". . . one can almost say that the steady burning of the Revival, sometimes smoldering, now blazing into flame, never quite extinguished (even in Boston) until the Civil War had been fought, was a central mode of this culture's search for national identity." -- Perry Miller, The Life of the Mind in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War (1965), pp. 5-6

Despite The Life of the Mind in America winning the 1966 Pulizer Prize in History, Miller's view of the importance of evangelical religion in the shaping of American culture has not become conventional wisdom. This is not to say that historians have ignored the "Second Great Awakening" to which he was referring or the tremendous social and cultural ferment of which it was so prominent a part. But they have not, with a few important exceptions, carried on Miller's effort to describe the basic categories of thought and styles of imagination through which Americans made sense of their experiences. Instead of seeking a grand synthesis we have specialized. We have gained much knowledge in the process and we have not worried overmuch about how to connect our findings.

Miller nonetheless had something very important to contribute to this neglected quest for synthesis. There was, as he expressed it, an "evangelical basis" to the newly emerging national culture. It affected the millions who flocked to revival meetings in the 1830s, '40s, and '50s, many of whom spoke of their "conversion" as the central moment of their lives. [Here are several testimonies, published in 1858] Converts flowed back into already established congregations where they demanded a new style of preaching and prayer. They also formed new sects, splitting established denominations in the process. They joined existing reform organizations, such as those for temperance or anti-slavery, where again they called for a more militant approach. They also formed their own reform societies. Beyond such institutional impacts, they set a cultural tone. They formulated the expectations that defined "respectability." In the process they influenced how "ladies" and "gentlemen" spoke, how they dressed, how they recreated. Evangelicals had an important say in determining which books and authors became well known. It is difficult to exaggerate their overall salience.

One way of grasping this is to think about Evangelicalism as a worldview, a coherent way of making sense of experience. At its heart were notions of grace and of sin. Men were sinners. American children still learned at their mother's knee that "In Adam's fall sinned we all." But the revival, the experience of conversion which came with the sincere acknowledgement of one's own sinfulness and the acceptance of God's grace, enabled one to triumph over sin. The notion of triumph is crucial. Evangelicals did not simply believe, as their Anglican and Puritan forebearers had, that they were saved through grace. They believed that grace transformed them. In the doctrine of Perfectionism, formulated by the great revivalist Charles Granison Finney, in his Lectures to Professing Christians, Christians could conquer sin. The drunkard could stop drinking. The adulterer could become faithful. The slaveholder could free his slaves. The Christian could stop using the name of the Lord in vain, could observe the Sabbath, could be truthful, could, in short, obey God's commandments. This notion of conquest over sin provided an enormous energy to the converted. They could remake themselves. And, since society was simply a collection of individuals, they could remake it as well. Evangelicals were reformers by definition, in sum. Reform meant eradicating sin, the sin of intemperance, the sin of slavery, violations of the Sabbath, prostitution, gaming, and so on. For each sin there were sins who were responsible for the evil they wrought.

Evangelical reformers, therefore, accepted the necessity of confronting the sinner. Often this was a matter of talking with a neighbor and expressing one's concern over the state of his soul. There were manuals which suggested ways Christians might most effectively carry out this duty. It also meant directly confronting the rumseller and denouncing the evil he did in trafficking in "Demon Rum." It meant publishing to the world the evils connected with slavery, the breaking up of families, the sexual licence of the master, the cruel punishments. Evanigelical reform was confrontational in principle.

Evangelicals did not have the work of cultural formation to themselves. And they were themselves shaped by other developments such as the rapid impact of technology and industrialization and by the sweep of political developments, especially the ongoing success of their own republic. They were shaped by the market as well. The United States of these years was one of the purest expressions of capitalism ever seen. The market called for discipline, frugality, and hard work. It also led to dreams of wealth and extravagance. It held out opportunity for individual advancement but also temptation. In other parts of this site we will explore Jeffersonian and Jacksonian liberalism and free market capitalism as worldviews which sometimes, as in the emphasis upon individual responsibility, reinforced evangelicalism and sometimes, as in the libertarian restraints upon government interference with individual behavior, conflicted with it.

As Miller suggested, a good place to start in making sense of this very complex and enormously important moment in American history and culture is with the Revival.

The great figure of the Second Great Awakening was Charles Granison Finney. Not only was he the most successful and famous preacher, he was the revival's great strategist and theologian. A revival is, by definition, an outpouring of God's grace. It was Finney's claim that a minister might nonetheless set about promoting revivals with an even greater expectation of success than an experienced farmer might have of growing a crop. The farmer also relied upon divine favor in that a drought or too much rain might frustrate his efforts. This did not prevent him from studying about seeds, soils and other practical dimensions of his calling. Similarly the minister needed to study human psychology and the Bible. If he did, and if he applied himself wholeheartedly to the task -- and Finney claimed that promoting revivals was the minister's sole calling -- God would reward his efforts. Finney published a "how-to" manual, Lectures on the Revivial of Religion, based upon a series of sermons he preached in New York City in 1833.

Finney's insistence on the singular importance of revivals and his corresponding demand that ministers be judged entirely on their success in converting sinners earned him many critics among the "settled" clergy who distrusted "spasmotical" religious upheavals. Well they might.

When Finney came to a community he completely monopolized its religious and social life. Everyone, including local "infidels" (unbelievers), came to hear him. A former lawyer, Finney spoke as if addressing a jury. In plain language he would marshall the evidence of his listeners sinfulness, explore their pet ways of excusing themselves to themselves, and, when he had them "convicted" in their own minds, explain the path to salvation. This was the critical moment. Sinners who wanted to be saved had to act. Specifically, the sinner had to approach the "anxious bench," a simple table at the front. There sinners had to make a public accounting of their sins. The person who hung back out of fear of what friends and neighbors would think was, Finney explained, still in love with his or her sin.

The minister, Finney pointed out, had to choose this moment of truth carefully. Too soon, and the sinner would not yet be sufficiently convinced of the magnitude of his guilt. Too late, and he would be emotionally drained and unable to act. If the minister chose the right moment, however, first one or two sinners, often well-known in the community for their skepticism or infidelity, would approach the anxious bench. Then a few more would follow, then still more, and then the rest. At moments of such intense emotional fervor the Spirit, Finney argued as had Jonathan Edwards, could physically overpower members of the congregation. Some might faint, some cry out, some fall to the floor. Tears often flowed, tears of joy. Converts, and Finney and his auditors used the language of conversion to mean this change of heart rather than a change of religious affiliation, testified that they experienced a sudden sense of exultation. Many described it as a feeling of being borne aloft. Others described it as a flood of light completely enveloping them. All said it was the most profound experience of their lives. Converts could not doubt the genuineness of their experience. To those who did doubt they could also reply that, were they to be converted themselves, their doubts would disappear.

What were born-again Christians to do once the revival was ended. Finney exhorted them to join a church, in the first place. A Presbyterian himself, Finney did not seek to get them to join his own denomination. Rather they should choose a church with a minister who preached sin and salvation and who would keep their new sense of religious dedication alive. Next they must alter their lives. It had been their old lives which had led them to disregard salvation. Now that they had found it, they had to change those old lives. Again, Finney did not tell them exactly what they should do. They might join a reform organization, he would say. That would be fine, provided they were active members. They might start organizations of their own. The point, he insisted, was that the convert live a new life.

One can gain some sense of Finney's power as a preacher from the published reminiscences of converts and colleagues collected for a memorial service at Oberlin College, which he established. Finney's own account, his Autobiography, is here. He devotes individual chapters to accounts of his activities in various town and cities, including the great revival in Rochester.

Early in his career Finney expressed a settled disinclination for doctrinal debate. In several of his "Lectures on the Revival of Religion" he claimed that ministers frequently stopped revivals cold by turning away from matters of sin and salvation to take up questions involving communion or baptism or other matters which tended to divide and distract the congregation. Nonetheless Finney himself turned to theological speculation with his formulation of the doctrine of Christian Perfection. In part he was motivated by his own dissatisfaction with "spasmodical" religion. Every revival, he noted with pain, presupposed a "declension." Christians might reach a genuineness holiness but then they returned to the world, to their occupations, and, sooner or later, to spiritual complacency or worse. Was it not possible to preserved the state of holiness reached at the revival in the moment of conversion? Was "backsliding" inevitable? Finney answered that it was not. He stated his reasons most forcefully in his Lectures to Professing Christians (1837).

Perfectionism proved as controversial as Finney's revival techniques. Nonetheless it reflected a kind of vision, that Americans could escape the failures of the Old World, which had deep roots in American culture and which was never stronger than in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. One way of seeing this is to compare Finney with Ralph Waldo Emerson. In many respects the two were polar opposites. Finney was largely self-taught. Emerson, despite his insistence that no one could ever teach another, was a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Divinity School. Finney sought truth in the Bible. Emerson sought it within himself. Finney, despite attacks upon his orthodoxy, remained within the Presbyterian Church. Emerson abandoned the pulpit and Unitarianism. Finney spoke plainly. The minister should always address his congregation the way a lawyer speaks to a jury. Make sure they understand every word. Emerson spoke allusively. His addresses, immensely popular as they were, often left audiences mystified. Yet Emerson was, in his own highly distinctive way, a revivalist. And Transcendentalism was a variant of perfectionism.

One way to see the revivalist in Emerson is to read his "Divinity School Address" along side Finney's "Lectures on the Revival of Religion." Emerson is as harsh a critic of the settled clergy as Finney and for some of the same reasons. Their preaching did not reach the heart. It was cold, formalistic, unconnected to the daily lives of the congregation. Most damning, it did not confront the listener with his own responsibility to transform his life. The whole idea, Emerson proclaimed in a phrase Finney might have echoed, was to convert life into truth. [Emerson and Finney on the responsibility of the minister]

Perfectionism was more than a theological doctrine. It was an expression of the central vision of Evangelical Christianity in the United States in the decades prior to the Civil War. That vision, as Perry Miller reminded us, was of a "converted Nation." We shall see this vision again and again, especially in various reform movements.