritual destiny and how they would respond to death. Added to that was the growth of rank Arminianism (Calvinistic Puritanism's dearest theological foe) which threatened to overturn accepted religious beliefs. People in Northampton were told that the growth of this great theological evil was a sign that God was withdrawing from the land, that the traditional values were being overthrown, and people were being given over to heresy. A sense of urgency was therefore added to their concerns over change for if God departed this land, who could be saved. The issues were clear. Would the word of God still be preached in its purity or would the people enter into a drought regarding spiritual truth? Would this land still stand firm in its Biblical principles or would it be swept away in a flood of godlessness? In late December, Edwards notes that "the Spirit of God began extraordinarily to set in and wonderfully work among us; and there were very suddenly, one after another, five or six persons who were to all appearances savingly converted, and some of them wrought upon in a very remarkable manner."5 Of special interest was a young woman of immoral character and irreverent nature who was stunningly converted. Some now dared to hope that if God would save a sinner such as she, perhaps He might stoop to save them. As Edwards saw it, a growing concern for spiritual matters, a sense of urgency, and a hope that God might save was the fertile soil from which real revival sprang.
Edwards then moved in his book to the effects revival had on his people. With genuine candor, he admits that he was concerned at first with what was happening. He was afraid that some might be hardened by these events, that others might grow careless and loose about life, and still others might use the situation as an opportunity to reproach real religion. But he was wrong. The reverse was the case. While fearing that all of this was nothing but empty emotionalism arising out of carnal fear, Edwards saw four things that showed him that something greater than man's natural religion was in progress. The first was that religion became the chief concern of life while worldly matters became a lesser issue. "The only thing in their view was to get the Kingdom of Heaven.... There was scarcely a single person in the town either old or young that was left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world."6 Secondly, the town seemed to be full of the presence of God. Edwards could write with joyful amazement that the town "never was so full of love nor so full of joy; and yet so full of distress as it was then."' People were experiencing God in a new way and they were being changed by love, joy, and even fear. No one stayed the same. The third mark directly flowed from the two above; public worship and public praise was given new life and vitality. As people set their minds on spiritual matters and as they experienced God in a new life-changing way, this showed itself most obviously in their worship of Him. Finally, these characteristics spread to neighboring areas. "Many that came to town on one occasion or other, had their consciences smitten and awakened and went home with wounded hearts and with those impressions that never wore off until they had hopefully a saving issue."8 Edwards goes on to enumerate 32 other communities in the Connecticut Valley which also caught some of this spiritual fire. Nothing like this had ever happened before in New England as previous outbursts of religious fervor had been largely sporadic and isolated in nature. In conclusion, then, Edwards argued that these four signs - greater spiritual awareness leading to a real sense of God's presence, ushering in a new heartfelt response of praise and worship along with a general spreading of the fire - these visible corporate effects of the Holy Spirit, were definite proof of a real work of God.
Add to these signs the quality of their nature and the arguments against this work are silenced. For these effects were of an extraordinary nature. They were not just small showers of God's grace as earlier experienced under Solomon Stoddard. No, this looked different and it felt different. God had, in many ways, gone beyond His usual and regular ways. The Spirit of God had extended His regenerating graces to the very old as well as the very young, to the rich as well as the poor, to the religious as well as to the irreligious and in larger numbers than ever before. In Northampton for example, a town of some 200 families, approximately 300 souls would claim salvation during this period. Add to that also the fact that it all happened in a swift and powerful way outside of the control of any individual and obviously something uniquely beautiful had occurred. "Tis wonderful that persons should be so suddenly and yet so greatly changed; many have been taken from a loose and careless way of living and seized with strong convictions of their guilt and misery, and in a very little time `old things have passed away and all things have become new."'9
As Edwards had thus far expressed the visible corporate effects of revival on a community, so now he focused on the individual convert. Here was the heart of his work as he developed his doctrine of conversion. People are first awakened with a sense of their miserable condition. The hard ground of the human heart must first be broken by the Law. As these hearers realize that their nature is corrupt, that they are in danger of perishing eternally, and that there is an urgent need to enter into a right state with God. "Their consciences are suddenly smitten, as if their hearts were pierced through with a dart."" These people saw their sinful condition, it was real to them, and they responded in definite ways. They immediately quit their sinful practices and forsook their former vices and extravagancies. And with eager anticipation or with a great sense of fear and awe or both, they actively pursued the means of salvation available to them - reading, praying, church attendance. Their cry was, "What must we do to be saved?" All of this led to Edwards' second step in the morphology of personal conversion. Now these people are ready to realize their utter dependence on God for salvation. They see that they can in no way help themselves. And as this knowledge comes only from God, then there is a hope that God is working in them. They see that only in God's sovereign mercy was there hope. It is here that we see the glory of God revealed in revival, for it is in revival that God consents to pour out His mercy in larger measure upon those who now see their need for it. To Edwards, the awakening was God glorified in the work of redemption by the greatness of man's dependence upon Him, in the whole of it. This understanding of revival will be one of the first elements attacked and discarded by succeeding revivalists, especially Charles Finney. But to Edwards, this was the heart of revivalism - not that man saves himself but that God in all His grace stoops to rescue helpless man. And until man learns that truth, real salvation and real revival was impossible. In a passage almost poetic, Edwards sought to drive home the essence of revival:
Thus they wander about from mountain to hill, seeking rest and finding none; when they are beat out of one refuge, they fly to another, till they are as it were debilitated, broken, and subdued with legal humblings; in which Godgives them a conviction of their own utter helplessness and insufficiency, and discloses the true remedy."
That true remedy of course is God Himself.
At this point, Edwards observed that burdened by an accurate sense of their own sinfulness and a realistic understanding of God's willingness to save those truly repentant, some turn towards God. It may be feeble and fearful due to their sense of God's justice and their unworthiness, but they have nowhere else to go. So, trusting in the infinite mercy of God and the all-sufficiency of Christ for sinners, with hope renewed, they seek salvation in Christ alone. They find in themselves a God-given disposition to acknowledge God as just and righteous in all His dealings, to admit that they are deserving of nothing good, and yet to leave their fate in His holy and merciful hands. This brings to the truly converted a calm and unexpected quietness and composure accompanied with a general hope that God will be gracious. Here "they will lie at God's feet and wait His time." Finally, with their will properly submissive to the sovereign God, there comes a special and delightful manifestation of God's grace to their soul whereby they know they are redeemed and accepted by God. Their focus has changed. They speak not of their escape from Hell but of the glorious excellencies of the God and Christ who is now theirs. They want to know Him, love Him, commune with Him and be His forever.
It should be obvious by now that Edwards sees conversion not as a work of man, not even a work man enters into, but entirely the "great and glorious work of God's power, at once changing the heart and infusing life into the dead soul."12 That's the wonder of revivalism-it's the mighty acts of God over a time and space, pouring out on large numbers of helpless people a salvation they could never earn or claim. It is only as man ceases his attempts at self-righteousness, of earning God's pleasure, of being good enough to be saved, and simply falls empty-handed at the feet of Almighty God, acknowledging God's right to act as He wishes, that true revival can with certainty be said to have occurred. Note that Edwards never believed that we could create revival, only that we could evaluate whether real revival had come. Truly converted souls would renounce their own righteousness with delight and rejoice in having no account made of it. Again much is made of this by Edwards for this is the heart of his understanding of revivalism. God may prepare the soil of the human heart with a growing concern for spiritual matters, with a sense of urgency, and a growing hope that He might save even that person. Outward signs of God working among His people may spring up as greater spiritual awareness leads to a deeper sense of God's presence and a stronger desire for worship. But there is no revival until the hearts of individuals are changed. When God sends real revival, He changes the inward hearts of people and they change their outward actions in reaction. It's that simple. Anything else, in Edwards' eyes, is just not biblical revival. Revival is not a series of meetings, nor is it a special time ordained by man. Real revival is the work of God.
Now in light of this understanding, we must be careful not to confuse the method with the message. Though he expresses salvation in terms of various steps for the sake of clarity, Edwards does not see conversion in a simplistic "one-two-three" plan that all must rigidly follow. To show the variety of conversion, he offers up two notable converts as case studies - Abigail Hutchinson and four year old Phebe Bartlet. The importance of these two is that they don't slavishly follow the pattern so carefully established earlier. While all of the basic elements of individual conversion are present - a sense of one's miserable spiritual condition, an acknowledgement of one's utter dependence on the Lord accompanied by a willingness to submit to Him and wait on Him, followed by a delightful manifestation of God's grace creating in the person a surety of salvation - they are expressed in different manners in different lives. Again Edwards cared not to create a revival methodology, lest mere man seek to manipulate the very grace of God. And in that, Edwards was more of a prophet than he realized.
The religious intensity in Northampton could not be sustained indefinitely and in the concluding section ofA Faithful Narrative, Edwards discusses the end of revival. In the beginning, Satan seemed to be unusually restrained but as the revival progressed, the devil was let more and more loose as the Spirit gradually withdrew from the land. Here Edwards could give no reason why the Spirit would depart. After all, who knows the mind of God but God. But as He began to depart, changes began to happen. After the suicide of Joseph Hawley due to a deep spiritual depression and the gradual decline in interest in spiritual matters, to be replaced with a growing interest in politics and the Indian problem, there was a falling off of that general engaged, lively spirit in religion which had been so joyous before. Things slowly went back to the way they had been before, but Edwards could rejoice at this early date that many who had been converted during the revival still seemed to have had an abiding change wrought upon them.
A Faithful Narrative is very different from the later books Edwards would write on revival. They would be written in the heat of battle when Edwards is called upon to justify the validity of revival itself. This work was not a polemic. It was a joyful recounting of what God can do. It has at its heart excitement, amazement, and a sense of gratitude for what God can and will do:
God has so ordained the manner of the work in many respects; as very signally and remarkably, to show it to be his own peculiar and immediate work, and to secure the glory of it wholly to his almighty power and sovereign grace. And whatever the circumstances and means have been, and though we are so unworthy, yet so hath it pleased God to work! And we are evidently a people blessed by the Lord! And here in this corner of this world, God dwells and manifests his glory.13
Distinguishing Marks
The environment which lies behind Distinguishing Marks is quite different than that of A Faithful Narrative. Where the previous writing was a joyful report of what God had done with various lessons drawn from it, Distinguishing Marks was born out of battle. Reacting to the New England need for sound principles of discrimination as to revival, Edwards offers not a history but a treatise, in essence a vigorous defense of revivalism itself. Religious experiences, he explained, were never wholly pure, never completely spiritual. As long as sinful man was involved, there would also be the natural and carnal as well. Thus, people needed to be educated so they could distinguish between the real and the fraudulent. Religious extravagance, for example, had little place in revivals. People who promoted fainting, bodily tremors, or any kind of uncontrolled passion were to be denounced. All they accomplished was to put ammunition in the hands of the anti-revivalists like Charles Chauncy and Solomon Williams. However, to those who reject revival, remember, religious lukewarmness and intellectual dryness is to be despised even more. Is that not what Jesus said in the Book of Revelation to the church of Laodicea? Far better to have a religion that compels the whole man even if his subsequent response leads to imprudence and irregularities. In balance, Edwards notes that the revival, the Great Awakening which had swept through New England, must not be judged by its oddities. A thousand irregularities and excesses would not disprove any action to be a work of God. The New Testament Church at Corinth was a perfect example of this, full of manifold imprudence, yet a real work of God's Spirit. In the same way, the New England believers, though truly touched by God, had displayed some of the worst kinds of responses, some of the most wretched excesses. Yet these elements were not the visible, distinguishing marks of a work of God no matter what either side might claim.
What then are the marks of a real revival? Edwards begins with a brief examination of the biblical text found in 1 John 4:1: "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world." Notice, Edwards begins, that it is the Christian duty to try the spirits. This testing is urged along with a caution annexed against an over credulousness and a forwardness to admit everything that claims to be from a true spirit. Beware! The devil loves to mimic both the ordinary and the extraordinary influences of the Spirit. Indeed, as the influences of the true Spirit abounds, so too do counterfeits. Therefore, it is not just our duty but a grave necessity for sound Christian living. Now to test and evaluate the spirits good and bad, the church must by necessity be furnished with some rules, some distinguishing marks of judgment. There must be something given that enables us mere mortals to correctly tell true from false, real from fake. That something has been given us by the apostles, the Scriptures. "Here I would observe that we are to take the Scriptures as our guide in such cases; this is the great and standing rule which God has given to his church, to guide them in all things relating to the great concerns of their souls; and tis an infallible and sufficient rule."14 Stated briefly, there are distinguishing marks. They are found as we study rightly the Scriptures.
Because he was dealing with a severely negative environment, Edwards turns his attention first to those already on record against the revival and its excesses, to those who sought to discredit this work as from God. Ingeniously presenting the very claims used against the revival, Edwards sought to preempt the force of those arguments by showing that they were not legitimate signs by which we judge a work to be or not to be from God. These "non-signs," as Edwards called them, were merely extrinsic manifestations, epiphenomena from which nothing certain could be concluded either way. They could not be used to prove revival had occurred or to show that it had not. Focusing on nine major complaints against the revival, Edwards showed from precedents in the Bible and history that every new movement in the life of the church, both true and spurious, had gathered many of the same charges. How then could such evidence prove that God was or was not really at work? The first non-sign was that the work was carried out in an extraordinary manner. So what? The Spirit of God is sovereign in his operations. He has always used a great variety of methods and means, and surely we ought not to limit God where He has not limited Himself. In fact the extraordinary nature could be an argument in favor of its validity for had not God Himself prophesied that in the last days His manner of working would be unusual. We are always afraid of the strange, especially if it is activity out of our control. But God's ways are not our ways and we must leave His manner to Him.
The second charge against the revival, indeed an often given one and thus to some a major charge, was that it produced effects on people such as tears, trembling, groans, loud outbursts, and fainting. This too must be relegated to the status of a non-sign because the Scriptures nowhere give us any such rule, one way or another, to evaluate them. Would we not expect people who suddenly understand their danger of Hell to cry out and faint and shake? Edwards argues. And those who are given a glimpse of the glorious excellencies of Jesus Christ, would we not expect them to be overwhelmed? But what do we make of this great ado and noise about religion? Here Edwards makes his chief point. Quoting Luke 17:20, "The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation." Edwards argues that when God comes in power, it doesn't consist of what is outward and visible. His opponents were going astray because they were obsessed with the outward. Those were the basics of their signs and evaluations and that was why they were confused. The signs of God's Kingdom are spiritual, inward signs. Outward signs and events prove nothing because that is not where the Kingdom is working. Here is the key point of the whole issue of signs versus non-signs and the underlying truth of all of Edwards' writing in Distinguishing Marks. If this is understood and accepted, most, if not all, of the objections and doubts as to the revival will fall away.
The fourth complaint, that the revivalism of the day stirs up great imaginations, is quickly brushed off by Edwards as insignificant. He reminds the critics that it is hard to think of the invisible without the aid of the imagination. Only dull men, indeed, are afraid of the power of imagination. The fifth charge changed the focus somewhat. The argument here was that the revival was prompted not by God but by the examples of others. In other words, a lot of what was happening could be explained by man's herd instinct, man's desire not to be left out, an ecclesiastical "monkey see, monkey do" sort of thing. Edwards' response is that God can, and does, use secondary means to achieve His goals. The examples of others are such a secondary means. Scripture sets before us good examples to follow. So does life. The problem is not with the examples but with those who fail to follow them. But some say, the so-called revival resulted in so many great imprudences and irregularities that are truly offensive to us. Edwards' response is simple and strong:
A thousand imprudence won't prove a work not to be the workof the Spirit of God; yea, if there be not only imprudence butmany things prevailing that are irregular, and really contrary to therules of God's Holy Word. That it should be thus may be wellaccounted for from the exceeding weakness of human nature, together with the remaining darkness and corruption of thosethat are yet the subjects of the saving influences of God's spiritand have a real zeal for God.15
God's Holy Word, not our sense of ease, not our feelings of familiarity, is to be our rule of faith and practice. Revivals may disturb and upset; that is the nature of zeal, but that of itself in no way invalidates revival. Actually it might say more about the spiritual state of the one upset than the nature of real revival.
Edwards now turns to the more difficult problem of various errors in judgment and seeming delusions from Satan found intermixed in this recent work. Surely, some would argue, that excludes this work as a real act of God. No, says Edwards, for the outpouring of the Spirit is not an outpouring of infallibility. Is it not true that even in the best of saints, there is a persistent mixture of grace with corruption, of the new man and the old, of the Kingdom of God with the tares of the devil? So too in revival. But, critics say, many of the professed converts fall away into gross errors and scandalous practices. This is a strong argument and will be a recurring criticism throughout the history of revivalism. And Edwards admits that it is true. But the fact there are false revivals did not mean that there are no true revivals. Rather, if there are counterfeits, is it not safe to assume that there must be some truth being counterfeited. Others are offended by the emphasis on the terrors of God's law and the dangers of Hell. But, Edwards counters, God's wrath is terrible, Hell is horrible. Should we not raise our voices to warn others? "If any of you that are heads of families saw one of your children in a house that was all on fire ... in eminent danger of being soon consumed in the flames, that seemed to be very insensible of its danger and neglected to escape, after you had often spoke to it and called to it. Would you go on to speak to it only in a cold and indifferent manner? Would not you cry aloud and call earnestly to it, and represent the danger it was in and its own folly in delaying, in the most lively manner you were capable of?"'6 Even more so the matter of Hell.
Edwards hoped that, by now, he had shown that these outward actions were not sufficient to judge the nature of a revival so he could move to those which do. Here in Distinguishing Marks, Edwards turns to the positive signs, those inward responses to God's Spirit. Going back to 1 John chapter 4, Edwards points to five sure elements of true revival. When there is a true revival, first of all, people's esteem of Jesus as God and Savior is raised. John gives this sign in the second and third verse of chapter four. When people confess Jesus as the Son of God, it is a real work of revival. "The spirit that inclines men's hearts to the seed of the woman (Christ), is not the spirit of the serpent, that has such an irreconcilable enmity against him (cf. Gen. 3:15). He who heightens men's esteem of the glorious Michael, that prince of the angels, is not the spirit of the dragon that is at war with him (Rev. 12:7)."17 From the beginning of the Bible to its end, it is clear that the devil is not going to promote anything that leads men to Christ.
Secondly, Edwards writes that when the spirit that is at work operates against Satan's kingdom by leading men to turn from their corruptions and lust to the righteousness of God, it is a sure sign that this is a work of God. I John 4:4-5 presents this truth. Surely Satan is not divided against himself, driving men away from those acts that please him and give him his perverse honor. Next, it is a true spirit that increases men's regard for these Scriptures. Here Edwards notes verse six of this chapter: "We have the truth from the scriptures, God's holy word. `To the law and to the testimony is never the cry of those evil spirits that have no light in them."'18 Note also that when true revival occurs, the objective truths of revealed religion are established in people's minds. It's not just that people begin to esteem Christ and hate sin and revere the Bible; it's more. These attitudes change lives. People meditate on these new truths and it begins to make a difference in their lives. This whole concept of "fruit" from revival is very important because, to Edwards, fruit was not the number of converts (many of whom will fall away) nor the excitement created (both good and bad) but the fruit of changed lives. And if there is no fruit, there is no revival. Edwards' fifth sign focuses on this idea of fruitfulness by accenting exactly what fruit it is we should look for. I John 4:12-13 mentions love as the mark by which we know who has the true spirit. It is a sure sign that revival has occurred when it awakens genuine love (sacrificial and active) towards God and man.
Here Edwards ends the major thrust of his book. Definitely, in his own eyes, he had made an overwhelming case. Those five inward signs were mountains of truth next to minor marks of confusion and action. How could anyone argue against these distinguishing marks so clearly laid out in I John chapter 4? These marks were sufficient to outweigh a thousand little objections as many had made from oddities, irregularities, and errors in conduct. Only the hardest-heart could resist the weight of what he has presented. Only the most resistant to reason could argue with his proofs. And up to this point, many anti-revivalists could listen to Edwards and nod in agreement. However, it is one thing to enunciate truth, it is quite another to apply it. And it was with the application that most might struggle. For in the application, or conclusion of his work, Edwards gives his unequivocal approval to the previous revival. He insists that he has judged, by the rule of Scripture enumerated above, his own experiences and is satisfied that the two correspond well together. Of course, Edwards had not been involved in the middle of the Davenport problem as his critics had. Edwards, for example, had not been condemned by Davenport by name as Chauncy and others had. Where was this genuine love for man that marks a real revival? He had not seen his people turn away from Scripture (however interpreted) to trances and visions. Where was this growing respect for Scripture that Edwards speaks of there? Edwards had not had his ecclesiastical structure threatened nor was Edwards questioned about esoteric issues which meant little to these Boston preachers. Using Edwards' criteria on the one hand and James Davenport on the other, some might have argued that revival did not occur -based on Edwards' marks. Edwards really doesn't deal with that here, but does reaffirm that these imprudences were not decisive. Rather they were a reflection of the youth and ignorances of many of the newly converted. Don't judge the whole on the basis of one loose cannon. The real danger is to do anything in the least to clog or hinder what seems to be "this work of God." Here Edwards pulls out all stops. To do so was not only to fight against God and dishonor Christ but was to fall in peril of committing the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit. To wait for a work from God without difficulties and stumbling blocks is mere foolishness. "There never yet was any great manifestation that God made of Himself to the world, without many difficulties attending it."'9 Take pains, Edwards urges the anti-revivalists, to see the big picture. Go where revival has occurred and diligently inquire into them and their effects on the community. Friends of the revival, likewise, have a responsibility. They must remain humble and self-diffident, coupled with a sense of dependency on Christ Jesus alone. Resist sudden impulses, he counsels. Seek holiness of life, respect learning and beware of continuous judging. Above all else, wait patiently on that wisdom that comes from the true and living God.
It had been a calculated risk to come to New Haven so soon after James Davenport and speak so plainly to what would certainly be a hostile crowd. But Edwards feared a split between believers that would surely kill the revival and bring much harm to the Lord's work. The light in the city on the hill was in danger of being extinguished, ironically by members of the city. Unfortunately, the risk failed to pay off. Davenport had done too much damage. Too many were afraid of this uncontrolled zeal in the hearts of the common people. Edwards spoke to deaf ears, to hearts already decided. And instead of reconciliation, the Yale lecture merely marked the beginning of the war. Yet Edwards had once again called attention to a crucial concept in revivalism: The heart of true religion is found not in outward events but in the inward response and relationship a person has with Christ and the things of Christ - reverential esteem to Christ, a hatred of sin, a love for the Scriptures, and changed lives expressed primarily in a newfound love for God and others. What Edwards had identified as real conversion in A Faithful Narrative has been enlarged to become distinguishing marks of a revival. The structure for evaluating revival was beginning to take shape.
Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival
The controversy over revivalism was not settled as Edwards might have hoped with the publishing of Distinguishing Marks. In fact, it grew worse. New excesses arose among those promoting revival and new attacks sprang from the pens of its enemies. Dismayed that this glorious work of God could be demeaned on one hand and embarrassed on the other, Edwards readied his pen once more. Plunging into the fray yet again, Edwards in 1742 produced Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival in which he counseled balance for both sides. The problem, as he saw it, was not so much with the wrong-headed as it was with the wrong-hearted. These naturalistic arguments against the revival rested on a false philosophy that separated man's affections from his will. Here was Edwards' point of departure from the Old Lights. Chauncy and others espoused a view of man in which the passions or emotions were sub-natural appetites to be held in check by the mind. The mind was everything sound and sure. To Chauncy and others of his kind, in a practical sense the mind had not fallen with the rest of man. Emotions, however, were a completely different story. Emotions were dangerous, sifting sand to the soul. Actually, this view was more in line with the view of classical Greek philosophers than it was with the biblical record. In reply to these eighteenth century stoics, Edwards viewed man as a unitary being. All acts of the affections are in some sense acts of the will just as all acts of the will are acts of the affection as well. True religion to Edwards thus consisted in holy affections. (This whole argument on emotions and the nature of man, Edwards would expand on in his later book A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, published in 1746). With the principle matter established, Edwards used it as a basis to define revival experiences, rebuke spurious manifestations and dispel shallow criticism while cordially urging all Christians to support the revival movement. Whether he was successful was a matter of debate.
In part one of this work, Edwards expands upon the answers given in Distinguishing Marks as to external manifestations and their meanings. The epiphenomena, says Edwards, are simply irrelevant. To argue about them is fruitless, a mere waste of time and effort. Any work of God among sinful men will be mixed in nature, full of imperfections and it is sheer foolishness to approve or condemn the whole because of a part. We err, Edwards noted, in all of this because we forget three vital facts. First, revival is not to be judged a priori. We do not judge "before hand." We do not judge a revival on the basis of how well it fits our preconceived assumptions of how it should begin or what instruments must be used or who should be involved. Rather we are to judge a posteriori -"after the fact." We are to observe the effort wrought and weigh its results. Edwards is not, here, falling into the trap revivalism will much too quickly embrace -the ends justify the means -for he is not, here, discussing methodology, he is talking of evaluation. He is not saying, "If it works, do it." Rather his point here is closer to "Get all the facts first before you evaluate the whole." Judge a revival by its fruits, just as you would a believer. Any a posteriori judgment worthy of true evaluation must appeal ultimately to some authority greater than itself. For Edwards, that authority was Scripture. That leads to his next point; we err secondly when we forget that Scripture alone is the only rule by which we can judge a revival. We are not to use philosophy, nor outward manifestations, nor history, not even personal experience. God's work of grace can only be judged rightly by God's Word. Finally, we err when we judge the whole by a part. There must always be discrimination. We must be ready to separate the good from the bad, the true from the false. Some are "very unjustly judging of the whole by a part," he wrote, "and so rejecting the work in general or in the main substance of it, for the sake of some things that are accidental to it."20 The judgment of a revival must be seen as a whole. In a glorious, wondrous work of God, the sum is greater than the parts. "The weakness of human nature has always appeared in times of great revival of religion by a disposition to run to extremes and get into confusion, and especially in these three things - enthusiasm, superstition, and intemperate zeal."" It was that way in the days of the Reformation. It was that way in the days of the apostles. It is that way today.
Change your focus, Edwards encouraged. Move past the excesses, for even among the extreme acts, there has been an astonishing improvement in personal piety and social morality all over New England. The renewed sense of the awesome majesty and greatness of God has been extraordinary. A great delight in the singing of praise to God and Christ has taken hold, accompanied by a strong desire for the establishment of God's Kingdom on earth. How can people be insensitive to its glory? This revival is glorious in its redemptions, in its very nature as a dynamic work of God. It is glorious in its extent, glorious in its numbers, glorious in its durability, and glorious in the growth it has produced in believers. Let me give you a case study that proves my point, Edwards says, and he produces his trump card - the example of Sarah, his beloved wife.
Sarah was not a new convert, her original conversion occurring some 27 years earlier. Yet real revival begins with and greatly affects believers and so too, during this time of real revival, she had been touched by God. As her sense of God's greatness increased, she felt herself suddenly transported to realms of joy and ecstatic rapture of such a degree that her bodily strength failed altogether. However, in all her experiences there was an absence of any impulse, revelation, superstitious delusion, or melancholic seizures. Here was Edwards' perfect example. If you must judge the whole by the parts, choose the right parts to judge. Here was a person noted for her sobriety. Here was a person "eating for God and working for God and sleeping for God, and bearing pain and troubles for God, and doing all as the service of love, and so doing it with a continual, uninterrupted cheerfulness, peace, and love. If such things are enthusiasm and the fruit of a distempered brain, let my brain and the brains of everyone be so touched," Edwards concludes as he ends part one.22
In the second part of this work, Edwards attempts to place the current revival in the context of God's bigger plan. The Puritans had hoped to complete the Reformation by planting in America a society so guided by Christian principles that it would serve as a working model for other societies to see and emulate. This was Governor Winthrop's famous "city on a hill" concept. America would be like a city placed up high where all would see and believe. God would get the glory but it would be America where He would do the work. They had failed in their attempt but the dream lived on. As one of America's major post-millennialist, Edwards had waited and prayed for God's outpouring on America, that glorious outpouring that would fulfill the dream and be the means for the conversion of the whole world. He could thus write in all heart-felt sincerity: "Tis not unlikely that this work of God's Spirit that is so extraordinary and wonderful is the dawning or at least a prelude of that glorious work of God, so often foretold in Scripture which is the process and issue of it, shall renew the world of mankind."" It amazed Edwards that the Millennium could be right around the corner and professing Christians would be dragging their feet. God expects everyone, ministers and laity, rich and poor, old and young to acknowledge His glory in this matter, rejoice in His outpouring, and do the most to promote it. To fail to do so, to hold back because of minor improprieties, was to risk offending God, causing Him to draw back, bring an end to His mighty work here and instead lead Him to pour out His fearful wrath on such ungrateful people. Ultimately, those who attacked the revival might also be guilty of striving against the Millennium and thus the Holy Spirit's work, itself. What Edwards did not seem to recognize (or more likely did not want to admit) was that this dream was all but dead among the clergy of his day. They had grown too sophisticated. They had learned to accept a low level of Christianity. They had so substituted the dreams of heaven for the realities of day-to-day life that they barely believed in a supernatural God who could take a rough and new nation like America and make it a showplace for anyone. The Millennium just wasn't what it used to be. It was not one of their major concerns. To some, it was off their theological radar altogether. Thus they lacked the larger framework (and hope) in which to place the possibility and event of revival. Edwards still had a dream. He probably didn't want to realize how much his argument fell on deaf ears.
Having warned his readers, perhaps in vain, of the seriousness of errors in the rush to judgment of the revival, Edwards now moved to address, in his third section, ten major complaints against those involved in the revival. The issue here is not whether the revival is real or not (Edwards surely hoped he had answered that question by now) but rather were those who were promoting the revival acting in a proper manner. Using the various complaints thrown out against revivalists, Edwards examined their validity. The first five arguments dealt with the preacher and the manner of his preaching. Ministers were found guilty of preaching to the heart, not the head, preaching terror rather than comfort, hell-fire and damnation rather than hope and at the same time preaching way too frequently. Edwards calls all these criticisms unfair. People needed to be preached to as total people: "Our people don't so much need to have their heads stored as to have their hearts touched."24 Terror and the danger of damnation needs to be preached for these topics act as light which shines on a sinner's conscience. In fact, Edwards suggested, comfort should be withheld lest the sinner finds his ease too soon and ceases his search for the Lord. As for subjecting children to such preaching, even a child with a dangerous wound needs the painful lance as much as an adult. The last five complaints Edwards examined dealt with "too much" of things. Preach ers made far too much of bodily manifestations (Edwards agreed), kept people together too often, spoke too much without bounds or regulations, sang too often (in an attempt to stir the emotions), and included young children in these blatant exercises. Edwards' response to all of these quibbles was that there can rarely be too much of a good thing. When God is acting, people forsake the unimportant to focus on the important. To complain of too much is to be too much like the Pharisees who were disgusted as Jesus entered Jerusalem while allowing the extreme manner of the multitude. And what were they doing? Rejoicing and, with loud voices, praising God, crying "Hosanna." Be careful; to be too critical could lead to being ultimately on the wrong side.
In part four, by far the longest section of Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, Edwards shows what things ought to be corrected and avoided. Here he undertook the painful task of rebuking his brothers in the revival for various excesses. We must be careful, he wrote, that we not let the devil drive us into those three extremes of enthusiasm, superstition, and severity towards opponents. Beware, for the errors that occur during a mighty work of God arises out of three fertile grounds of sin: spiritual pride, wrong principles, and ignorance of Satan's devices. When men involved in a revival fall in these areas, they become easy targets for skeptics and bring shame upon the work of God. Especially beware of spiritual pride, Edwards warned, for it is the root cause of all the rest, the main support on which error and ignorance rest. Also it is the most difficult to recognize and correct. "The spiritually proud man is full of light already; he doesn't need instruction and is ready to despise the offer of it,"25 Edwards wrote castically. Spiritual pride causes us to look at others' sins rather than our own, takes great note of opposition and injuries, real or imagined and results in jealousy, contentiousness, bitterness, and contempt whereas pure Christian humility "vaunteth not itself, doth not behave itself unseemly, and is apt to prefer others in honor."26 Ministers especially need to be careful that they do not provoke God as Moses did and, like Moses, find themselves shut out of the Promised Land.
Wrong principles or erroneous beliefs were also to be seen as a danger to real revival. The most apparent one in Edwards' mind was the notion that God, still in this day, guided His saints by inspiration or immediate revelation either with or without the pretence of a scripture text. By this, Satan could open wide a door whereby in the midst of a great work of God, the Evil One could set himself up as the guide and oracle of God's people. The effects of this are terrible as they reinforce the growth of spiritual pride:
As long as a person has a notion that he is guided by immediate direction from heaven, it makes him incorrigible and impregnable in all his misconduct: for what signifies it for poor blind worms of the dust to go to argue with a man and endeavor to convince him and correct him, that is guided by the immediate counsels and commands of the great Jehovah?27
After all, how do you argue against God? Obviously Edwards has James Davenport in mind here. Instead, God's Spirit leads His children, not by giving them new statutes and laws, but by teaching them His statutes and causing them to understand the ways of His precepts. The problem with people like Davenport is haste; they are too impatient, trying to move too far, too fast, leaping for any shortcut they might find, and only succeeding in falling, hurting themselves and God's work of revival. It is interesting to note here that while Edwards firmly believed man could not start revivals, he did believe that man, in his sinfulness, could bring a revival to a premature end.
The third error noted by Edwards that occurred in this current revival was ignorance in the way of Satan. Satan is always seeking to incorporate falsehood into truth, corruption into purity, the natural into supernatural. If he cannot stop the wonderful work of God, he will at least try to corrupt it. Here Edwards offers keen insight into the character of all revivals; they are always of a mixed nature. Piety coexists with human passion, imaginations with the real works of God, righteousness alongside pride. True Christians have serious flaws even during genuine experiences of God's grace. There is a need for caution and patience as young converts and young ministers grow into spiritual maturity. Indeed, we can recite a long list of the particular errors into which these young friends of the revival have fallen. Chief among this is censuring professing Christians in good standing in the visible church as unconverted simply because they do not agree with most (or even some) elements of the revival. Edwards was at his strongest here: "It is the worst disease that has attended this work, most contrary to the spirit and rules of Christianity, and of the worst consequences."28 For twelve pages, Edwards goes on rebuking those who are so quick to censure their opponents. Censorious judging is beyond the pale of all Christian propriety and should not be allowed even against the revival's worst enemies. God alone has the right and ability to judge. We do not, and to act as if we do is the essence of spiritual pride and selfrighteousness. Part four closes, however, with a conciliatory word as Edwards expresses the hope that many of the friends of the revival will soon correct their errors which are so harming the cause of Christ.
Finally, in the concluding section, Edwards shows what is needed to promote real revival. While we cannot create revival (only God has the right and ability to bestow His Grace), we can remove those things that hinder revival and do those things that prepare us to receive an outpouring of God's Grace. We must begin by removing stumbling blocks, he writes. Indeed there needs to be a great deal of confession of faults on both sides. Our pride must be mortified, for if our spiritual pride is dealt with, there will be less room for the growth of ignorance and wrong beliefs. Then, on the positive side, orthodoxy must be reaffirmed. Men need to examine themselves to see if they have truly experienced a saving work of the Spirit. The authority of the Scriptures must be reaffirmed and beliefs contrary to it renounced. With a wonderfully brief passing statement, Edwards notes that "now is a good time for Arminians to change their principles."29 Ministers should seek grace, zeal, boldness. Colleges should nurture piety in their students. Christians should seek after God with seasons of prayer, thus renewing His covenant with them.
If the people of God at this day, instead of spending time in fruitless disputing and talking about opposers ... would be more silent in this way and open their mouths much more before God and spend more time in fasting and prayer, they would be more in the way of a blessing.311
By now, it was apparent that the revival was over. The Millennium had not come. America had not been established as that glorious "city on a hill" as Edwards had desired. God's Spirit was withdrawing from the land, caused as much by revival's friends as its enemies. Yet Edwards ends his writings with hope. Perhaps, it might please God to once again bless this great nation, to again pour out His divine providence. We must forever focus on the depth of God's Grace for it will continue to give us hope "that Christ would speedily come to set up His Kingdom of light, peace, and joy on earth as is foretold in His word."31 After all, who can tell what our great God might do.
Charles Chauncy
Six months after Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival appeared, the Rev. Charles Chauncy published his answer to Edwards in the book entitled Seasonable Thoughts on the State ofReligion in New England (hereafter Seasonable Thoughts). It intentionally played off of Edwards' title and went so far as to imitate his five-point structure in an attempt to answer Edwards point by point. Chauncy occupied the perfect position in which to oppose the revival. He had been born in Boston on January 1, 1704, into a prominent, proper home of well-to-do parents. His great-grandfather had been the second president of Harvard and it was expected that Chauncy would continue the family tradition by attending. He read theology there and did well enough that in 1727 he was chosen to serve as the assistant at First Church in Boston. Soon after the senior minister was stricken with a paralysis and Chauncy became, for all purposes, the chief minister. His prestige grew as he assumed the pastoral and social duties of such an important church as First Church. He became a major force in the area's life and saw himself as the protector of all things religious. And he probably was.
When revival started in 1740, Chauncy quickly used his influence to protect the status quo. He gathered information from the beginning with an eye on putting an end to these enthusiasms before they could spread their poison too far. He heard from his fellow anti-revival ministers around the area, gathered newspaper articles about what was happening, and even went on a trip to the places of revival in order to judge for himself. All of this was processed into Seasonable Thoughts. He intended it to reveal the dangers of revivalism and to specifically answer Edwards' work which he remarked to a friend was "dangerous because there is so much good in it." Chauncy's literary style left much to desire. His preaching would never be an occasion for excitement and he was not noted for any eloquent oration. He was more important because of who he was and where he was than any amazing ability. But he was known as a lover of reason and his sermons were known to be clear statements of reasonable thoughts. And he knew how to make an argument and win a debate.
Like all of us, Chauncy was a product of his environment in both social as well as religious views. Social position definitely has a part to play here. Social classes had always been a part of New England since its start. There were real differences between those who lived in Boston and those farmers who lived in the western part of New England. This was especially true in the area of wealth and, indeed, the merchants and people of power found in Boston had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Religious traditions were different as well. In Boston, the traditional form of religion focused in orderly, unemotional worship while elsewhere, evangelical pastors like Solomon Stoddard were having religious stirrings regularly. It is said that the country was divided into three parts: the ministers from more liberal Harvard, the ministers from more evangelical Yale, and the Baptists who never went to school at all. George Whitefield in 1740 had gone so far as to criticize Harvard for its liberal tendencies and failure to teach its students the Scriptures in the correct manner. Chauncy went to Harvard. Edwards went to Yale. Chauncy was brought up in a tradition of orderly dignified worship of a high nature. Edwards was of the evangelical tradition. All of this shows that both were men of their times and environment, already predisposed to be suspicious or accepting of the revival that came.
In Seasonable Thoughts, Chauncy seeks to show, by reason, the errors of the revivalists. He begins rather ponderously with a 30 page account of the Antinomians, Familists, and Libertines who had bothered the church in New England 100 years ago. His preface is the story of Anne Hutchinson, a woman whose godless attacks on the church and its leaders back in the beginning had caused great harm and almost destroyed the churches of the Bay Colony. This story needed to be retold for the same errors and false spirit were prevailing in the revivalists as they had in her. Only now, as then, are the right weapons against such error in reason and order.
The first charge Chauncy brings against these disturbers of the peace of the Church is the use of itinerate preaching. These itinerate ministers leave their own pulpits for a time to preach somewhere else. Some are invited but most just go where their fevered minds believe God would have them to go. They justify this action with some pious words that declare that the whole world is their parish, for does not God wish all men to hear the gospel? Is not every minister called to do the work and will of his Lord wherever it leads him? However, by entering into the work of another minister, they seem to infer that the resident minister is not doing his job properly. The chief instigators of this form of ministerial wandering in America were the Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield, and surely Chauncy had Whitefield in mind. And with cause. As in England, Whitefield was admired in the colonies for his powerful preaching for conversions and already resented, as in England, for his unrestrained attacks on less fervent ministers. Chauncy did not like Whitefield because like all itinerate ministers, he spread division and disorder. Also there was about him "a scent of enthusiasm." He would come into a quiet place stirring up the emotions and inferring that the local ministers were not themselves converted. In his journal entry of October 9, 1740, for example, Whitefield reports that the Lord opened his mouth so that he could preach against unconverted ministers: "I am persuaded the generality of preachers talk of an unknown and unfelt Christ. The reasons why congregations have been so dead is because they have dead men preaching to them.... How can dead men begat living children?" Chauncy did not quote that passage from Whitefield (it had not yet been published) but it shows that his fear was real. Chauncy does mention Gilbert Tennent who followed Whitefield. He was worse with his regular sermons, naming as unconverted all ministers who opposed the revival. Now there did seem to be a valid concern over unconverted ministers at this time but not all who opposed the revival did so because they were unconverted. And preaching against them by name was not the best way to deal with the problem. But it just got worse. Following Tennent was the awful James Davenport, one of the most controversial of the itinerate preachers. He was the last straw for Chauncy and became his favorite whipping boy, for Davenport truly epitomized everything Chauncy hated about them. What was the meaning of such things? Chauncy asked. In this so-called revival, one sees a minister neglecting his own people to take care of others under another's care. And if a few do it, why not all? If that were to happen, parishes would dissolve and there would be no church order throughout the land. No one would know their boundaries and the people would not know who was their minister. That would be utter chaos. And underlying this practice is the suggestion that the settled were unfit for office or grossly negligent. All of which leads to division and doubt. Is this the fruit of revival, confusion and disorder? That is not a fruit of God.
Secondly, Chauncy questioned the men themselves and their antiintellectualism. Did they think themselves fit to be teachers of others when they act as if they have had no learning and "small capacities" of thought. Here Chauncy shows the elitism that he held dear. These itinerate preachers had not gone to Harvard. Some had not gone to a college at all and others had learned in a pseudo-school like Tennet's Log College. These untrained men from all occupations tended to discredit the very idea of an educated ministry by their examples and their teachings. Most seemed to view education with some suspicion; they were educated by the Spirit and had no need for the teachings of man. Davenport had gone so far as to proclaim that human education was a hindrance to the leading of the Holy Spirit. They spoke supposedly with the inspiration of God while human learning was nothing more than a snare for the unwary. To Chauncy, this was pure heresy. As he would write in 1744, in Ministers CautionedAgainst the Occasion of Contempt, the effective minister "ought to have skill in the Learned Arts and languages so as to be ready to make use of them in the service of the Sanctuary" (p.14). Inspiration in no way replaces preparation. Scripture must harmonize with reason, not that it was under the authority of reason, but being true, Scripture could not contradict reason. And that was what many of these revivalists did. This argument against revivalism did not carry a great deal of weight. Though there were men like James Davenport who lost his reason in the service of revival, most in favor of this Awakening were educated and would agree with Chauncy on the need of education. Edwards was certainly highly educated and placed a deep importance on learned ministry. What they most were worried about was not education itself but a dead education given by dead professors which only created dead ministers. All Chauncy was doing here was creating a straw argument out of the antics of his favorite foil.
Chauncy at this point goes further into the division caused in the Church by these attacks on the settled ministers. By now, it is easy to see that Chauncy was extremely bothered by this as he goes back to it again and again. This rash, censorious, and uncharitable judging must stop, said Chauncy (who had just inferred that all itinerant ministers were ignorant bumpkins). Look at Tennent; one of his constant themes was the unconverted clergy, going so far as to suggest that a large part of New England clergymen were worldly and lacking in salvation. Look at James Davenport; when he first arrived in Boston, he immediately attempted to question each minister as to the state of their souls. When most refused to humor him, he preached to the crowds that he had received from God the truth that most of the Boston ministers (including Chauncy) were unconverted and thus leading their flocks straight to hell. What gives them the right to judge another's heart? All they do is sow the seeds of discontent and discord. All they do is subvert and make even more difficult the job of a minister. It is an abuse on the ministers of God and an injury to the Church of Jesus Christ. Their fruit looks more like that of the devil than of Christ.
It was amazing what damage a few over-zealous persons could do to the work of the Spirit. Using them, Chauncy had the ammunition to condemn the whole. We must, at this point, remember that there were actually three different groups regarding the revival. One group led by Chauncy condemned the Awakening and ministers in it from the beginning because of its implied (and sometimes actual) attack on the status quo. Can we imagine Chauncy's face when Davenport boldly asked him what was the state of his soul? One just did not do that to the acting head of First Church, Boston, especially one of the social class as Davenport. Thus they looked only for those examples that placed the revival in the worst light. Then there were those of the other extreme. As supporters of the revival, they would find no wrong in it or in the actions of the revival ministers. Like Davenport, they embraced the excesses, the visions, the physical disorders, all under the "Godly preaching" of the itinerants. They were called the "rabble" and the "ignorant" all of the lowest class and they were proud of it. But between the two extremes, as is usual in American culture, there was the much larger middle. These were those who were excited about the revival and the changes it brought and saw much to rejoice over. But they also saw that the excesses were not essential to revival but were the overzealous actions of a few of the fringe elements. This group was led by Edwards. Edwards was just as concerned as Chauncy to champion an educated and established clergy. Order was a crucial aspect of Edwards view of God and nature and an attack on order was an attack on Heaven itself.
In The Outpouring of the Holy Ghost, written by Chauncy in 1742, he argued that the revivalists were the innovators while his group only sought to preserve the received tradition of the Church. They blurred the important question of how one can distinguish between a real religious experience and the delusions of an overheated imagination. The process of salvation did begin with the conviction of sin as the revivalists claimed but that was not the same thing as conversion. And it certainly was not a reliable sign of conversion. Thus, the amount of emotional tumult, both of sorrow and joy, was of little value. The only test of real conversion was the fruit of the Spirit which Chauncy saw as displayed in one's conduct. As an internal event that occurs in the heart, only God can see its reality. All we can see is its results, the results that show in the way one acts. Davenport demands swooning and shrieking, convulsions and trembling, and such before he will acknowledge the salvation of a soul. Going back to Seasonable Thoughts, Chauncy is so concerned with emotionalism that he criticizes Whitefield for smiling too much and Tennent for laughing during a sermon. (Edwards saw no need to answer that charge.) Chauncy could not deny that religion could arouse the emotions but it was this excessive emotionalism that worried him. The Holy Spirit deals with one as a rational creature and emotions must be kept under reasonable control: "Light and heat should always go together." Edwards agreed with that statement and wrote that religious affections were not heat without light.
In his fight against revivalism, Chauncy feared that they were opening the door to a religion of which he could not hold. He argued that this emotionalism that characterized this Awakening led to an ambiguity of spiritual signs and ended a hope for an orderly universe. In its place, one would find a world of individuals concerned only about their private experiences without any capacity for Christian community or any heart for good works. And that was not Christianity of men like the great Puritans, William Perkins and John Owens and Richard Baxter. Because he was opposed to the revival, most see him as James Davenport saw him, unconverted and liberal. He was more liberal than many of the evangelicals like Edwards (Harvard versus Yale) but then most ministers in Boston were of a liberal nature. He did defend liberal ministers and would later support a self-confessed Arminian for ordination, but in 1740 he was an orthodox minister. As he grew to react against the doctrine of original sin and began to accent more and more the benevolence of God, he fell more and more into the Arminian camp. By 1750, he had come to the conclusion that ultimately all sinners would be reconciled to God. He prepared a tome on his conclusions but was afraid to publish it until 1781, six years before his death. The title - The Mystery, Hid from Ages and Generations, Made Manifest by the Gospel Revelation; or the Salvation ofAll Men the Grand Thing Aimed at in the Scheme of God- said it all. Chauncy tried to put together the freedom of man with the desire of God to save every person. Thus, all of life, even life after death, was a time of trial and discipline by which sin is utterly conquered and salvation triumphs. Then the last rebellious soul will be saved and only then will death truly be swallowed up in victory. (Interestingly enough, the most detailed argument against his book was Salvation of All Men Strictly Examined written by Jonathan Edwards, the younger). By then Chauncy certainly had no need for revival.
Edwards and Revivalism
It is important that we understand Edwards' writings on revivalism because they set the stage, the foundations, of American revivalism. Everything that will follow is a reaction to Edwards either in building on what he has said (i.e., Sprague) or rejecting and modifying the foundation (i.e., Finney). It is obvious that while his three major works on revivalism are very different from each other due to the circumstances prompting their writing, taken together they form a comprehensive picture of the nature and process of revival. A Faithful Narrative is joyful, full of hope, as Edwards records how God richly blesses His people at times with revival. Its tone is factual, a historical account of what God has been doing. Rather than a detailed theological discussion of revival, it is a practical description of individual conversions and the beauty of changed lives. Distinguishing Marks, on the other hand, writes largely in the area of theological reflection. It is a defense of this revival, and revival in general answering, challenging, explaining. It explores those elements which distinguish a real work of God from a false one. It is combative; Edwards does not pull any punches. Yet it is also reasonable, humble, willing to learn, full of intermingled excitement and frustration. It is powerful. Some Thoughts on the Revival, written later, is much more reflective, almost pastoral. It is not as combative as Distinguishing Marks nor as joyful as A Faithful Narrative. Neither recounting what God has in His grace done nor setting a theological framework for understanding revival, Some Thoughts on the Revival looks at the revival in its waning moments to see what happened. It is a serious and mature work, as Edwards notes, with underlying sadness on how man can corrupt a mighty work of God. And the irony was that the greatest enemies of revival were its friends. Thus, we see here a progression in Edwards' writings that will be reflected in the history of American revivalism. He begins with a joyous appreciation of what God has done, moves into the theological analysis and examination of how revivals work, and ends with the sad mourning of how men, even Godly men, seek to manipulate revival for their own purposes. Three very different works with various tones and focuses, yet they all flow out of a unified understanding of who God is, how He works, and what He will accomplish.
To fully understand Edwards' view of revivalism, we must be clear on certain points. First, it must be clearly understood that Jonathan Edwards' view of revival was shaped by his Calvinism. This was Edwards' theological bedrock upon which everything else was built. Those who have written about Edwards may have despised, ridiculed, dismissed, or justified his Calvinism but they could never deny it. Edwards was a strict Calvinist and the First Great Awakening, unlike the other American revivals, was a Calvinistic revival. This shows in many ways. Edwards (along with George Whitefield, the chief human catalyst of the Awakening) believed that God alone in His good pleasure awakens Christians from their spiritual slumbers. He alone has the power to turn a sinner to Him in faith. The preacher is merely an instrument among many in the hands of the Almighty. The preacher does not cause the revival to come; it is not man-made, it is Godgiven. Man may pray and prepare his heart but he is at the mercy of a sovereign God who does as He will. Revival is a work of divine grace and all man can do, if he tries to create revival, prolong revival, or control revival, is corrupt revival. This is because revival is a work of divine power. It is affected by the Holy Spirit through the Word. The Spirit's work is persuasive (making a dead sinner willing to respond to the gospel) and physical (making a dead sinner able to respond to the gospel). It is as the Spirit does both acts that grace becomes irresistible. No one, in Edwards' eyes, was forced against his will to believe or against his will not to believe, but as the Spirit changes a man's heart and makes him alive to Christ, he comes freely. This understanding of man's inability and the Spirit's activity flows out of Edwards, taking seriously the Biblical teaching that man was dead in sin towards God, trapped in a bondage that only the power of the Almighty can break. The importance of this theological view of man can be seen in the contrast between Edwards and the next great name in American revivalism, Charles Finney. Because Finney believed in the plenary ability of man, his view of revivalism and God's part in it will divert greatly from Edwards. The Calvinism of Edwards extended to the method of conversion as well as the manner. Conviction of sin, induced by the preaching of the Law, must precede faith since God desires that man realize that there is indeed no hope in himself, a ruined, wrecked sinner. Then man is ready to trust only in Christ for his salvation, freeing himself from the anxiety of works and enabling him to fully appreciate the love of Christ toward him. Edwards even counseled caution in giving a man comfort lest he find his ease too soon and thus never learn to lean on Christ alone for salvation. False encouragement produces false peace and false hope. Besides, the sovereignty of God extends to the timing of revival as well. Preachers are to declare the Word of God and call all men everywhere to repentance but they must be careful in demanding immediate repentance and faith for not all are ready. The immediate duty of the unprepared sinner is not to try and believe which he might not at this time be able to do but to read the Scriptures, pray, and submit to the will of God. Heaven is not taken by storm! It is God's prerogative, not the evangelists' , to fix the time of revival. For the latter to try and do so is for man to take to himself the sovereign right of the Holy Spirit who comes and goes as He will. Interestingly enough, with this viewpoint, the First Great Awakening did not have the problem of numerous professions quickly followed by numerous denials as seen in later revivals.
The second main theme that runs through Edwards writings on revival (and all his writings, in fact) is a consistent hope that God will accomplish His will. Indeed God will complete His plans because He is God and not man and no one can stay His will. Edwards believed that God would eventually usher in a millennium, a time when Christ's rule over all would be actualized here on earth. And he believed that Christ would accomplish this realization of His Kingdom, not by force or judgment but by a mighty work of revival. Thus, even if the current revival had not achieved all these hopes, Edwards could hope, and expect, that God might soon act again in grace and mercy. Now this great expectation that Edwards learned from the Scriptures was also shaped by his Calvinistic Puritanism. Edwards firmly believed that the millennium reign of the Lord would begin in America. This was America's spiritual manifest destiny. America would become, Edwards trusted, the living fulfillment of Matthew 5:14 where "a city on a hill" would be a model for all the world to see. This concept of Godly country, set forth as a model for all nations, had been set forth from the beginning of American settlement by religious pilgrims but Edwards firmly and completely placed it into the context of revival. What's more, these ancient prophecies appeared to point, Edwards was convinced, towards his own time as presaging an immediate climax in the work of redemption. Edwards went so far as to attempt to justify this view most notably in Some Thoughts on the Revival with a series of typological comparisons and fanciful allegories of biblical prophecies that show the attraction of isogensis even in the minds of great theologians. The famous British Calvinist, Isaac Watts dismissed the whole notion with the curt remark: "I think his reasonings about America want force." But then, Watts read them from the wrong side of the Atlantic. This glorification of America would continue into the American Revolution and later. In 1783, for example, Ezra Stiles preached a sermon, "The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor," in which he expounded on America as God's chosen nation, blessed with virtue and grace, the sure harbinger of the Millennial Kingdom. This allowed him and others to reinterpret the Revolutionary War in a theological vein as a conflict between God's anointed (America, of course) and the forces of the Anti-Christ (Britain). It was with the decline of American Calvinism that this millennial expectation weakened and eventually disappeared.
Within the context of Edwards' Calvinism and optimism, it is easier to see his understanding of the nature of revival. While a work of God, man is still involved in them. Revivals, for example, can and should be evaluated to see if they be from God or the devil or man. Perhaps, more than anything else, due to the fight he found himself in, Edwards sought to show that real revivals are not judged by outward manifestations and extraordinary actions but by changes of the heart. His five signs of the affections, raised reverence in Jesus Christ as Savior and God, a hatred for sin, a love for the Scriptures, a desire for truth, and a new deeper love for both God and man, are not of the head. They cannot be faked. Real revival ushers in a difference in lifestyle, not a decision for the moment. Again and again, Edwards would remark on the changed nature of churches during real revival - more praise, more prayer, more concern for the Word, and more piety. None of this is desired by the Fallen One, so it does not come from him. And this change was not just a change for Sundays. Personal piety was not just a Sunday occurrence but for every day of life. It was an amazing change of the total person. Change, real noticeable change, was the key element of real revival. When people do not change for the better, when society does not change for the better, there is no revival. Revival was to have a social dimension to it as well. When God really changes a man's heart, that man begins to bear fruit in all areas of life. When this happens to a group of people, large or small, revival will begin to impact whole communities for Christ. Finally, Edwards would affirm that, while there might be a falling away of some due to false conversions and over-zealous emotions, real revival made real lasting changes in hearts and communities.
As a counterbalance to the overriding expression of revival as change, Edwards would be quick to note that all revivals are of mixed character. The good and bad were always intermingled as the Evil One loves to counterfeit the real in order to confuse and distort any mighty work of God. And he uses sinful man, at times Christians and even ministers, to create the confusion. More than anything else, this was a matter that worried Edwards and even broke his heart. It was hard seeing young converts and inexperienced ministers meaning well yet, because of the greenness of their fruit, bringing shame and ridicule to the work of God. Underlying this was Edwards' concern for the misuse of revival. Edwards was afraid that man, in his sinful independence, would seek to manipulate or even recreate revival in his own power. And the more he attempts to do so, the more God withdraws from the work until the people are left with the empty elements of extreme emotionalism (enthusiasm), incorrect doctrine (superstition) resulting in inappropriate actions guided more by the devil than the Lord (ignorance). The further history of American Revivalism unfortunately shows Edwards to be an acute prophet.
Jonathan Edwards did not live to see the next outpouring of the Holy Spirit and it probably was well that he didn't. For Edwards' Calvinism did not survive well in the tremendous changes of American culture. Calvinism would give way to the middle ground of the New Divinity which would eventually fall before Unitarianism and Transcendentalism which would help usher in the cultural change known as Jacksonian democracy. The theology and methods of these new revivalists would create such a different environment that historians would signal this the beginning of "modern revivalism." And whatever modern revivalism was, it certainly wasn't the revivalism of Jonathan Edwards.
REVIVAL AS THE REASONABLE ACTS OF MEN
By the 1820s, things were different. The American culture had changed and new men were shaping new ideas and being shaped by new ideas. The Puritanical America of Jonathan Edwards was gone, replaced by a new America, a bolder, more aggressive America, an America molded by the forces of Jacksonian democracy. And when culture changes, theology changes as well. All theological thinking is ultimately shaped by its environment, either in acceptance of its culture or in reaction against its pressures and influences. There is after all, no purely objective theology. No matter how straight forth or clear the Scriptures are, theology is formed by man's interpretation of them. Theologians come to their religious beliefs with preconceived ideas gained by living a certain way in a certain land, surrounded and subtly influenced by certain other ideas. It is obviously the same with American revivalism. As we move into the 1800s and the revivalism of Charles Finney, we find that the aristocratic sovereign God of Jonathan Edwards disappears, replaced by a political God seeking your vote and allegiance. The city on a hill reflecting God's glory to the whole world has been replaced by a frontier America glorying in its own power and virility. God's sovereignty has given way to man's ability. The chosen nation, shaped and called by the Almighty, has disappeared into a culture praising its self-styled Manifest Destiny driven by rugged heroes. The climate has changed and revivalism enters into a new phase quite unlike anything Edwards could have imagined.
When Charles Finney left his law office in 1821 for the more important job of saving souls, he entered into this environment of flux. And being a strong leader with definite ideas, he turned this time of uncertainty into an American Revolution in revivalism. The methodology he developed in the short period of fourteen years (1821-1835), later labeled the "New Measures" would transform the entire philosophy and process of evangelism. He would move revivalism from the old-style Calvinism of Jonathan Edwards into a more modern man-centered path. It was, in a real sense, a religious Copernican revolution, the difference between the medieval and modem mind. Religious life became audience-centered (only a step away from pure entertainment) rather than God-centered. Before, God had been the center of the universe, now man was. Revivals, which had been prayed down as a "surprising work of God" in Edwards' mind, now were worked up as a "purely philosophical result of the right means of the constituted means" as Finney wrote in his Lectures on Revivals. Methods and styles that were rejected during the First Great Awakening as unlearned and dangerous became the norm in the Second Great Awakening. They worked and that was what was important (American pragmatism did not begin with John Dewey). Finney's phenomenal success did not and could not occur in a vacuum. Instead success flowed from the fact that Charles Finney was very much a man in tune with his times. The influx of political changes from what we now call Jacksonian democracy mixed with the influence of a popular theology of the people finds its clearest religious expression in the New Measures. The New Measures, organized around lay participation, depending upon a clear-cut biblical literalism, expressly anti-Calvinistic, unsacramental, pragmatic and non-sectarian, was really the religious expression of Jacksonian Democracy.
Religious fervor after the Great Awakening had not fared as well as hoped. The theological consensus which had emerged was Calvinistic in form reflecting Edwards' powerful convictions. But it was a Calvinism somewhat modified from that of its Puritan forefathers. It was a Calvinism that emphasized (and this emphasis was the difference) the willingness of God to save those who truly repented of their sins and it stressed God's continual favor towards America as the potential scene of the Millennium. While this was an idea English Puritans would not embrace with zeal, it was ingrained powerfully in the hearts and minds of the immigrant American. Eventually it will express itself politically in the form of a Manifest Destiny. James Polk and others of his time were really the children of Winthrop. But that is later. To the immediate followers of Edwards, America was still the "city on the hill." Edwards had seen revival as the great necessity of the time, for revival set the city aglow with holiness and the nation blazed before the world as an example that the Millennium would come. Yet Edwards, even in his zeal, was careful and precise in his theology, never letting his desire for conversions and Millennium outrun his understanding of the helplessness of man and the sovereignty of God. Those who followed him were not so careful.
In New England, after Edwards, the religious environment toward revivalism was mostly divided into three camps. There were those who opposed the revival because of rationalistic reasons. Known as the New England rationalists, they soon settled into Deism on the way to their final destination of Universal Unitarianism. Politically they mainly became associated with Thomas Jefferson and the elite. They were mostly the educated (often by foreign ideas, mainly French), rich land-owners. They believed in man's innate goodness, total freedom of his will, and the sufficiency of reasonable experience. Like Jefferson, they removed from the Bible what they disagreed with and used only that which could be shaped to reinforce their views. Their creed could be summed up in "God helps those who help themselves" and they were successful, not in converting people to Deism or Universalism, but in reflecting the belief which fit well with an America preoccupied with empire building. They saw God as a benevolent being who governs at a distance through reasonable regular laws (no miracles, please), all to promote happiness and well-being for those who deserved it (themselves).
On the other extreme were the old-school Calvinists. Perhaps the truest followers of Edwards from a doctrinal stand-point, these were men mostly centered at Princeton College, who held to a strict Calvinism which seemed more and more out of place in growing America. The very idea that God would arbitrarily elect some people to salvation and pass over others in their sinful condition was repugnant to the sense of fair play and individualism growing in the American frontier culture. To many Americans, the Princeton people were out of touch with the real world and seen to be pessimistic and critical of our great nation. All they ever talked about, it seemed, was sin, sin, sin. Their legalistic rigidity, strong sacramentalism (which smacked of Catholicism) and their inability to get along with one another made them largely irrelevant to the new American society.
Eventually a third camp emerged, a theology that sought to take its place in the middle. They desired to keep the Biblical orthodoxy of the past but wanted as well to present the gospel in a manner that would resound with its hearers. Taking from that around them, they embraced a free-will, pietistic evangelicalism. This new theology identified with the New Haven school of theology led by Nathaniel Taylor, attacked the doctrine of original sin, and reinforced the freedom of man's will. The New Divinity, as this camp came to be known, broke down the forensic system of Calvinism and landed somewhere between the other two camps. Although God was sovereign still and conversion was still the work of God, certain means could be used to place the person in a state where God's Spirit could, and would, deal with him. Since no man was depraved but through his own acts of sin (you are a sinner because you sin, not you sin because you are a sinner with a nature passed on by Adam's fall - to the New Divinity, sin is "original" only in the sense that it is universal) man was a determinate part of the process, not a passive force acted upon. This fit perfectly with the America that embraced and exalted individuals who entered into the wilderness and accomplished great things. Man was a free, national, responsible creature and it was his responsibility to respond to what God had done through Christ. The New Divinity took theology and joined it with the growing beliefs of an expanding muscular America. But there was still an uncertainty of how to flesh out this new creed in American religion, especially revivalism. What would the means be? How would revivals be conducted, even begun? It would take Charles Finney to establish the means of revivalism that would give body to the New divinity.
The significant effect of the New Divinity on revivalism was a reduction or denial altogether of an arbitrary grace of God which elected some to Heaven and most to Hell. Finney and these preachers would proceed on the assumption that every individual had a free will and thus a moral ability to work out his own salvation. Calvinism, with its stress on predestination, was pushed to the background. Instead, the New Divinity revivalist concentrated on calling sinners to repent and submit to God without the confusion of offering any clear doctrinal interpretation of what these terms meant. The normal 19th century American had never been very fond of the nearly non-existent God of the Deist and was ready to return to a Christianity where the arbitrary God of wrath had been replaced with a comprehensible God of love and where he was informed that religion was a reasonable service in which God merely asked the acceptance of a freely proffered salvation for all. They were open to a practical theology that respected their ability as men. This was the results of New Haven theology and it gave Finney the doctrinal platform on which to stand.
There was another element which also contributed to the flux of religion during this period. By the mid-18th century, Americans were again becoming increasingly preoccupied with secular matters. Questions like predestination, the right mode of baptism and salvation itself didn't seem as urgent as war, Indians, and nation building. The optimistic attitude of the successful Revolution against England and consolidation of the Republic was disappearing in the face of division and change. Political issues were uncertain. The era of the elite had become the era of the common man with all the upheaval change brings. The very fabric of society seemed to be in question. Preconceived norms were disappearing, new manners were inapplicable. The country had entered the period after the Revolution with great anticipation and though great strides were being made, the kind of future people desired was not easily realized. The result was a vague uneasiness. The change from the agrarian culture of Thomas Jefferson to the market revolt of Andy Jackson was shaking up all aspects of American life, even religion.
In response, the American populace, having rejected the Judeo-Christian philosophy encoded in Calvinism as largely irrelevant, looked to secular success to ease their fears. They found it in the Enlightenment concepts of natural law and innate rights. The Millennium of the Puritans gave way to its political form, the Manifest Destiny of America. The Ten Commandments were replaced by a common sense moral law that sought to hold communities together. The authority of the Word of God moved over for the certainty of science and the work ethic was no longer justified for the glory of God but now for the sake of prosperity. America would solidify during this time of change a civil religion that, come revivals or not, it would never lose. It was therefore no surprise that Christianity, under the attack of the Deists (Thomas Paine's Age of Ethan Allen's Reason the Only Oracle of Man, and Elihu Palmer's Principles of Nature are excellent examples), the inward retreat of traditional Christianity as seen in Calvinism, and the middle-ground blandness of the New Haven theologians, should find itself by the end of the 18th century battered, broken, and bankrupt. Ministers would write of the increase in impiety, of an almost universal inattention to religious concerns and meetings. The state of American religion was gloomy and depressing. America desperately needed again revival.
James McGready and Timothy Dwight
It is helpful to see the Second Great Awakening as occurring in three stages with the first two phases as preliminary, leading up to the more influential third phase under Charles Finney. The first phase, from 1797 to around 1805, was centered in the west around Kentucky and Tennessee. It introduced the "camp meeting" and was characterized by emotionalism and fervent, extended preaching. The chief figure during this time was a Presbyterian minister, James McGready, emotional in his style, coarse and inelegant in his manner. McGready mixed well with his frontier audience and found mild success in his work among them. In 1797 there was a visible increase of spirituality and conversions among his congregations and McGready began to encourage his people to pray and prepare for an even greater work of God (McGready followed Edwards' mode of praying down a revival rather than working one up). It appeared his prayers were answered in June 1800. On that occasion, McGready's three congregations joined together to hear him and other ministers preach almost continually during their four day semiannual time of special services. The Spirit seemed to fall in a unique way and by the last day of services the camp was full of sinners pricked to the heart desiring salvation. Sensing the possible beginnings of revival, McGready and the other ministers held another series of services a month later at Gasper River, Kentucky. Although the term "camp meeting" was not actually used until late 1802, this was the first camp meeting with camp sites, wagons, provisions, informal services, and four days of continual outdoor preaching. The climax of this "summer rain of grace" as some called it came in the massive Cane Ridge camp meeting of August 1801 when a huge crowd of over 20,000 people came from as far away as Ohio and Tennessee to participate. It was at Cane Ridge that the unique excesses associated with this phase of the Second Great Awakening surfaced. There was jerking (convulsions), rolling over and over like a log, running until exhausted, dancing both gentle and ungraceful, barking like a dog along with shouts and groans and cries long into the night. Frances Trollope, a proper Southern lady, went to the meeting to see what would happen and she got an eyeful:
Above a hundred persons, nearly all females, came forward uttering howhngs and groans so terrible that I shall never cease to shudder when I recall them.... They were soon all lying on the ground in an indescribable confusion of heads and legs. They threw about their limbs with such incessant and violent motion that I was every instant expecting some serious accident to occur. But how am I to describe the sounds that proceeded from this strange mass of human beings? Hysterical sobbings, convulsive groans, shrieks and screams the most appalling, burst forth on all sides.... As if their hoarse and overstrained voices failed to make noise enough, they soon began to clap their hands violently. At length, the atrocious wickedness of this horrible scene increased to a degree of grossness that drove us from our station; we returned to the carriage about three o'clock in the morning and passed the remainder of the night in listening to the very-increasing tumult.'
There is no record as to whether Mrs. Trollope ever again visited camp meeting. These excesses soon caused friction and schism among the religious community. McGready was the most successful of the revivalists (and one of only five Presbyterian clergy who participated in the Kentucky revivals) and the only one who did not defect from his Calvinistic principles. However, by 1803 the Presbyterian Church was convinced that these revivals led to immorality, heresy, and hypocrisy. By 1805, formal charges of heresy were brought before the Synod of Kentucky against all five. Although McGready escaped the charge of heresy, he lived out the rest of his life under a cloud of suspension. Finally, he left revivalism and served as a missionary in the area of Indiana until his death in 1817.
McGready was caught in the middle of the dispute about revival and its change to a new form. He was unacceptable to his fellow Presbyterians because of his connections with his revivalist friends and their excesses (which he did not approve of or promote) and he was unacceptable to the revivalists because he refused to come over to their non-ecclesiastical and anti-Calvinistic position. What set him apart from the others interested in revival was his ability to remain true to his doctrinal beliefs and stay in the Edwardian school of revivalism. McGready was convinced that revival was inherently theological (unlike those who were beginning to feel that theology interfered with revival) and that the question of conversion, a crucial one to him, was ultimately a theological one. Failure to distinguish between real and false conversion would destroy revivalism, he felt. If counterfeit conversions were allowed and even encouraged by a loose man net of evangelism, the revival itself would become counterfeit, creating more harm than good. Therefore, revival conversions had to be interpreted and governed by the norms of Scripture in the grid-work of theology (much as Edwards had argued in Distinguishing Marks). Revivals were like all other forms of religious activity; they must be judged by their theological soundness since only sound doctrine results in sound conversions. McGready saw the frontier as the beginning for a new world very much in the same manner as the Puritans had a century earlier. From it he envisioned a spreading of the gospel throughout the whole earth. McGready's dream was that the frontier would become God's new colony on earth marked by the piety of the Puritans, the doctrinal framework of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the commitment to the high standards of morality and education that had reigned supreme in New England. This colony (or paradise, as McGready saw it) would be established through genuine conversions fostered in genuine revivals by a genuine work of God. Rather than rejecting revivalism as had most conservative Calvinists, the rightthinking minister used every means possible to alarm and awaken Christless sinners to the horror of their sin and the grace of God in Jesus. Unfortunately, McGready was swimming against the stream of modern development without the help of his theological brethren. The frontier American cared little for the intricate educational system of New England, the irrelevant Calvinism of long ago, and above all else the piety of the Puritans.
Yet McGready fought on until his trial in 1805. There were two great theological truths threatened by this modern form of revivalism, he would argue with his revivalist brethren. The first was the total depravity of man. McGready insisted that only the power of God could bring about conversion because of the enormity of sin, while most revivalists had moved on to the New Haven concept that God had given man freedom to move towards repentance and conversion in his own power. To McGready, the purpose of the revivalist was to convince people of the horrors of an unconverted state. They must despair over their own powerlessness and learn to depend entirely upon grace, the act by which God calls and saves a man. Most revivalists made grace meaningless, a vague sort of desire on God's part to save without any surety of accomplishment. Everything had changed. Suddenly it was all dependent on man's will and the preacher's persuasion. The revival McGready cherished was in danger of losing any theological moorings at all. Some were even saying that the revival was the result of genuine relief and release as those demonic Presbyterian doctrines were removed. This was the second great danger to McGready. The very nature and purpose of revivalism was changing. The purpose of revival was not to get audiences to stand up and claim a divine birthright but to bring them to their knees in preparation for divine showers. Revivalism becomes dangerous when the very event of revival is taken from God and placed in the hands of man to manipulate and control. McGready sought to retain the Edwardian view of revival in the midst of a changing theological culture. But by the time Finney took over the revivalist movement, it was clear how greatly McGready had failed.
The second phase of the Second Great Awakening (roughly from 1802 to 1825) saw revivalism further redefined and Calvinism more undermined in a much more subtle way than that of the frontier revivalists. The key figure here was Timothy Dwight, who became president of Yale in 1795. Students openly scorned the Christian faith and ridiculed a professing Christian; the sophomore class contained none. The college church had dwindled down to only two members. It was so bad that someone stole the Bible Dwight used in chapel services. Nevertheless, Dwight preached and debated with the unbelieving students. Believing in a direct frontal assault, Dwight challenged and preached and prayed fervently. And his patient work paid off. In the spring of 1802 a momentous revival occurred. One third of Yale's 230 students became professing Christians. Over 30 of them would enter the ministry. Conversions continued and Dwight, disapproving of emotionalism and fanaticism in any form, kept tight control over what was happening. Unlike the earlier Western phase of the revival, orderliness typified all that was done. During the spring break, the young men carried the revival with them throughout New England. Other schools were also touched with the fires of revival and revival continued in stages of ebb and flow. Under Dwight's continuing ministry, revival grew strong again in 1808, faded somewhat by the end of the year and came in strength again to Yale in 1813 and 1815.
While the outward style of the second phase of the Second Great Awakening was quite different, its theological framework was nothing more than a continuation of the direction already begun. Dwight, building on the concept of man's free will and active involvement in conversion, believed that the unregenerate man could respond in a manner acceptable to God. Agonizing prayers for deliverance and faith in Christ by sinners were accepted by God and therefore ministers ought to encourage sinners to respond in the right way ("whosoever will may come"). As others around him, Dwight rejected human inability and accented instead man's choice in salvation. What was new was Dwight's understanding that God had done all He would do and now it was time for man to choose quickly. This did away with the old Puritan idea of a prolonged period of conviction and replaced it with one in which conversions should come within a relatively brief period. This set the stage for the invitational system so well used by Finney and every American revivalist that followed. An example in the change in outlook toward man's ability can be seen in the revival sermons of Edward D. Griffin (1770-1837). In his sermon "Taking the Kingdom by Violence" based on Matthew 11:12, Griffin argued that all men are commanded to take heaven by force. To the objection that wicked man is unable, Griffin responds: "Although means cannot subdue it, they (sinners) ought to subdue it themselves. It is invincible to all others but not invincible to themselves.... And although the strength or inclination is given by God, the transferring of the affections to God is the work of the creature."2 This is a far cry from Edwards and his understanding of the abilities of unregenerate man given by one who was proud to say that he followed in Edwards' steps. All of this flows out of the conviction found in all New Divinity men that God never asks men to do what they are unable to do in themselves. Here, Griffin gracefully articulates how this leads to the immediate call for conversion:
Others say, I cannot change my own heart, and God does not see fit to change it; what can I do but wait his time? This you say to justify yourselves and to cast the blame on God.... And yet you will not move. You are about to let a savior go, though in all probability it is the last time that he will pass this way in season to open your eyes ... there is solemn reason to fear that you may not live to see another, or if you should, that you will be left like the heath in the desert.... 0 if you have any reason left, awake without delay and take the kingdom of heaven by violence.3
There is a very small step from this plea to Finney's "God has done everything He can. The rest is up to you."
Secondly, Dwight argued that while revival was obviously the work of the Holy Spirit, still God invited men to institute and stir up revival by their prayers and preaching. While this may not seem like a major change, it was. Edwards truly desired revival and had preached and prayed for it. Yet he was genuinely surprised (and greatly pleased) when revival came. He did not think that he had started the revival. That would have been a great presumption on his part. Instead, he saw himself as caught up in the work God began. Dwight deliberately set out to start a revival in Yale College and he calculated the means to achieve his purposes. As noted historian Sidney Mears wrote in an attempt to express the difference: "To Edwards, the revival was a by-product of his shared experience; to the latter men (Dwight, Nathaniel Taylor, and other New Divinity men), revivals were the calculated means to an end."4 This gave Finney the doctrinal basis to place all of revival, its beginning and continuation, into the hands of the revivalists and the power of conversion in the hands of the sinner.
By the time we reach the third phase of the Second Great Awakening (1825 to 1835), the change in the American concept of revivalism is complete. Where Jonathan Edwards saw revivals as miracles in which ministers had no more agency in producing than they had in producing a thunderstorm, Charles Finney, the inheritor of Timothy Dwight's mantle and eventually the recognized head of the Second Great Awakening, defined revival as "a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means - as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means."5 Where Edwards had seen promotion of a revival as the involvement in something already underway (not unlike jumping on a moving carriage), Finney saw promotion as the act of initiation or creation (not unlike starting a carriage ourselves). Revival was no longer a miraculous work of God but had become the determined actions of men, the reasonable work of man. Men no longer waited on the mercy of God, seeking His possible grace. Heaven was now taken by force. The door opened by Dwight was removed by Finney. The worst fears of James McGready were realized. The Calvinistic revivals of Jonathan Edwards were overthrown to be replaced by the audience-centered evangelicalism of Charles Finney. Revivalism would never be the same again.
The Life of Charles Finney
Charles Finney was born in 1792 in Warren, Connecticut, the seventh child of unbelieving parents. He entered law in 1818 and was admitted to the bar in 1820. Following a dramatic conversion in 1821, Finney determined to enter the ministry. After some informal theological training from his Presbyterian pastor, most of which he rejected, Finney began to preach in the small towns of western New York. His early success in obtaining conversions showed him to be a man to be reckoned with. Coupled with the dynamic nature of his conversion, for Finney never did things halfhearted, his successes led him to adopt a pragmatic and dramatic approach to revivalism. The dynamic approach showed itself in the need of instant responses, the more the better. The pragmatic approach meant that the unspoken ground rules of evangelism were changed. Finney's legal training gave him a strong bent toward human logic and reason rather than the mysteries of Christianity. Like many Americans of the 1800s, Finney required all knowledge, theology included, to justify itself before the common sense naturalism of the average man. Gone were the mysterious and transcendent qualities of religion in general, and revivals in particular, that even greater thinkers like Edwards had had to bow before in humble submission. Just as the American society in general was moving from a Puritanical Christian society under the mysterious grace of God, "a city on the hill," to a secular community built around man's comprehension and superiority, a nation with a "manifest destiny," so too revivalism reflected its society as it moved from a "surprising work of God" to a reasonable act of man. With this change in outlook came a change in method. The major method of communicating religious thought, preaching, was modified. Finney always saw himself more as a lawyer pleading God's case than as a preacher expounding exegetical truth. Revival preaching was arguing before a jury. As Finney remarks in his autobiography:
Ministers ... do not exercise good sense in addressing the people. They are afraid of repetition. They use language not well understood by the common people. Their illustrations are not taken from the common pursuits of life.... Now if lawyers should take such a course, they would ruin themselves and their cause.... Our object ... in addressing a jury is to get their minds settled before they leave the jury-box; not to make a speech in language but partially understood by them; not to let ourselves out in illustrations entirely above their apprehension; not to display our oratory, and then let them go. We are set on getting a verdict. Hence we are set upon being understood. We mean to convince them.'
And as is so often the case in religious history, when the outlook changes and the method of communication changes, the changing of the message itself is not far behind. In his legal training, Finney had been impressed with Blackstone's argument in his discussion of crime and guilt that only those violations of the law that were committed voluntarily (that is, with a free will) could be justifiably punished. This simple legal assumption forced Finney to replace the Edwardian reliance on God's sovereignty with his own accent on free will and human ability. Edwards' understanding of Calvinism must be rejected for to believe otherwise was to make God a tyrant.
God, it is said, requires what man cannot do. And does He know that man cannot do it? Most certainly. Thus He has no apology for requiring it and the requirement is most unreasonable.... But again, upon what penalty does God require what man cannot do? The threatened penalty is eternal death! Yes, eternal death, according to the views of those who plead inability as an excuse. God requires me, on pain of eternal death to do that which He knows I cannot do. Truly this condemns God in the worst sense. You might as well charge God outright with being an infinite tyrant.... The law of our reason demands it [emphasis mine].7
God the tyrant was removed. But so was God the King. Man now reigned by his logic and law and that was to permeate and shape the character of modern revivalism.
In 1825, Finney's revival meetings in Westerville, New York, began to attract widespread attention. From there, he strengthened his grip on American revivalism with a series of successful tours of the eastern seaboard. By 1829, his New Measures were the religious rage. However, along with these amazing successes came criticism arising from doctrinal concerns and old fashioned jealousy. Finney took little heed to them, however, as he concluded his first real revival tour in 1830 with a revival meeting in New York City. But this was all a prelude to even greater things. The years 1830-1831 witnessed his most successful and most highly publicized revival held in Rochester, New York, where thousands were converted. The Rochester revival was undeniably remarkable for the widespread efforts it caused. Instead of being confined to a relatively small geographical area as Finney's previous revivals had been, this revival spread. Thousands were touched at distances as great as 100 miles and more. Revival was breaking out, it seemed, everywhere. It was clear that God's blessings and His power was on this unusual man with his unique methods. Indeed this revival campaign served as a watershed for Finney. Prior to Rochester, he was still suspect to multitudes, especially the clergy. After Rochester, he was widely accepted. The New Measures, modern revivalism, were here to stay.
Yet Finney was a controversial figure, even early on. Many of the older ministers still had concerns about this new emphasis in the common man. Asahel Nettleton, a New Divinity minister early in Finney's ministry gave voice to his opinions of this new revivalist. Nettleton himself had been a major preacher and evangelist in Connecticut in 1816 and was definitely of the old Edwardian school. Nettleton's style was to end a service of preaching with prayer and then to quietly speak brief words of application to his audiences: "I love to talk to you, you are so still. It looks as though the Spirit of God were here. Go away as still as possible. Do not talk by the way lest you forget your own hearts.... Retire to your closets, bow before God; and give yourselves to Him this night."8 He held no protracted meetings nor did he adopt any of these new measures. His concern as he would often say was for the right preaching of the Word not for various effects on the audiences. That he would leave in the hands of the Lord. Nettleton believed in leaving the convicted in their conviction for this drove then away from all human dependency: "Distressing as it is and cruel as it may seem, it is necessary for them to feel that no arm but God's can help them."9 Nettleton never believed that a church could raise up a revival at any time under their own strength. That would just be the carnal work of man. A real revival of true religion depended on one thing only, the sovereign interposition of God. Thus he rejected the anxious bench, the new measures, and, to some extent, Finney himself. As he wrote to a friend in 1835, "I do not oppose these measures because they are new but because of the mischief which they had done in bringing the very name of religion into disgrace." It also seemed obvious to him that many of these so-called converts soon lost all appearance of conversion, but, convinced of their salvation, they became conceited and gospel-hard, giving a bad name to the Christ they claimed.
Feeling the Scriptural command to be reconciled with his brother in Christ, however, Nettleton did seek to speak to Finney about his concerns. In the winter of 1826-1827, while preaching in Albany, New York, Nettleton took time to visit Finney in nearby Troy. During this time, he twice visited the younger preacher articulating his concerns, hoping to harmonize views and practices. He found Finney set in his ways, flush with growing success, unmoved by his theological arguments. Finney was listening to a different language than theological, a language that achieved his desire to see men moved in some manner for Christ, if only for a time. Finney's response to the elder minister was to warn caution lest he find fault with God and His methods. After that, the war of words between the workers of the new measures and the Edwardian ministers heated up in New England, Nettleton wrote Finney one last time: "What is worse than all the rest, these ministers and Christians who do not fall in to defend these men (of Finney's) and their measures are denounced as cold and stupid and dead and enemies to revivals."10 There was no response from Finney. Eventually Nettleton withdrew from the fight, giving revivalism up to these new ways but never accepting them: "Such is in my conviction of the tendency of these views to corrupt revivals and produce spurious conversions, that if all New England should go over, I should prefer to stand alone." Eventually it must have seemed that he did.
Resisting all who might attack him or cause him to stray from his chosen path, Finney continued on. In 1831-1832, he sought to consolidate his success by invading the opposition's stronghold, Boston. It was there in the autumn of 1831 that Finney preached his most famous sermon "Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts" from Ezekiel 18:31, on the basis of which he was charged with heresy by the Rev. Asa Rand. Nothing much came out of the charges of heresy except for Finney's final break with most organized denominationalism. In 1832 he accepted the pastorate of the independent Chatham Street Chapel in New York City where he served until 1835. Tiring of the ministry, Finney entered the teaching profession in 1835 when he became Professor of Theology (and later President) of Oberlin College. While there, he wrote about revival (Lectures on Revival of Religion), theology (Lectures on Systematic Theology), and himself (Memoirs). Yet even to the very end, Finney never gave up his first love of revivalism (as the controversy on his view of perfectionism showed, Finney, for all his pride in logic and reason, was always a better revivalist than theologian) and he continued on a lesser scale to hold revivals in America and England until his death in 1875).
Finney's Shaping of American Revivalism
Finney greatly changed the nature of American revivalism almost beyond belief. In the areas of theology and methodology, there is almost no connection to the previous Edwardian form of revivalism. In the area of theology, Finney did not so much move revivalism from the Edwardian Calvinism to an Arminian evangelicalism (Finney was more of a Pelagian than an Arminian) as he solidified the changes begun by the New Haven theology and made it accessible in the eyes of rationalistic America. He built on the foundation of the changes in American theology and shaped them to fit his purposes. The editor of the conservative Congregational religious journal, Literary and Theological Review, wrote in 1838 that "Mr. Finney of all others has taught the New Haven theology in its greatest purity and has ventured to push its principles to their legitimate results." Indeed, at the heart of Finney's theological expression was his extreme rejection of original sin and its effects on man. Man was not unable to respond, trapped in the results of some sin occurring eons ago. Calvinism had assumed that if God willed a man to be saved, it would come to pass. Since salvation was seen as a total work of God, the New England preachers of Edwards' day had accented the inability of the sinner to better his own condition. He was dead in his sins, because of the original sin of Adam and Eve. We have already noted that Timothy Dwight and the New Divinity had moved away from that position but not with the force and ranker of Finney. Finney openly repudiated the main tenets of what had been considered less than 100 years earlier the orthodox position. The attack on the inability of man became Finney's battle cry. Finney was a lawyer, a preacher, a revivalist, not a theologian held hostage in an academic ivory tower far away from the maddening crowds. He was, for most of his career, in the midst of people with a frontier mentality, a "can do" attitude. What was important was not some abstract truth but something that worked. Finney was a realist, and that doctrine was to be used that did the most good, that secured the most conversions. If Calvinism, or some part of it, hindered men from coming to Christ, then it had to be modified or removed. Finney's test of a doctrine (and as well his followers) of a doctrine became the results it was able to achieve in conversions and right living. It wasn't that Finney wasn't able to think on these things but he refused to for the simple reason that doctrine stifled revivals. (Interestingly enough this seems to have also been the view of a young Billy Graham, since repudiated).
Thus, due to his exaltation of man and his ability to reason and act, Finney truly came to hate Calvinism with all his heart: "When I came to read the (Calvinistic) confession of faith and saw the passages that were quoted to sustain these particular positions, I was absolutely ashamed of it. I could not feel any respect for a document that would undertake to impose on mankind such dogmas as these."" Rarely will you find a sermon by Finney that does not attack Calvinism at some point. His messages were designed to combat traditional belief by arguing that men were sinners by choice and could easily change the situation by exercising their own free wills. Man's only inability was his voluntary unwillingness to do what he ought to do about his sins. Responsibility was commensurate with ability. God never would, nor could He, demand of us what we are unable to do. What held sinners back from salvation was their own obstinacy and lack of determination. People were endowed by nature with all the powers of moral agency and what was required of them was not an alteration of these powers but a usage of them in the service of their Creator. The revival call to "throw yourself on the mercy of God" became "make up your minds." From our position in history, so surrounded by the remains of modem theology, we perhaps do not appreciate the fullness of the change but it was a major shift in theology and methodology. Jonathan Edwards was outdated, a historical relic, and Charles Finney had slain the beast. If not dead, Calvinism was at least mortally wounded in the arena of revivalism.
The practice had been, I believe, universal, to set anxious sinners to praying for a new heart, and to using means for their own conversion.... I tried to show them that all delay was only an evasion of present duty; that all praying for a new heart, was only trying to throw the responsibility of their conversion upon God; and that all efforts to do duty, while they did not give their hearts to God, were hypocritical and delusive.'
This doctrinal understanding (not yet a system) of Finney's did create some problems for him, however. For one thing, to be consistent, Finney had to say that regeneration was not a physical change, a change in the character (substance) of the soul but merely a change in the overall desire of the mind. Conversion was an act of the will, not so much a change of the heart. The work of the Holy Spirit then was reduced from one who changes hearts and actually accomplishes and applies salvation to one who, by moral influence, seeks to persuade people through internal motives (usually self-centered ones) to embrace the truth of the gospel. This led, as well, to a different point of view as to the work of the preacher. His job was no longer primarily to interpret and expound the truth of the Scriptures. His role was to persuade people to act on their convictions using whatever means at his command; to sway (perhaps even manipulate) people into making the right choice for whatever reason. Perhaps the most controversial novelty flowing from Finney's theological outlook was the concept of perfectionism. If it is true (and to Finney, it was an obvious truth) that responsibility demands ability lest injustice occurs, and if Christ calls us to be as perfect as God (and He does), then the responsibility for perfection demands that we have the ability to be perfect. As Finney would later express it in his book on Christian living: "Entire and permanent sanctification is attainable in this life.... It is self-evident that entire obedience to God's law is possible on the grounds of natural ability. To deny this is to deny that a man is able to do as well as he can. The very language of the law is such as to level its claims to the capacity of the This stance was similar to John Wesley's view of sanctification and did not create much reaction. However, Finney went further. In a lecture given December 16, 1840, on I Corinthians 10:12, Finney crossed the theological line of orthodoxy when he charged, "However much grace may have done, it has not changed our nature. Our constitutional susceptibilities remain the same." Not only had Finney placed salvation in the hands of the people, he now argued that salvation didn't change their very nature. Regeneration has been fully removed from the essence of a person and placed solely in the mind, where decisions are made. Even the New Divinity school had not dared to go so far.
However controversial Finney's theology was, it was his methodology that drew the most fire. In the beginning, Finney's methods were very conventional. Much prayer, secret and social, public preaching, personal conversation, and home visitation were his primary techniques. Every evening he would invite those who had been recently converted to assemble in the front of the church for brief instruction and prayer. By the time of the Utica revival in 1826, Finney was beginning to change his methods. His dramatic showmanship, coarse and inflammatory language, and the desire for "excitements" needed to be toned down for urban areas. There Finney introduced what would become known as the "new measures." These innovations included public prayer by women in mixed audiences, protracted series of daily meetings, immediate church membership for converts, and most famous of all, the anxious bench. Finney was, of course, seeking to remove as best he could the unpredictability in God's working and replace it with the predictability of human choice. If men had to be persuaded into the Kingdom, then persuade them, he would.
What do politicians do? They get up meetings, circulate handbills and pamphlets, blaze away in the newspapers, send ships about the streets on wheels with flags and sailors, send conveyances all over the town, with handbills, to bring people to the polls - all to gain attention to their cause and elect their candidate. All these are their "measures" and for their end they are wisely calculated. The object is to get up an excitement and bring the people out.... I do not mean to say that their measures are pious, or right, but only that they are wise, in the sense that they are the appropriate application of means to the end."14
Everything was done for a purpose, to increase the bottom line of conversions.
It was in Rochester, the scene of his greatest success that Finney added what was to become a staple of modem revivalism, the anxious bench. Before, there had been separate meetings for those who were seriously enough impressed with the state of their souls to request instruction on what they should do to be saved. There Finney would have short conversations with as many as possible and finally address the whole group on the misconception that they had to wait for God to convert them. Instead Finney would call upon all who were ready to submit and commit themselves to God right then. Afterwards, he would pray for them and dismiss them. Yet Finney often felt this was not enough. He felt the need to make an impression on all his listeners that they were expected to act at once, to give up their hearts to God immediately. He needed something that would call them to act publicly, to respond immediately, to make a lasting impact on these new converts. He needed some overt physical activity:
At Rochester, if I recollect right, I first introduced this measure.... I made a call, I think for the first time, upon all that class of persons whose convictions were so ripe that they were willing to renounce their sins and give themselves to God, to come forward to certain seats which I requested to be vacated, and offer themselves up to God, while we made them subjects of prayer.15
It was a subtle difference but an important one. Now people were coming forward not to publicly announce that they had been saved but to be saved itself.
These changes, of course, did not go unnoticed. We have already noted Asahel Nettleton. Others also rose up against these new devices. John Nevin in his 1844 book, The Anxious Bench, condemned the practice he described as "revival machinery, solemn tricks for effect, decision displays at the bidding of the preacher, genuflections and prostrations in the aisle or around the altar, noise and disorder, extravagance and rant, mechanical conversions, justification by feeling rather than faith, and encouragement ministered to all fanatical impressions."'6 It was unfashionable to entertain deep thought or intellectual piety. These measures, to Nevin, led to shallow experiences and spurious conversions. Surely, Nevin felt, all of this would lead to a "sickly Christianity," defective in doctrine and practice. Even more, Nevin argued, it had the problem of being rank heresy, with a shallow, Pelagianizing theory of religion running through it from beginning to end:
The fact of sin is acknowledged but not in its true extent. The idea of a new spiritual creation is admitted but not in its proper radical and comprehensive form. The ground of the sinner's salvation is made to lie at last in his own separate person.... Yet that which is born of flesh is flesh.'?
Finney's answer to such criticism was consistent to the answer he had for other criticisms. "Show me the fruits of your ministry; and if they so far exceed mine as to give me evidence that you have found a more excellent way, I will adopt your views.... Yet the results justify my methods."18 And in the pragmatic results-oriented culture of frontier America, it flourished. By the time of D. L. Moody, the anxious bench had become an indispensable fixture of modem revivalism (though Moody himself was to replace it with the anxious room so not as to cause anyone undue embarrassment).
Finney's brilliance was found in that he understood the American culture of his time and knew what needed to be done to be successful. Revival preaching based on common sense reasoning and revival practices based on pragmatic purposes got results. And what worked was right. Powerful preaching, clear and applicable to all, protracted meetings which aided in making a more profound impression of divine matters upon the minds of the people, and the anxious bench which pushed matters to an issue and forced people to decide and immediately act on their decision were the real ingredients of revivalism. To attack one element was to attack all and to reveal yourself to be an enemy of the salvation of souls. Finney had merged the methods of frontier revivalism with the theology of the New Divinity and from this raw material create an even more radical form of revivalism, one all his own. And thus Charles Finney became the father of modern revivalism.
Lectures on Revivals of Religion
In 1835, Finney produced the most significant work of his career, the Lectures on Revivals of Religion. Based on a series of 22 lectures given to his church, Chatham Street Chapel, this book constituted a professional handbook of revival techniques that succeeding generations of modem revivalists would turn to for authority and inspiration. It is still readily available in most Christian book stores today. In the realm of theology, it clearly marks the end of Calvinism and the final acceptance of Arminian evangelicalism as the theological force behind American revivalism. Finney attacks those views opposed his as "the traditions of the elders" and offers instead 13 years of extensive preaching experience and shrewd observations. The focus here is definitely on the practical rather than the theological. Unlike the previous writings of Edwards, Finney's main function is not to describe or defend revivalism. It is assumed, quite rightly, that revivalism is by now largely an accepted part of Christendom. Meetings are just meetings, even commonplace. What Finney desires to accomplish in his book is a defense of his methodology coupled with an explanation of how others might produce revivals themselves. Man is no longer on the side watching the mighty acts of God. Now he has moved to center stage, in the heart of the action, making things happen.
In the very first lecture, Finney states the viewpoint and agenda that has shaped American revivalism ever since: "A revival is not a miracle, nor dependent on a miracle, in any sense. It is a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means - as much so as any other effect produced by the application of means.... A revival is as naturally a result of the use of the appropriate means as a crop is of the use of its appropriate means."" To think otherwise was absurd. If men can change their hearts and respond in the right way under the right influences, then men can promote revivals. When a revival occurs, backslidden Christians repent and sinners are converted. There are three agents used in revivals, all equally involved: God arranges events and employs the truth to its greatest effect; the preacher gives the message of the truth, the Word of God, and seeks to persuade; finally, the sinner himself, influenced by God, the preacher, and the Word, responds in the right manner and revival occurs. Here, we notice a major change in the meaning of the word "promote." In Edwards' day, to promote a revival was to recognize what God was doing and actively seek to be involved (promote) in that which was already under way. Now, to promote a revival was to initiate one by the right use of methods adapted specially to that object. Indeed by the end of the first chapter Edwardian revivalism is briefly examined and solemnly discarded.
Lecture two tells us when to expect a revival. When the church is in a backslidden state -when there is no love in the church, when there are instead fights and jealousies, when members fall into gross and scandalous sins - then there is a need for revival. Only when a revival is the only possible thing that can wipe out the reproach of a church and restore it to the honor and glory of Christ can one be expected. When people begin to pray and confess their sins, when ministers and professors are willing to have God work by whatever method He chooses (here Finney is thinking of those dinosaurs who so quickly reject his methods), then a revival can be expected. Ultimately you can have a revival when you want one:
You see why you have not a revival. It is only because you do not want one. Because you are neither praying for it, nor feeling anxious for it. I appeal to your own consciences: Are you making the efforts now to promote a revival?"
With lecture three, Finney moves from his brief theological perspective to a more practical outworking. How do Christians expedite the coming of a revival? Simple! First, by breaking up the fallow ground of their hearts. A believer is to "prepare your mind to bring forth fruit unto God." After developing the right attitude, Christians must act on this right thinking by seeking to subdue all sins, to be constant in prayer and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. They are to deal wisely with sinners for winning souls requires wisdom. Take care to note what kind of sinner with which you are dealing. The careless sinner is one who has no interest in spiritual things. He is to be warned by the intelligent preaching of the gospel. The awakened sinner, however, is ready to attend to spiritual matters with some degree of seriousness. Here the evangelist is to pour light upon his mind. Hopefully, this will lead him into becoming a convicted sinner, one who knows his plight and its remedy. At this stage, the wise believer is to help him resolve whatever difficulty is preventing him from being converted. Now wisdom is required here for the Bible has laid down no specific course of measures for the promotion of revivals of religion but has left it to ministers to adopt such means as are wisely calculated to secure the end. Thus, a truly wise minister will always be successful. He will always get results.
In the midst of all this, preaching is crucial for widespread revival. In fact, Finney is convinced that most men, when they come out of seminary, are absolutely unready for revival because of the poor quality of preaching they are taught.
I have known a minister in the midst of a revival, while surrounded with anxious sinners, leave off labouring to convert souls, for the purpose of "indoctrinating" the young converts, for fear somebody else should indoctrinate them before him. And there the revival stops! Either his doctrine was not true, or it was not preached in the right way.'
Preaching was crucial to Finney for it was the chief means of persuasion. Indeed, the design of preaching is not to make men bored or quiet but to drive them to action. Preaching thus must be extemporaneous, conversational, colloquial, repetitious, practical, lively, and to the point. Only then is it persuasive.
But what about these "new measures"? In lecture 14, Finney reminds us that like others, religious people tend to accept new ideas slowly. Remember that most of the current customs we hold dear met opposition when first introduced. So it is not surprising that the new measures have met with some opposition. In time, Finney prophesied correctly, they will be as fully accepted as current customs are today. Especially opposed have been anxious meetings, the habit of holding personal conversations with anxious sinners, and the anxious seat where people are urged immediately to come forward to find Christ. However, never forget, Finney counsels, that these means have been found most successful in practice and thus obviously have God's blessings on them. . Protracted meetings, another complaint against Finney, are not new but have been practiced as early as the Jewish festivals. They are necessary to make a powerful impression of divine things on the minds of the people. Done correctly, they do not interfere with the duties of family nor business nor private spirituality as is accused. If you wish to speak of a useless protracted meeting, Finney says, talk about the Presbyterian General Assembly where no one has ever been saved and probably each year causes a jubilee in Hell. It is, however, the anxious bench, Finney notes, the opportunity for convicted sinners to come and receive Christ, that has received more opposition than all the others put together. People misunderstand it. It is used to break down pride and encourage sinners to act.
Preach to (the convicted sinner) and at the moment, he thinks he is willing to do anything; he thinks he is determined to serve the Lord; but bring him to the test; call on him to do one thing, to take one step, that will identify him with the people of God or cross his pride, and his pride comes up and he refuses; his delusion is brought out, and he finds himself a lost sinner still; whereas, if you had not done it, he might have gone away flattering himself that he was a Christian."
Thus, the anxious bench done rightly does not create false hopes and delusions as some have argued but rather prevents them.
Lecture 15, on the hindrances to revivals, is one of Finney's most heated and intemperate chapters directed against all those who would oppose him (and thus revivalism and thus God). This is because Finney's heart's desire is to save sinners, and to have so-called Christians try to stop God's work because it doesn't agree with their idea of how God should and would work is without doubt the greatest betrayal. It has always been the case, Finney notes, whenever any of God's servants do anything in His cause and it appears that they will succeed, that Satan will attempt to divert their minds and nullify their labors. Be careful, for believers can cause a revival to cease. It will cease when Christians believe it is going to cease, when they believe it should cease, when they become mechanical in the attempts to promote it, or when they grow proud of it (all statements Edwards would have agreed with). Revivals cease when speculation on abstract doctrines grow up, when Christians lose the spirit of brotherly love, when believers cease practicing self-denial, and when division arises over methodology. Indeed nothing is more certain to overthrow God's work of revival than slandering revivals and revivalists, ecclesiastical difficulties, and censoriousness. These acts grieve the Holy Spirit and bring revival to a quick end. Instead those ministers who oppose revival should humble themselves and repent along with revivalists who have displayed the wrong kind of spirit (echoing the very concerns Edwards had expressed earlier). Then all Christians could join together to expand the effects of revival into the social and political realm ushering in the millennium of the Lord. Godly men would take the right ground in politics (voting for honest men), slavery, the Sabbath, and temperance. Above all else, Christians must be united in promoting the revival with the hope that it would never cease:
If the Church is kept advancing, the revival will not cease. If the instructions given and the measures pursued, keep the Church going ahead, and the young converts growing in grace, the revival will go on. Let the minister keep pouring in the truth, let him know fully, from time to time, the state of the Church, and find out just what the people need.... If the means could be made whereby to bring influence to bear upon the Church, and upon the young converts - to keep them out of the way of sinners, and keep them continually advancing in holiness - the revival would never cease.23
That, of course, would be the Millennium.
"Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts"
It is interesting that Finney's Lectures on Revival of Religion really does not deal much with the theology underlying his revival methodology. To find examples on his doctrinal position, we must look to his sermons and his Lectures on Systematic Theology. Because his lectures were written in 1846 after much of his revival career was over, it is in his sermons that we get perhaps a more immediate expression of what he believed and how he presented it to sinners. "Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts" is one of Finney's most famous sermons, quite controversial at the time. It was preached in the autumn of 1831 in the Park Street Church, Boston. Its text was Ezekiel 18:31, "Make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit, for why will ye die?" In the audience was Asa Rand, the editor of a local religious periodical, The Volunteer. Determined to expose the New Divinity for what it was, Rand used this sermon as an example, while never mentioning Finney by name. Finney included this sermon as the first sermon in his first published volume, Sermons on Various Subjects. Without a doubt, it is a key expression of his theology.
As noted before, it annoyed Finney greatly that many of his hearers assumed that they were born constitutionally wicked, without recourse in changing their condition. It was that attitude of inability that his sermon is primarily directed against. He begins his sermon by asking that question he loved to often ask, whether it was reasonable of God to require the performance of duty, of making a new heart and a new spirit, when at the same time, he knows we do not have the power to obey. Here Finney reduces the very complex question concerning the mysteries of God's working to a simple yes or no question. And he phrased the question in such a way that reasonable men could answer in only one way. For Finney, absolute free will was the possession of every person. There was nothing physically wrong with the human heart in the first place: "We need nothing added to the constitution of our body or mind; nor is it true in experience, that those who have a new heart, have any constitutional alteration of their powers whatever."24 As he went on to say, "I understand a change of heart, as the term is here used, to be just what we mean by a change of mind."25 Far from being born morally corrupt and unable to act rightly, man "has understanding to perceive and weigh; he has conscience to decide upon the nature of moral opposites; he has the power and liberty of choice."26 The heart, according to Finney, is not so damaged that it needs a supernatural electrical shock. Instead it is prejudiced by self-interest and ignorance and what it needs is the skillful persuasion of the preacher to change its moral character, its moral disposition. Thus, it is ultimately a change in the choice of a Supreme Ruler:
Thus the world is divided into two great political parties; the difference between them is that one party choose Satan as the god of the world, yield obedience to his laws, and are devoted to his interest.... The other party choose Jehovah for their governor, and consecrate themselves, with all their interests, to his service and glory. Nor does this change imply a constitutional alteration of the powers of body or mind, any more than a change of mind in regard to the form or administration of a human government.27
Conversion is reduced to a decision to vote for Jehovah, much like a vote for Andy Jackson. Things are suddenly changed. Here God proposes and man disposes. Instead of God electing men to heaven, they elect Him to rule the world.
Nevertheless, Finney does not want to reduce God to the point of insignificance. True, the sinner alone has the responsibility of accepting or rejecting the grace of God, but God was involved. He is one of four different agencies used in the conversion of a sinner:
Suppose yourself to be standing on the bank of the Falls of Niagara. As you stand upon the verge of the precipice, you behold a man lost in deep reverie, approaching its verge unconscious of his danger. He approaches nearer and nearer, until he actually lifts his foot to take the final step that shall plunge him in destruction. At that moment you lift your warning voice above the roar of the foaming waters, and cry out, "Stop." The voice pierces his ear, and breaks the charm that binds him; he turns instantly upon his heel, all pale and aghast, he retires, quivering from the verge of death."
The daydreamer is the careless Hell-bound sinner. The observer who shouted to him was the soul-winning Christian (or revival preacher). The word shouted, "Stop," was the Word, the truth of the gospel. The paleness and quivering was the unavoidable emotional excitement accompanying the crisis (so often criticized by others). Here are clearly three agents: the sinner who, of his own will, turned; the preacher who called out; and the Word itself. But where is God in all of this? Finney claims that God's work was first of all a providential one. If God had not, in His providence, placed the preacher at the right spot at the right time, the careless daydreamer would have plunged to his death. But even more importantly, God does more. He has His Spirit drive the Word home with such power that the sinner turns. So there are four agencies that effect a conversion but beware, Finney argues, of giving them equal weight:
The act is his own act, the turning is his own turning, while God by the truth had induced him to turn; still it is strictly true that he has turned and has done it himself Thus you see the sense in which it is the work of God.... The Spirit of God, by the truth, influences the sinner to change.... But the sinner actually changes, and is therefore himself, in the most proper sense, the author of the change.29
This statement certainly flew into the face of Paul's writing to the Ephesians where he says, "For by grace, you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). To Finney, the strivings of the Spirit is more like a debate, a strife of mind to mind. The Spirit acts, more like a lawyer who is seeking to convert a jury to his point of view. Only He can combat those unspoken arguments used by the sinner to resist God. It is obvious in this sermon that Finney is not completely satisfied with the role God plays in the view of conversion he presents; the role of the Holy Spirit seemed to be less and less and the role of the preacher more and more. The sermon ends with a call for the preacher to study and understand the laws of minds so he might better persuade coupled with a call for the sinner to obey God's reasonable command and make their own hearts new at once: "Another moment's delay and it may be too late
Rand's response to Finney's sermon, "The New Divinity Tried," exposed the deficiencies of the sermon to all who cared to see. He first argued (as many others did during Finney's career) that Finney ignored scripture. The basic problem was moral depravity and here scripture was in agreement; man was fallen in his nature, dead in sin, defiled in the faculties of soul and body, possessing a nature of profound corruption. To prove this, Rand offers scripture after scripture after scripture. Could Finney really have overlooked so many passages that disagree with him? We have seen already, that he has made off strangely with the doctrine of entire depravity; reducing it to a trifling matter, seated only in the "governing purpose" and put off as easily as persons change their plans of business. Rand also went on to attack Finney's understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is reduced to the role of convincing and persuading, complimenting the role of the preacher. In Finney's scheme of things, the Spirit only persuades. He is not allowed to actually accomplish something, lest He violate the free will of the man. Conversion is simply an act of man's own will, induced by selfish motives. Rand argues that the root problem is poor theology seen especially in the insufficient attention given to Christ's work of salvation. Christ, the mediator, is left out of view. He is not even seen as one of the agencies involved in conversion. All He has done is make salvation possible and then left the stage for man to perform. Some would call this another gospel.
The Conservative Response to Finney
In the first half of the 1800s, the theological journal of Princeton University and Princeton Seminary, The Biblical Repertory and Theological Review (known as BRTR, renamed Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review in 1837) published a huge series of articles attacking the form of theology known as the New Divinity and its prime example Charles Finney. As a subject, it dominated the pages of the august journal especially in the period of the 1830s. The sole purpose of these reams of writing it seemed was to expose the errors of this new theology both in the areas of theology and practice. Calling themselves the theological and philosophical heirs of Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening, these Calvinistic professors and pastors were greatly alarmed by the manifestations and innovations of these "new measures" and the doctrines on which they rested. To Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander, and Albert Dod, joined later by men such as John Nevin (The Anxious Bench, 1844), the New Divinity was the resurgence of the ancient heresy of Pelagianism whereby human responsibility and individual ability were linked together improperly. The results of this error were a lessening of the activity of God and His Holy Spirit in salvation and a placing of the issue of salvation purely in the hands of man. They objected that the amazing works of God had become nothing more than the reasonable acts of man.
Charles Hodge, the most prominent of the voices against Finney, had laid the groundwork in an 1830 article on "Regeneration" (BRTR, October 1839, reprinted in Princeton Versus The New Divinity, The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001, pp. 1-51). In it, he develops what he sees to be the heart of the matter, the heart of man. Noting the New Divinity argument that since God commands every person everywhere to repent and believe the gospel, then by necessity every person must have the physical and moral ability to so act. Otherwise God is ordering man to do something he cannot do and then is punishing him when he does not do it. This seems hardly fair and is a blasphemy to God's very nature (To see how Finney expressed this problem, see page 66). Hodge argues that there is a difference between physical and moral ability, between what man ought to do and what man wills to do. Man is physically able to believe so he is without excuse but because of the sin that indwells him, he is morally unable to so believe. They are morally blind (or spiritually dead as Scripture puts it) due to their sin. Thus, God is correct to hold them in account because they were able to repent and believe but they chose not to. Their eyes are blind, they cannot see the beauty of Christ and his sacrifice and thus they have no desire for it. Salvation is not as real to them as is this world. They need new eyes and new hearts and can, by the act of their own will, recreate this in themselves. As Hodge puts it: "How can they love what they have not seen?" Thus there is a clear need that God first regenerate the person's moral core "in such a change as brings the soul into a state to see and love the beauty of holiness." This is denied by the New Divinity ministers who reduce salvation from a love of God in Christ to a simple act of voting for God's government over this world. But what is man really choosing? Without a converted heart, man knows very little about God and the choice he is called upon to make is vague and without saving content. The New Divinity argues that man can be made to see by the preaching of the minister and the persuasiveness of the new measures. But the Scripture teaches that, while it is the soul that repents, believes, hopes, and fears it is the Spirit God who regenerates.
Turning specifically to Finney and his revivalism in the 1832 article "The New Divinity Tried" (BRTR, April 1832, reprinted in Princeton Versus The New Divinity, The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001, pp. 141-170), Hodge turns his analytical theological mind toward Finney directly. Hodge correctly labels Finney as one of the major exponents of the New Divinity theology as seen in his methodology. He contends that Finney's theology was really nothing more than "specious deductive reasoning" with a blatant disregard for Scripture and theology. Finney only used Scripture as a support for propositions already held, much as a man who looks in a mirror and sees only himself. This erroneous use of proof-text to prove his point actually proves that the writer is not clear in the overall use of Scripture. And he was correct. Finney did reason precisely in that matter. In his writings, one sees Finney establish a position and then go looking for a Scripture text often out of its context to buttress his point (this method of argumentation is rampant in his Lectures on Theology). Thus, Finney is guilty of substituting biblical doctrines with his own thoughts as if he were above the Scriptures and they had need only as they fit into his presuppositions. The errors of Finney and the New Divinity as a whole began with the assumption that all sins and holiness are actually acts of choice rather than a moral state. This grand objection to the doctrine of original sin, upon which all of Calvinism was built, stands against Edwards and the heart of the previous Awakening. Thus, to Finney, there was no concept of natural hereditary depravity, no concept of a corrupt moral nature derived from our ancestors Adam and Eve that causes each person to reject God's gracious offer of salvation. Instead, salvation is man's own act consisting in man changing the governing purpose of his life; it is to Finney, "the simple volition of the sinner's mind through the influences of motive." Man is not converted; he is motivated. There is nothing here about the creation of a new heart by God or the work of the Holy Spirit in making man alive. It is the choice analogous to changing one's direction or profession. And Hodge noted that Finney even thinks that this is an easy act. To him it is an easy thing to change one's heart. It is nothing more than a reasonable action accomplished by motivated people. But is that really so? Is it not true that the transformation of the affections from one object to another of an opposite character, to love what we have hated and to hate what we have loved, is that not so hard as to be impossible? Obviously, to Hodge, Finney had reduced conversion, that great miracle of God, to a very trifling matter, something easily done in a moment. Rather, in Hodge's eyes, conversion is nothing if it is not supernatural.
Hodge also has another concern with this new salvation. He notes that when salvation is made dependent on the person himself, God is reduced to the role of having done all that he can, having exhausted all his power in persuasion which may or may not work. There is no concept here of sovereign grace. This mode of preaching keeps the Holy Spirit and his influences out of view as he is reduced to a gentle force (a warm feeling perhaps) and the cross of Christ is made of no effect as it does not actually accomplish any real result, only some possibility. This is not, in Hodge's mind, the salvation of the Bible. It is nothing less than a false gospel, one to be discarded with the false gods of this world.
Perhaps the strongest and longest evaluation of Finney comes from Albert B. Dod with his two-part article "On Revivals of Religion" (BRTR, 1839, reprinted in Princeton Versus The New Divinity, The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001, pp. 171-273). Dod starts his epic examination by reminding his readers that Finney's system, the new measures, actually contains little that is "new" as it is made up of already exposed errors and condemned heresies. He goes on to note Finney's writing style (at the end of the second article, he will criticize Finney's preaching style): "It is not often fallen to our lot to read a book in which the properties of grammar as well as the decencies of taste were so often and so needlessly violated; and in which so much may not inappropriately be termed slang was introduced (emphasis in the original).31 So from the beginning, the reader knows where Dod stands regarding Finney. Dod himself wrote in a technical style proper to theology and the comparison between the two could not be clearer. But then, Dod was writing in a theological journal to other theologians while Finney wrote to the pastor and the man in the pew in a practical and readable manner. This is one of the reasons Finney won the battle for the hearts of Christendom.
Much of what Dod writes about Finney's doctrine of revivalism has already been done by Hodge and others. Nevertheless he adds a few wrinkles of his own. For example, he argues that by offering these new measures, Finney comes with the avowed purpose of clearing away the errors by which the gospel, for centuries, had been overlaid. How, Dod asks, did the Church survive all those years without the truth revealed by Mr. Finney? This, he believes, shows the arrogance and pride of a man who cares not what the Church has taught since its beginning. Also he looks more closely than others at this time on Finney's role for the Holy Spirit in conversion. While Finney does reject divine intervention in the matter of salvation, such as God changing a heart, a mind, a will so that unbelievers really see Christ for the first time in His beauty and glory and thus believe, he does say that the Spirit gets and helps keep the attention of the mind. Since Finney's salvation is immediate upon the change of a thought, it must not be for long. While others criticizing Finney had ignored this aspect of his belief of God's work in salvation, Dod is glad that Finney is willing to concede that much power to his maker. Yet Dod reminds the reader, one cannot ignore that God, in whose hands the Bible says are the very hearts of all, is made a petitioner at the hands of his subjects for permission to execute on them his plans and purposes. Go further in this to its logical end, Dod then writes. If salvation is the choice of the individual under moral motivation to submit himself to the government of God and accept the salvation of Christ, and if the choice is one that can be made at any time, and if God in no way and at no time causes or prevents a person from choosing salvation, then what keeps a person from so doing when under the moral motivation of actually suffering in Hell? Surely being in Hell under the moral influence of eternal suffering would be the supreme motivation to opt for salvation. There is, therefore, no reason to fear that God would keep any person from being holy, and the infinite motivation of escaping the flame and torment necessitates, logically, that there is no one in Hell or if there is, it is because they choose to be there. This damnable doctrine leads to a lack of dread of eternal punishment and the well-known heresy of universalism.32 Finney would explain that once a person died, the rules changed but was never able to say why. Later in his life, Finney, in his Oberlin Institute lectures on theology, did seem to lean towards the possibility of universalism (everyone will be saved eventually) but he probably did not care much about it at the time.
Dod also brings a charge against Finney's doctrine of regeneration as most of the Princeton writers had. It is deficient because there is no theory of depravity. This was a common argument against the New Divinity and it is no surprise that Dod brings it up. The change which takes place in regeneration is represented by Finney as a simple change of the mind's method of acting. As it originally chose sin instead of holiness, now a new habit consisting of choosing holiness instead of sin is made. Why not just call for a person to reform himself and turn over a new leaf and not involve God in it at all unless there is something only God can do? The idea that there is, imparted to the heart, a new relish for spiritual things or that a new heart is implanted into the repentant sinner is rejected out of hand. Instead, what happens in Finney's revivals is that the person chooses from two political parties, one with God at the head and the other with Satan as master. There is, Dod laments, no sense of repentance or faith. There is only the naked choice. There is nothing of the grace and glory of God or the hatred of offending a holy God with sins that caused Christ to be crucified. There is only the reasonable option to choose. Now, in all fairness, it is clear from Finney's sermons that he did preach the cross of Christ as a revelation of the very love of God and his desire to save all. Finney did not carry his ideas to their logical extremes. But by saying what he says, Finney asserts the perfect unqualified ability of man to regenerate himself, Dod argues, and that leads somewhere logically. Finney says in his lectures that "most professors of religion pray for sinners that God would enable them to repent. Such prayers he (Finney) declares to be an insult to God."33 Rather than "I can do all things through Christ," Finney teaches we can do all things without any strength from Christ. Finally, Dod notes that Finney does not even attempt to bring forth a single passage of Scripture in which his doctrine is directly taught. It is based on the proposed solution to one problem, can God command man to obey when he is not able to obey? This is a slim platform on which to build such a new theology.
Dod was correct in asserting that Finney's new measures theology, the theology of the New Divinity, was a severe departure from the doctrines of Edwards and the founding Puritans. It was actually much closer to the teachings of Pelagius, a fifth century British monk of high moral and spiritual standing. The heart of his doctrine was the neutrality of man's natural condition. In the debate and trials that followed, the great Church Father, Augustine, put into definite form the doctrine of original sin and total depravity which the church determined to be the truth of the Scriptures. Pelagiansim was condemned and the issue was thought ended. However, the doctrine of man's own sufficiency and ability would return many times in many different forms. In America, the Puritans held it up as an ongoing threat leading to immoral lives, but it was in the New Haven theology that arose in New England after Edwards that led to the New Divinity where a form of Pelagius' teachings were expounded. Despite the mountains of articles and books and papers written against it, after Finney, it became mainstream American Christian thought. Some of the rough edges, such as pointed out by Hodge and Dod were removed, creating a form that one might call "semi-Pelagian" and this was the form of theology used by men like D.L. Moody. Why was it so successful so quickly? This was because it fit perfectly with the American democratic mood of its time. As I have already noted, and will note throughout the rest of this book, culture and society greatly influence the form of theology of a people and also which theology will prevail. It seems that there is a time when an established form of thinking is held as the truth. Then another form arises, challenging the old. Then there comes a time when the old is formally held but the new has actually already won. Then the new form becomes institutionalized and takes the place of the previous form until a new measure arises and the process begins all over again (for an example of this in relationship to science, see Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution).
So what do we have to say about the new measures themselves? In the second part of his massive article (pp. 220-272), Dod takes a look at what the New Divinity has created and it is a monster indeed. Dod begins by noting that, in opposing Finney and the new measures, he will be denigrated as an enemy to revivals and a friend to the devil. Not so. It is in the best interest of true religion everywhere for him to proceed. Finney charges that the new measures are opposed mainly because they are "new." Finney compares them to the complaints heard in the past over cockedhats, preaching without a wig, hymns instead of psalms, and fiddle playing in church; all called improper at one time. Dod challenges anyone to show where these methods are condemned because of novelty or the innovations used. This argument is used to give the impression that objections brought against Finney's measures are trivial and ridiculous. Besides, they are not that new, just some things Finney picked up "among the castaway rubbish of past times." Besides the anxious meeting, the inquirers meeting and the protracted meeting (various forms of revival services) have been held in all parts of the Church for a long time. The real complaint is with the anxious seat. And that is not a trivial matter.
The anxious seat changes the very nature of the gospel, creating in its place a false gospel. It might do well at this point to remember in the middle of all these charges and countercharges that both sides were fighting not just for the sake of it or in an attempt to gain some sort of spiritual brownie points. There was no real personal animosity on the most part, but they fought because both sides felt this was a battle for the true gospel and the glory of God. To the men on both sides, this was not some sort of theological splitting of hairs. This was all about the work of God in salvation in such a way that souls were really saved. There could be nothing more important. Dod, talking about the anxious bench, quotes Finney at length to show that Finney objects the ministry and its measures used to get people to reject the kingdom of the devil and vote in Christ as the governor of the universe. How shall this be done? "The object of our measures is to gain attention and you must have something new. As sure as the effect of a measure becomes stereotyped, it ceases to gain attention and you must try something new" (emphasis in the Dod's reaction is horrifically prophetic:
How is the temple of God dishonored by this alleged necessity for a continual shifting of its services, like the scenes of some raree-show, to attract the vulgar gaze? How is the gospel degraded by being made dependent for its effect upon a kind of jugglery which shall be studiously adopted to surprise and startle beholders and thus "attract their attention?"35
Finney argues in his book that there are so many exciting subjects constantly coming before the public that the Church cannot command notice without sufficient novelty and exciting preaching. This is exactly the same kind of arguments used later by Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson against their critics when they sought to attract crowds with various sideshows and competitive entertainment (see chapters four and five). Dod did not know what a prophet he was and it was probably good that they never saw what would become of revivalism. The gospel fails when the church seeks to amaze and amuse rather than convict and con vince. It is not in human craftiness, Dod reminds us, that man is saved but in the manifestation of the Living Word that the Church finds its purpose. After all, the apostles appeared to find that nothing was necessary beyond the simple declaration of the truth in the power of the Holy Spirit. Instead, we are told today that it is right and even necessary to use any measure that achieves our purpose but where does one draw the line between right means and wrong means? Do the ends always justify the means?
Now with that introduction, Dod is ready to focus on the anxious seat. The sole purpose of the anxious seat is to produce results by creating an effect of its own. It is not just to gather together in one place those of a particular state of mind that they might be suitably instructed and prayed for. No, there is another purpose in mind here. The real purpose, as Finney openly admits in his lectures, is twofold: it gets the individual willing to perform an action (going forward to the anxious bench) before others, and it prevents a great many spurious conversions by those who are troubled but not enough to come to the bench. This unwillingness shows them that they have not yet made a real choice. As Finney sees it, the anxious seat enables one to break the chains of pride and "gain an important point towards his conversion." The problem Dod had with it is that it does the very opposite. There is, with the anxious seat, a tendency to form delusive hopes. It creates the image first that to go to the anxious seat is to do something for Christ and that it is impossible for one to become a Christian who refuses to go forward. It becomes "a sort of Christian pilgrimage to Mecca." And what about those who venture forward for the wrong reasons, who look for any opportunity in which to place themselves in front of others in a manner that looks spiritual? Or what of those who respond to the call to the anxious seat but are not really ready to submit to the Lordship of Christ? It is one thing to vote for God; it is quite another to place oneself and all they are in His hands to do as He will. Most of these, after the heat of the moment has passed, will doubtless return to the wickedness of their ways, bringing shame to the name of Christ. And for those who were not properly awakened, how hard it will be to convince them that they were not converted and are still lost in their sins. It was the act itself, the going forward to choose God in some vague way that, in their minds, was the means of their salvation. It was the momentary decision they made that saved them and resting in that false promise will one day stand before the Lord of Lords and King of Kings and hear those awful words, "Depart from me, I never knew you." See what this poor theology has wrought. As the anxious sit, they are not urged to call upon God for mercy found in the sacrifice of Christ, but instead they are informed that they are able to perform, themselves, this miraculous work of salvation. All they need to do is summon up all their energies and put forth one gigantic determination of the will and their salvation is complete. And then they leave just as unconverted as when they entered. Where is the call to repentance, the plea for faith? Where is, at the anxious seat, the cry to look to the Lord for their salvation, to render thanks to God for his grace? To Dod, the anxious seat is nothing more than "a hot-bed of delusion." And then, after the spurious activity is completed, Finney wants them to be immediately entered into church membership and admitted to the Lord's Supper. Surely with the lack of lasting results already seen in the new measure converts, wisdom calls upon the church to wait "until the blossom, if not the fruit, shall have appeared."
So in conclusion, how does Finney justify so great a departure from the gospel? By one measure and one measure only; success. But even here, Dod says there is a problem. How successful are the new measures actually? Through testimonies and some long-term observations by local ministers, it seems that the numerous converts of Mr. Finney's measures have been, for the most part, as lasting as the morning dew. In some places, Dod points out, not a half, a fifth, or even a tenth of them have remained. And look at other results of these measures as well. Godly ministers who have opposed them or merely not joined in have been denounced as unbelievers and been driven from their churches. Other churches have divided over this new gospel and those who embraced it at first find the inability to sustain the novelty and the excitement (for it is from man and thus only for a time) and find the fields to be "burnt-over." Dod has in mind here the western part of New York where there was, for a time, a great interest in revival that afterwards led to weariness for anything religious. Dod admits that some good has come from these services as God is willing to use the foolishness of man to achieve his purpose, but overall, as a system of doctrine and revival, it is unredeemably bad.
Here Dod comes to the end of his complete dismanthng of the new measures. His arguments are so complete, his insight in where the new measures would lead are so on target that very little was left to say. William Sprague (see next chapter) will seek to find some central ground where revivalism can prosper under biblical theology. But it was assumed that Dod had completely shown the fallacy of the new measures and the empty gospel it created, full of glitter and form but lacking any substance whatsoever. Yet Dod and Hodge and all the Princeton theologians lost. Why? Was it because of Finney's well-reasoned response? No, for there was none. As Dod remarks in a footnote, Finney makes it his rule never to reply to any criticism of him or his methods, except for bitter vituperations from the pulpit. A very convenient principle, that. Now Finney did fight back in his comments from the pulpit. He claimed, of all people, Jonathan Edwards (showing himself to be as knowledgeable about Church history as he was of biblical theology), stating that just as Edwards was attacked for his revivalism by dead churches, so too was he. It was a shame, he would say, even a sin that theological professors who seldom preach and who have little to do with the active duties of the ministry should sit in their fancy studies and write their letters or dictate their articles and think they are in the right circumstance to judge what needs to be done. The blatant charge of elitism struck deeply with the American people. Jacksonian democracy, with its core of common people, had overthrown the elitist society of Thomas Jefferson and John Quincy Adams. This generation was the doers and there are always people who want to complain about those who do and how they do it. America in the 1800s was a culture that accented action and looked to results for vindication. These were people who achieved great things, fought great battles, built great communities, and they had come to the pragmatic conclusion that results mattered. Certainly they mattered more than arguments over theology. And to the average person, what was the right religion anyway? They were in the midst of removing the last of the European Puritan Calvinism and replacing it with a unique form of American Christianity, one that celebrated the ability of the individual and was a reflection of the world as they saw it, a world of manifest destiny and one man, one vote. So Finney could consign to Hell those who disagreed with this new and improved brand of Christianity. As Dod noted, Hell was, with Finney, nothing more or less than the state prison of his system, to which all were condemned who dissented or doubted. Finally, the attacks against Finney failed because of their nature. There was a great difference between the nature of the attacks on Edwards and on Finney. Edwards was attacked from the left by Charles Chauncy who would later become a Unitarian) not on theology but on the extremeness of men like James Davenport. Finney was attacked from the right by Hodge, Dod, and others on the basis of theology. Edwards went to lengths to refute Chauncy because he was interested, as were the New England communities, about correct theological foundations. Finney rejected Hodge and the others because he was not interested at all in the theological argument. Neither were most people. So Finney could lose the argument and yet triumph. He knew his America and that was the key to his success.
Lectures on Revivals
It would be a mistake to imagine that all the Old School Calvinists did during the Second Great Awakening was attack Finney. Indeed they were not just Monday-morning quarterbacks. Many were involved in revivals. Not only did they seek to correct the errors they saw in Finney's new measures, they also sought to present a more correct view of revivalism. In 1832, William B. Sprague, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in Albany, New York, published his Lectures on Revivals. From Albany he had watched revivalism occur around him in its best and worst forms and he felt the need to educate his people as to the difference between a genuine revival and a "spurious excitement." Being, for the most part, an Edwardian, Sprague desired to offset Finney's brand of revival. However, the basic aim of the book was more positive than negative. Sprague sought to vindicate and advance the cause of true revival. Whatever reasons for publication, his book clearly reflects the growing preoccupation among ministers of all stripes with the promotion of revivals. This is no better seen than in the appendix to Sprague's book, letters from 20 leading Calvinistic pastors stressing the church's duty to encourage revival. As Reverend Francis Wayland put it so clearly in his letter: "I believe in the existence of revivals of religion."36
Sprague begins his book with a definition of revival. A genuine revival of religion is a revival of scriptural knowledge where people are convicted of their sins and learn what God expects of them, vital piety where they desire in their hearts to be holy and right before God, and practical obedience where they actually act out the desires of their Lord. Revival denotes the improved religious state of a congregation or community where Christians are increased in their zeal and sinners are converted.
Whenever then you see religion rising up from a state of comparative depression to a tone of increased vigor and strength; whenever you see professing Christians becoming more faithful to their obligations, and behold the strength of the church increased by fresh accessions of piety from the world; there is a state of things which you need not hesitate to denominate a revival of religion.37
Revival, according to Sprague, starts in the house of God, with God's own people. A revival is not so much a conversion of the lost as a regeneration of the converted with the lost, seeing the amazing changes in believers come to Christ. There was a progressive cause and effect at work in revivals. First, there is usually an increase of zeal and devotedness on the part of God's people. They wake up and resolve to return to their neglected Christian duty. This is followed by a growing alarm and conviction in those who had before been careless towards spiritual concerns. Sinners suddenly desire to be saved. Those who have had no interest in eternal things are awakened to the defects of their souls. Finally, there is a great number of those who believe they are reconciled to God and born of the Spirit. The church receives a fresh infusion of new converts and others grow in strength and vigor as well. Notice that by this definition, revival is not something that can occur in one building in one night.
But be careful, Sprague warns, for there are often counterfeits of these actions found in all revivals. Certain things have been claimed to be signs of revivals that are not. Great excitement, for example, is not necessarily a sign of a genuine revival. "It is admitted indeed that great excitement may attend a true revival; but it is not the necessary accompaniment of one, and it may exist where the work is wholly spurious."38 Never forget, excitement can be produced by artificial stimuli created by man or the devil as well as by the power of divine truth. Great numbers professing to be converted are no certain evidence of revival, as well. While Finney over and over again would point to his "results," Sprague reminds his people that "there is scarcely a more uncertain test than this."39 People fall away (as Finney would later admit to) and so profession is simply that, a profession of faith. Finally, the existence of great opposition is not a sign of real revival. Experience reminds us that there are multitudes who pass through a revival without the slightest interest in it or spiritual things. In fact, often, extensive and violent opposition is almost courted and even gloried in by some. But these people suffer not for righteousness sake but for their own faults.
What then are the indications of a genuine revival of religion? Like the good pastor he is, Sprague gives three. A genuine revival is, first of all, caused by Scriptural means. God honors His Word and those who are faithful to it. He also honors His institutions, especially those means He has established to produce and promote a revival. Here we very clearly see the dangers he ascribes to Finney's revivalism with the contrast of biblical means:
Suppose there were to be a powerful excitement on the subject of religion produced by means which are at war with the spirit of the gospel;- suppose doctrines were to be preached which the gospel does not recognize, and doctrines omitted which the gospel regards fundamental;-suppose that for the simple, and honest, and faithful use of the sword of the Spirit, there should be substituted a mass of machinery designed to produce its effect on the animal passions;-suppose the substance of religion, instead of being made to consist in repentance and faith and holiness should consist of falling, and groaning, and shouting;-we should say unhesitatingly that that could not be a genuine work of divine grace.40
Notice that, to Sprague, the Scriptural means for revival is found in the preaching of the Word in the right way-rejecting unbiblical doctrines (such as free will and perfectionism) and instead the preaching of fundamental doctrines (such as total depravity and the sovereignty of God). That is the right means. Interestingly, both Sprague and Finney accent the importance of preaching in revivalism; their difference is in the power and content of what is said. As for means, while Finney's new measures are not mentioned by name, it is obvious here that Sprague sees them as "a man of machinery designed to produce its effect on the animal passions" of its listeners. Genuine revival is also characterized by a due proportion of reflection and feelings. Truth comes to the affections through the mind: "The truth can never find its way to the heart, except through the understanding."41 Here again we see that Puritan emphasis on the mind over the feelings. Finally, a true revival is one where there is a lasting effect. To say there was a revival when the excitement passes away and then is left no substantial or enduring good, when converts fall away and there is no real holiness is foolishness. It was a revival in name only. True revival ushers in a substantial and abiding fruit. The same rule used to determine the reality of an individual convert is to be used for multiple conversions, as well. You can't determine revival until it is over. It is not judged by how many came forward but by how many lived Christ-like lives afterwards.
Sprague goes on to define revivals against those opposed to the very concept by showing they are scriptural, necessary, and beneficial. Here he speaks not to the followers of Finney but to many of the Old School Calvinists who threw out revivals with the revivalists. If real revivals are the work of God (and Scripture says they are), then as good Calvinists we must not limit God: "Has God bound Himself that He will convert men only by small numbers, or by a very gradual influence; or does He not rather in this respect, claim the right of absolute sovereignty?"42 If our view of God is that He can do whatever His will is, then how can we have the right to tell Him He cannot work in certain ways? Do we truly know all of God's will? Sprague has in mind here the hopes of bringing more doctrinally astute men into the sphere of revivalism to better counter the influences and effects of the doctrinal inadequate. However, we must realize that there are and will always be hindrances to real revival. Lecture three deals at length with these, and here more than any other place in the book, we see the pastor's heart of Sprague as he anguishes over missed blessings. Ignorance or misapprehension of the nature of true revivals hinders the coming of God's blessings. Too often, Godly ministers have formed their opinions of revivals by focusing on the "unfavorable specimens" or by being too sensitive to anything that offends their sense of propriety. Instead of seeing the glory of God at work, they can only see the frailties of sinful man and thus remain blind to the greatness of God's work. Other hindrances include a spirit of worldliness among professed Christians, a lack of personal responsibility among professed Christians, the tolerance of gross offenses in the church, an absence of a spirit of brotherly love, and an erroneous or defective teaching of the Word of God. It obviously pained Sprague that the greatest obstacles to the promotion of real revival comes from within the church. What great works of God, what wondrous outpourings of the Spirit we miss because of our sin.
Yet there must be no confusion here. Revivals are not the work of man. Rather God is the grand agent in producing them. The work is God's and the way He works His will is through providence and the Spirit. God ordains all things according to the counsel of His own will; He has a plan that includes all events, including revivals. This is providence. But God also works in the hearts of men by His Spirit in the sovereignty of His wisdom. The Spirit is active in convicting men of sin. He also turns the soul from sin to holiness. This is what we call conversion. Here Sprague sees a real change in man's moral nature, including his conscience, his will, and his affections. This is much more than Finney's change of the intellect. Sprague sees conversions as a real conversion, totally changing the whole person. Thus, it is crucial that we recognize in every revival the sovereign work of God. Yet there is great danger here. It is possible to attribute to the Spirit too little an influence in revival. There are those who "do this by the manner in which they speak of revivals - as if they were produced altogether by man.... They do this by the measures which they adopt in carrying forward revivals; substituting human inventions for divinely appointed means."43
On the other hand, Sprague says, beware those who give so much attention to the work of the Spirit that they neglect man:
They do this who speak of revivals, as if God only was at work in them, and man a mere passive recipient of impressions. They do this who do not exert themselves to the utmost to co-operate with God, on the ground that a revival is a mere matter of sovereignty, and that god is able to carry forward His own work independently of means.44
Again, as we so often see in Biblical studies, everything is a matter of balance. We best honor the Spirit when we give Him precisely the place which He claims. We labor - we use means - but we labor with a sense of our dependency on God. Here is the unique element of Sprague. Sprague actually stands between Edwards and Finney in some sort of a great compromise, in an attempt to reach the Biblical balance between election and free will. To the foundational question, are revivals worked up or prayed down? Edwards had said prayed down and Finney had said worked up. (The difference here is on emphasis. Both men believed both were needed in some way). Sprague, however, accents both. Revivals are worked up and prayed down. Edwards had said, if man uses right means, God might. Finney argued that if man uses the right means, God will. Sprague replied that if man uses the right means, God usually does, but not always. To some, this may seem like hair-splitting but Sprague allows Calvinists to use ordained means to produce and promote revivals without violating their concept of the sovereignty of God. And sink into an unbiblical passivity. And what are these means? The first is the faithful preaching of the Word. The great doctrines held up in their practical bearings, not abstract but personal. Indeed, Finney's concept of preaching to the common man has won the day. Secondly, and just as important, is private and public prayer. Witnessing by serious Christians is also a means God uses to give revival. As Christians are faithful to encourage, arouse, quicken one another and warn the wicked, God blesses. The Sabbath school and Bible classes are also useful means to revival, as is parental duty. Finally, and most surprisingly, Sprague adds an exercise designed particularly for awakened sinners much along the lines D.L. Moody would return to and Billy Sunday ignore:
At the close of a public service in which God's truth has been exhibited and enforced, let those who have been impressed by it, and who wish to have their impressions deepened, and to be instructed to remain after the rest of the assembly have retired. And then let the minister ... address them earnestly and affectionately in reference to their peculiar condition; connecting with the address one or more prayers; and afterwards so far as circumstances may admit or occasion require, let them be met in a more private way, and let the particular state of each mind be ascertained; and let each receive appropriate counsel and instruction.45
Sprague realizes that this modified acceptance of Finney's anxious bench would be suspect to some of his readers but he confessed that he could find no better way to impress on the conscience and heart of the awakened sinner the truth of the Scriptures in a personal way. Instruction to the sinner should be in the utmost plainness with an emphasis on his duty to God and God's willingness to save. It is interesting that here Sprague moves toward Finney by arguing that the sinner must be admonished that now is the best time for securing his soul's salvation (see Hebrews 3: 7-19 for a Biblical example of a call to conversion "today"). Arguments about inability and the question of election should not be allowed to be used by the sinner as excuses from repenting and believing. Preachers are to direct inquiring sinners to use the means of grace God has prepared for them. From there, Sprague tells how to nurture new converts (a part too often neglected by the new measures and the modern revivalism that followed), what to watch out for in revivals, and ends with an emotional chapter on the glories of revivals.
Sprague's volume is a definite attempt to examine both sides of the issue and pull from both that which is Scriptural. It is a valiant attempt, one that deserved a better fate than to be lost in the dustbin of history. For Sprague's attempt to incorporate the good of revivalism with the correctness of doctrine was lost amid the Presbyterian schism of 1837. That is a shame for this book perhaps expresses the best understanding of revivalism from a Calvinistic approach in the American culture yet written.
Finney and Revivalism
When Charles Finney left his law office in 1821 for the job of winning souls, he inaugurated a new era in American revivalism. Because his career reached its peak quickly, around 1825, and remained there for about ten years, Finney was able to dominate the revivalism of his generation. The New Measures would transform the entire philosophy and process of evangelism. His writings on revivalism would be the last theological writing on the subject by an actual revivalist for decades. Yet Finney's phenomenal success stems from the fact that he did not develop the New Measures in a vacuum. They did not spring fully grown from Zeus' head. Remember, successfully communicated religious thought is as much a product of its culture as it is the Bible. And Finney's success lies in the fact that he was very much a man of his times. The influx of elements from what we now call Jacksonian democracy when added to the influence of a popular theology also influenced by these political elements was to find its clearest religious expression in the New Measures.
During the decades immediately before and after 1800, a massive shift began to take place in American theology. The dominant Calvinistic framework was to give way to a prevailing Arminianism. According to church leaders such as Timothy Dwight and Nathaniel Taylor, the very idea that God would arbitrarily elect some people to salvation and pass over others in their sinful condition was repugnant to the sense of fair play and individualism growing in the American frontier culture. Therefore, a reaction of free-will pietistic evangelicalism emerged. This new theology identified with the New Haven school of theology led by Taylor, attacked the doctrine of original sin and reinforced the freedom of man's will. As a free, rational, moral creature, man was not a passive or determined part of the system of nature. Thus sinners were to be confronted with these facts and told how to respond. Finney became the first preacher to attempt to employ the New Haven theology in practical evangelistic work in central and west ern New York and with this he caught the public eye. As the editor of the conservative Congregationalist journal Literary and Theological Review wrote in 1838: "Mr. Finney of all others has taught the New Haven theology in its greatest purity and has ventured to push its principles to their legitimate results." Drawing from the roots of New Haven theology, Finney was able to incorporate the main tenets of Jacksonian democracy and make his theology uniquely acceptable to mainstream America.
Finney's concept of revivalism must not just be placed in its theological framework; it must also be placed within the context of the times. This was the age of Jackson, the Era of the Common Man. The development of the West had destroyed the idea that the destiny of the country rested in the hands of the elite. Ordinary people were conquering the West. A contested Presidential election in 1824-25 revealed the fight between the elitist and the common man with that greatest of common men, Andy Jackson, victorious in 1828. This gave rise to a great tide of opinion, sentiment, idealism, and materialism that never achieved the coherence of a philosophy. Its characteristics were a passionate belief in freedom, combined with a conviction that the protection of life and property was the primary function of the law. It was a movement of paradoxes. Western experience emphasized equal opportunity along with great respect for unequal achievement. It brought out the importance of the community but awarded the highest prestige to triumphant individualism. It accepted a toleration of diversity in religion and politics but was fiercely intolerant of any who strayed beyond the limits of dominant opinion. There was also a significant shift away from the Jeffersonian belief that the best government was the one which governs least. Instead it was felt that government under democratic control could be beneficial. This was a change from seeing the democratic process as a defense against power to accepting power as the agent of democratic aspirations. Even the concept of the pursuit of happiness changed. It was no longer just a right as under the Jeffersonian concept of government. Now it summarized the purpose of society. As most Americans of this time saw happiness as an ethical concept, the concern with religion grew.
Unlike the majority of his clerical colleagues, Finney was a child of his age, not an enemy of it. Lyman Beecher, sometimes called a latter-day theocrat, and his friend, Asahel Nettleton, saw in Finney's revivalism certain social overtones that seemed to them to encourage the worst aspects of mob rule. In Letters of the Rev. Dr. Beecher and Rev. Mr. Nettleton on the "New Measures" in Conducting Revivals of Religion, published by Nettleton with Beecher's permission in 1828 as a direct rebuke to Finney, Nettleton refers in several places to their fear of government of, by, and for the common man. Beecher apparently feared that Finney's revivalism might aid and abet "mob rule." The Rev. Albert Dod, a man with solid Calvinistic credentials, attacked Finney's Lectures on Revivals in the October issue of Biblical Repertory and Theological Review. Dod also saw Finney as a Jacksonian revolutionary. He suspected that the lower classes throughout the United States were somehow getting out of hand under Jacksonian leadership and Finney's demagoguery. Indeed, Finney's revolutionary theology and revival measures, formed by the frontier and the New Haven theology and based upon the commonsense reasoning of the common man, was considered part and parcel of the Jacksonian revolution in American social and intellectual history.
One major view of Finney's which reflects the impact of Jacksonian concepts is in the area of man. Men who had conquered the West could lay conquest to their own natures and, as Finney appealed to the Jacksonian sense of human potential, power, and self-determination in vigorously denying the old notion that man was totally depraved in his human nature, a condition inherent within all men as a result of the sin of Adam. In response, Finney affirmed that human nature was not fixed but flexible. Born as a free agent, man was empowered with the natural ability to discern and obey the moral law, making it as easy to choose right as to choose wrong. "The truth is," Finney wrote, "man's nature is all right." Finney went on to say that depravity was a state of selfishness, entirely voluntary, that all men were in if they were unconverted. Self-gratification was the "god" of these unconverted men. Over and over again Finney would emphasize that Adam's sin merely aggravated our temptations but did not give us a sinful nature. There could be no sin apart from transgression and no person could be sinful until he exercised his powers as a free moral agent. This optimistic view of man inherent in Finney's new measures revivalism has been seen as the religious equivalent of the Jacksonian faith in the worth and dignity of the common man. Finney and Jackson, each in his own way, were striving for much the same kind of free, individualistic and equalitarian society.
Building on this view, Finney taught that ministers should aim at and expect the regeneration of sinners upon the spot before they left the church. Here is the foundation for Finney's whole method of procedure in the promotion of revivals. He placed the responsibility of immediately accepting or rejecting the truth as then apprehended upon the sinner. Perhaps the greatest example of this is seen in William McLoughlin's description of one of Finney's typical arguments:
Because in American democracy all the complex problems of freedom and power were reduced to voting for, or against, one of two candidates, Finney applied the political metaphor to religion: "the world is divided into two great political parties; the difference between them is that one party choose Satan as the God of this world.... The other party choose Jehovah for their governor." Conversion was the decision to vote for Jehovah and to support his administration. It did not imply a constitutional alteration of the power of the body any more than a change of mind in regard to the form of administration of human government.46
In this metaphor, God suggests and man decides. Instead of His electing men to Heaven, they elected God to rule their world. Revival preaching, therefore, amounted to a kind of campaign oratory for Jehovah's party.
Finney asserted that man could do something about his own salvation and thus it was up to the evangelist to persuade people to act on their convictions using those means at his command. This led to a pragmatism underlying all of Finney's work. Whatever device worked to bring someone back into the fold was good. For the layman, the pragmatic test in religion was the experience of conversion. For the clergyman, it was the ability to induce this experience. The end justified the means. Very early on and increasingly so as time went on, Finney perfected the all-powerful answer to all objections, even the metaphysical ones like those of Nettleton: "The results justify my methods." Finally the work of the minister tended to be judged by his success in one area alone, the saving of souls in measurable numbers. The "star" system prevailed and the Puritan idea of the minister as an intellectual and educational leader was steadily weakened by the concept of the minister as a popular crusader and exhorter. If this new system of revivalism had any idol, it was success. Truth was indeed not measured in terms of faithful exposition of Scripture but in terms of numerical success in saving souls (by this measure, Jesus was himself a failure). The test of the veracity and validity of a measure of the message was its performance. If it worked, God was behind it for God was a sanctifier of success. When success followed the measure itself, the proof was unanswerable that the measure was wise. Success in terms of the number of converts was the only criterion.
Finney's unique sensitivity to the needs of the people has often been expressed in terms of his pleas for plain, practical, pungent preaching. Yet it was pragmatic considerations which shaped this sensitivity. Finney addressed himself to his primary constituency in their own language not because of any intrinsic value in the status of the common man but because such appeals drew greater masses of people into the church. He adorned his sermons with dramatic gesticulations and homely illustrations not because they could best express the gospel but because ornamental oratory and classical illustrations failed to break down men's resistance to the gospel. Finney's democratic simplification of theology in reducing theological complexities to catchy slogans, was grounded in a concern to be understood and make an impression. Doctrinal disputes were to be avoided because they created diversions and interfered with revival labors. Finney would casually manipulate his theology and methods to achieve immediate goals. He also manifested his dedication to pragmatism in his use of prayer. Prayer became less a conversation with God than an address to his audience. Finney encouraged women to speak and pray in the presence of men, not because of a high view of women's rights in society but because women were usually the first ones affected by revivals and their example and energies could expand the revivalistic endeavor through the contagion of sympathy. Underneath the egalitarian, optimistic veneer of new measures, revivalism was a layer of cold pragmatism concerning the nature of people and their openness to the gospel. But it was there for the sole purpose to save the lost. That was all Finney really cared about, saving the lost.
The idea of progress was also characteristic of the age of Jackson. The Puritan concept of a city on a hill that Edwards had embraced had been secularized into a manifest destiny. The Millennium would come but through the works of able men, not some supernatural outpouring of God's Spirit. Americans made America, and never was this more clearly seen than during Jackson's reign. Optimism was the order of the day with an emphasis on the ultimate perfection of society through progressive improvements in mankind. The theological roots of the social reform element in Finney's preaching lay in his instinctive belief that God was benevolent and man was reasonable. Progress, Finney defined as the working out of God's will, and since God was, by definition, benevolent, His ultimate aim was to produce the greatest possible happiness in the universe. Finney's faith in progress and ultimate perfectibility stemmed from the prevailing concept of a divinely ordered universe with which man was capable of putting himself in harmony by means of the intellectual use of his faculties. God's fundamental laws of society, politics, economics, and morality were all becoming more evident from day to day and soon their relationship to God's divine government would be seen by all. Once they were understood by all, Finney had no doubt they would be lived up to by all. If the essence of Finney's Jacksonian temper lie in his attitude towards progress (coupled with pragmatism), this in turn is closely connected with his doctrine of millennialism. The doctrine of post-millennialism constituted the social equivalent of individual benevolence and perfection which would lay the basis for the return of Christ. And this worldwide Millennium would begin in America and it would probably begin soon. However, for all his faith in man and in God's benevolence, when it came to which came first, social reform or spiritual ends, Finney insisted on putting first things first. Saving souls was more important than anything else. And that is the heart of all he believed.
Finney's theology of revivalism must be placed within the context of the times. Behind his tremendous success was the fact that his theological bent fit the social and intellectual context of the day. His New Haven, New School roots gave him a theology that seemingly autonomous man could accept. His common beliefs with Jacksonian democracy gave him a political and social context in which his audiences could apply what he taught with the lives they lived and the hopes they dreamed. The great secular historian, Perry Miller, in his book The Life of the Mind in America delineated the situation so clearly:
As (James F.) Cooper fulminated against the degradation of democracy in Home as Found, (Calvin) Colton arraigned the evangelical churches in Thoughts on the Religious State of the Country for having degenerated into a mob. There was no question for Cooper as to who was primarily to blame for the debacle -Andrew Jackson. There was equally no difficulty for Calvin Colton to name his villain - Charles Finney.47
REVIVAL AS BIG BUSINESS
Between Finney and Moody
By the time Finney left New York City for Oberlin, the democratization of Christianity, as Nathan Hatch calls it, was very nearly accomplished. As the movement westward continued, the increased demand for pastors made it virtually impossible to provide a learned ministry everywhere. Itinerant evangelism filled the need that many of the new easterneducated clergy found so unappealing. Denominations, in an attempt to meet the ever-growing need, began to lessen their doctrinal requirements and licensed young men whose theological understanding tended to be extremely inadequate. In response, these young evangelicals tended to resist the constraints of creeds and the confines of ecclesiastical tyranny. As time went on, the distinction between clergy and laity blurred. People refused to defer to those learned theologians. In that great assumption of Jacksonian democracy, common folk were wiser, better, more trustworthy, and obviously nearer to God. Education became a danger rather than a benefit. Christian anti-intellectualism arose (and stayed through the late 1950s) and an artificial distinction between doctrine and practice was developed. The prestige of the local pastor was replaced by the glamour of the itinerant evangelist. Finney had accomplished his Copernican revolution for American Christianity but not everyone was pleased with what they saw.
Finney himself began to have qualms about the vast number of those evangelists and their usage of his new measures revivalism late in his life. Like many a leader, Finney found his followers to be too rash or too mechanical in their usage of the means. Earlier he had warned that mechan ical methodology would end a revival. And sure enough, somehow God now seemed to have been lost in all of the commotion. As a result of his concerns, Finney began to disassociate himself from what he considered the extravagant methods of his so-called imitators. And no wonder. Of the eight top itinerant evangelists from 1827 to 1845, all but two abandoned or were forced out of the ministry. Three became involved in the free love experiments of the radical perfectionists. One was defrocked for adultery. Augustus Littlejohn (a great believer in results) was described as "grossly unsound in doctrine, boisterous in manner, a man whose sermons were characterized by coarseness, vulgarity, and abuse."' He was defrocked in 1841 for seducing female admirers. Jedidiah Burchard, one in whom Finney once expressed great hope, was noted for being the first to number his converts and brag about his statistical success from town to town. The man thought by many to be Finney's true heir, Luther Myrick, was so extreme and vulgar, so harsh and preoccupied in his attacks on the Presbyterian denomination to which he still belonged, that Finney violated his own "hands-off" principles to advise him to be more restrained and humble, without effect. By 1835, Finney must have wondered what sort of beast he had indeed created. Unfortunately, it was going to get worse. Money, big money, entered the picture.
Two Baptist revivalists, Jacob Knapp and Jabey Swan, rather than fighting their denomination as the Presbyterians seemed to do, instead brought the new measures into the Baptist churches and moved revivalism from sporadic event to programmed institutionalism. To them, this was the next logical step. They made revivalism a regular event, scheduled, performed, and expected by local churches. They arranged to be invited week-in and week-out by individual local churches rather than just moving from here to there as the Lord leads. And with invitations, there was money to be made. Large numbers attending and "converted" led to more invitations which led to more offerings taken which led to more money received. Knapp especially combined the worst elements of modern revivalism. He was controversial and flamboyant. He would seek out information on the personal habits and beliefs of prominent local citizens in order to preach against them by name, thus adding a new measure to the new measures, gossip. His revivalism was full of gimmicks and exaggerated claims of conversions but his chief claim to fame was his use of institutionalized revivalism to make money. Knapp was the first new measure evangelist accused of becoming rich through his preaching. Between 1839 and 1842, at the peak of his career, he was making over $2000 a year in fees and offerings at a time when the average pastor did not make $500 a year. He often demanded a flat fee along with the offerings and when appealing to his audiences for a free-will offering would misrepresent his financial status. By 1942, others had jumped onto the money train and it seemed that the real occupation of most of the prominent evangelists was to see who could charge and make the most.
All of this was occurring within the context of another religious slump in American life. This spiritual depression, beginning around 1833 was caused in part by a reaction to the excesses of revivalism (coining a new phrase, "the burned out district"), denominational schisms, and the growth of secular good works, especially in the area of anti-slavery. Contrary to Finney's assumption in his Lectures on Revivals of Religion, revivals could not be kept burning constantly. Even Edwards' revivals had ceased after a time. The attitude of the people and the revivalists changed; revivals became just another meeting to the people, and revivals became just another job for the evangelist. In that kind of environment, abuses were sure to appear and sinful men sought to turn things to their own advantage. America suffered spiritual fatigue. Throughout the nation, church attendance declined. Revivalism was costing more and producing less. Albert Dod in his review of Finney's book looked at the figures of the new evangelists and compared them to their master's criteria of success with devastating effect:
It is now generally understood that the numerous converts of the new measures have been in most cases like the morning cloud and the early dew. In some places, not a half, a fifth, or even a tenth part of them remain.2
Once again, in the usual display of American religion, there was much action but little lasting effect. There was much activity but very little power behind it.
After the Civil War, American Protestantism continued to drift. With the increasing influx of Catholics, Jews, and the generally unchurched, the nation moved more and more towards a pluralistic religious society. As the influence of Darwinism, higher criticism, and political liberalism grew, more and more began to turn their backs on largely discredited revivalism and seek other means for change. Education was highly respected among some circles by this time and many followed the lead of Horace Bushnell's Christian Nurture (which had been published much earlier) by elevating Christian education in the local church as the means to the Millennium. Others focused on social reforms within a distinctive Christian context. Yet others still continued to hold out hope for itinerant evangelists and a national revival. Even to these people though, revival conversions too often seemed to amount to little, just spur-of-the moment decisions lacking depth and meaning. Walking forward became a stereotypical sterile ritual. Formalism and hypocrisy became the order of the day.
By 1875 ... the annual revival meeting conducted by an itinerant specialist was such an integral part of evangelical church ... (that) in most evangelical churches both urban and rural, the revivalist was looked upon as a kind of spiritual masseur employed once a year to tone up the body religious. When he arrived the church was placed in his hands for a thorough over-hauling.... As a result of his preaching, church members expected to be whipped back into shape themselves and then to go out and round up those who had strayed from the path since the preceding revival. Sunday school pupils who had grown old enough to become fullfledged members of the flock were urged forward to the anxious seat to go through the rite du passage.3
American Christianity seemed to have collapsed into a state of exhausted lethargy. It is in this context that we can see the real importance of Dwight Moody, for it was his ability to revive revivalism with his moral character and his new vigor that set him apart from all the others followers of Finney. He was a professional, running revivalism like a business in a day when business and businessmen were greatly admired. He had his fingers on the pulse of the American gilded age. How could he fail?
The Third Great Awakening
The period of time from 1875 to about 1920, which we call the Third Great Awakening, finalized the shift in revivalism from Edwardian Godcentered revival to Finney's man-centered methodology. Method becomes master over message. Activity triumphed spiritual power. Here we find little of the supernatural experiences encountered by Edwards and expected in some degree by Finney. Revival is no more a glorious, unexpected downpour from the Holy Spirit nor is it any longer a spiritual situation ready to happen under the leadership of godly men. Instead, the elements of purely human calculation noticeably increases as revivalists of this time became proficient in picking a precise time and place for a revival to begin and then work diligently to build public interest (as you would selling a bar of soap) to a high point of enthusiasm just as the evangelist and his singing partner began their work officially. Revivalism has been reduced to its least lowest form, a series of church meetings held by professionals for the expressed purpose of creating a large number of respondents. And here lies the final dramatic shift and the end of historical awakenings in America; an awakening is no longer realized by supernatural changes in the lives of believers and those around them but instead by a simple counting of how many people responded to the stimuli of the meetings. Edwards wrote extensively arguing for the validity of the awakening by the widespread changes in lives. We find nothing like that in this awakening. In fact, it is amazing as we read accounts of the works of Moody and Sunday to note how little is made of the work of the Spirit and how much emphasis is given to individuals deciding for Christ, how much emphasis on numbers, how little on lasting change. Because of this, it is difficult to determine whether this period of religious activity should be labeled an awakening (William McLoughlin, in his book Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, argues it was not) or merely seen as the continuation of those series of revival meetings held since the days of Finney. The confusion arises because this awakening, like all before it, is its own unique blend of theological assumptions and cultural pressures.
If Edwards had interpreted the First Great Awakening in the context of the Puritan culture with the supernatural involvement of a sovereign God and the millennial hope of a New Jerusalem on earth, making America the glorious "city on a hill" for all to see, and Finney had structured the Second Great Awakening under the aspects of Jacksonian Democracy, where man can do anything and whether his unalienable rights are summed up in the right to vote, even in spiritual matters, the Third Great Awakening under Moody could be summed up as revivalism as big business, done well, done orderly, done with an eye on the bottom line. Things done properly and in the correct manner was the order of the day. What else was to be expected in an era of materialism, methodology, and measured results. Indeed, the last of the 19th century had been an age of change and instability. America found itself challenged by the difficulties and revolt growing out of immigration, urbanization, and industrialization. This was a time of unrest. Movements such as the Grangers, Greenbackism, and the Farmer's Alliance frightened many middle-class Americans. Labor uprisings and economic difficulties such as the Panic of 1873, the railroad strikes of 1877, and the Haymarket Square riot were examples of how explosive the situation really was. Society itself seemed to be coming apart.4 American Protestantism had become a middle-class society facing problems for which it had neither experience nor appetite. And while all of this fit well into the pessimistic pre-millennial view of many of the revivalists of that day, there still arose a cry for order, for something stable to cling to. While the secular man found their cry answered in the order that business imposed over society ("what is good for G.M. is good for America"), the churched man found his prayers answered in an orderly, predictable revivalism (God is still in control in an orderly, fashionable manner).
Along with this emphasis on predictability and order was the growing influence of pragmatism. While perhaps too much has been made of pragmatism in America's Gilded Age (for that philosophy is found in all of American history), this more modern form shaped by William James definitely had a profound impact. With a renewed interest in material things and the here and now rather than supernatural blessings and the future hope, pragmatism comes into its own. What mattered was results. The end justified the means (in all fairness, this popular understanding of pragmatism is not really what William James taught) and the end must be measurable to be valid. In the absence of strong theological moorings (and Moody and Sunday both would brag of this lack of theological training), pragmatism become the supreme guiding means for measuring success. As Moody would remark later in his career, "It makes no difference how you get a man to God providing you get him there." And why not? After all, Moody was running a business and you get paid (or judged) by how much you sell or how many you win to Christ. The messenger has swallowed up the message and in its place has allowed the culture of materialism, methodology, and measured results to reign.
All of this should not be surprising. The revivalism of the late 1800s through the early 1900s had carried Finney's lectures to their logical conclusions. The doctrinal struggle between Arminianism (Finney) and Calvinism (Edwards) for the soul of America was finally over, with Finney the clear winner. Certain assumptions were made into truths. First of all, doctrinal discussion was to fade into the background. For one thing, there was no need to re-fight the battle. The methodological viewpoint of revivalism was fully established and there was no need to argue over what most people already accepted. Also, one of Finney's great concerns was never to let controversial doctrinal issues interfere with revival. Save them all and let God sort them out. The less said that was controversial, the better. Doctrine only sidetracks and derails revivals. Finney's followers expanded this viewpoint until there was very little room in revivalism for much content or social concerns. Oh, we might attack alcohol or the theater but then almost all Christians were already against them. Those were safe social concerns. Secondly, the emphasis of revivalism was placed firmly and finally on man's initiative in salvation. Total depravity was totally defeated. Revivalism reduced God to an interested spectator (who just kept on knocking at the door of sinners hearts) and redirected its efforts to persuading man to do what man ought to do. This in turn placed the emphasis on the preachers' powers of persuasion and reinforced the concept that whatever works is all right. Thirdly, the entire idea of a theology of revivalism disappeared. No one thought in those terms any more. There was no real further thought about the Biblical soundness in what was being done in the name of God. If anyone wrote on revivalism, it just showed they were not about the King's business. They were probably locked in their ivory towers and had no desire to be out winning the lost for Christ. Besides, the Church had Finney's writings on revivalism. They needed nothing more. All of these ideas merge together, reinforcing each other, driving out any that might question or confound the system. Which was exactly what middle-class American Christianity wanted - something within the solidity and orderliness of business in this ever-changing world. And they found it best in D. L. Moody. Later, without a theological framework accented and developed (even Finney only went so far), that sense of comfort would change man-centered revivalism into nothing more than entertaining evenings for the already converted. And at that point, revival (if the word still had meaning) would become completely distorted.
Unlike Jonathan Edwards and Charles Finney, D. L. Moody never wrote a volume on revivalism. He did not feel the need to do so. Besides he was a practical man, too busy doing the work to stop and write about the work. That he would leave in the hands of his son and his friends and his enemies. Edwards had written to justify revivals in the Calvinistic con text of God's sovereignty. Finney wrote the theological nature of revival in an effort to move it from a focus on God to an invitation to man. Moody felt Finney had said it all. Revivalism is man-centered, man-organized, and man- manipulated (in a good sense), religious excitement geared to winning souls. But Moody was not just a continuation of Finney. While he personally had little interest in the theology of revivalism, he was fascinated with how it worked. And so in his interest, he expanded on Finney and changed it somewhat. He took what was seen by some as a dying venue and turned it into big business, bigger than ever before and in the process laid down the operational foundations of mass evangelism. Finney provided the theology. Moody provided the organizational management. He ran revivalism like a business, and in the context of the spiritual gilded age, he made a profit.
The Life of Dwight Moody
Charles Finney made revivalism a profession but Dwight L. Moody made it big business. "As he stood on the platform, he looked like a businessman; he dressed like a businessman; he took the meeting in hand as a businessman would..."' This statement of praise by Lyman Abbott summed up the heart and whole of Moody's brand of revivalism. An observer of Moody's 1876 revival in New York could honestly say that "the Hippodrome work is a vast business enterprise, organized and conducted by businessmen who put their money into it on business principles for the purpose of winning souls."6 Moody was a man with a business outlook who ably expanded revivalism with business techniques. And in an era that saw business as the chief end and successful businessmen as their noble heroes, he was perfect.
Born on February 5, 1837, in Northfield, Massachusetts, Moody moved to Boston at the age of 17 to make his fortune. While sitting under the ministry of Edward Kirk, a previous associate of Finney, he was converted in 1856 with the aid of Edward Kimball, his lay Sunday school teacher. Moody seemed to experience little doubts and struggles, and his conversion was swift and simple:
I (Edward Kimball) determined to talk to him (Moody) about Christ and about his soul.... I found Moody in the back part of the building (where he worked) wrapping up shoes. I went up to him at once and putting my hand on his shoulder, I made what I afterwards felt was a very weak plea for Christ. I don't know just what words I used, nor could Mr. Moody tell. I simply told him of Christ's love for him and the love Christ wanted in return. That was all there was. It seemed the young man was just ready for the light that then broke upon him and there in the back of that store in Boston, he gave himself and his life to Christ.7
Because his conversion was not a highly charged emotional experience, Moody would later on in his ministry refrain from producing the overwhelming emotional responses so popular with other evangelists. Being converted by a lay leader, Moody would constantly accent the role of the laity in witnessing and in revivalism itself. Often he would agonize that the one major hindrance to real revival lay in the lack of lay workers to counsel the convicted. Once, in England, when introduced as Reverend, Moody quickly corrected the speaker by announcing that he was no ordained clergyman nor a theologian; he was just a layman used by God. Because the emphasis of the witness that led him to Christ was on the love of Christ, Moody would later claim that as his emphasis as well.
In 1860, this layman used by God decided to give up a growing business in shoes to devote himself full-time to Christian work, especially YMCA work. By 1866, he was president of the Chicago YMCA and a locally well-known evangelical leader. That Moody should find his platform for ministry in the YMCA shows an important aspect of revivalism that had taken root after Finney. Finney had had denominational links (Presbyterian and Congregationalism) no matter how tenuous but those after him had begun to work more and more independently of denominational oversight. While it was true that no denomination was going to control Charles Finney (he could change denominations like some people change shirts), there was still an apparent assumption that there was oversight and that Finney was to some degree subject to that oversight. By the time of Moody, revivalism had mainly moved out of the denominational framework and become much more independent. Revivalism was now a para-church function. Revivalists now were responsible to no one but themselves and their hand-picked boards, usually made up of friends and family. Unfortunately, the system in place definitely encouraged personal empire-building amidst a large influx of money, fame, and power. While Moody never surrendered to these temptations, those who followed (such as Billy Sunday) were not so strong.
Moody continued to labor for the YMCA until 1871 when two major events pushed him away from his chosen vocation into itinerant evangelism. The first was the preaching of a friend Moody had met in England in 1870, Henry Moorehouse. While away from the pulpit, Moody had invited this young English minister to preach. When he returned, things were different. Moody was to recall later that when he returned to his church after Moorehouse had preached things were strangely different. Moorehead had preached two sermons on John 3:16 and had presented a God of love rather than a God of wrath. The crowd greatly responded and the desire for spiritual things seemed to grow. Moody became convinced that nothing attracts people to God more than His love. Before Moody had preached of a wrathful God ready to condemn and cast down helpless sinners. Now, all that was changed as he himself sat under Moorehouse's third sermon on "For God so loved the world." God was watching over the sinner, Moody saw, but in love, to hold him up and change him for the better and the foolishness of sin is to reject that God of love. Moody was overwhelmed, fundamentally changed by what he had heard. It brought back memories of his own conversion. But this was a change more emotional, more profound than the terms Moody had used to describe his own conversion. Later in his life he would describe the change thusly: "I used to preach that God was behind the sinner with a double-edged sword ready to hew him down. I have got done with that. I preach now that God is behind him with love and he is running away from the God of love."8 Moody had found his message. Now he needed his motivation.
That came on October 8, 1871. After preaching on "What then shall I do with Jesus which is called Christ?" he ended his service with these words: "I wish you would take this text home with you and turn it over in your minds during the week, and next Sabbath we will come to Calvary and the cross and we will decide what to do with Jesus of Nazareth." That evening the great Chicago fire occurred. As Moody was going home, he saw the glare of flames. By one o'clock, Moody's church had burned down and everyone was fleeing the scene as the fire spread. Many were killed and Moody was horror-struck. Never again would he preach a sermon where he would not invite people then and there to respond to Jesus Christ. For who knows if they would be alive in the morn:
What a mistake! I have never dared to give an audience a week to think of their salvation since. If they were lost, they might rise up in judgment against me.... I have never seen that congregation since ... but I want to tell you of one lesson I learned that night which I have never forgotten and that is, when I preach, to press Christ upon the people then and there and try to bring them to a decision on the spot.9
Moody had his message - the love of God towards man - and now he had his motivation -a sense of urgency realizing that for some, there would be no tomorrow. People were dying and going to Hell and something needed to be done about it. And Moody now wanted to do something more, but he lacked one thing more, a sense of spiritual power that comes from a clear calling of God.
As Moody struggled with a sense of calling, words he had heard back in 1870 while in England came back to him with force: "The world has yet to see what God will do with and for and through and in the man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him." Moody hungered for spiritual power, more of that sense of total commitment, more of that surge of the divine. This he felt he still lacked. Then sometime around the beginning of 1872, while on a trip to New York, it happened.
My heart was not in the work of begging.... I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well, one day, in the city of New York- oh, what a day!- I cannot describe it. I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name.... I can only say that God revealed Himself to me and I had such an experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I went to preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any new truths, and yet hundreds were converted."10
He had his message. He had that sense of urgency. He had the divine touch, the special anointing. Now D.L. Moody was ready to take revivalism and make it his life-work.
Eighteen seventy-two was a time of getting ready, of preaching in small places, honing the message, developing the methods. After a year of preparation, Moody was ready to undertake a major revival tour and accepted an invitation to preach in England. Here Moody had a stroke of genius. He decided to bring with him the famous hymn-singer Ira David Sankey as a co-worker. Music was to supply the missing key to revival success. Together they began to develop in England the measures that would eventually make them famous in America. In England, they succeeded beyond all expectations. By the end of 1873, they had touched off some thing akin to a national revival in Scotland, and in 1874 they triumphantly toured the British Isles, returning to America the next year as international heroes. Moody had taken up the mantle of Finney as America's foremost revivalist without spending much time in America. But now he was ready. He firmly believed that with the proper means and management, urban mass evangelism was again feasible. It would take planning, organization, publicity, vast sums of capital, a host of workers, a skillful executive director - in short all the techniques and facilities that made a big business work, but it could be done. Finney had established the theory of modern revivalism (which is why Moody and Sunday saw no need to write on the subject) but Finney's greatest successes had been achieved in towns and cities of less than 10,000. Other revivalists after Finney had found larger cities hard nuts, indeed, to crack. Moody, with his business-like methods, was able to galvanize the religious elements of cities with populations in the millions. Moody was convinced that was where the action was. If the whole nation was to be reached for Christ, it would have to begin in the large cities and flow from there.
From October 1875 to late 1877, Moody launched a series of revival meetings in the largest towns he could get invited to. He preached in Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and Boston, five of the largest cities in America at that time. These series of meetings can be seen as the beginning of an "evangelistic mission" (Moody's term) in America that would last for 20 years. In some places, Moody stayed as long as five or six months, educating Christians as well as converting sinners (something Finney and his immediate followers had never done). By 1881, Moody had covered the West as far as California. But then, more and more, his emphasis began to change. Moody turned more and more to building structures that would widen and perpetuate his principle concern, evangelism. He had begun to see that his revival efforts, though called by God, were producing results that were limited and, at times, short-lived. People would respond and then fall back into the old ways. Churches would catch on spiritual fire and then soon become nothing more than dying embers. The revival wasn't spreading. Moody was being confronted with the chief problem of modern revivalism, little lasting results and he was smart enough and determined enough to do something about it. Moody may not have been a theologian but he wasn't stupid, and when he realized that what he was doing wasn't achieving what he wanted to achieve, he tried something else. His solution: education. And in education, Moody left his most lasting results. In 1879, he started the Northfield Seminary for girls. In 1881, he instituted the Mount Hermon School for boys. Here young people could learn the importance of spirituality along with the practical application of the work ethic. The Bible took pre-eminence as the primary source of education; each course included Bible training incorporated into it and each student was required to share in the domestic chores of the schools so they could learn Christ-like attitudes in the context of hard work. In addition, Moody was instrumental in starting the Chicago Bible Institute (later evolving into the Moody Bible Institute) as a means of solving the greatest need facing revivalism:
"I believe we have got to have `gap-men'- men who are trained to stand between the laity and the ministers," was a common expression of Mr. Moody's. He felt the great need for more lay Christian workers.... His effort was to solve this problem, and he made urgent appeals for funds wherewith to open a training school.""
Finally, Moody also started the Northfield Bible Conference, considered by his son to be one of his most permanent achievements for the American church. Being no theologian himself, Moody invited speakers from all over America and England to lecture on theological topics to the hundreds of Christian visitors. In the beginning the lectures were largely devotional (doctrine of Holy Spirit or how to have communion with God by A. A. Bonar or F. B. Meyer on the Christian life) but later they unfortunately became dominated by dispensational pre-millennialism and its pessimistic outlook. By the turn of the century, the Northfield Bible Conference was the major force spreading Darbyism and Dispensational Premillennialism throughout America as an antidote against the higher criticism and creeping liberalism of American denominationalism.
After 1880, Moody would again preach in Chicago, New York, and Boston as well as smaller towns. But with fading fervor came declining impact. The country's attitude towards revivalism was beginning to change; once again people seemed to desire less and less spiritual challenge and more and more comfortable religion. With his great sensitivity towards popular moods and feelings, Moody sensed intuitively that things were changing. More and more, he realized that the churches themselves would need to be revived in order to become centers of outreach and support. This just didn't happen through mass meetings. The church at large needed well-trained evangelists and lay workers, and that would hopefully occur through his Bible institute and Bible conferences. It would be in the educational structures, not in the number of converts or mass meetings that his vision of evangelism would be preserved. Once again, modem revivalism had disappointed its chief advocate. And as Finney had tried at Oberlin, so Moody sought to raise up a new generation who, through the right educational training, would run revival-ism like a well-oiled machine. Now, Moody would continue to hold revival meetings throughout the U.S. and England until his death in December of 1899, not because he had high hopes in it, but because he was truly concerned with the lost and preaching was what he most enjoyed. But by then, his lasting contribution to American revivalism was established. He had moved the business of revivalism into the operations and methods of big business. Finney had rendered the doctrinal issues of revivalism mute. Moody settled the issue of methodology. It would take Billy Sunday to show what man hath wrought.
Moody's Message
Unlike Edwards and Finney, D. L. Moody did not write a book on revivalism (neither did Sunday). There was no need to. Why duplicate the fine work Finney had already done? His Lectures had answered all the questions, explained the nature of means, and laid the framework on which Moody could build. If you wished to understand revivalism, read Finney. Moody was a businessman. His theology was not systematic. It didn't need to be. Moody's work was to do the work. Let others do the writing. Besides, the theological issues had been settled. No longer did the common people wrestle with the issue of free will versus election; free will was an accepted assumption. No longer did the ordinary person in the pew debate the new measures; they were old hat. What was needed was not newness of message but perfection of method. As Moody entered into the field of revivalism, he saw that something was needed to breathe new life into a system with the gospel message but which, through abuse, had become mechanical and stale, almost to the point of death.
This is not to suggest that the message was not important to Moody. Of course it was. It was crucial that the Word of God be preached, that the message be biblical and true. After all, it is the power of the Word that changes hearts, somewhat. However, the message was increasingly subjected to the overriding criteria of the best way to win converts. Eventually, the message was absorbed by the means. This process, which really began with Finney and found its apex in Sunday, was passed on by Moody. Often Moody would test doctrines for their suitability to evangelism:
Technique seemed to be Moody's great strength ... theology a noticeable weakness. His success in the revivals of the 1870s and later came chiefly by creating a mood or special frame of mind that seemed to speak: of God, Christ's love, and the need to be saved. This mood was the result of the use of right techniques primarily, and not the outcome of intellectual pyrotechnics. Frequently Moody's methods largely determined the special emphases to be found in his theological statements.'
Moody desperately wanted to convert people and that, in his mind, was primarily a function of technique. The almost inevitable result was the incorporation of the lowest common discriminate standards of the present culture into the message. This unique combination of technique and culture can be readily seen in Moody's preaching. It most obviously kept Moody's sermons simple and positive. Stanley Gundry, in his book on Moody's theology, aptly called Love Them In, summarizes Moody's message as the three R's: ruin by sin, redemption by Christ, regeneration by the Holy Spirit. Moody understood man to be both sinful and sinner, because of his fall in Adam. Consequently, man's problem was both corruption and condemnation. "We are wicked by nature," Moody would preach to the crowds. "There is nothing good in us; the Bible teaches us that all the way through." Yet we are masters of our own fate. We cannot blame God or even Adam, for the solution to our problem has been given to us by God and if we are lost it is because we spurn it. Though we are under the influence of the Devil, we can choose to believe the gospel if we so wish, for we have the ability. And if we choose the gift of salvation, the blood of Jesus Christ redeems us. Christ paid the penalty; Christ died in our stead. And He did so because of His love for us. That love became the heart of Moody's message. As we have noted, more and more Moody grew to emphasize the love of God and downplayed the law, Hell, or God's wrath. After all, people did not respond as well to fear.
Now my friends, repentance is not fear. A great many people say I don't preach up the terrors of religion.... I don't believe in preaching that way. If I could get some in that way they would soon get out. If I wanted to scare men into heaven I would just hold the terror of hell over their heads and say, "go right in." But that's not the way to win men ... they must accept salvation voluntarily. Terror never brought a man in yet.13
Finally, Moody's theology believed there must be a new birth, a real conversion. Those bound for Hell must not only be sheltered by the blood (thus solving the problem of condemnation), they must also be born of the Spirit (taking care of the corruption issue). Unlike Finney, Moody saw regeneration as a real change in the nature of man. Underlying this was a subtle shift away from earlier 19th-century evangelical emphasis on the social concerns of sin toward an emphasis on the individual. This was amazing in the context of American social upheaval. Yet it fit in well with the mood of the conservative church, whose viewpoint (due to the influence of Dispensationalism) was to devote itself to the salvation of individuals and leave social consequences to take care of themselves. Conservative American Protestantism, especially that linked to the revival movement, was a middle-class society facing problems for which it had neither experience nor appetite. In truth, deep in its collective heart, conservative Christianity no longer believed the ills of American society could be solved as a whole. Before, Edwards and Finney had believed that you change the hearts of men and then, and only then, do you change the health of society. As you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, it was argued, so one cannot elevate a society whose members wallow in stubborn sin. Thus, enough people get converted and society itself is changed. This was an expression of the post-millennial outlook Finney and others before him held. Edwards had seen the realness of human sin, and yet his ultimate vision of this world was one of redemption and rescue. Finney as well worked to reform the world and prepare it for the Lord's return. Both men were convinced that God would do great things, that He had great plans for America. The secular concept ofAmerica's manifest destiny had flowed out of early American post-millennialism. Americans could do anything if they but tried. After all, they were the new chosen people of God. But by the time of Moody, things were different. The American mood had grown more pessimistic after the Civil War and the various recessions and depressions. America might have embraced the late 1800's with its prosperity and glitter but it was only a "gilded age," a gold covering over what many saw as a rotting reality.
Moody reflected this mood, being a person of his time, and while in England found a system of doctrine that built on and expanded this cultural condition - dispensationalism with its inherent pessimistic view of society. The dispensational view of the world was focused in a pre-millennialism ("pre" meaning Christ would come before the Millennium to establish it as opposed to "post-millennialism where Christ would come after the Millennium had been established by the work of the Church, including revivals) that saw no hope for society prior to the coming of Christ. Moody was the first noteworthy pre-millennial preacher of revivalism in America. And while professors and scholars were detailing the extremely complex ins and outs of pre-millennialism, Moody was popularizing it before large crowds who did not recognize its novelty but knew, somehow, it felt right. Moody, and just about everyone who followed him in revivalism, now saw the world not as a milieu to change in preparation for the glorious return of Christ but as something from which to rescue souls:
I have felt like working three times as hard ever since I came to understand that my Lord was coming back soon. I look on this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a life-boat and said to me, "Moody, save all you can." God will come in judgment and burn up this world, but the children of God don't belong to this world; they are in it, like a ship in the water. This world is getting darker and darker its ruin is coming nearer and nearer. If you have any friends on this wreck unsaved, you had better lose no time getting them off.14
There is no statement here as to the repair of the vessel. Passengers are wise to get off, one by one into the lifeboats of individual conversions. The world is the Titanic and it is going down fast. Like the culture of the gilded age, it was every man for himself. Moody rejected the Christian social reform movements that gained momentum in the 1880s and 1890s under men like Walter Rauschenbusch in what would become known as the Social Gospel. Moody couldn't find any place in the Scriptures where God says the world is to grow better and better until Christ is to have a spiritual reign on earth. Instead things are going to get worse and worse. So Moody offered a healing ministry to individuals, not society. His sermons almost always centered on the value of salvation to the individual. There was none of Finney's appeal that the public good might be superior in value to the private welfare, and so, Moody remained aloof from any discussions of the basic ills of society. Such efforts were characterized as "patching over," "white-washing a pest house," and "trying to make the stream good while the fountain is bad." Moody's thoughts were on personal sins. It was the sinner standing alone before God. And while the church could provide encouragement and example, ultimately the decision for or against real Christianity was, in the democratic, self-serving tradition of the American late 1880s, the decision of each individual. Here, post-millennialism and its hopeful expectations largely disappear from American revivalism.
It is, therefore, amazing that, even with this negative underpinning, Moody still was a powerful preacher. In an attempt to reach all, Moody uttered sermons that were so nonsectarian and non-doctrinal that they could be heard with appreciation by all denominations. Many criticized him, of course, for the lack of content, but Moody, neither educated nor refined, could not have cared less. He was not a theologian nor a social reformer, not even a local pastor. He was a revivalist, and so, for the most part, his messages were not directed towards Christian growth. Let the Bible Institute and various conferences tend to that. His job was to preach simple sermons for the common man. And simple they were. When one reads many of Moody's sermons, one is struck by how little Scripture is contained in them. Moody's texts were brief and only lightly touched on. He was not strong on exposition nor in the development of his text. Nor could much organization be found in the sermons of the man who revolutionized revival organization. He relied mostly upon illustrations taken from his personal experiences to develop his themes. At times he used illustrations to illustrate illustrations. Story after story follow, narrated back to back. No application is given, no points separated one from another. At times his sermons read like nothing more than a loose collection of stories that vaguely circle a theme. In his sermon "The Reward of the Faithful," on John 4:36, after a brief introduction, Moody quickly moves to personal experience:
I can speak from experience. I have been in the Lord's service for twentyone years and I want to testify that He is a good paymaster - that He pays promptly."
From that statement, he moves through a number of stories, 11 in all, involving an old man, a Sunday school superintendent, a Sunday school teacher, two drunks, a young man, three different mothers, and a fireman before ending. (Note that all these types of people would probably have been in the audience listening and identifying themselves with the illustrations.) At no time does Moody seek to place that verse in its biblical context or express clearly its meaning. It serves as a springboard from which Moody was to tell his most sentimental stories. His language was poor, his diction and grammar worse. Sometimes he said "ain't" accidentally, sometimes deliberately to add color. Yet Moody could fill a building with sometimes more than 5,000 people from the most sophisticated areas in New York and Boston. It wasn't because of his message or his manner of speaking. It was because he cared and he spoke to the culture of his listeners. There was not the underlying greed or arrogance that had clothed other revivalists since Finney. He seemed to care more about the listeners and their souls than he did their money. His delivery was sincere and urgent. Emotion filled every sentence; there was a "realness" about him. Those who heard Moody preach would write of his conversational manner. He sounded like he was talking to three or four people in the front row. He was a friend. The great preacher F. B Meyer wrote of Moody's preaching: "The first characteristic of Mr. Moody's that struck me was that he was so absolutely unconventional and natural ... a rare common sense, a directness of method, a simplicity and transparency of aim, which were as attractive as they were fruitful in results. 1116 People didn't care how much he knew because they knew how much he cared. Some had come expecting to find a pompous windbag or a religious charlatan. Instead they found a genuine human being with the attitude of a concerned friend who gave voice to the fears they really felt deep inside. And they loved him for it.
So with the message of Moody, there had indeed come a change in American revivalism, perhaps the last great one. All through American revivalism, there had been that nagging question of why revivals caused such little lasting effects, so small social changes. Now there was an answer. It was because it was not possible to save so corrupt a society. Revivalism now becomes a rescue mission, a spiritual raid in hostile territory, rooted in love and compassion geared solely to the salvation of sinners from a doomed, dying planet. The problem, the shame of American revivalism had been linked to a doctrinal position and enshrined as an ultimate truth, part and parcel of the revival mentality.
Moody's Methods
If the major change in the mood and message of American revivalism, championed by Moody, is often overlooked, his changes in revival methodology simply cannot be. Moody took the concept of religious revivalism and infused it with the secular concepts of better business. The thing Moody seemed most pleased with at times was the fact that his meetings were run like a well-oiled business. Suddenly, places had to earn the right for a revival. To be considered for a revival, a location had to meet three basic criteria. First, there had to be a promise of united support from the evangelical churches. Especially important, there were to be no competing activities held by the churches while the revival was in progress. The purpose of revival might be to win the lost, but Moody never forgot that most, if not almost all, of his audience would be church goers. Secondly, there was needed adequate physical facilities to house the meetings. Finally, there must be sufficient funding for the campaign. This amount was to account for the preparation of adequate facilities, advertisement, and various salaries. While at times this could be a large amount, it was rarely a problem. If the location could not raise the entire amount needed, there were prominent businessmen and various men of wealth who were willing to subsidize the ministry. These men pledged to defray any shortfall of a revival meeting. And if need be, public appeals in local newspapers and to supporting churches could be made. Because of the pre-arrangement of finances, Moody rarely felt the need to take up offerings during the revival meetings. This was a pleasant surprise to many who saw revivalists as money-hungry frauds and contributed greatly to the positive image of Moody's revivals. Moody himself received no percentage of the money raised. Instead, wealthy supporters gave to an honorarium which he privately received at the close of a revival series. Moody had noticed what had happened to the ministries of those who focused too much on money during the revival and so made sure that money matters were, for the most part, taken care of before the services had even begun. Thus, Moody was able to escape the money snare that had entrapped so many before and after him.
Once Moody decided where to conduct a revival and for how long (usually in large cities, a revival lasted two to three months; in smaller cities, three to four weeks), preparations began in earnest. Volunteers, made up primarily of local ministers and businessmen, worked out the operational details with an eye for creating a crescendo of activity which was tuned to peak precisely at the beginning of the revival. There would be a financial committee to raise money, a prayer committee to raise prayer, a home visitation committee to raise visitors, an usher committee to select and train ushers, a choir, a publicity committee, and other smaller groups to handle select details. Next to the preparing of the building to be used (decided by the building committee), the publicity committee received the most funds. Choir members were chosen from the local church choirs, trained in Sankey's gospel songs, and divided into separate groups to sing on alternate nights. Ushers, usually between 1,000 to 2,000 were instructed in how to handle unruly crowds, fainting women, and crying children should the need arise. Personal workers were carefully screened, usually from the church leaders and teachers, and trained in dealing with the anxious in a manner that would lead them quickly to Christ. Local churches were busy creating the "proper climate" of expectation and prayer. Revival prayer meetings, special days of prayer and fasting, sermons built around the need for revival were used to raise expectations and gain God's pleasure. If this sounds like a Billy Graham revival, it is. Moody's methods were quickly incorporated by other revivalists because they clearly created results and at the same time gave the evangelist and his team a large control over the entire process. There would be no out-of-control James Davenports here. But there was more here than just control. The idea was to get as many people as possible involved. Involved people came and brought their friends. After all, it was their revival; they had worked hard for it, given sacrificially in time and money for it. Indeed, all of these preparations took months of work in advance of Moody's arrival, and although Moody himself took no active part in the preparation of a campaign, he made certain before the revival began that what had been done met his strict standards. Eventually the multi-layered complexity of this massive preparation forced Moody to increase administrative efficiency by using certain subordinates over and over again to do the same jobs in different cities. All of this gave birth to the first non-preaching professionals of revivalism. These administrative professionals were able to organize revivals in a way that would have horrified Edwards and amazed Finney. With this level of organization, they were able to mobilize large cities in a way that Finney could have only dreamed of. And again, note that the impact of this system is borne witness in its lasting effect, traced through the large number of Billy Sunday's "advance men" and the tightly-run program of Billy Graham.
The main attraction of the revival was the services held in the main meeting hall every evening. Moody rarely spoke to less than a packed house but the attraction was not all spiritual. To most conservative Christians of this day, the theatre, the circus and most social forms of entertainment were considered sinful. Here were warm friendly god-centered meetings, exciting and entertaining, yet good for the soul. Here was a chance to see a celebrity (Moody), be entertained by the singing, preaching and general hubbub and yet remain pure. And best of all, it was free. Moody would lead the service from a raised platform at the front of the auditorium surrounded by several hundred dignitaries and supporting ministers. It was from there that he preached and sought converts. The service always began with a half-hour of congregational singing, in itself somewhat of an innovation. An even greater innovation, one that would become standard practice for revivalists after 1875, was the employment of a professional soloist song leader to accompany the revivalist from place to place. Ira Sankey had the useful knack of composing gospel songs that were easy to learn and fun to sing. Nearly all of his songs contained a refrain or chorus which the congregation could quickly pick up from the choir. The impact was to set the stage for the entire evening:
Determine the pleasure that you get from a circus quick-step a negrominstrel sentimental ballad, or college chorus, and a hymn all in one and you have some gauge of the variety and contrast that may be perceived in one of these songs.17
The words of these "gospel" songs often contained horrible, even heretical theology. But their intent was exhortative, not educational. The words, like the music, were designed primarily to create a mood. At some point in the service Sankey would introduce his solo with a short talk concerning salvation. Most of his solos were extremely sentimental dealing with dying children, wandering lads, and reunited families. As someone noted in the newspapers, "Moody's audiences always enjoyed a good cry." Other songs sung by Sankey were old Calvinistic hymns with their theologies revised to reflect the Arminian beliefs of Moody and company. Here was the best of both worlds, a sense of connection with the past traditions modified by the theology of the day. No matter the source of the songs, they all dealt with in some manner the joys of Heaven and the peace in knowing Jesus. These tunes and words reduced to the lowest common denominator helped to mold this crowd of strangers into a body of people ready to respond to the preacher. This is most obviously seen in the invention of the "invitational hymn" sung at the end of the service encouraging people to "come and trust now" in direct response to the sermon. Here, created by the style of Moody's preaching and Sankey's singing, was a vastly different atmosphere from Finney's righteous warnings to repent and believe and Edwards' exhortations to seek out the mercy of God. It was a warm, fuzzy kind of "do yourself and God a favor and get saved" salvation.
Along this line, one of Moody's important modifications of Finney's revivalism was the rejection of the anxious bench. This, as is to be expected, was not due to theological reservations but because of practical concerns. Moody felt the tactics involved were too high-pressured and pushy. It violated the integrity of the individual and created needless embarrassment by forcing respondents to parade their inward feelings and decisions before thousands of curious onlookers. That might actually keep some of the more timid from coming forward and getting saved. Therefore, people were encouraged to adjourn to the inquiry room where they could be dealt with in a friendly, confidential manner. However, just because there was no high-pressure selling doesn't mean there was no selling at all. Any reasonable measure was used to get a person into that room. The earthly rewards, as well as the spiritual insurance of salvation, were pointed out. Moody would argue that obedience to God brought peace, contentment, and most of all prosperity. Surrounded on the platform by the wealthiest men in the community (and the less well-off pastors), Moody would note that few of the poor found in the slums of Chicago or the streets of New York ever attended church. The Dodges and the McCormicks, however, were church-going, born-again Christians. They, too, had started off poor, but look at these church goers now. The conclusion was self-evident.
Once the meeting was over and the last stragglers had entered the inquiry room, the doors were shut and Moody, climbing on a chair so all could see him, gave a short forceful talk in which he pressed the necessity of an immediate surrender to Christ. Then the personal workers would begin. For the next half hour or more, Moody and his co-workers would converse earnestly with those present, sharing scripture and praying. Always they were pushing the person towards an acknowledgement of Jesus Christ as their personal savior though the large majority of respondents were already church members who needed assurance of their salvation or help in other areas. One of Moody's assistants later estimated that less than a third of those entering the inquiry room were non-believers. Nevertheless, when the inquiry meeting was concluded, Moody or some designated worker would announce to the waiting press the number who had been saved that night. At first, Moody had refused to do so: "Urge an immediate decision but never tell a man he is converted. Never tell him he is saved. Let the Holy Spirit reveal that to him. You can shoot a man and see he is dead - but you cannot see when a man received eternal life."" But as his revival meetings became more and more business-like, they began to demand a tangible result, a sale. And numbers came to be an essential part of measuring the bottomline, the efficiency of the meetings. After Moody, these reported conversions would become everything.
Some have suggested that Moody brought revivalism into the 20th century, that he rescued a dying form by pumping it full of new life. That he did. But once again, the new life was very different from the old way. Optimistic millennialism had given way to a pessimistic world view. The individual was all important, society doomed. Methodology was more refined, enabling revivalists to mount attacks on larger cities with larger results. Finney had held on to Edwards' demand for changed lives with substantial modification. By the death of Moody, change, either individual or social, had been replaced with numerical results. And while Moody was ultimately unable to change the masses nor was he able to add an appreciable number to the church, he was able to keep his integrity. That problem, which had occurred to those who had come before him, would again arise among those who followed.
REVIVAL AS ENTERTAINMENT
The Coming of Billy Sunday
American revivalism reached a climax of sorts with the career of Billy Sunday. Reflected in his ministry is the essence of American Christianity where money is important, theology is not, and, without a doubt, God is an American. Sunday's revivals were no longer occasions when God, in His good pleasure, chooses to awaken in believers a desire to better become imitators of Christ. Instead, revivals become unabashedly dramatic performances where the audiences laugh at, cry over, and are entertained by the histrionics of a master showman. American revivalism had fallen from being an amazing work of God as Jonathan Edwards wrote to being the greatest show on earth available to conservative Christians unwilling to enter the theatre or circus. And when religion becomes entertainment, it is definitely not long for the world. For entertainment is one area that the Church certainly cannot outperform the world. America's great ability to trivialize the important finally occurs here in the religious realm. And sadly, it is in the story of Billy Sunday that we see in clear detail what man hath wrought; the supernatural aspects of revivalism disappear, the methodology is exalted, and the minister himself becomes corrupted by the very system he uses.
None of this occurs in a vacuum of course. Historically, we have already seen this decline and debasement of revivalism in the man-centered theology of Finney and the secular methodology of Moody. Sunday, to give him credit, just carried everything to its logical conclusion in the environment he found himself. American Christianity had been going through some distinctive changes in the period from Moody to the 1930s. The key element in religious life was voluntarism. In America, one's association with the church was free and unforced. It was voluntary. Thus, churches had to compete in a free market system with each other to gain members and money in order to survive and grow. This created a fear of anything that might be divisive, that might alienate prospective "buyers." The emphasis of the churches was on the practical; what will attract people, what will make them want to come? Divisive issues were ignored or downplayed, theology was reduced or deemphasized for the most part. Yet at the same time, each denomination felt the need to justify its doctrinal and practical distinctives as opposed to other churches. Why choose us? Most churches that were involved in and influenced by revivalism (as opposed to the more liberal churches involved in the social gospel) tended to argue that their churches best reflected the church of the New Testament. They held up the Bible and argued that this was them. The developments of the intervening centuries and its creeds and theological systems were ignored or downplayed. Conservative American Christianity continued its antihistorical, anti-intellectual bias that would culminate into the separatist Fundamentalism of the 1930s.
Underlying the conservative church of this period (for it was they who formed the rank and file audiences and supporters of American revivalism) was a drive to hear what the Bible said to them right now, right where they were. In regular preaching as well as in revivalist preaching, little sense of history or tradition was mentioned. The search for truth, even biblical truth, was largely forgotten. That was reduced to familiar cliches, comfortable to the ears. What was important was what affects them now. Revivalism, always in some manner subjective, becomes extremely subjective, almost an existential sort of experience. The message is changed from what was preached by Edwards and even Finney. Revivalist preaching was now largely devoid of Scripture content. Even more under Sunday than was with the case with Moody, a Scripture reference is read and ignored under the onslaught of stories and general moral admonitions. Arminianism, with its emphasis on man's initiation in salvation, has worked its effect, driving everything down to its common denominator. Converts were to be won by persuasion, manipulated by technique. Therefore, the message had to be simplified; if man can't understand it, ignore it. And as mystery and supernaturalism left the message, so too did the distinctive Christian message until, under Sunday, all that is left is some sort of general morality based on common sense and the standard values of the audience rather than that which is uniquely Christian. Preaching is no longer divisive but it is no longer distinctive either. And with a subjective message handled in a subjective manner, the only way to judge its validity was by results, numbers, not by the accuracy of its truth. Moody, I believe, saw this coming and that he was wise enough to eventually moved more and more into education as an attempt to reclaim the truth beyond the phrase "The Bible says." Sunday did not.
No wonder America entered into a "religious depression" after 1925 and large scale revivalism seemed over by 1930. Both had been made trivial by surrendering to the surrounding culture. Sunday's emotional preaching, bombastic speech, and extravagant lifestyle reinforced a negative image not seen in Moody. Mention the word revivalist in the 1930s and most Americans saw an Elmer Gantry (published in 1927), a sweat-soaked evangelist amid an emotionally charged crowd shaking down the gullible for their money. It is sad that what was first experienced as an amazing work of a gracious God with the hope that it might usher in the Millennium in America had been reduced in 200 years to a hypocrite shaking down dimwitted people for a pocketful of money. Man had indeed outhved his God and in the remains of life, all that was left were scoundrels. And to many people, one of those scoundrels looked a lot like Billy Sunday.
The Life of Billy Sunday
William Ashley (Billy) Sunday was born on November 19, 1862, one mile south of Ames, Iowa. His father, a soldier in the Union army, died in December 1862 without ever seeing his third son. Sunday's mother remarried in 1868 and two more children were added to the family. However, in 1874, his stepfather disappeared and Sunday and his older brother Edward ended up in a soldier's orphan home in Glenwood, Iowa. Two years later, Sunday returned to work on his grandfather's farm near Ames, but he and his grandfather quarreled and finally, at the age of 15, he left to be on his own in the neighboring town of Nevada, Iowa. Sunday never finished high school but gained some success in playing baseball for the Marshalltown, Iowa, team. He wasn't a good batter, but he was fast, very fast, and eventually was offered a chance to play for the Chicago White Stockings. For eight years (1883-1891) he played right field for various National League teams, enjoying moderate success as a fielder and base runner. So it came to be that after 1883, Billy made his home in Chicago and it was there he met God.
What Sunday actually encountered was a street-preaching team from the Pacific Garden Mission. They operated a "Gospel Wagon," sort of a rolling rescue mission complete with men and women playing on cornets and trombones, singing gospel hymns, preaching salvation. At their invitation, Sunday left his fellow ballplayers and followed the entourage down to the Mission itself where he heard more hymns, testimonies, and a sermon encouraging the listeners to become doers by coming down to the altar, confessing their sins, and seeking God's salvation. Sunday did not go forward that night but he did keep on going back until one night in June 1886, he went forward and publicly accepted Christ as his Savior. The conversion does not seem to have been particularly emotional but it was definitely the watershed event of his life. He stopped drinking alcoholic beverages and gambling. He refused to play baseball on Sunday. He began attending Jefferson Park Presbyterian Church, rising to the position of Sunday school superintendent. His testimony was in popular demand not just because he was a ballplayer but because he had the knack of speaking in an interesting, natural style that held the listeners' attention. In 1891, he was offered a full-time position as assistant secretary of the religious department of the Chicago YMCA. Here Sunday and his young wife were thrown into the religious issues of the day. The debate raged everywhere. What were the church's priorities? Should the church work to feed the poor and change the American economic system as those of the Christian Socialism or Social Gospel movement felt or was the new conservative reaction correct? Should the church's efforts be focused on attaining personal salvation for individuals rather than public salvation for societies? Would it be Moody or Rauschenbusch? Sunday knew poverty, he had seen with his own eyes the destructive influence of booze and gambling. Yet he had found economic success without any sense of fulfillment and purpose. It was evangelists with the word of God that had brought him to the Lord. Thus, as far as the focus of his ministry was concerned, the die was cast. He would be an evangelist. He chose to follow in the steps of Moody.
And he was taught by one taught by Moody. The Rev. J. Wilbur Chapman, the best-known evangelist in America in the 1890s, had inherited Moody's mantle. Moody had often recommended Chapman to preach in his stead and Chapman's meetings had grown until he needed a fulltime assistant, an advance man to go ahead of him and prepare the way for his crusades. He needed someone who could do some preaching, who had a heart for the lost, and was a conservative Bible-believer willing to stand firm against the rising tide of liberalism. Billy Sunday was his man. As Chapman's advance man, Sunday gained valuable on-the-job training in the revival profession by organizing local committees, choosing meeting places, training ushers, arranging for publicity, organizing prayer meetings, even doing some preliminary preaching himself. When Chapman gave up revivalism in December 1895, he passed the mantle on to Sunday, recommending Sunday to others just as Moody had recommended him. Sunday opened his first revival meetings on January 7, 1896, in Garner, Iowa, a town of about 1300. In this annual revival meeting backed by three churches, Sunday basically tried to copy Chapman's style while he preached Chapman's sermons. It wasn't true Sunday, but it was good enough to get him invited to Sigourney, Iowa, a town twice Garner's size. And with that small beginning, the career of the last great revivalist until Billy Graham had begun.
Between January 1896 and November 1907, Sunday preached in 70 different communities. Of the 66 documented revivals, 28 were in Iowa and 24 in Illinois. Other engagements were held in Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri, and Indiana. This was known as the "Kerosene Circuit," rural agricultural-service communities with populations less than 10,000. This was a hard circuit devoid of glamour or prestige. Staying in shabby hotels and rooming houses, Sunday was at times so poor that he would wire his wife, Nell, for traveling money. Yet he felt that he was effective. When he had first started, Sunday, conscious of his social and educational shortcomings tried to make up in dignity what he lacked in formal learning. But as he grew more comfortable in his calling, he began to preach more like Moody than the educated Chapman. People in these rural areas liked his preaching. It was plain and practical, appealing to common sense and reasonable judgment. Soon Sunday's style was made up of two basic ingredients: slangy humor and florid rhetoric. He was "of the people" and he chose to speak like the people to the people. "I am a rube of the rubes. I am a graduate of the University of Poverty," he proudly announced. And the audiences loved it. He began more and more to entertain because he found that was what attracted the crowds. One headline in 1904 read "Evangelist Does Great Vaudeville Stunts in Tabernacle Pulpit." Revivalism had become show business.
By 1907, Sunday faced a great decision. He was all set to break into the big time but there was no way he could move himself and his revival organization to national fame, material wealth, and numerical results without his wife's administrative skills. Incredibly capable, Nell was able to keep Billy happy and oversee the ever growing organization. But to do so, she would no longer be able to make children and home her supreme responsibility. After much anguish, they chose to go for it, for all that revivalism had been reduced to, fame, fortune, and impressive numbers. But in so doing, they also chose the heartache of neglected children gone wrong, tarnished reputations, and dishonor to the cause of Christ. Revivalism as a system of evangelism in American Christianity had become so far off track that to choose success in it was to gain the world and lose their souls. So Lyle Dorsett remarks in his insightful book, Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America, though prayerful Christians, the Sundays were not immune to the culture of the day. America from 1908 to 1920 was in a boom time. Material success was as easy to achieve as ever before. And surely faith in God, like faith in America, should bring rich dividends. Sunday and Nell were not the only Christians who pulled Scripture out of context in order to argue that God wanted them to be millionaires, to not lack in any good thing. And in America of this time, good things equaled bigger houses, expensive clothes, privilege and status. "In short, the Sundays prayed for God's direction but allowed their culture to dictate the road."'
By New Year's Day 1908, the die was cast. Nell would work with Sunday and others would care for the children during the school year. And at first, God seemed to bless. 1908 ended with the largest crusade Sunday had yet done in Spokane, Washington. Opportunities opened up in 1909 for major crusades in Washington, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and it seemed, everywhere. Time with the children became less and less as Billy and Nell embraced the joys (and very tangible rewards) of serving Jesus. Tabernacles were built, expenses were being met, and love offerings were surpassing anything Sunday had ever seen. Ottumwa, Iowa, was an example. On the last night, 5,000 came to the meeting and 75 responded to the Gospel. Yet Sunday seemed more excited about the $1,000 he could send Nell and the Swiss-made watch he bought for himself for $118. The focus had changed.
It was hard not to be overwhelmed. The Sundays were flattered at being sought out by the rich and famous. Not everyone could call John D. Rockefeller a friend and supporter. They were invited to larger and larger cities. He was surpassing Moody in popularity and reputation. And he was definitely making more money. In Columbus, Ohio, for 49 days, for example, their offering totaled $21,000, almost $450 per day, an enormous sum for anyone in 1913. In Pittsburgh, they raised $46,000 in 56 days. Sunday earned for himself, after expenses, $870 a day during a time when the national average income was $836 a year. And that was just the beginning. In the 13 years from 1908 to 1920, Sunday earned over a million dollars. Obviously God did want to make him a millionaire. And he even dabbled in politics. Sunday dined with mayors, Presidents, and senators. Woodrow Wilson declared Sunday to be a major force behind the war effort and many suggest prohibition would never have passed without his help. The Sundays, simple folks at heart, became friends with the rich and famous. That dazed them and changed them as well. They too began to display a taste for the trappings of wealth themselves. New homes, new cars, tailored clothing, fur coats, leather shoes, and jewelry dotted their lives, but above all else was the applause. Revivalism had lost the savor of Christ and His sufferings, the Law and its demands, and had become nothing more than the job of entertainment, keeping the crowd happy and keeping them coming. And along with the change in focus came a another change in message. Finney and Moody had made the message non-theological. Sunday went further. The challenge of the Gospel heralded by Finney and Moody became temperance lectures and adages of general morality. Revivalism had no more use for the gospel. It just hadn't realize it yet.
Sunday began to give more of an emphasis in his campaigns to fighting certain social evils. While he would never speak against poverty or racism, he began to build his messages around temperance and patriotism. His famous booze sermon, "Get on the Water Wagon," was preached in every city. After World War I began, Sunday began lambasting godless Germany, the home of the Kaiser, higher criticism, and evolution. Now he called people to get saved, get on the water wagon, and support the war against Germany. And amazingly enough, salvation got the least emphasis. Revivalism had become a means of promoting Americanism. After all, everyone knew God was an American. Edwards' hope for a millennium city on a hill, Finney's hope for the great destiny of America, and Moody's sinking lifeboat had taken another strange turn for the worse.
Sunday hit his peak in 1917 with a ten-week crusade in New York. By then, he had his show down to perfection. It seemed a huge success. Over 98,000 people hit the sawdust trail (though few seemed to ever join a church). It was trumpeted in all the papers and fame was truly his. Everyone, it seemed, wanted Sunday in their pulpits. By 1920, the Sundays had added wealth to go with the fame. Rich and famous; they had realized the American dream. By the world's standards, they should have been overwhelmingly happy. But they were not. The price they had paid had come due. Reporters began to note, negatively, the differences between Sunday's lifestyle and Moody's simple life. Moody never asked for money. Money had become an obsession to Sunday. He injected the subject of money in every sermon and if the offerings were not large enough (the ushers would interrupt the service to tell him how much had been taken in), he was not above stopping the service to take up another. Increasingly the press began to feel the Sundays were selling the gospel. They didn't realize it wasn't the gospel anymore. It was entertainment. And people were expected to pay for entertainment. The money issue grew so bad that staff member B. D. Ackley left in 1917 after arguing about the emphasis on money. But even worse were the problems with the kids.
The Sundays had felt guilty about leaving their children in the care of others and so tried to compensate by indulging their every whim. So it is not surprising that their children were spoiled and became greedy and lazy. Of the four children the Sundays had, all were problems except the oldest, Helen. She had the fortune of growing up before Sunday became famous. Helping her mother, she developed stability and devotion to God and her husband, always responding to every gift with genuine surprise and gratitude. The boys were different. Their parents were never there for them. All they received were material things and the assumption grew that everything was to be handed to them. And without the Christian heart that Billy and Nell had, the boys began to reflect their characteristics in a distorted manner. George, the oldest son, reflected his dad's love of money. He enjoyed the high life of fast cars and cheap women. He drank heavily, married often, and greatly embarrassed his parents. Involved in various money schemes, he suffered financial ruin in 1933 and committed suicide. After a wild life of alcoholism and women as well, William Jr. died in 1938 at the age of thirty-seven, his health ruined by the life he led. Paul also distressed his parents with his unpaid bills and his rebellious attitude. He passed away in 1944 at the age of thirty-three after a life of waste and ruin. Many noted the irony of the great temperance-advocating father who's children were alcoholics and party goers. At times, Sunday would go through periods of great anger towards the boys: "The name Sunday God has made famous with His cause and I would die before I would dishonor it and I would rather the boy (in this case George) die than disgrace it."2 I'm not sure that is what his family needed to hear from a frequently absent father and mother. At other times, it just broke his heart and made him wonder if he had made the right decision or not. Before she died, Nell told the story of Sunday's pain after the death of George:
Billy stood gazing out the window of their Winona Lake home. Watching the autumn leaves fall, and looking wistfully toward the lake, he turned to her (Nell) with tear-filled eyes and said, "Ma, where did I go wrong? I thought we heard God's call to evangelism. But look at our boys. Where did I go wrong?"3
Nell recalled that she went over to Sunday and told him to buck up. He had done his best and that was all he could do. He had to keep on with God's work. And so he did.
However, the heady successes of the years 1910 to 1920 could not last. This year's entertainment eventually becomes last year's entertainment. And so Sunday's ministry went into decline. After 1921, no major U.S. city invited Billy Sunday to conduct a revival. Smaller cities meant smaller crowds, fewer converts, less income. Specially built tabernacles became a thing of the past. Now revivals occurred in packed churches. His organization also began to break up. His right hand man and music director, Homer Rodeheaver, wrote in 1927 a seven-page letter listing his concerns for the ministry. Sunday's growing irritation, his change in message, his incessant call for money was destroying the ministry and morale of his staff:
The people begin to come and if there is the slightest bit of congestion, (Billy) shouts to the ushers and secretaries angrily and I have seen people reach up to get his hand and a sudden look of fear or astonishment come into their face because he was not looking at them but shouting something which they could not understand. Then I have seen other serious men and women coming along in line with bowed heads, the most serious moment that they have in their lives, expecting a direct word and hearty hand clasp from the man who asked them to take this step, and ... he would be looking away or talking to someone else and many times never look at the men or the women with whom he was shaking hands. I have seen them turn away with disappointment written on their faces sometimes refusing to go into the seats or give their names and go ... out of the tabernacle.4
There is no way anyone could have written that about Finney or Moody. But the problem always seemed to center on money. In his letter, Rodeheaver was especially concerned that Sunday accented money way too much:
Sometimes, Mr. Sunday seems to forget that when the crowds are small, the collections necessarily must be increasingly small. He has bawled the people out here when in proportion to the number that have attended the meeting, they have been exceedingly generous and have given more in proportion than any other place we have been in this year.'
Something had to be done. After a few months, when it became clear that there would be no response, Homer Rodeheaver, Sunday's partner of almost 20 years, quietly slipped away. But something must have gotten through. With the deaths of their children, Helen and George, the loss of dear friends and supporters, and the decline of his revivalism, Sunday, in the end, abandoned his expensive lifestyle for a simpler one. He began once again to spend more time with local pastors and ordinary people. The man who would have liked to be the Republican nominee for President in 1920 (it was Warren G. Harding instead but Sunday had let everyone know he was available) now was thankful for the meals he enjoyed around the tables of common folk. He continued to preach and seemed to have finally found the quiet satisfaction he lost in 1907 when he died in October 1935.
Sunday's Methods
There is really very little to say about Billy Sunday in the area of theology or intellectual history. He was not a thinker. He was a borrower of ideas that had come before. Not only did he not write a book on revival, some would jokingly say that he had never even read a book. His importance is really more as an example, showing what is the end result of revival separated from the glory of God, the end result when the message disappears in the method. The methodology of Billy Sunday was the methodology of Moody developed from the ideas of Finney. There is little to be said of Sunday's methods that has not already been said about Moody's. Serving as an advance man for Wilbur Chapman, Sunday learned from a disciple of Moody how to run a revival. And that he did. However, he did carry the techniques to a new peak of mechanical efficiency. He claimed to have based his ideas upon that of Finney, sometimes quoting Lecture on Revivals in defense, but he most often compared his techniques with those of Moody and big business: "I am not only a preacher but a businessman. I endeavor to bring: 1. System (and) organization; 2. Business principles; 3. Common sense into revival work."6 At the height of his popularity, Sunday could and did make strong demands on the communities which sought his brand of revival. He would ask churches to close their doors for the duration of the revival so that religious intensity would be focused on the campaign (much as Moody). He also began to request that all communities erect wooden tabernacles like Moody. It was a relatively costly enterprise but offerings were always good enough to pay for it. And it was a status symbol (not unlike who had the largest revival tent in the 1950s) for Sunday, a sign that like Moody and Chapman he had arrived. Finally, Sunday would request that the financial arrangements made in advance guarantee that the revival not finish in debt.
But what made this all work was organization. By 1909, Sunday had a huge team of various specialists. He had advance workers who arrived before the revivals to line up local support. He had people to oversee the construction of the tabernacle. He had experts in Bible study speaking to men's groups and ladies' groups, individuals to visit factories and schools, to contact business executives, and to organize the musical services. And, of course, there were the usual committees -finance, building, secretarial, publicity, and nursery. Ushers were organized and drilled like military companies and the officers proudly bore titles of "Captain" and "Lieutenant." At the Boston crusade in 1915, the local oversight committee arrived at the following number of volunteers needed: 2,000 ushers; 700 secretaries; 200 doorkeepers; 5,000 workers to lead local prayer meetings; 1,000 women to approach businessmen; 1,000 women to approach women in factories, hospitals, and hotels; 500 women to work in nurseries; and 8,000 to sing in the choir for a grand total of nearly 20,000 people.
When the revival team reached its destination, Bible studies were set up in neighborhoods, schools, and churches, talks were delivered to civil and religious groups, and meetings held in offices, factories, YMCA branches, and stores. Prayer groups were begun and excitement was built upon. But above everything else, Sunday's people played every publicity card he could deal out. They sold Sunday like corporations sold cereal. In Fairfield, Iowa, in 1907, they organized a baseball game on the town square between various store owners. Driving with Nell to the game in a wagon pulled by a yoke of oxen and driven by the oldest white male in the county, Billy played in the game for both teams. And the people loved it. Once criticized for treating religion like a circus, Sunday hired a former Barnum and Bailey "giant" to act as an usher. Sunday's crowds were warmed up by his chief assistant Homer Rodeheaver. Rody played the trombone, sang, chatted, gave announcements, told stories, and used his knack for reading crowds to whip up enthusiasm and spirit.
Sunday's methodology was definitely built around entertainment and vaudeville rather than the stately religious services of the past. He moved around the stage waving his fists doing flips, jumping on chairs. He'd challenge anyone in the crowd who sided with the forces of evil to fight him here and now. Skipping across the stage, he'd shadow box the devil. He'd pretend to pick up huge boulders and hurl them into the crowd. He'd slide like a ballplayer crossing home plate. With lithe, supple athletic agility, he was always moving, astonishing the audience with a spellbinding display. This was no dainty, sissified religion. This was hard-muscled, guttough religion. And for those whose religion would not allow them to enter a theater or go to a circus, this was, for them, the greatest show on earth. Sunday's revivals had become events, part church service (preaching and an offering), part political rally (against the Germans and for the war), part stage entertainment (Sunday in all his antics). Moody would have been horrified.
The other major change Sunday effected in the area of methodology was the doing away with inquiry rooms. He made the gospel so simple, it was claimed, that there was no need for inquiry rooms (as Moody had used) nor for an anxious bench (as Finney had so controversially started). All that a man had to do to obtain forgiveness for sins was to accept Christ by walking down the aisle, by hitting the sawdust trail. Salvation was no longer a reasonable, thought out decision made apart from the meeting. Now, by walking down the aisle, a person was saved. There at the front, the new believer received a hand shake by Sunday, a decision card to sign (for statistical purposes), and a booklet informing him or her that "by this act of coming forward ... you are now a child of God and NOW [their emphasis] have eternal life." This was the theology which Sunday called the old-time religion of our fathers. In actuality, it, like his preaching, was a major change.
Sunday's Message
It is in Sunday's message that we can see how much revivalism has changed. His appearance at the beginning of a service was not that of a typical minister; no, he looked good. He wore delicately creased suits, patent-leather shoes, a diamond stickpin and the best silk necktie one could find. It was show time and the star had to look the part. He also had to talk the part. As was normal with revivalism after Moody, the message was built around two principles. First, it was simple. His doctrine could be summed up in ten words: "With Christ you are saved, without Him, you are lost." Secondly, it tended to be anti-intellectual. Sunday often stated, "I know no more about theology than a jackrabbit does about ping pong or an elephant does about crocheting." But Sunday made even those two givens, uniquely his own.
First, his simple doctrine became even simpler as he went on. More and more, he reduced the gospel until there was barely any gospel at all. Sunday didn't have a message. Method had conquered all. What he needed was a new message to attract crowds. Sunday harkened back to simpler times, to true moral values, to the American way. His classic sermons, such as the booze sermon or "motherhood," wandered off into sentimentality and had little to do with distinctive Christianity. They were the kind of talks one could have heard at community meetings or the local social clubs. There were sermons on morality, on the home and family, on motherhood, attacks on evolution, and a call to old-fashioned religion (whatever that was). He would attack booze, warn against alien philosophies and evil amusements, and exalt patriotism. The content of these sermons couldn't be seriously compared with previous revivalists. They showed neither the study, the style, nor the ability to understand Scripture that others possessed. Moody's sermons had been full of illustrations, Scripture exposition swallowed up in many stories. Sunday's sermons went further. full of moral admonition and sad stories. Scripture exposition was replaced with moral advice.
But what made Sunday popular was the drama he created. A gospel meeting with Billy Sunday was an event. His sermons were heightened by his pounding the pulpit, standing on a chair, swinging a chair over his head, jumping, sliding, falling, whirling, and even doing handsprings on the platform. At his more patriotic moments, he would end his sermons by jumping on top of the pulpit and vigorously waving an American flag. Jokes, slang, and shocking speech made up a large part of his sermons. Some came just to hear what he would have to say next. Others found him vulgar and coarse. Sunday loved to make fun of booze, women, liberals, evolution, and politics. He paraphrased Bible stories, acted them out, and injected them with little morals. Middle-class America loved it. As World War I began, Sunday's message took another turn in content, a more strident patriotic sound. "If hell could be turned upside down, you would find stamped on the bottom `Made in Germany,"' he often said. Revival meetings quickly became more like pep rallies for God and country. In the New York crusade, he had people come forward to the sounds of the "Star Spangled Banner." In Buffalo, Sunday ended one sermon with a Bible in one hand and an American flag in the other. God was definitely an American. The American culture's process of assimilation had watered down the message and exalted the method of revivalism until the whole enterprise had lost the distinct Christian message and had been trivialized into unimportance. Before in Edwards', Finney's, Moody's, and other's revivalism, the Christian message had walked in some uncomfortable fashion side by side with the glorification of the American experience. But now the Christian message had disappeared completely into the cult of Americanism. The American culture had taken over revivalism to such an extent that God and country became interchangeable. It was America and God together against all the godless evolutionary liberals who had slithered out of Germany. And Kaiser Bill and "his dirty bunch of pretzel-chewing, hamburger-eating high binders" were in for a real fight. When criticized about the vicious attack on all Germans, Sunday replied: "I'll say what I please about the most lecherous, degenerate, hell-bound gang that ever wiggled out of Hell, God pity their stinking hides."
All of this brought to the front another aspect of Sunday's preaching that had been there all along. His sermons of motherhood and morality were also filled with militancy and hatred. Moody had stayed above the theological fray. For someone who had no knowledge of theology, Sunday plunged right in. And if they were his enemies, then they were obviously His enemies, as well. Often Sunday would remark off-hand that if he were God, he would instigate a moral purge, a slaughter of the ungodly. Papers would be full of obituaries, freight cars full of the dead. Sunday would at times go so far as list by name those he had consigned to Hell, "I have no interest in a God who does not smite." Suddenly James Davenport was running the revival. Sunday's anger showed itself as well in crazy, simple solutions: "If I was mayor of this city and had authority to put men on the corners with double-barreled shotguns to shoot anyone who cursed, you'd see how much cussing there would be." Booze brewers, atheists, evolutionists, socialists, foreigners, and anyone who disagreed with Sunday were on that list. That was the problem with America, that's the reason for its decline, foreign influence causing moral decline. And Sunday would fight them all. This was the world of Billy Sunday, a world of black and white, winners and losers, Americans and aliens. Revival had ceased to be about God and man's relationship with Him. Now it was about man and the society around him, how he acted and who he kept company with. And unfortunately, for mostly rural middle-class Americans, Sunday was a voice harking back to a simpler life and times. To them, it was good entertainment, it was comforting entertainment, it was moral entertainment. But it wasn't the gospel. And eventually the show grew old and outdated. By 1920, Sunday no longer had the power to surprise and overwhelm. People seemed to grow tired of crusade after crusade built around moral righteousness and patriotism. They had just won the biggest crusade against Germany and now they just wanted to have fun. The greatest show on earth was competing with other forms of entertainment and losing. And as Sunday had no life-changing, God-touched message, his voice was lost in the midst of other voices. In May of 1930 in Mt. Holly, New Jersey, Sunday held his last city-wide revival. But by then a new figure had taken the tired old stage of revivalism and, with the fervor of a new Pentecost and the love of the spothght, had revitalized revivalism for a moment. By institutionalizing revivalism, she had tamed the wild power of God and made it part of the weekly church service. She was Aimee Semple McPherson.
REVIVAL AS SPECTACLE
The Adventures of Aimee Semple McPherson'
January 1, 1901, was not just the start of a new century. It was the start of a new religious movement soon to change the religious landscape, including revivalism. Charles Fox Parham laid his hands in prayer on Agnes Ozman in a church service and suddenly she began to speak in an unrecognized language. This was, in their eyes, the beginning of the modern resurgence of the New Testament gifts of the Holy Spirit centering on healing and speaking in tongues. These gifts had occurred in the New Testament Book of Acts upon the apostles and had sporadically surfaced throughout Church history, mainly among the fringe elements but nothing like this. This would not disappear. A few years later, an African-American preacher William J. Seymour, a disciple of Parham, started the 1906 Azusa Street revivals in Los Angeles. These interracial meetings ran almost three years and became the birthing place of the modern Pentecostal movement. At first there were no formal meetings, membership, or leadership, but the ensuing chaos changed all that. Unlike the previous revival structures, women were allowed and even encouraged to take leadership roles. If women were given the gifts, who were men to overrule God's Spirit? Drawing upon this new charge of emotional energy, revivalism was somewhat rekindled from the ashes left by Billy Sunday. One of the practitioners of this new outpouring was a young minister William Durham who, upon his return to his church in Chicago, instructed another young minister, Robert Semple, on Pentecostal theology and practices. It was this Robert Semple who led the revival services in Canada where he would meet, wed, and introduce Aimee Kennedy to the world of Pentecostal revivalism.
Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy was born in Ingersall, Ontario, Canada on October 9, 1890. Her mother Minnie was involved in the Salvation Army and her father, though not as emphatic about religion as Minnie, had links to a fairly fundamental Methodist church. Thus, religion occupied a central place in the Kennedy household. Like many teens, Aimee had her moment of religious crisis about the faith due to classes on evolution, but she was never rebellious. One of her chief sins of that day was to go dancing with a Presbyterian minister. It was not made clear what was the worst sin, dancing or dancing with a Presbyterian. Anyway, in 1907, at a Pentecostal revival near home led by Robert Semple, she reconnected with her God and connected with her future husband. They married in August 1908 and soon left for the mission field in China. In her often preached sermon, "The Story of My Life," McPherson recounts a vision she had, as they prepared to go, of "men clad in priestly robes and ministerial attire smothering the book of light and wisdom (the Bible, probably the King James Version) with their distorted thoughts and theories. Thus they spoke only dark and foolish sayings that kept the Church dark and unbelieving." But then God told Aimee that He had chosen and empowered her to go forth and clean away the debris and contamination with which they had covered and obscured the light of His Word. She was ready now to do great things for God. She had heard and she would obey.
Or so it seemed. Within months of reaching China, Robert Semple died leaving Aimee alone with a new child, Roberta. Able to return home, she found her way back to her mother's house full of questions and doubt. What had happened to her call, her vision? Where were the power and promises of God? On the rebound, she met and quickly married Harold McPherson, a businessman who was warm and sensitive to her in her time of need (unlike her mother). She settled into a routine of a normal married life, had a second child, Rolf, and loved her husband. But she was not satisfied. Surely God had called her to greater things than this marriage.
Not knowing what to do prompted another crisis. During the winter of 1913, McPherson fell sick and was hospitalized. Believing that she was going to die, as she recounts again in "The Story of My Life," she heard once again the clear strong voice of God: "Now Will You Go?" It was to her a matter of life or death. She was to either serve God or die. She chose to obey God and soon recovered. Harold was not sympathetic to her new calling, so one day, while he was away at work, she packed up her suitcase, her children, and fled back to her mother's. Harold demanded that she return immediately to her life of washing dishes and taking care of the house, the things women were supposed to do in those days. But she had been, for a second time, touched by God, and by God she would never again return to the domestic life.
Getting involved in a Pentecostal camp ground in Kitchner, Ontario, McPherson found her life's calling. Camp meetings held there were really nothing more than old fashioned revival services, very much like the camp meetings at the time of Finney. These revivals would gather usually on the outskirts of town, led by itinerate ministers for days and even weeks on end. They were the revival services of the rural. While the big boys like Finney, Moody, and Sunday focused on the urban areas where the crowds were, there were many lesser known revivalists who crisscrossed the countryside without advance men or local congregational support, sometimes only with a tent and a message. They had no danger of succumbing to the temptations of wealth or fame as Sunday had. There was no wealth or fame to be found here, only a simple message of God's love in Christ. At first, Aimee Semple McPherson was to be one of these. But not forever.
With her gospel car painted with the words "Where will you spend eternity?" on its side and with various tents of different sizes at different times, she went off as she felt the Lord led. In her autobiographical collection of remembrances, testimonies, and news articles, This is That, she tells of meetings held in Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. When the weather got cold, she traveled down south to Georgia and Florida. Eventually, she went west a few times and fell in love with California. With her in every step of the way was her mother Minnie to handle finances and her two children. (Later Harold would occasionally come along but this was not his work and they eventually divorced.) Her message, as she saw it, was the simple and pure story of the Gospel; what it was really was an original combination of Pentecostalism (with emphasis on the spiritual gifts of healing and tongues), Salvation Army methodology (making a public scene to attract an audience), Fundamentalism theology that exalted the literal Bible and rejected all forms of modernism (especially the hated evolution) all undergirded by a commitment to the Finney concept of revival methodology. This blend spoke well to the people unsure in the tumult of the day seeking familiarity.
She was very successful in her limited venue. She would often start her revivals off slowly in building an audience but would have the place packed by week's end. She would do anything for publicity. She would stand in the middle of the street screaming for people to come quickly and when she had gathered a group, lead them into her tent for a service. She loved to visit bars and pool halls and places of ill repute, preaching and inviting people to come to the revival. Once she got them there, many stayed to listen. Her preaching was very positive and nurturing, speaking more of the joys of heaven quite unlike Sunday's negative criticism of culture with his focus on Hell and politics. She also attracted crowds by adding something somewhat rare to audiences in the 1920s, an emphasis on physical healing. In our day of TV evangelists healing on every show, it is difficult for us to understand the amazing aspect it gave to revivalism. This was something many had never seen before and had only read about in the Bible. Aimee emphasized the healing events. In This Is That, she records at length her revival services before setthng down in Los Angeles. She usually notes something like "Jesus was lifted up" to sum her preaching and then spends page after page on stories of miraculous healings and witness documentations. This was something new in main-stream revivalism (though already happening in Pentecostal meetings), an emphasis not just on the healing of the soul but the healing of the physical body as well. This was something not seen in Edwards, Finney, Moody, or Sunday, but it struck a nerve in the hearts of her audiences. Their fears were solid; it was not just the sickness of the soul but it was a loss of society, a collapse of financial security, eventually even the horror of war. These were physical problems and it was reassuring to see God work His miracles in the physical world. Through McPherson, the Pentecostal viewpoint was brought into mainstream revivalism. Perhaps here is her greatest impact on Christendom.
After a couple of years of hauling the children and her mother all across the country, McPherson began to wear out. It was a hard job for a single mother to do all the driving and then often set up the tents with whatever help you could round up, attract an audience, preach and heal, take down the tents, and drive to the next town. Amid all that McPherson realized that this was no life for her kids. (Unlike Sunday, McPherson and her kids got along wonderfully until the day she died.) Realizing that Cal ifornia was a chief tourist attraction and already loving its weather, beaches, and people, she decided to build a church there in Los Angeles. Rather than always going to the people, she would build a Temple and have them come to her. And it would be a real Temple like Solomon's Temple, beautiful and ornate, so impressive that tourists would want to see it. The finances to build it would be raised during her revival travels and in every revival meeting she took donations for the Temple. As one newsman wrote, she put the cost in Pentecostalism." She would take revivalism and institutionalize it. She would combine the old fashion camp meeting with the every Sunday church and create a place where there was revival every Sunday. She would take revival to church and in so doing, she would tame it by removing its "special-ness" with an ongoing meeting. God was still the Lion of Judah but now this Lion was tame. Revival would take its final steps from a mighty work of God to meetings this week from 7:00 to 9:00.
The Temple, called Angelus Temple, was dedicated on January 1, 1923. As McPherson wrote in her own newspaper, The Bridal Call, the Temple would be:
a great revival center to which thousands may come to find salvation, divine healing, the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, encouragement, rest, refreshing and endowment of power for service, and where the prospective evangelist and worker may come for practical training in winning souls for Jesus.'
Now evangelism had entered a new phase. While Billy Sunday and others (such as Billy Graham) would continue to go where the sinners were, using the time-tested methods of D.L. Moody and Billy Sunday, McPherson was free to try new things. Her revivalism had to please no one but herself (and Jesus, of course). A new thing was in place. Now, church meetings had been around for a long time but this was not to be a church. It was a revival. Revival was institutionalized even more than it had been before. It was no longer something that might happen when community leaders came together in prayer, hired an itinerate revivalist to come to their city, and for a week or longer seek God's help in changing the place for the better. Now they would go to the revival at the Temple in another city and hopefully bring it back to their home church (much as the early Pentecostals had so done). Then every individual church could have its own individual revival, increase its membership, and maybe affect the community. But it rarely worked out that way. Revivalism had finally become an instrument of the local church and would become stale and ordinary. Only with the emergence of the mega-churches of the 21st century would this concept gain new life.
But that was all in the future in 1923. In the December 31 edition of the Los Angeles Times, there was an article on this new Temple that would open the next day: "Visitors were expected to feel as if they were attending an old-fashion outdoors camp meeting when they entered this Temple sanctuary." At last, revival was available without the hassle or hard work for either the evangelist or the audience. Finney's theological and social conquest of American revivalism (just one part of what Nathan Hatch called the "democratization of American Christianity") as a man-centered event, shaped and molded by Moody's stress on methodology, had resulted into two different forms of contemporary evangelism. The more traditional city-wide special meetings under a name preacher who comes and leaves were still going on. People will always want the circus to come to town. But in this society's desire for something more permanent, more secure, McPherson created an opportunity every Sunday at the same church in familiar settings for that same power to strike. Perhaps this was a reflection of how ordinary and staid the average Christian church had become. Certainly Fundamentalism with its decision to retreat from the world in mass (expanding on a message already seen in Moody) in the face of the modernist attack and Pentecostalism with its visual promise that God would rise up and smite the enemy forces with Holy Spirit power point to a need in American Christianity. No wonder Martin E. Marty, in his series on the modern American religion, called this period (1919-1941) "the noise of conflict." McPherson's genius was to decide to fight the good fight in the field of her own choosing. There she could control the message, the environment, and even the crowds better than ever before. American revivalism had separated into two forms, both similar in message but different in style and setting. One was itinerate, the other institutionalized. One is the forerunner of the Billy Grahams and television evangelists, the other, the ancestor of the mega-church movement. Both were distant cousins of the revivalism of the First and Second Great Awakenings but changed enough that the connection was dim. Both hoped to impact society, to stem the flood of the world's attack, but for the most time, both fought the wrong battles at the wrong time in the wrong way. Neither brand of revival would truly affect society in a real way. Racial and gender issues were not challenged in any serious way. McPherson would allow integration in her church but was also very friendly with the Ku Klux Klan. Billy Graham would talk of brotherhood but allow segregated meetings throughout the South. The Pentecostal movement had already opened its doors to white and black alike and women had always been welcomed to places of authority. McPherson was just acting in the context of her denominational teachings but neither she nor any of the other major revivalists move these issues into the front. Instead she got involved in local politics and sought to win over Los Angeles. Revivalism, now like everything else religious in America, had become a personal thing, an individual decision, that need not to reach out past one's life, family, and friends. Was this then a revival as of old? No. They had died out and were no longer possible with Finney's removal of action from the hands of God into the hands of man. Now all that was left were a few salvations and wealth and fame for the evangelist.
So into the work of the Temple, McPherson went seemingly from success to success. She spoke to her age and to her surroundings by mixing that old-time religion with new-age Hollywood, mixing sensationalism with spirituality, spectacle with sanctity. But as time went on, things began to change in McPherson. Wealth and power and popularity are strong drugs and it takes a rare person to resist them all. And surprisingly, the hours were a killer, even worse than on the revival circuit. As she became more famous, she was placed in the spothght more and more. More and more was demanded of her. But she loved it as she had always adored publicity. But by early 1926, McPherson was again exhausted and showing it. Mother Minnie, still running the business end of the show, was worried about her and ordered her overseas for a good long European vacation. There were multiple reasons why Minnie wanted McPherson to go. Probably the main reason was that they were not getting along and she hoped that the absence would smooth things over. Minnie Kennedy was a strict strong woman of her own and she would not fold before Aimee. They fought over dress, behavior, and religious style, but mostly they argued over money. McPherson loved to spend money and now she had it to spend. But her mother liked to keep a tight hand on the purse in order to make sure the massive bills for the huge church and productions and staff were paid. Plus there was one more concern, not big yet but troublesome. Minnie was worried that McPherson had become infatuated with the Temple radio engineer, Kenneth Ormiston.
Harold and Aimee had divorced in 1921, and while the divorce was amicable, it showed a side of Aimee that few ever saw. She regularly failed to get along well with the ones she had close and continual contact. She was the star; it was her way or the highway. And her mother Minnie was the only person who even tried to stand up to her. After her idealized first husband, Robert Semple, died, no other person would ever be superior enough to tell her what to do. She was the one with the calling, she was the messenger of God. And as it did with Billy Sunday, the fame began to take its toll. So Harold was out of the picture. When McPherson would tell her life story sermon, she would gloss over her time with him. But Pentecostals and Fundamentalists hated divorce and called it sin. She would have to answer. In her sermon "From Nineveh to Tarshish and Back," she answered her critics in this manner. She called the time of her marriage fleeing from Nineveh to Tarshish with the disobedient prophet Jonah. She had tried to run away from God's calling by marrying when she should not have, and by allowing him to divorce her, she was returning to God. So this divorce, though painful, was an act of obedience to the God who forgives and takes us back. It looked like most of her audience too was willing to join God in forgiving her and welcoming her back into her calling. At least everyone seemed to give "Sister" (as she liked to be called) a pass. So here she was, free and available again and finding Ormiston to be funny and genuine and warm; she spent a lot of time with him. However, there was one problem. He was already married. So McPherson was sent away to rest up and cool off. Unfortunately, Ormiston quit soon after she left and disappeared. His wife let Minnie know that he might have followed McPherson to Europe. Things were starting to get complicated.
McPherson returned to Angelus Temple in April 1926, seemingly rested and ready to work. She immediately plunged into the work and resumed her busy schedule. Then on May 18, she took a rare afternoon off and went to the beach with her secretary Emma Schaffer. While swimming, McPherson disappeared and was feared drowned. After time passed and her body was not discovered, theories began to emerge. Her mother assumed that she had drowned, either accidental or as a suicide. Some of her fans thought that she had been kidnapped because of her (usually ineffective) attacks on organized crime. The skeptics suggested that this was nothing more than a publicity stunt to increase the crowds, while still others thought she had run off with a man, probably Ken Ormiston. Ormiston disappeared and reappeared and was questioned by the police after rumors of him being in Carmel with an unidentified woman surfaced. And then, so did McPherson. On June 23, a month after her disappearance, she wandered into the Mexican border town of Agua Prieta where she claimed she had escaped her kidnappers. The story is too long to tell here.3 But it does get very strange. There was a grand jury that determines that there was not enough evidence to assume an actual kidnapping took place. There was a woman who got involved, because the prosecuting attorney's main witness, went mad, and recanted her testimony. There was a trial against McPherson and her mother for falsifying a crime that was dropped, possibly because McPherson blackmailed William Randolph Hurst who ordered the D.A. to drop the charges. And finally, when it was all over, the only person to go to jail was the prosecuting attorney for taking bribes from an oil company. No wonder Hollywood thought about making a movie about McPherson's life.
McPherson had avoided jail but she had her fans to face. It was clear to many of them that over the years, this poor Pentecostal lady had changed into something else. She seemed to have lost her Christian focus, her godly calling, and begun to actively seek stardom and popularity. McPherson needed the limelight, and after all that had happened, she seemed afraid that her Pentecostal and Fundamental followers would abandon her and end her career. While this did not happen, many, including some among her staff and church, did leave. For example, the association she had been a major force in starting, The Foursquare Gospel Churches, disassociated with her and strove to establish their own identity. So she strove to reinvent her own image. She sought other venues for the success and fame and wealth she had experienced before. Her system had tamed revivalism. She would now set it aside for lesser things. She suddenly started doing those things her mother had tried to keep her from. She sported new European dress fashions, cut her hair short (a great worldliness among Pentecostals as they believed that long hair was a woman's glory), and wore cosmetics. This "spirit of worldliness" caused even more of her Temple members under the choir leader to leave and start a new church. The woman who had been called by God to fight modernism was suddenly giving in to it. Rumors flew. Maybe she was a demon possessed or maybe she was revealing her true colors or maybe she had fallen because of sexual sin (or maybe she just wanted to have fun and look good), but whatever the reason, here again we meet a 20th century revivalist who could not handle the temptations of the big stage with its fame and fortune. She was not the first and she would not be the last.
Aimee and her mother began to fight even more, verbally and even physically; Minnie ended up, on one occasion, with a broken nose courtesy of a punch from Aimee. Finally, Minnie had had enough and she left. Without her restraining hand, financial disaster loomed and so did emotional doom. McPherson was terribly lonely. Her mother had left and her children, now grown, had gotten married and moved away. Her actions grew even more desperate. One Valentine's Day, she sent a card to her followers which said on the outside "Let me have a place in your hearts." Inside was a picture. In the old days, it would have been a picture of Jesus. Now it was a picture of McPherson. It must have been sad for those who still cared to see an open appeal to be loved. She jumped into a quick marriage and divorce with an actor from one of her church productions, David Hutton. She was so hungry for the limelight that she invited the press into her bridal boudoir, even allowing a noisy kiss to be broadcast over the radio. We are familiar with that sort of thing today, but during that period of American history, such things were not done, especially by religious leaders. But there was developing a real question of whether she was a religious leader anymore. There were ongoing rumors of inappropriate relationships with other men after her divorce and then, to her conservative devotees, the bottom hit. Aimee Semple McPherson, famed female revivalist, one of the most powerful women in conservative American religion, called by God Himself to fight modernism, decided to do vaudeville. She needed the money but more importantly, she needed the stage. To another large group of followers, surely this crossed the line. She had joined the enemy, making herself part of the worldly wicked entertainment profession. So there she was, on stage sandwiched between two acrobats and a midget. But even that was a flop and as the audiences dwindled, her act was dropped. It was here at the very bottom (figuratively eating pig pods), utterly unhappy, that she decided to return to the Father that always takes in the prodigal.
In 1936, McPherson publicly renounced her previous efforts and sought to redefine herself within her past, the Pentecostal movement. One consistent things about Christians, they are always ready to forgive a sinner who repents and comes back home. Calling those previous years as "years in the Wilderness," McPherson returned to her roots. When she had opened the Temple, she had down-played the more controversial aspects of Pentecostalism (such as tongue speaking and loud, chaotic meetings) in order to appeal to the largest possible crowd. Now her motto was "Back to Pentecostalism," and she began to push the baptism of the Holy Spirit upon believers. She had been redeemed (again) and questionable activities were discarded. She refocused her efforts on making America a Christian nation again by batthng liberalism, modernism, Darwinism, and communism. We need a national revival, said the one who had reduced revivalism to individualistic church services. So to reinvent herself, she returned to her past in an effort to correct where she had gone wrong. She went on a national revival tour like the ones she had begun with (though these were much bigger and others now did the hard work of finding places and drawing audiences). She got involved in politics, urging her audiences to vote for the most godly man (she had promoted Hoover in 1928, F.D.R. in 1932). She talked more about social concerns. While many Fundamentalists saw this foray into politics as useless and even distracting from the only job that mattered, rescuing souls off this sinking ship of a world, others agreed with her and crowds began to return to her Temple. Now she had been involved in local politics before. In 1932, she had been very much involved in keeping Upton Sinclair from becoming governor of California. Sinclair got his revenge by writing her into one of his books, Oil. But now she was going national in her scope. Using tactics that would be used years later by Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority, she was soon on top again, a powerful revivalist this time, offering Americanism to her patriotic followers. By World War II, she was again a major force in American religion. Echoing Billy Sunday during World War I, she preached against Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese, calling down plagues of boils on all of them like Moses against Pharaoh. Her voice became nothing less than an extension of government policy and once again she was happy. She was where she was supposed to be, doing what she was supposed to be doing.
It was quite a shock, therefore, when on September 26, 1944, her son Rolf went to wake her in her room to find her dead from an overdose of sleeping pills. The coroner determined that she had probably died of an accidental overdose complicated by the failure of her kidneys. She had transformed Pentecostalism, helping it to grow and gain credibility. By World War II, thanks in part to her, Pentecostalism had entered the reli gious mainstream. Unfortunately, she had moved revivalism into the mainstream as well, removing its mystery and edge. It was now a safe and secure predictability found in the church of one's choice. Billy Sunday had almost destroyed revivalism with ridicule. McPherson had rescued it from that but placed it solidly as another service, another program to be run at the desired time. The awesome elements of Jonathan Edwards were now totally submerged. Revivalism had gone to church and was now doomed to be nothing more than a meeting.
The Message of a (Somewhat) Pentecostal Revivalist
As we look at the unique theology and context that McPherson brought to revivalism, we need to first remember that for the most part, the issue of theology had already been settled. The foundation had already been laid. Edwards' concept of revival as a mighty work of God had lost to the more democratic user-friendly works of man as developed by Charles Finney. There was no longer any real debate. If you did revival, most likely you were Arminian in outlook. It is true today. Enter any Christian bookstore and you will be able to find an edition of Finney's Lectures on Revivalism. Not so with Edwards' writings on revival. Added at this time to the democratic-oriented revivalism was the business-like methodology of D. L. Moody. If you had a revival, you had gospel songs, special singers, and altar calls. That was revival. It was set in stone. And even if Billy Sunday had shown its hollow results, it was still the method used. McPherson will not so much challenge any of this as she will drag it into the 20th century with the use of radio and illustration.
To understand McPherson's revivalism, one needs to understand her loose form of Pentecostalism. This was the perfect theological platform for her and it added a dimension to revivalism that gave it a huge boost and allowed it to offer better answers for the dilemmas of the 20s, 30s, and 40s. Important female revivalists were few and far between (that is why I have mentioned none before now). No female led a major revival movement before McPherson. Revivals were promoted by conservative Bible teachers and they were patriarchic. To most of them and their followers, a woman's place was in the home or singing or giving a testimony or maybe praying but certainly not preaching. Pentecostalism changed that. Because women were so important in the beginnings of Pentecostalism, it was assumed from the first that women, if given the gifts from God, were in every way equal to men. After all if God gave them the gift of evangelism, who were men to stop them. There were already female Pentecostal revivalist when McPherson came along. She was just the first one to go mainstream. McPherson had a great impact on Pentecostalism as well helping to bring it out of the theological wilderness and into the acceptable realm of modern evangelicalism. This was what she knew and was the main part of her message early on. Building on Hebrews 13:8, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever," she joined Pentecostalism in offering Christians the same Holy Spirit, the same power that the apostles and early Church had used to overcome and conquer Rome. It happened then, and if Jesus was still the same, it could happen today. The devil (a favorite topic to McPherson) and his evil agents, modernism, evolution, and Communism, could be defeated and the United States could return to God. How that message must have encouraged her listeners. Though message and methodology might change (and she certainly did change her emphases a few times), her theology never really did. It was Evangelicalism mixed with Pentecostalism all undergirded by a Fundamentalism minus its legalistic behavior.4
This was a perfect blend for the American culture of her time. This was an age where everything sacred seemed to be under attack. Everywhere one turned, the very pillars of society appeared to be crumbling. McPherson attacked the very same monsters joined in battle with conservative religion everywhere. Higher criticism was undermining the authority of the Bible. Darwinism had removed man from the center of the universe (and God's eye) making him just another animal. Modernism sought to remove the standards of decent society and replace it with the jazz age of "anything goes." And Communism (and its liberal cronies) was trying to overthrow the United States itself. Suddenly the media and college professors were saying that the Bible was untrue, that man was not a special creation, and if they were correct, then it was alright to live as one pleased. McPherson's America suffered immorality in the 20s, economic collapse in the 30s, and world war in the 40s. These were turbulent times and conservative God-fearing people were afraid. They felt helpless, overwhelmed by the onslaught of evil and the events surrounding them. More and more the talk of the last days and the end of the world came to the fore. Fundamentalism, mostly located in Dispensationalism, had fled the scene, grown deeply pessimistic about this world, seeking only to rescue who they could from a sinking society and then removing them from the influences of evil. Suddenly, here comes a movement that does say this is the last days and in the "latter rains" of the last day comes supernatural power from God to stand and even just maybe conquer. It offered just what the conservative believer needed; it offered hope. And Aimee Semple McPherson offered the most hope of all. She saw Pentecostalism not merely as a rescue mission but as God had promised Joel, a pouring out of power in the last days to restore. Those with the power of God were not to be in retreat. They were on the march. They would attack the foe and win. McPherson never conceived the idea that her God could or would lose.
At the base of this was a view of the second coming of Christ called Pre-millennialism. This view had been in some form throughout all periods of Christendom but become more prominent in the late 1800s through Bible conferences which arose to deal with the understood collapse of society. Sin would doom this world, leading it on a downward path ending in apostasy and persecution and then Christ would return for His faithful. These last days were the period right before He returned and any day he would return, punish the wicked, and raise believers to places of authority in his realm. The Jesus who had renounced an earthly realm was finally to get one. Pentecostalism was an end time religion and McPherson was always ready to let her audience know that those atheistic liberals would find no place in the Kingdom.
Like the revival tradition had established, McPherson also believed her primary goal was to win the lost to Christ. She sought to persuade rather than compel, to offer hope rather than condemnation (except against the enemy mentioned above). And it was the enemy, for ultimately all the ills of the world were to be laid at the feet of one person, the devil. The devil was a major character in her sermons. During her trial, she filled the Temple with an advertised sermon, "The Biggest Liar in Town." Everyone showed up to hear if it was the prosecuting attorney or maybe she was going to confess and admit it was her. But no, it was the devil. She reduced the problems of the time to a simple choice; who would you choose to follow, God or the devil? In her sermon "The Heavenly Aeroplane," preached shortly after the plane she was on crashed on take-off (just her and the pilot in a two-seater, no one hurt), she put two small planes on her stage. One was piloted by the devil, the other by God. She asked the audience who was the pilot of their plane. Then the devil's plane rose and crashed while God's plane rose and flew to a beautiful backdrop called the Heavenly City. Choices! Revivalists were all about making choices and McPherson was no different. Time was short. It was the last days, remember, and today was the day of salvation. The latter rains would not fall forever. As she told a reporter, "If you go to hell, you go on your own accord."
Eventually as she grew more popular, McPherson began to distance herself from hard-core Pentecostalism and more into broad evangelicalism. She deemphasized the role of the baptism of the Spirit as seen in tongue speaking and prophesy but did not deny them altogether. "I very seldom talk in tongues," she was reported to say when seeking Baptist ordination. "My message is now the cross of Christ." Early on as an itinerate revivalist, she had made her fame by miraculous healings. Most of her reports in This Is That of her early revivals dealt with examples of healings. But not so much in her Temple. There the emphasis was on the illustrated sermons and the entire show. As Matthew Sutton notes in his excellent book on McPherson,
At heart, McPherson was never anything but a Pentecostal. Like many of her modern-day counterparts, however, she downplayed the controversial elements of the movement and instead took a moderate position that facilitated broad alliances.'
Eventually McPherson and the Assemblies of God, a major Pentecostal denomination, separated as her lifestyle took on a more definitely nonPentecostal slant. The Assemblies official paper published an article "Is Mrs. McPherson Pentecostal?" The answer was obviously no.
In its place, McPherson adopted and developed the concept of the Foursquare Gospel. Focusing on Christ's character, he was presented as savior, baptizer of the Holy Spirit, healer, and coming king. Again this was the perfect message for McPherson. It was what she had been preaching, only now tidied up and very hopeful. Christ had the ability to transform individuals (and if enough were transformed, they could transform society). She used this to talk much about the love of Christ towards those who believe. Secondly after salvation, the baptism of the Holy Spirit gave the new convert (or a fallen old one) those extraordinary experiences of power to enable them to live in this troubled uncertain world. Divine healing was the third element accenting that Christ was there regularly to help in the problems of everyday life. And anchoring it all was the certainty that Christ was coming again to crush his enemies (and yours) and make everything right. Hers was that old-time religion they had heard as children, not just offered again but accompanied with confidence rather than fear. Let the Fundamentalist run away. Let the Evangelicals compromise. McPherson and her Lord were there to fight. And to fight, one had to remember that one's citizenship in Heaven did not in any way rule out one's citizenship here on earth. After all, America was God's chosen nation and to support it against the forces that would destroy it was to do the will of God. Thus, she was able to attach to the biblical message the traditional concept of American Exceptionalism. Messages fluctuated as McPherson had her ups and downs, but the heart of it stayed the same. And therein lies some measure for her success. She was able to tap into the cultural fears and hopes and offer her brand of answers with a lot of Hollywood sparkle. It was the right message for the right time.
The Old-Time Religion Enters the 20th Century
Sutton in Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America sums up McPherson's methodology perfectly:
Dazzling religious theatrics and a penchant for publicity made McPherson one of the most famous American personalities of the interwar years. The first religious celebrity of the mass media era, she mastered print, radio, and film for use in her evangelistic mission. Her integration of the latest media tools with a conservative creed established precedents for the twentieth century's most popular ministries from Billy Graham to Oral Roberts to Pat Robertson.'
Like most revivalists before her, Aimee Semple McPherson became an allimportant celebrity preacher who mastered much of the culture and its tools around her by the force of her personality. Added to a message much in tune with the needs of the day, it a very powerful force.
Early on, McPherson's methods resembled early Methodist camp meeting revivals more than the big business programs of Moody and Sun day. In This is That, she writes an article entitled "What Makes a Revival" 7 that clearly reflects her early thinking. First, one needs to be clear what is not of necessity to make a revival. It was not a reception committee that brought revival to Canton, Ohio (though there was a small one). It was not the sending of advance representatives to boost the work (early on McPherson could not afford that luxury). It was not paid newspaper publicity (though there was a lot of free newspaper publicity-McPherson was the master of free publicity). It was not the preaching of the evangelist "alone" (though good preaching ensured good crowds). It was because the devil did not oppose the revival, for he surely did. No, none of these were important or crucial. Real revival comes when there is a message and there is a power to deliver it. Sunday had discredited in the eyes of many the methodology that seemed so much to manipulate without much of a message. McPherson and many others of this time were reacting against that charge. "God wants a revival everywhere and is looking for empty vessels through which His message can flow."8 And that message is clear; the message must be simple just as the Bible is simple.9 It also must have the indwelling power of the living Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. It must be a "lifting up of the great Christ and a preaching of the full gospel (of the Foursquare Gospel sort). This emphasis on the work of the Spirit was remarkable. The Holy Spirit had been given lip service by conservatives during this time, but McPherson and the Pentecostal movement in general brought the "forgotten member of the trinity" into the forefront. This allowed them to incorporate some of the amazing works of God into the man-centered revivalism of modern culture for who could tell when the Spirit might fall. Every song, every sermon, every testimony, indeed every action must lead to the one great important thing-the altar call: "all other things being subservient until the battlements of Heaven are made to echo with the joy bells welcoming the wandering ones back home."" Thus, real revival was not so much for lagging believers but for the lost, and it came only when they did not spare themselves or their ambitions and wants but gave all to the God who could do a great work in them.
In her early career, a Reverend Frank Thompson wrote a description of one of McPherson's revivals. It was reprinted in This Is That (pages 451454). Her message, he wrote, demonstrated the attractiveness of that oldtime religion on the people of today. The sermons were simplicity itself yet mighty in their convicting power. Each one drove home the necessity for repentance and McPherson insisted that those who sought salvation would only find it by coming down the aisles to the altar seeking mercy. The warning bells, she reminded her audience, had long been silent, but now through her they were ringing but perhaps only for today. Yet in the midst of all this, Thompson was amazed that the dominant note was the love of Christ and the sufficiency of His blood to cleanse from all sins. Thus, her altar calls were, to Thompson, more powerful than any he had seen before. "It was like she was calling `Lazarus, come forth."' And added to these calls to the altar were two elements new to Thompson (and most conservative evangelicals), the emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and healings. One gets the impression he does not know what to make of them but notes that they did not disrupt the service.
After McPherson moved into her Temple, her methods changed somewhat. Originally she had wanted the Temple to be a revival center, a permanent campground meeting, with services held every week or more. She stated that she did not want people to join as her goal was not to draw members from their home churches. Rather, she wanted to fill her audiences with the Holy Spirit and then send them back to their home churches to spread the baptism much as it was done in the beginning to spread Pentecostalism. During her first years, she actually discouraged membership and finally offered associate memberships to stem the demand. Only those who had no church were encouraged to join. Later, as she came to realize that active members and regular attendees came back more often and thus gave more money to the ministry, she changed her policy and started accepting, with joy, members to her church. But now she needed to offer something that would make them return to hear a message they had already acted upon, something that would keep them in their seats. Like Hollywood, she needed to get people in so she could get the necessary funds to do the things that brought people in. The key aspect of her services was her and her flair for the dramatic. People would come just to see what she would do next, what prop or animal or stunt would show up on her stage next. So she performed to the masses. Her rich voice clearly played a significant role in reaching the audience as did the force of her personality. She was funny and sometimes even silly without reducing the gospel to a mockery. She was very quick on her feet. Once during a sermon on the shepherd (Jesus) amid the lost sheep, she attempted to pick up a fairly large sheep (it was supposed to be a lamb; it was not). She could not and dropped it to the floor scaring it and ended up running around the stage trying to catch it. Suddenly she stopped and asked the crowd if they were like the sheep running around in circles rather than letting Jesus, the good shepherd, capture them with his love. The crowd loved every moment of it. Even H.L. Mencken, the noted skeptic, liked her and even wrote an article defending her during her trial. Even in Georgia, he wrote, no judge, drunk or sober, would ask a lady to defend her honor under oath. Upton Sinclair attended whenever he could until she helped derail his political career. They liked her. McPherson was upbeat, did not take herself too seriously, and worked hard. She liked to preach on being the bride of Christ, of being ready for his return, and most of all she loved to preach about herself. Her most popular sermons were ones on the story of her life and one on being stopped for speeding. If she went on an airplane ride, she would preach on Jesus using airplanes as examples the next week. Towards the end of her career, this love for self-promotion led to a slight change of emphasis. At the end of her sermons, it was not Jesus to the rescue. It was Aimee Semple McPherson with the sword of Christ.
And as I have noted above, what sermons they were. They were called illustrated sermons that were elaborately staged featuring numerous props. One never knew what would show up. It might be live animals (not too often as they failed to follow their lines), or an airplane or a motorcycle or even a model of the White House to represent America. Combining her experiences with drama, spectacles and scripture made the most ordinary sermon into a spellbinding epic. These innovations allowed her to compete with Hollywood for people's attention. Charley Chaplin told McPherson once that he was amazed that she could produce, stage, and present a complete drama every week. And she used the radio. In fact, she may have been the first female religious leader to broadcast nationally every week. It allowed her to reach thousands who would never come to Hollywood and she quickly found out what every radio and television evangelist knows; there's a lot of money out there. She justified to the few who complained, "If Christ were alive today, I think he'd preach modern parables about oil wells and airplanes, the things you and I understand." Sarah Comstock in her article on McPherson for Harper Monthly in 1927 wrote that on a given Sunday, one might see Heaven or Hell, Satan, Egypt, Paradise with its angels, or an evil world, all made visual by actors, costumes, and theatrical slight of hand of any and every kind." McPherson believed everything was fair game in order to capture a crowd. To catch an audience and bring them back week after week, one needed a simple story with a catchy opening, plain language, sincerity, and repetition. People's emotions had to be brought to the forefront, first in awe (at the setting), then songs (with the rhythm), followed by laughter (in the skits) ending with a serious emotional call to salvation. And it worked. Whether it was, as early on, a sermon from the Bible, or later a sermon on current events, it worked. The method was still manipulative, but McPherson hid it better by placing her methodology in the middle of the service.
This kind of service was not built on a stable of old sermons. It demanded hard work and imagination. And McPherson had both. She worked hard at her services and planned every element of them. For those who listened on the radio and were not able to see the elaborate staging, she included testimonies, prayers, music, and special singers. Music became especially important to her in creating the revival mood. She borrowed heavily from D.L. Moody here for the style of singing and the songs themselves. She opened with 30 minutes of various music with bands, choirs, and special performances just to set the stage and get the people ready. She used the gospel songs of revival tradition. These were songs that the people knew and loved. "All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name," "Revive Us Again," and "Power in the Blood" flowed out of her services. People heard these songs and were reminded of better times and of younger times when, to them, life was good. Her opening hymn of the service proper had to be "bright and bouncy." She would get the audience involved from the start with clapping to the tune or singing rounds or in alternation. Edith Blumhofer recounts an example of how she could manipulate an audience with music:
In Denver, she asked everyone aged fifty to sixty to raise their hands, then those sixty to seventy, seventy to eighty, and eighty to ninety. While the rest of the audience listened, she led each group in singing a stanza of "My Faith Looks Up To Thee." By the time the octogenarians sang softly "When ends life's transient dream; when death's cold sullen stream shall o'er me roll," an eerie hush had fallen over the thousands who stood vulnerable before Sister (a pet name for McPherson), ready to yield control to her.12
And to a crowd that did not yet have television and had never entered a theatre or a movie, that was indeed one of the greatest shows on earth.
After Billy and Aimee
It is sometimes said that American revivalism died with Billy Sunday in autumn 1935 (with a brief resurgence under Aimee Semple McPherson) until the coming of Billy Graham after World War II. But in actuality, it died much earlier. As Albert Dod had warned in his article about Charles Finney and his new measures (page 112):
How is the temple of God dishonored by this alleged necessity for a continual shifting of its services, like the scenes of some raree-show, to attract the vulgar gaze? How is the gospel degraded by being made dependent for its effect upon a kind of jugglery which shall be studiously adopted to surprise and startle beholders and thus "attract their attention."
Dod, in 1839, had seen where this perceived need for novelty would lead. He had warned that the role of the Church, the purpose for revival, was not to entertain but to call all persons to Christ. The only thing gimmicks and novelties would do were reduce the gospel and distract the needy. If it sought to compete with the world, it would become like the world and in so doing would dishonor the Church and remove the presence of the Lord. And woe to the minister who did this. He had been right. By 1920, revivalism was no longer in style. Radio had become the entertainment for those who felt it would be too worldly to go out to the theater or shows. Secularism was sweeping the nation after World War I. Religious things were trivial ideas to laugh at, and so became unimportant in a fastchanging world. It was time to grow up. America entered into a religious depression dominated by economic concerns, liberalism rooted in evolution and higher criticism, and ministers who tended to embarrass rather than entertain. Sunday's emotional preaching, shocking speech, and extravagant lifestyle added with McPherson's Hollywood style of shows and suspicious disappearance reinforced the "Elmer Gantry" image of revivalism. Revivalism seemed ruined beyond repair. That great hope that revivalism had offered early in this country's history of a millennial "city on a hill," a holy nation given completely over to God, now ended as nothing more than a call of allegiance to some vague unknown deity. President Eisenhower's comment in the 1950s sums up what revivalism had built: "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith and I don't care what it is."
However, revivalism really had begun to die shortly after its birth on American shores. Edwards had seen revival as an amazing work of God, sent by Him alone as an act of grace. All one can do is pray for it and get involved in it in the right manner when it comes. Revival was a mysterious action of God, like salvation is a mysterious action of God. One did not cause it; one did not control it. It just happens. But things change and viewpoints change with the culture. No theology flows out of an empty environment; all theology is in some way culturally conditioned. And as Americans left behind the Calvinistic outlook of the early settlers, they began to revise revivalism. Charles Finney's greatness was not in his reading theology (which he abhorred) but in reading his culture. Seeing in the Jacksonian democracy of his day, the glorification of man and his ability to change things, Finney developed a revivalism that did the same thing. It accented man and lessened the active role of God. And there revivalism as a means of saving an entire nation died. Now it was an individualistic matter. Suddenly what had been a great work of God was a reasonable act of man. God was still there but now in a passive manner, waiting on man to do the right things to get the right results. Finney took revivalism out of the hands of God and put it in the hands of man, with some success. But this success was hollow because everyone realized that man alone did not have the ability to change the entire world. This, the first major step in making revivalism a man-made religion, automatically limited revival. Man, does not have the staying power of God, and even after Finney things began to decline until D. L. Moody showed up to reinterpret revivalism in the society of post Civil War. By turning revivalism into big business, he further pushed God to the outskirts. All God needed to do now was arrive at the end and pronounce His blessings on the work of the revivalist. Everything was taken care of; everything was manipulated by man. The Holy Spirit need not apply. And this was outwardly successful because it fit the American perspective. Americans had never seemed very comfortable with a God who would intrude into their lives without warning. They would rather have a God who waited until He was called, a God content to watch and see what man would wrought, a return to some bizarre form of Christian Deism (which is probably closer to what our founding fathers held). And that is what Moody's big business revivalism gave them, something very far removed from the work of God that changes nations - the loss of the vision of a Jonathan Edwards - but something they were comfortable with. For above all else, Americans wanted a god they could be comfortable with. There is, of course, a great price to pay for all of this; if there is a sovereign God in Heaven actively involved in the lives of people, He is not going to put up with this foolishness for very long before He leaves man to his own empty acts. And in Billy Sunday and Aimee McPherson, we see the final conclusion of a revivalism that turns from a God that mattered. Revivalism and religion is trivialized, and God at work becomes nothing more than cheap entertainment, no more life-changing than a motion picture or an educational TV show. And in the process, sadly, revivalism becomes a system by which even the messenger is corrupted. Without the assertive power of God, all preachers become Elmer Gantry in some form. Sunday's was just very evident. Finney was not happy with those who came after him. Moody became dissatisfied enough to retreat into education. McPherson downplays the supernatural aspects of her Pentecostalism and becomes somewhat of a joke. These people knew something was wrong but their culture-induced theology made it impossible to rediscover true revivalism.
Of course revivalism did continue in a lesser form after Sunday. In the rural areas of the South and Midwest, it existed as pre-planned one week long special services, attended mainly by members of a single church. However, most of revivalism's energy in the 1920s and 30s was transferred to a hard-shelled Fundamentalism based on a pessimistic view of life and a retreat from society. One sees that in McPherson. After World War II, there was a brief resurgence of revivalism under Billy Graham, but it was really nothing more than a return to the Moody style of revivalism focusing on individual decisions rather than social changes and without the show business antics of Sunday and McPherson. Lost was the hope of revivalism as a means of turning around a nation. Instead, under Graham, we were back to the sinking ship - lifeboat style of evangelism. Its effects were ultimately of a minor enough nature that there is a question as to whether America even went through another Awakening or not (if you have to ask, you didn't but I will leave that to future historians). Yet, note that revivalism of this time tended more to facilitate the status quo than challenge the areas of civil or gender rights.
Ultimately then, the history of American revivalism is the story of the decline and death of an American religious institution with little lasting effects. Above all else, it is a lesson of what happens when one replaces God with oneself, His means with our methods, His truth with our culture. Revivalism had moved from an amazing act of God to a reasonable work of man to big business and finally an empty shell of showmanship. What had begun as an amazing work of God had ended as an unsatisfying effort of man. And we are all losers for that.
Final Observations
So in the end, what does one say? The purpose of this brief account of American revivalism from Edwards to McPherson has been an attempt to show the influence of culture on religious activity. It has not been a pretty picture watching the decline of revivalism. What was, in the First Great Awakening, a glimpse of the great things God could do for a country, for the entire world, becomes, in the end, mundane meetings in mundane settings that lead to mundane Christians. Mark Noll, the noted Church historian, partially ascribes the intellectual failings of modern Christianity to modern revivalism. To Noll, modern revivalism promoted a new style of leadership built around the revivalist and created a new level of celebrity for these traveling experts. This undercut the traditional authority of the churches and helped foster individualism and immediatism in its worst form. After all, how could the local minister compete with these Christian hired-guns who were here one week and gone the next. Ultimately, this led to a synthesis of Christianity with popular culture in order to survive in the marketplace.' And then Christ as a personal Savior has less to do with the objective truth of what He did than with how a person feels subjectively. Church services become one huge entertaining event in which there is no mention of sin and what is offered as gospel is what David Wells calls, "the therapeutic model of life."' After Sunday's exorbitant display and McPherson's escapades, there was, among many believers, a recoil against revivalism's base secularism. That is why Billy Graham's model seems to hearken back to the Moody era. However, in the post-modern world of the 21st century, it looks like the local mega-church with its big screens and its entertaining mindset had fallen into McPherson's churchbased revivalism and Sunday's legacy of itinerate evangelist who now travel the airways offering cheap salvation if one just sends in a pledge. This is the horror of Wells and Noll and most biblical believers. The antidote to all of this is well expressed by Noll: "The scandal of the evangelical mind may be addressed by the scandal of the cross."3 But so far there are few buyers. In all of this, there are lessons to be learned.
1. The history of American revivalism is a movement from message to method.
Edwards' emphasis was on the message presented. To him, revival was a response to the preaching of the whole council of God. It was after the sudden deaths of two young people that interest in spiritual things arose, but it was only during Edwards' sermon series on justification by faith that revival fell. And Edwards notes that these were not just sermons on the love of Christ. His messages contained much on the wickedness of man and his inability to respond rightly before they pointed to the grace of God and His willingness to save some. Here is an example of Noll's scandal of the cross. As people fell under the godly preaching, now strengthened supernaturally by the power of the Holy Spirit, they turned to Christ as their only hope and the land was filled with the love for Christ and one another. If Edwards had any methods, they were preaching and prayer. And the results were, for a time, stunning.
Finney changed all that. Due to his opposition to a God who would demand what He knew man could not do, Finney looked for things man could do to gain his own salvation. This was the heart of his search for methods - not just preaching and prayer and waiting in hopes God might notice but reasonable acts determined to create desired results. This new emphasis on methodology led to a manipulation of the crowds and an emphasis on the revivalist rather than God. The message was important only as it stimulated the crowds to choose for God. And as the methods developed, the message shrunk. Under Moody, the message almost disappeared in folksy retellings of emotional stories and moralistic homilies. He focused on modifying Finney's methods, dropping some and improving others, while the whole message of God became tales of how much God loved you and wanted you to prosper. By the time we reach Sunday and McPherson, the message of God has disappeared under a mess of flagwaving and theatrics with no sense of the Transcendent whatsoever. And when the message is reduced to nothing, anything can take its place. Television evangelists talk more of money than God. Churches who lose sight of the message of God begin to fill it with the message of the world. Political issues become the focus of the day's sermon. Like McPherson, the preacher runs from one crucial issue of the day to the next. And eventually, where there is no vision, the people perish. So we end up with a contemporary church focused on emotions and "felt needs" (real or not) and a lack of interest in propositional truth. And the church then becomes meaningless to the lost world. When there is no longer assumed that there is any meaningful message from God to His people, there is no longer a reason for the church to exist.
2. Church theology is shaped as much by its environment as by its exegesis.
Too many people today think theology is produced in vacuum. They believe that their beliefs and how they are held is a product of good biblical exegesis and the proper world view. Without a proper understanding of history, they do not see that they might believe the same as those who came before them, but that acceptance is partially influenced and even shaped by their culture. The things they accept and even enjoy today without any qualm may have been considered dangerous sins in years before. The theological arguments of the past, so serious to our spiritual forefathers, might seem today trivial matters indeed. No matter how hard a person tries, they cannot escape the cultural air they breathe. So every person is, to some degree, a product of his times, and that culture will filter and help define his emphases. We have seen how the theology of the revival has been shaped by the culture of the day. Edwards' evaluation of the revival in his day was no doubt shaped by his Puritan and Calvinistic background. The idea that America was favored by God above all other nations, that it would be the starting place for the millennium, was not popular with British evangelicals. The post-millennialism, popular among the Puri tans (see Ian Murray's The Puritan Hope), was not the only possible interpretation of the Lord's second coming, but it can be seen in Edwards' writings on revivalism. However, because Edwards was chiefly concerned with the message as opposed to methods, there was a mighty attempt from the start that man's response should be biblical and from God in every manner. This helped Edwards to resist many of the cultural influences that would have led him astray. Not so with Finney. He was so clearly shaped by Jacksonian democracy that even a non-theologian like James Fennimore Cooper could not help but notice. Moody also was shaped by his time. He was a businessman in the age of businessmen and so his message was a message of the bottomline and the net profit. His means were taken from Finney and molded by the principles of successful business. By Sunday's time, what is left is a message so well known that Sunday is left with nothing but acting out what the crowds already know, filling their desire to be amused rather than challenged, to be comforted rather than confronted. And McPherson, boosted by the influx of Pentecostalism, still ends up as Sunday, acting out in an entertaining manner, a message almost extinguished.
3. In revival (as in all areas of theology), the view of man is crucial.
Looking over the trend from Edwards to McPherson, it is obvious that there was a debate going on between total depravity and man's free ability and to the detriment of revivalism; man's ability won. Edwards' preaching of Gods sovereignty even in salvation led to powerful conversions full of gratitude that one's lost soul had been rescued by the love of Christ and the grace of God. If man is unable to save himself, he is unable to create revivals. Then only God can. Thus the focus would be on preparing oneself in obedience and open-heartedness while praying that God might pour out His blessings. With Finney, things change. Free will demanded that man had the power to save himself. God was knocking on the door to a person's heart, waiting hopefully that they might do Him a favor and let Him in. He had done all He could. It was up to man to respond. And so it became the role of the revivalist to talk him into it. But a problem arose in modern revivalism, disappearing converts. If man did the final act that saved him (by believing), then salvation was no longer such a big deal. If he made the choice once, he could make the choice again later if he fell away. So holiness and perseverance fall by the wayside. Salvation may have become immediate, but it was no longer urgent. It was individ ualistic but not necessarily society changing. It was no longer necessary to seize the moment while the Spirit is working, for one could choose today or tomorrow or later if one wished. And if one chose today under the pressure of the preacher, who knows how they might feel tomorrow. Christianity became more and more an emotional reaction to crisis rather than a logical well thought out belief. And that weakened religion because an emotional response can very well be a "here today, gone tomorrow" kind of response. And that does not change lives. And religion that does not result in better lives is trivial and of no lasting value. That religion is a dying religion, ready to go the route of Zeus and Odin. The revivalists realized that. The problem of converts falling back into their old ways got to be such a problem that revivalists had to create the "carnal Christian" (the idea that a person can take Jesus as Savior but not as Lord) to explain those who supposedly had been converted in meetings but their lives never changed. Moody was so discouraged by this that I believe he changed his emphasis to education. Billy Sunday never noticed. McPherson had a falling away as part of her theological mindset and believed that that was just the way things were. But the problem is still real today and was one of the major criticisms of the Billy Graham crusades and the mega-church movement. Interestingly enough, this did not seem to be a major complaint during the First Great Awakening.
4. The manner in which revivals are determined as real (or successful) change.
Suddenly, revivals cannot be judged by their lasting effects. With the missing of the biblical cross-confronting message and the emphasis on man-centered methodology, the results do not look so good. Too many converts quickly fall away as we have already mentioned. There seems to be no lasting results. Edwards wrote about whole towns being changed, churches increased, prayer and praise expanded, lives changed forever, changing lives leading to changed actions and attitudes. As church membership records indicate, the results in the First Awakening were great. In Connecticut, for example, more churches admitted more new members during the revival than in any other five year period. Some churches reported adding more than 100 members in one year. In over half of the churches of the colonies (these were the churches that supported the revival), more people became members than in any other five years combined in their history. Here was empirical evidence of revival. Finney, Moody, and Sunday really could not point to that kind of evidence. Instead, their critics pointed to lapsed converts, churches without growth, and society unchanged for the better. Of all the criticism towards revivals that Edwards went through, very little complaint was on the above. Their criticism focused on too much zeal, too much emotionalism, too much James Davenport. So how does one judge a revival? The later evangelists, perhaps looked at the First Awakening try to match its numbers. The number of those who choose God over the devil (Finney) or walk down to the front (Moody) or the amount of offering (Sunday) or the regular attendance (McPherson) became the measuring stick for success. The problem is that those numbers can be manipulated. I remember attending a revival meeting in a church where the guest revivalist began by telling us of the great outpouring of the Spirit in his last meeting where over 90 percent responded to the altar call. At the end of our service that night, he invited people to come down and get saved. Since it was a Saturday night and only serious believers would be willing to spend Saturday night in church (I was there with a girl), most everyone there had already made some profession for Christ, no one responded. So then he began to go through a list of various altar calls, each one more general than the other. He got some to come forward to dedicate themselves again to Jesus, others responded to coming forward to open themselves to God's leading and finally, he played his trump card: "If you love Jesus, come forward." Now who in church, willfully on a Saturday night, does not in some manner love Jesus? And sure enough, everyone in the church but my date and I went forward. (I'm sorry. I do love Jesus but I just was not going to allow myself to be manipulated by this preacher so he could brag at his next meeting). But there is more. Looking directly at us (we were the only ones out there), he pleaded that we make it 100 percent. We did not, but I am sure that at his next meeting, he began by telling of his last meeting where 98 percent came forward to be saved or to rededicate themselves to Jesus. Such is the reality of numbers.
5. There is, among conservative and evangelical theologians, a desperate need for a new theology of revivalism.
I used to have a philosophy professor who said we could not present a problem unless we had given some thought towards a solution. So what is the solution? How does the Christian community reclaim revivalism? First, there is a need to examine this form of Christianity and decide if it should be renewed or allowed to die an undignified death. If one decides to attempt to breathe into it new life, one needs to begin, I believe, with Mark Noll's scandal of the cross. This calls for the preaching and teaching and learning of the whole gospel, even the parts one finds uncomfortable. It demands that Christendom must first reclaim the message of the gospel and boldly preach it whether it is popular or not. To help do that rightly, the church will need a few things.
First, it needs a biblical theology of revivalism. While Edwards' writings on revivalism is still available, the most popular writing today on revival seems to be Finney's Lectures on Revivals. That the last real attempt to present revivalism to the common man is a book, more about methods rather than message reflecting Finney's anti-theological bias, is part of the problem. Thanks to the Banner of Truth Trust, William Sprague's book on revival, while out of print is available, though little read. The Christian Church will need a more current attempt to place revivalism in its theological rather than a cultural context. They need a popular approach that defines revival as closer to Edwards but in modern terms for today's laity. They need a theology that discusses methodology in the context of its dangers and offers biblical reasons for the biblical means of preaching, prayer, and worship. They need a theology that talks about signs that a real revival occurs and how to evaluate the activities often surrounding revivals while treating seriously the person and work of the Holy Spirit. They need a modern theology that interacts with the other points of view on revival and draws from their strengths and learns from their weaknesses. A good starting place might be the excellent book on spirituality by Richard F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology ofRenewal. It is out of print but well worth hunting down. However they begin, the Christian Church will need to reclaim revivalism by establishing the theological framework that will open up again the possibility of a real revival. To do less is to waste everyone's time.
Secondly, the Church needs a discussion on the nature of salvation. Is it just individualistic or does it have a social dimension as well? Like Edwards, is the revivalist to preach on justification by faith through grace and thus reclaim the emphasis on man's inability and God's sovereignty? Should total depravity in its fullness be proclaimed, and how is it to be always coupled with the death of Christ and the grace of God? As long as the Church acts and thinks that it's all about them, God will not pour out revival. He shares His glory with no one except the Son and the Spirit. Cornelius Van Til, a Calvinist theologian, called the struggle between man's will and God's sovereignty a war between two gospels. The Christian Church needs to examine which gospel it holds to.
Thirdly, the theologian must approach the question of whether revivals are man-made or God-given. Here one might prosper by looking back again at Sprague. He argued that while revivals started in the house of God, one must be careful to realize that the Church does not create revivals. A true revival is caused by Scriptural means. As Aimee McPherson liked to say, God honors His Word preached and He honors those who are faithful to it. And His Word presents the means to revival, the preaching of the gospel in its purity, coupled with lots of heart-felt prayer. As the old hymn goes, "Trust and obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus..." The Church needs to humble itself, and like Israel at the Mount Sinai, prepare themselves for what God will do and when God will work, and leave the rest in God's hands. As Sprague noted, "If we believe and if we obey, will not our gracious Lord hear our prayers and send healing to our land? He has done so before. He will do so again."
6. Americans can and will trivialize everything, even God.
As the Church seeks to reclaim revivalism, it must be aware that the American culture can and will, given enough time, trivialize anything. Culture is always a dangerous guest to have at the party. The Fundamentalists are correct to be afraid of culture. If we look at the end of our study, we see the effects of the culture on those who seek to use it for their own purposes; it destroys them instead. Can anything be sadder than the train wreck that was the life of Billy Sunday and his family? Can one not learn anything from watching what happens to Aimee Semple McPherson's calling after she compromises with the standards of her time? One must be careful that in an attempt to obey Christ and take culture captive, they are not themselves taken captive by culture. It is a thin and difficult line to walk, using the means of the society to reach the society and using the means to such a degree that one becomes irrelevant to society. The world does not need another social group or a source of bad entertainment. It needs someone who speaks with the voice of God. The Church must speak to people where they are but must never allow them to tell the Church where to stand. That right belongs only to God and is the real route to relevance and maybe to revival.
Chapter I
1. Peter Bulkeley, The Gospel Covenant or the Covenant of Grace Opened (London, 1646), 1-4-15.-
2. S.E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New York, 1830), 78-79.
3. Unpublished letter of May 30, 1735, in Jonathan Edwards: Representative Selections, ed. Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson (New York: Hill & Wang, 1962), 104.
4. The Works ofJonathan Edwards, ed. C.C. Goen, vol. 4, The GreatAwakening (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 144-145.
5. Ibid., 149.
6. Ibid., 150.
7. Ibid., 151.
8. Ibid., 152.
9. Ibid., 159.
10. Ibid., 160.
11. Ibid., 166.
12. Ibid., 177.
13. Ibid., 210.
14. Ibid., 227.
15. Ibid., 241.
16. Ibid.
IT Ibid., 250.
18. Ibid., 253.
19. Ibid., 273.
20. Ibid., 314.
21. Ibid., 318-319.
22. Ibid., 340.
23. Ibid., 353.
24. Ibid., 388.
25. Ibid., 414.
26. Ibid., 428.
27. Ibid., 432-433.
28. Ibid., 474.
29. Ibid., 503.
30. Ibid., 518.
31. Ibid., 530.
Chapter II
1. Frances Trollope, "A Camp Meeting," in Issues in American Protestantism, ed. Robert L. Ferm (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1976), 156-158.
2. Edward D. Griffin, "Taking the Kingdom By Violence," in Sermons ofEdward D. Griffin (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1992), 393.
3. Ibid., 403-404.
4. Sidney Mears, The Lively Experiment (New York: Harper, 1963), 3.
5. Charles G. Finney, An Autobiography (Westwood, NJ: Barbour, 1990), 61.
6. Ibid.
7. Charles G. Finney, "The Excuses of Sinners Condemn God," in 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, Volume 3: Wesley to Finney, ed. Clyde E. Fant, Jr., and William M. Pinson, Jr. (Waco: Word Books, 1971), 343.
8. Bennet Tyler, "Memoirs of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton," in Robert More, Jr., AsahalNettleton and Evangelistic Methods (London: Banner of Truth Trust, October 1970), 29.
9. Ibid., 30.
10. Ibid., 33.
11. Finney, Autobiography, 44.
12. Ibid., 57.
13. Ibid.
13. Charles G. Finney, Views ofSanctification (Oberlin: James Steele, 1840), 59.
14. Charles G. Finney, Revivals of Religion (Virginia Beach, VA: CBN University Press, 1978), 187.
15. Finney, Autobiography, 192.
16. John W. Nevin, he Anxious Bench," in Issues in American Protestantism, ed. Robert L. Ferm (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1976), 171.
IT Ibid., 173.
18. Finney, Autobiography, 59.
19. Finney, Revivals, 4-5.
20. Ibid., 31.
21. Ibid., 206.
22. Ibid., 282.
23. Ibid., 493.
24. Charles G. Finney, "Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts," in Issues in American Protestantism, ed. Robert L. Ferm (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1976), 159.
25. Ibid., 161.
26. Ibid., 160.
27. Ibid., 161.
28. Ibid., 165.
29. Ibid., 166.
30. Ibid., 169.
31. Albert B. Dod, "On Revival of Religion," in Princeton Versus the New Divinity (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 2001),173.
32. Interestingly enough, this idea of escaping hell can be seen by those who believe that ultimately no one stays in hell, that hell is "locked from the inside." See C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce for an allegorical approach.
33. Dod, p. 208.
34. Ibid., 224.
35. Ibid., 225.
36. William B. Sprague, Lectures on Revivals ofReligion (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1978), 9.
37. Ibid., 7-8.
38. Ibid., 13.
39. Ibid., 14.
40. Ibid., 17-18.
41. Ibid., 20.
42. Ibid., 37.
43. Ibid., 111.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., 147.
46. William G. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism (New York: The Ronald Press, 1959), xlix.
47. Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965), 28-29.
Chapter III
1. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 133.
2. Albert B. Dod, "Review of Lectures on Revivals, by Charles G. Finney," Biblical Repertory and Theological Review VII (October 1835): 660.
3. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 160-161.
4. Henry Mays, in his work Protestant Churches andlndustrialAmerica, calls this period, and especially the year 1877, one of the darkest in the annals of American history.
5. George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism andAmerican Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 32.
6. William R. Moody, The Life of Dwight L. Moody (Murfreesboro: Sword of the Lord, 1900), 281.
7. Ibid., 41.
8. Ibid., 139.
9. Ibid., 145.
10. Ibid., 149.
11. Ibid., 339.
12. James F. Findley, Jr., Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist 1837-1899 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 260.
13. Clyde E. Fant, Jr., and William M. Pinson, Jr., 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, Volume G. Spurgeon to Meyer, ed. Clyde E. Fant, Jr., and William M. Pinson, Jr. (Waco: Word Books, 1971), 288.
14. Dwight L. Moody, "The Second Coming of Christ," in The Best of D.L. Moody, ed. William H. Smith (Chicago: Moody Press, 1971), 193.
15. Dwight L. Moody, "The Reward Of The Faithful," in 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, Volume 6. Spurgeon to Meyer, ed. Clyde E. Fant, Jr., and William M. Pinson, Jr. (Waco: Word Books, 1971), 293.
16. William Moody, Moody, 158.
17. Findley, Moody, 211.
18. William Moody, Moody, 491.
Chapter IV
1. Lyle W. Dorsett, Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1991), 88.
2. Roger A. Bruns, Preacher: Billy Sunday and Big-Time American Evangelism (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992), 277.
3. Dorsett, Redemption, 132.
4. Ibid., 136.
5. Ibid., 137.
6. McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 420.
Chapter V
1. I am greatly indebted to two books for much of my information on McPherson: Matthew Avery Sutton's Aimee Semple
McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America and Edith Blumhofer's Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister.
2. Edith Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody's Sister (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1993), 238.
3. Sutton's book takes an exhaustive look at the disappearance, the later grand jury trial, and the options of what might have happened, though I think he gives her too much benefit of the doubt.
4. H.L. Mencken called one of her services "an orthodox Methodist revival with a few trimmings borrowed from the Baptists and the Holy Rollers."
5. Sutton, 43.
6. Ibid., 4.
7. Aimee Semple McPherson, This Is That (Los Angeles: Foursquare, 1923) 373-381.
8. Ibid., p. 378.
9. What she means here with the word "simple" is clear and uncomplicated, not anti-intellectual or unreasonable.
10. McPherson, This Is That, p. 380.
11. Sarah Comstock, "Aimee Semple McPherson: Prima Donna of Revivalism," Harper's Monthly Magazine, December 1927-May 1928, 11-19.
12. Blumhofer, 229.
Conclusion
1. Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: W B. Eerdmans, 1995), 61-68.
2. David Wells, No Place For Truth (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 61-68.
3. Noll, Scandal, 253.
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