Page 305 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Congregational churches of New England. He induced thousands—in his home church
12.1 in Litchfield, Connecticut, and in other churches that offered him their pulpits—to
acknowledge their sinfulness and surrender to God.
During the late 1820s, Beecher was forced to confront the new and more radical form
12.2 of revivalism Charles G. Finney was practicing in western New York. Upstate New York
was a hotbed of religious enthusiasms. Most of its population consisted of transplanted
New Englanders who had left behind their close-knit villages and ancestral churches but

12.3 not their Puritan consciences. Troubled by rapid economic changes and the social dislo-
cations that accompanied them, they were ripe for a new faith and fresh moral direction.
Although he worked within Congregational and Presbyterian churches (which
were cooperating under a plan of union established in 1804), Finney was relatively
indifferent to theological issues. His appeal was to emotion or the heart, rather than to
doctrine or reason. He wanted converts to feel the power of Christ and become new
men and women. He eventually adopted the extreme view that redeemed Christians
perfectionism The doctrine that could be free of sin—as perfect as their Father in Heaven. This perfectionism led many
a state of freedom from sin is evangelicals into moral reform movements.
attainable on earth. Beginning in 1823, Finney conducted successful revivals in towns and cities of
western New York, culminating in his triumph in Rochester in 1830–1831. Even more
controversial than his freewheeling approach to theology was how he won converts.
Finney sought instantaneous conversions. He held meetings that lasted all night or for
days in a row, placing an “anxious bench” in front of the congregation where those
who were repenting could receive special attention, and he encouraged women to pray
publicly for male relatives.
Finney’s new methods and the emotionalism that accompanied them disturbed Beecher
and eastern evangelicals. Finney also violated Christian tradition by allowing women to
pray aloud in church. An evangelical summit meeting between Beecher and Finney, in New
Lebanon, New York, in 1827, failed to resolve these and other issues. Beecher threatened to
Quick Check stand on the state line if Finney tried to bring his crusade to Connecticut. But it soon became
What made revivalism such an clear that Finney was not merely stirring people up; he was leaving strong, active churches
effective means to win converts to behind him. Opposition weakened. Finney eventually founded a tabernacle in New York
religion?
City that became a rallying point for evangelical efforts to reach the urban masses.
From Revivalism to Reform

The northern wing of the Second Great Awakening, unlike the southern, inspired a great
movement for social reform. Converts were organized into voluntary associations that
sought to stamp out sin and social evil and win the world for Christ. Most of the converts
of northern revivalism were middle-class citizens already active in their communities. They
were seeking to adjust to the bustling world of the market revolution in ways that would not
violate their traditional moral and social values. Their generally optimistic and forward-look-
ing attitudes led to hopes that a wave of conversions would save the nation and the world.
In New England, Beecher and his evangelical associates established a network of
missionary and benevolent societies. In 1810, Presbyterians and Congregationalists
founded a Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and soon sent two mission-
aries to India. In 1816, the Reverend Samuel John Mills organized the American Bible
Society. By 1821, it had distributed 140,000 Bibles, mostly in the West where churches
and clergymen were scarce.
Another major effort went into publishing and distributing religious tracts, mainly
by the American Tract Society, founded in 1825. Special societies targeted groups beyond
the reach of regular churches, such as seamen, Native Americans, and the urban poor.
In 1816–1817, middle-class women in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Boston
formed societies to spread the gospel in lower-class wards—where, as one of their mis-
sionaries put it, there was “a great mass of people beyond the restraints of religion.”
Evangelicals also founded moral reform societies. Some of these aimed at curb-
ing irreligious activity on the Sabbath; others sought to stamp out dueling, gambling,
and prostitution. In New York in 1831, a zealous young clergyman claimed there were
10,000 prostitutes in the city laying their snares for innocent young men. As a result of
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