Charles Grandison the third (and final)

Re-viv-al: restoration to life, consciousness, vigour or strength… an awakening, in a church or community, of interest in and care for matters relating to personal religion… an evangelistic service or a series of services for the purpose of effecting a religious awakening. Revival is part of personal experience. In Charles Finney’s time, the revival of individuals spread into the communities until large numbers of people were affected. It occurred so often after Finney’s preaching that he began to hold these meetings with the clear expectation that revival would begin.

Just as this image is many layered (thanks to Hanwen), so REVIVAL is a many layered concept.

It’s hard to find comprehensive descriptions of what these revivals looked like. The witnesses seem to expect people to know and understand. As far as I can gather, Finney and some friends would book a meeting place and Finney would preach. He would do so for prolonged periods, for nights in a row. People come in droves to listen to him, be overcome with emotion, “the conviction of sin upon them.” Sometimes people would shake and fall down. Sometimes they broke into uncontrolled laughter. Finney himself records in great detail the occurrences he witnessed at his revival meetings.

Finney would not prepare his sermons. He would pray and ask God to show him what bit of the Bible to preach on. Then he would stand up and talk to the people for hours.

Many complained about Finney’s measures. The Unitarians complained that his ‘anxious seat’ (a place where people who were concerned about their salvation could sit during the meetings) created an emotionally driven response, indeed the beginning of religious melancholy as a social problem has been traced to these kinds of meetings. The Deists believed that by calling people out by name he placed undue pressure on them to change their lives. The Calvinists complained that in urging people to make an immediate decision for Christ, Finney offended against God’s sovereignty.

Finney defended himself, claiming that his exhortations were not emotionally based, but grounded in appeals to reason. He defended his ‘new measures’ claiming that it was appropriate to use means at his disposal to bring a message he believed was urgent to his hearers. Finney believed that he needed to use his new measures to jolt people out of the apathy they lived in. He claimed this apathy was a result of the popular Calvinist view taught in most Presbyterian Churches at the time. Finney believed that such people were not ‘real’ Christians.

Interestingly, the conversion experiences that would ‘change people’s lives’ at Finney’s revivals seem to have done just that. Records show that church membership did not drop off, and eighty percent of recorded converts remained active church members years after the revivals. No one can say how much goodness was introduced into lives and communities through his influence.

In his popular but controversial ‘Lectures on revivals of religion’, Finney says, “Revival is a renewed conviction of sin and repentance, followed by an intense desire to live in obedience to God. It is giving up one's will to God in deep humility.” I think it would be interesting to live in such times and too see the changes taking effect. It may also be frightening. I may have been someone who would have criticised Finney and his measures.

I really don’t know how to interpret Finney’s character and life in the light of today. In images, he seems an intense character. Our records of his sermons on ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ seem to represent all that is wrong about evangelical Christianity. However, I can’t help respecting his passion. He took risks to right the wrongs he was so obviously disturbed by. He was loved and respected by those who knew him, family and friends. He was deeply committed to serving God and believed he knew how best to do that.

I think Charles Grandison Finney presents us with the same challenge that Jesus’ does in his life among the people, and eventually in his challenge to the authorities that resulted in death: these men spent their daily lives helping those they encountered to re-think God, to not be complacent about connecting with the creator of the universe. They jolted people out of their ordinary, everyday contexts and brought them to a point of confrontation with a larger, spiritual world where Good and Evil are locked in a cosmic battle.

Perhaps as God’s messengers in our own context, we need to be imaginative and cooperate with his Spirit in discovering how we can do the same thing for those around us.

Unitarians believed that Jesus was not truly human.
Deists believed that though God created the world, he would not interfere with the events of history.
Calvinists believed utterly in the sovereignty of God and taught that humans could have no impact upon his decisions through prayer or action.

Sources:
Finney, CG (1875) Lectures on revivals found at http://www.gospeltruth.net/life_of_finney.htm
Harvey, BC (1989) Charles Finney: The great revivalist, Barbour publishing, Uhrichsville, Ohio
Liardon, R (2008) God’s Generals: the revivalists, Whitaker House, New Kensington
Rubin, JH (1994) Religious melancholy and the protestant experience, Oxford University Press.
Shelley, BL (1995) Church History in Plain language, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville

Charles Grandison again...

A great revivalist of the nineteenth century? I feel suspicious already, though I'm not sure why. Perhaps I am having flashbacks to the frauds I vaguely remember people like Mark Twain used to write about, tent revivals and false healings and an emotional fever or a spiritual high... wasn't there a movie about this kind of thing with Robert Duvall? I remember feeling confused because I liked Christianity, but I didn't like this sort of thing...

Pete Vol says that he thinks Finney was a man who made himself fully available to God; he risked saying 'yes' to the universe against what may have seemed the acceptable thing to do. Perhaps Finney was listening to the Spirit of God?

Maybe my confusion could be helped by looking at the context of these revivals in the religious life of the USA?

At the birth of the United States, only five to ten percent of citizens were church members. The Christianising of America has been put down to two factors: the influence of voluntary societies and revivals.

Although the official separation between faith and politics underpinning the American constitution saw to it that the USA would not become a church controlled state, voluntary societies in imitation of those pioneered by William Carey became significant influencers on American life. The American Bible society, the Sunday School Union; groups such as these, made up of voluntary members, made contributions to American society. And that’s the volunteer’s influence.

But what of revivals? Supported by the preaching of George Whitefield, Jonathon Edwards’ Great Awakening of the eighteenth century had seen the beginning of revivals that saw thousands brought to faith in Christ and radical changes in the personal and moral lives of those converted. At the same time, similar revivals were being witnessed in England through the work of Whitefield and John Wesley’s Methodists.

Finney’s revivals came after a period of dropping church membership and lost interest in ‘religion’. The Calvinism of the day taught that salvation was only available to God’s elect, pre-ordained from the beginning of time. No one could know for sure if they were part of the elect, so the deal was to live as good a life as possible and hope for the best. This tended to produce lifeless churches, where people prayed but without belief that their prayers could have any effect. Finney revolutionised that thinking by bringing people to make a decision for Christ. He encouraged them to believe that they had a part in forging their own destiny. Finney preached strongly, exhorting his hearers to act now to avoid punishment later. Different signs and wonders happened among the people attending Finney’s revivals.

Pre-civil war America. Finney was a man with Abolitionist sympathies. As president of Oberlin college, he held anti-slavery rallies in a tent, one hundred feet in diameter. Finney’s preaching helped pave the way for the abolitionist movement in America.

After the civil war there seems to have been a split between Christian groups in America, responding to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of the Species and the new emphasis on criticism in Biblical scholarship. One group embraced the new ideas, emphasising a social gospel and developing a liberal theology. Pastors such as Walter Rauschenbusch were concerned with people’s eternal destiny. However, they also recognised the importance of caring for earthly needs.

The other group responded by focusing on the individual's need for salvation. They believed that the most important thing to do was to prepare people for the day of Jesus' return. And it is this group that continued the tradition of revivals, camp meetings and getting people's souls right with God. DL Moody was to become a proponent of this branch of Christianity. As the years lengthened the polarisation of the two groups became more extreme.

My personal sympathies lie in many ways with the former group. And I suppose I have been suspicious of ‘revivalist’ traditions, feeling that even when they aren’t phoney they tend to overlook some of the pressing needs of those in front of them, offering one dimensional solutions to complex problems.

So from my own context now I need to work hard to remember that Finney preached at a time before this kind of polarisation became entrenched.

Finney seems to have expected that receiving the gospel would ready the individual for relationship with the one true God through Jesus Christ. He also seems to have expected that the individual's life would be transformed by such a relationship in such a way that they would become more outward in their focus, caring for the needs of others.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UM-MJn2K7Q

So popular images of revivalist preachers like this one must be separated from my view of who Finney is if I am to do him justice. But just what is a revival anyway? That’s my next post.

Sources:
Harvey, BC (1989) Charles Finney: The great revivalist, Barbour publishing, Uhrichsville, Ohio
Liardon, R (2008) God’s Generals: the revivalists, Whitaker House, New Kensington
Reynolds, DS (2005) John Brown: abolitionist, Vintage books, New York
Shelley, BL (1995) Church History in Plain language, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville

Charles Grandison Who?

Finney. Ever heard of him?

A man whose determination to seek and understand the truth was matched by his commitment to communicating that truth once he found it.

Finney was converted to Christianity at the age of twenty-nine, the process of his conversion including a prolonged period of study, seeking the truth about the central claims of Christianity. Having been convinced on this level, Finney prayed, determined to resolve his growing anxiety about the subject. He records what happened in almost scientific detail in his autobiography:

"There was no fire, and no light, in the room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me... that it was wholly a mental state. On the contrary it seemed to me that I saw Him as I would see any other man. He...looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at his feet. I... regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it seemed to me a reality... I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to Him…"

Following his conversion experience, Finney resigned his apprenticeship as a lawyer and studied to become a minister. He refused to attend Princeton, the Presbyterian theological College, and studied under his pastor for two years before successfully taking the examination and being accepted as a Presbyterian minister.

Finney profoundly disagreed with the staunch and narrow form of Calvinism prevalent in Presbyterian churches at the time of his conversion. He urged potential converts to make their decision to believe in Jesus Christ and to choose to live good lives. Finney’s ministry saw him travel to many small towns and villages in and around the state of New York. His preaching was the catalyst for ‘revivals’ that brought many face to face with the message about Jesus. Though people disagree about the validity of Finney’s methods (and his theology) his impact cannot be understated and his revivals came to be known as the first of the Second Great Awakening.

In 1832 Finney moved to New York City and became a pastor of two congregations. He eventually accepted the call to become professor and later president at Oberlin College (one of the first in America to co-educate men and women, white and black). Finney’s gospel message impacted many communities and thousands of individuals. He was also a fierce abolitionist, denouncing slavery from the pulpit in a time when to do so was unpopular.

Though I am not so sure about all of Finney’s measures, I do admire his whole hearted approach. I would like to emulate him in dedication to following the course God has laid out for me.

This is his description of his own reaction upon his conversion:

“No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say, I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart.”

I love to think of this grand, intense man, bellowing with love in large, loud moans and groans. Such passion is not often encountered methinks.

Sources:
Finney, CG (1873) Memoirs of revivals found at http://www.gospeltruth.net/life_of_finney.htm Harvey, BC (1989) Charles Finney: The great revivalist, Barbour publishing, Uhrichsville, Ohio
Shelley, BL (1995) Church History in Plain language. Thomas Nelson Publishers. Nashville.
Linden, DH (accessed 10/5/9) ‘Charles Finney’s Doctrine of Justification’ in Reformation and Revival Journal , Vol. 6, issue No.4, published online at http://www.grebeweb.com/linden/finney.html
Horton, M (accessed 10/5/9) ‘The disturbing legacy of Charles Finney’ published online at http://www.mtio.com/articles/aissar81.htm#horton#horton
Galli, M (2000) ‘Charles Finney: Father of American revivalism’ posted at christianhistory.net, 8/08/2008 12:56PM
Johnson JE (1988) ‘Charles Grandison Finney: Father of American Revivalism’ in Christian History, issue 20.