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Politics and Apolitical Religion: The Great Urban Revivals of the Late Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Sandra Sizer
Sandra Sizer
Affiliation:
lecturer of religious studies in San Diego State University, San Diego, California. Portions reprinted from the author's Gospel Hymns and Social Religion, copyright Temple University Press, 1978.
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Extract

The treatment of late nineteenth-century revivalism by historians of American Christianity has generally been rather unsystematic, despite the inclusion of the great revivals in survey histories like William G. McLoughun's Modern Revivalism and Bernard Weisberger's They Gathered at the River. There have been a few good biographies of major evangelists, such as James Findlay's of Dwight L. Moody. Early nineteenth-century revivalism has received a larger share of attention because of its close connections with social reform movements, which seem to be more interesting to liberally- inclined historians than do the later revivalists with specifically conversionist aims. From more “conservative” religious scholars, understandably, the treatment of such material has tended to be more expository and theological than analytical. In all, the revivalist tradition after 1850 has been given rather short shrift as representing only a backwash of American religion, perhaps associated with lower socioeconomic classes or marginal groups. That, unfortunately, has left us with a wide gap between event and explanation when the late sixties and seventies brought a resurgence of conservative and “Spirit-filled” evangelicalism among middle-class Christians, and when 1976 revealed a strong evangelical strain even in the political arena.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , March 1979 , pp. 81 - 98
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1979

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References

1. The references: McLoughlin, William G. Jr, Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham. (New York, 1959);Google ScholarWeisberger, Bernard A., They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalists and Their Impact upon Religion in America (Chicago, 1958);Google ScholarFindlay, James F. Jr, Dwight L. Moody: American Evangelist, 1837–1899 (Chicago, 1969).Google Scholar

2. Pollock, J. C., Moody: A Biographical Portrait of the Pacesetter in Modern Mass Evangelism (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

3. Weisberger, , River, pp. 168–169;Google ScholarMcLoughlin, , Revivalism, pp. 168, 257;Google ScholarFindlay, , Moody, pp. 285–302.Google Scholar Findlay's account is richer in specifics, but the over-all perspective is the same.

4. McLoughlin, , Revivalism, p. 7.Google Scholar

5. Ibid., p. 169; Findlay makes and ignores the same point in Moody, pp. 290, 297.

6. I base those statements on extensive reading in the popular press, not theological journals. Henry Ward Beecher's Christian Union was the largest in circulation for the early 1870s, as large as the largest secular weeklies, but dropped off sharply after his trial began in 1874. For a supplement from the Congregationalist-Presbyterian heritage, therefore, I have used the Independent (New York), which was by then virtually as nondenominational as Beecher's paper. Although smaller in circulation, it was an extremely influential religious weekly. To represent the Methodist tradition, as the largest Northern body and one without a theocratic heritage, I have chosen the Northwestern Christian Advocate (Chicago). To cross-check issues from the secular press, I used Harper's Weekly, one of the largest miscellanies published. As in many “secular” publications in the era, of course, there was a strong evangelical strain in Harper's. For information on these journals see Mott, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines, 5 vols. (Cambridge, 1938–1957), Vol. 3, 1865–1885;Google Scholar and his American Journalism, A History: 1690–1960, 3rd ed. (New York, 1962).Google Scholar The papers considered show in the early 1870s generally positive attitudes toward the achievements of science and biblical research but a dubious and condescending attitude toward evolution. The defensive hysterics of later years are nowhere in evidence. Specifically religious issues tended to be intra-denominational; e.g., a fight over the formulation of the creed in Presbyterianism and arguments over the presiding eldership in Methodism.

7. Burke, Kenneth, Philosophy of Literary Form (Baton Rouge, 1941), pp. 1, 293–298.Google Scholar See also, among Burke's, works, A Rhetoric of Motives (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1950; reprint, Berkeley, 1969);Google ScholarThe Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Boston, 1961);Google Scholar and Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method (Berkeley, 1966).Google Scholar The latter two show examples of this sort of criticism, in Burke's essays on Augustine and Shakespeare.

8. Burke, , Rhetoric of Motives, pp. 19–31, 35–37;Google ScholarLanguage as Symbolic Action, Chapter 1. Although “strategy” implies conscious choice, Burke holds that not all strategies are fully conscious, and that the word is perhaps too strong in that respect (Philosophy, pp. 20, 297; cf. Language as Symbolic Action, p. 301); similarly, “identifications” may be partly unconscious and unarticulated (Rhetoric of Motives, p. 36).

9. A fuller explication of strategy, focused on the gospel hymns of the late nineteenth-century revivals, can be found in Sizer, Sandra S., Gospel Hymns and Social Religion: The Rhetoric of Nineteenth-century Revivalism (Philadelphia, 1978).Google Scholar

10. This may not seem a striking observation, since we tend to assume that religious communities are based on commonality of feeling, whether that is understood in terms of Weberian “ethos” or Durkheimian “effervescence.” But precisely that issue is raised by the study of nineteenth-century revivalism: if it is possible to identify, as I think it is, a marked shift to a language of feeling to describe religious community, perhaps that concept itself is a product of modern Western thought, under the impact of pietism and romanticism. If that is the case, it should not be imposed on the study of earlier or non-Western religious communities.

11. Finney, Charles Grandison, “Christian Affinity,” in Sermons on Important Subjects (New York, 1836), p. 186.Google Scholar

12. Ibid., p. 190; cf. Finney, , Lectures on Revivals of Religion, ed. McLoughlin, William G. Jr (Cambridge, Mass., 1960; originally published 1835), p. 115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Finney, , Lectures, pp. 81, 60, 94, 114.Google Scholar

14. Sprague, William B., Lectures on Revivals of Religion, 2nd ed. (New York, 1833), p. 85;Google Scholar see further pp. 4–5, 83–86.

15. Fish, Henry C., Handbook of Revivals: For the Use of Winners of Souls (Boston, 1874), pp. 134, 319;Google ScholarConant, William C., Narratives of Remarkable Conversions and Revival Incidents (New York, 1858), p. 416;Google ScholarOld South Chapel Prayer Meeting: Its Origin and History (Boston, 1859), p. 12;Google ScholarGoodspeed, E. J., The Wonderful Career of Moody and Sankey in Great Britain and America (New York, 1876), p. 383;Google Scholar cf. Prime, S. Irenaeus, Fifteen Years of Prayer in the Fulton Street Meeting (New York, 1872), p. 267,Google Scholar on the spirit spreading like fire, kindling one heart from another.

16. Thompson, Charles L., Times of Refreshing: A History of American Revivals from 1740 to 1877, with Their Philosophy and Methods (Chicago, 1877), p. 319.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., p. 353; cf. Fish, , Handbook, p. 302:Google Scholar “God is pleased to accompany [music] with the energy of the Holy Spirit. He made us to be moved by singing. The soul is a many-stringed lyre, which he touches while working in us. Hence, the influence of sacred song is to refresh, stimulate, and ennoble the mind.”

18. Thompson, , Times, pp. 382–383.Google Scholar Some worried about the imitative tendencies this created. Henry Ward Beecher, writing the introduction to Conant's Narratives, warned that young people and new Christians “should be taught not to try themselves by other people's evidences⃜ Do not lose comfort and growth in grace by waiting to feel like some other Christian” (pp. xvi-xvii).

19. Fish, , Handbook, p. 134.Google Scholar The emphasis on family lines of influence is significant, as the family became by the midcentury the primary model for the community of feeling, with the woman as wife and mother being the image of perfect control along with depth of feeling. See Chapter 4 of the author's Gospel Hymns and Social Religion.

20. For the identification of the evangelical churches with sound money and Republicanism, see May, Henry F., Protestant Churches and Industrial America (New York, 1949;Google Scholar reprint with new introduction, 1967), pp. 43–44. The Methodist Northwestern Christian Advocate observed in 1875 that denominations had often been identified with particular political parties and, most recently, the Methodists with the Republicans (September 15, 1875, p. 4). Most of the leading Northern denominational papers leaned Republican, though many in the early I 870s opposed Grant.

21. Cf.Burke, , Rhetoric of Motives, p. 28.Google Scholar

22. McLoughlin, , Revivalism, pp. 6–7.Google Scholar

23. Part of our differences here stem from McLoughlin's concept of an awakening as extending over an “age.” In his scheme, there were four such awakenings: 1725–1750, 1795–1835, 1875–1915, and 1945–?. While that may be appropriate for the first two periods, when revivals were more local and regional, it seems to be less adequate for the later national revivals. It forces McLoughlin to ignore the 1857–1858 revival, which is unfortunate since that revival contained almost all the components of later ones except for the leadership of an evangelist. In any case, my treatment derives from asking not about the over-all rhythm of revivals compared to other trends in American culture, but rather about the sharp “peak periods” in mass revivalism.

24. See especially Foster, Charles I., An Errand of Mercy: The Evangelical United Front 1790–1837 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960).Google Scholar The case of the Finney period is, however, more uncertain in terms of relation to politics than is the Beecher-Nettleton revival system.

25. For these developments and especially the ideology of the “Slave Power,” see Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1970).Google Scholar

26. McLoughlin, , Revivalism, p. 163.Google Scholar

27. See Taylor, William R., Cavalier and Yankee (New York, 1961),Google Scholar for the opposing ideologies. Foner has criticized Taylor for holding that concern over Yankee character was prevalent “everywhere,” but does not question that it was a significant element in the Northern self-understanding. On the importance of family images in Uncle Tom's Cabin and the conventional understandings to which the novel appealed, see Ward's, John William “Afterword” to the Signet edition (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

28. Independent, March 4, 1858, p. 4.

29. See especially Prime, , Fifteen Years, pp. 48–49, 136, 139, 273–289, 290–309.Google Scholar

30. In a time of such loaded language as the 1850s, the term for the noon prayer meetings, “union meetings,” meaning nondenominational meetings, may have also carried the connotation of “Union meetings.”

31. Editorial, , Northwestern Christian Advocate, 08 11, 1875, p. 4;Google Scholar cf. the article by N. A. Patterson, ibid., February 23, 1876, p. 1; and the editorial in the Christian Union, 08 26, 1874, p. 16.Google Scholar

32. See Foner, Free Soil, for comments on this in the earlier part of the century, and Polakoff, Keith Ian, The Politics of Inertia: The Election of 1876 and the End of Reconstruction (Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1973),Google Scholar Chapter 1, for the organization of politics in the 1870s.

33. Smith, Jonathan Z., “A Pearl of Great Price and a Cargo of Yams,” History of Religions 16 (1976):1–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. On the political background, see Polakoff, Politics; on Beecher, see Carter, Paul, The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age (De Kalb, Ill., 1971), pp. 109–132;Google Scholar on the Ring, Whiskey, Gen, . McDonald, John, Secrets of the Great Whiskey Ring (New York, 1969;Google Scholar originally published 1880). The latter was especially damaging; for, as the Northwestern Christian Advocate observed, it was bad enough to make and sell whiskey, but now a legal crime had been added to the moral offense (editorial, December 8, 1875, p. 4). For Lowell's poem, “Agassiz,” see Christian Union, 07 15, 1874, p. 38.Google Scholar

35. For the decisions, see Wilson, John F. (ed.), Church and State in American History (Boston, 1965), pp. 121–126.Google Scholar

36. This summary follows Higham, John, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1955), pp. 28–29.Google Scholar Another issue which some connected with Catholicism was Ohio's Geghan Law, providing that prisoners should be permitted to be served by clerics of their own denominations.

37. Independent, 09 9, 1875, p. 16;Google Scholar cf. editorial, September 23, 1875, p. 17; and the article by Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 09 30, 1875, p. 1,Google Scholar which admitted that “The prediction is constantly made that we are on the verge of ‘a religious conflict which threatens the very existence of our Republic,’” but disparaged that notion.

38. Harper's Weekly, 05 8, 1875, p. 384.Google Scholar The Republicans supposedly had a “close identification … with the cause of education,“ the accompanying article said, because of their connection with the program of education for freedmen. Democrats and Catholics were therefore against education; in fact Catholic education was none at all (p. 385).

39. Harper's Weekly, 10 9, 1875, p. 823;Google Scholar the title of the article is “The Democracy and Its Papal Guides.”

40. Editorial, Northwestern Christian Advocate, 08 11, 1875, p. 4.Google Scholar

41. Christian Union, 08 26, 1874, p. 150.Google Scholar

42. Independent, 09 16, 1875, p. 1;Google Scholar cf. the editorial for October 7, 1875, p. 16: “Negative preparation for a vast advance in the religious world has been made during the past two years. Trust in money and in men has been signally weakened⃜ Mistrust and suspicion are disintegrating political parties and paralyzing trade and commerce. Thus, by being emptied and swept of other trust, men's hearts are being prepared for that which is pure and safe and permanent.”

43. Northwestern Christian Advocate, 08 4, 1875, p. 2;Google Scholaribid., September 22, 1875, p. 4.

44. Ibid., January 5, 1876, p. 4.

45. Harper's, Weekly, 03 11, 1876, p. 210;Google Scholaribid., December 4, 1875, p. 983.

46. See especially Anecdotes and Illustrations of D. L. Moody, comp. J. B. McClure (Chicago 1878).Google Scholar

47. Quoted in Harper's Weekly, 10 23, 1875, p. 860.Google Scholar

48. I have used the term “evangelicals” to refer to those who are part of the broad Protestant mainstream, “revivalists” to refer only to evangelists as such. At this point in history, before 1880, most evangelicals were still positive toward the practices of revivalists; it was only after 1880, when the conservatives in theology and the perfectionists in spirit began to form movements of their own, that the revivalist tradition began to diverge from mainstream American churches.

49. One might fruitfully compare the situation of the nation when Billy Graham first began to make a large appeal: 1949–1955, following on the heels of the first nuclear explosion by the U.S.S.R. and coinciding with the “Red scare” of the early fifties. Graham in his writings described Communism as a kind of perverted religion, which is a threat to Christianity both because of the imperialistic designs of its bearers, the U.S.S.R. and China (“Russia” and “Red China”), and because of the possibility of its insinuating itself into our country from within (infiltration and subversion, brainwashing, etc.). Interestingly, those same kinds of characteristics were attributed to the slave system on the one hand and Catholicism on the other. Slaveholders seemed to have control of the government, an external threat of coercion; but also the acquiescence of Northerners in the system (by returning fugitive slaves and such) showed the power of the system to eat away at the minds of people from within. Similarity, Catholicism was a threat because of the imperial designs of the Pope, but even more frightening was the erosion of the minds and hearts of school children if the Catholics were allowed to block the practice of true religion in the common schools. There is of course another question here, namely the presence of a strong leader who can carry the revival on his own shoulders, so to speak. The 1857–1858 revival is interesting precisely because there was no such figure. But one can raise the question of how important it was in 1875–1877 that Moody and Sankey were already leading a successful revival in the British Isles. One can never determine whether there would have been a revival anyway; it does seem likely that the news of a revival in Britain gave added impetus, especially since it had been well publicized in the American evangelical press that Britain had undergone some religious reforms to reinforce church hierarchy and ritual and that Moody and Sankey were appealing to those who rejected “dead forms.” The parallel with the perceived Catholic threat in America could hardly be missed. But in the present essay I have ignored the question of “the man” to concentrate on “the situation.”