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Charles Grandison Finney was born on August 29, 1792, in Warren, Connecticut, and grew up on the New York frontier in Oneida County, in the region historians later nicknamed the "burned-over district" for the waves of religious revival that swept through it. He trained and began practicing as a lawyer in Adams, New York, with no thought of entering the ministry.
In October 1821, after a period of deep personal struggle, Finney underwent a dramatic conversion experience while alone in the woods outside Adams, which he described as a direct, overwhelming encounter with Christ. He abandoned his law practice immediately, telling a client who arrived the next morning that he had "a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause" and could no longer take up other cases. He was licensed and later ordained as a Presbyterian minister, though largely without the formal seminary training typical of clergy of his day.
Finney became the best-known revivalist of the Second Great Awakening, the sustained wave of Protestant religious revival that swept the United States in the early-to-mid nineteenth century. Beginning in small towns of western New York — Antwerp, Gouverneur, Dekalb, Western, Rome, Utica, Auburn, and Troy among them — his preaching produced dramatic conversions and reshaped the practice of American revivalism. He introduced what became known as "new measures": protracted (multi-day) meetings, the "anxious seat" where seekers could come forward for prayer, extemporaneous preaching that addressed sinners directly and by name, and public prayer by women in mixed assemblies — innovations that were controversial among more traditional clergy of his day but were widely adopted by later evangelists.
The revival Finney led in Rochester, New York, in the winter of 1830–1831 is generally regarded by historians as the high-water mark of the Second Great Awakening, transforming the religious and civic life of the city and drawing national attention. He went on to preach in New York City, first at the Chatham Street Chapel and then at the Broadway Tabernacle, built for his ministry in 1836.
In 1835 Finney joined the faculty of the newly founded Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) in Ohio as professor of theology, and he served as the school's second president from 1851 to 1866, continuing to teach there for the rest of his life. Under his leadership, Oberlin admitted Black students, supported the abolitionist movement, and became a noted stop on the Underground Railroad. At Oberlin, Finney also developed and taught what became known as "Oberlin theology," an emphasis on present, entire sanctification and practical holiness alongside vigorous evangelism — a perspective that departed from the stricter Calvinism of much of his era in favor of a more Arminian, morally engaged view of conversion and Christian growth.
Finney's most influential written works include his <em>Lectures on Revivals of Religion</em> (1835), a practical handbook on evangelism that was widely read on both sides of the Atlantic; his <em>Lectures on Systematic Theology</em>; his critique of Freemasonry, <em>The Character, Claims, and Practical Workings of Freemasonry</em> (1869); and his posthumously published <em>Memoirs</em> (1876). He also conducted two extended preaching tours of England and Scotland, in 1849–1851 and again in 1858–1860, with notable revivals in towns such as Bolton.
Charles Finney died in Oberlin, Ohio, on August 16, 1875. Historians of American religion regard him as one of the most consequential figures in the shift from the formal, doctrine-centered New England Calvinism of the colonial era toward the more direct, emotionally engaged, decision-oriented style of revivalism that came to characterize much of American evangelicalism — an approach that would later shape evangelists such as D. L. Moody and, further still, twentieth-century mass evangelism.
This page is original biographical material prepared by UECF.NET from standard, widely published historical facts about Charles G. Finney's life and ministry. It is not part of A. M. Hills’ 1902 biography reproduced in the chapters of this Web Book, and is kept separate from that source text.