What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848

by Daniel Walker Howe

Edwards had regarded religious revivals as ultimately mysterious, the action of divine grace. By contrast Finney boldly proclaimed, “A revival of religion is not a miracle” but a human work, a “result of the right use of the constituted means.” The evangelist’s job was to employ these means effectively in the effort to save souls. A good evangelist should be as self-conscious about his methods as a good farmer about scientific agriculture, Finney declared. If all the farmers waited upon the sovereignty of God “to give them a crop only when it pleases him,” the world would starve.23 By putting evangelical preaching on a scientific basis, Finney and his co-workers hoped to transcend the cycle of revivals and declensions, creating a continuous downpour where once there had been but intermittent showers of grace. In their new theology of how revivalism should be organized, the evangelists turned themselves into early psychologists of the techniques of persuasion.