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The Welsh Evangelical Community and ‘Finney's Revival’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Richard Carwardine
Richard Carwardine
Affiliation:
Lecturer in American History, University of Sheffield
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Extract

The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the emergence in American Calvinist churches of a new brand of religious revivalism. Energetic evangelicals successfully challenged the authority of a Calvinist theology which had seemed to emphasise the exclusiveness of the elect, and man's helplessness and inability to act in securing his own conversion. These evangelicals adopted a revivalism which, in contrast, reminded man of his responsibility and power, and which experimented with means to win converts that conservative evangelicals thought an affront to the operations of the Holy Spirit. The ‘new measures’, as they were called, included more direct preaching, often by revivalists who itinerated solely to stir churches and win converts, the ‘protracting’ of services over several days or weeks, and the ‘anxious seat’—the use of a special pew at the front of the congregation where those concerned for their spiritual state could go to be exhorted and prayed for, and where a public commitment might be expected. These measures—and the ‘New Divinity’ which gave them theological justification—became increasingly widespread during the 1820s and 1830s, the climax of the ‘Second Great Awakening’. In large part the impetus for change had come from the rapidly-growing Methodists, Arminian in theology and determined exponents of a high-pressure revivalism; but within the Calvinist churches the single most influential agent of change was the ‘high priest’ of revivalism, Charles Grandison Finney.

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Articles
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The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 29 , Issue 4 , October 1978 , pp. 463 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 McLoughlin, William G. Jr., Modem Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham, New York. 1959, 11–121Google Scholar provides the best examination of the newer revivalism; Mead, Sidney Earl, Nathaniel William Taylor 1786–1858: a Connecticut Liberal, Chicago 1942Google Scholar, offers an excellent discussion of the New Divinity; for Methodist influence, see Carwardine, Richard, ‘The Second Great Awakening in the Urban Centers: Methodism and the “New Measures” examined’, Journal of American History, lix (1972), 327–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism, 11ff. and passim, offers the best introduction to a figure taken extremely seriously by historians of American evangelicalism, but generally overlooked by British religious historians. Still the best source for an outline of his life (1792–1875) is Finney, Charles G., Memoirs, New York 1876Google Scholar.

3 Cross, Whitney R., The Burned-over District: the Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800—50, Ithaca, N.Y. 1950, 151—69Google Scholar; Finney, Memoirs, 234—324.

4 The titles of some of the Lectures suggest Finney'sapproach to revivalism: ‘How to Promote a Revival’, ‘Means to be used with sinners’, ‘How to Preach the Gospel’, ‘Measures to Promote Revivals’. Finney, Charles G., Lectures on Revivals of Religion, ed. McLoughlin, William G. Jr., Cambridge, Mass. 1960CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 John Keep to Gerrit Smith, 13 November 1839: Gerrit Smith Miller Papers, Syracuse University. By April 1838 a 7th edition of 2,000 copies was required. The special British edition, ‘With Introductory Prefaces by Rev. John Angell James, Rev. George Payne, D.D., and Rev. N. S. S. Beman, D.D. with Notes, and carefully revised, by Rev. William Patton, D.D.’, was published in 1839.

6 Finney, C. G., Darlithiau or Adfywiadau Crefyddol, Swansea 1839Google Scholar. Griffiths'sother translations included Finney's Sermons to Professing Christians [Pregethau ar amrywiol o’byndau pwysig], Swansea 1841.

7 Jones, James Rhys, ‘Characteristics of Welsh Preaching’ in William Rees, Memoir of the late Rev. W. Williams, of Wern, trans. James Rhys Jones, London 1846, 157—86Google Scholar; Christian Witness, i (1844), 947.

8 Christian Witness, vii (1850), 315. The Baptists apparently added about 2,000 new members, the Calvinistic Methodists some 7,000: Hughes, Henry, Diwgiadau Crefyddol Cymru, Caernarvon 1906Google Scholar. Wesleyans grew from 16,053 in 1838 to 19,287 in 1841; their numbers then dropped steadily until 1848: Alan D. Gilbert, ‘The Growth and Decline of Nonconformity in England and Wales’, D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University 1973, 54.

9 Rees, Thomas, History of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, from its rise in 1633 to the present time, 2nd ed., London 1883, 429—30Google Scholar. For Rees (1815–85), see Dictionary of National Biography [DNB].

10 T. Rees to C. G. Finney, 19 April 1850: Finney Papers, Oberlin College Archives.

11 See the obituary of Finney in Y Tyst A’r Dydd (Menhyr Tydril), 10 September 1875.

12 New York Observer, 7 March 1835.

13 Williams, David, A History of Modem Wales, London 1950, 166Google Scholar.

14 Davies, E. T., Religion in the Industrial Revolution in South Wales, Cardiff 1965, 97–140 and passimGoogle Scholar.

15 ‘The people feel that he is of them, and with them, and that their interests are one and undivided’: Jones, ‘Characteristics of Welsh Preaching’, 171; Christian Witness, i (1844), 950.

16 Christian Witness, i (1844), 945–8.

17 Morgan, Kenneth O., Wales in British Politics 1868–1922, Cardiff 1963, 11–18Google Scholar. But according to the census, 47–67 per cent of the population were unattached to any denomination: ibid., 12. Cf. Jones, William, Prize Essay on the Character of the Welsh as a Nation in the Present Age, London 1841, 28—53Google Scholar.

18 Relations between the various Dissenting denominations were sometimes bitter. Davies, Religion in the Industrial Revolution, 50–4. Cf. Evans, D. Tyssil, The life and Ministry of the Rev. Caleb Morris, London 1902, 243–4Google Scholar. The spirit of competition undoubtedly intensified the drive towards church growth.

19 Rees, Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, 429—31; Davies, Religion in the Industrial Revolution, 55–7; Evans, Eifion, When He is Come: an Account of the 1858–60 Revival in Wales, Bala 1959, 11–20Google Scholar.

20 Jones, ‘Characteristics of Welsh Preaching’, 160. Cf. Jones, Character of the Welsh, 53: ‘The institution which has produced the greatest effect on the religious character of the people is that of preaching the gospel’.

21 Evans, D. M, Christmas Evans: a Memoir & with selections from his sermons, London 1863, 211—17Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., 133–46, 163–73.

23 Stephen, David Rhys, Memoirs of the late Christmas Evans of Wales, London 1874, 39–40Google Scholar; Evans, Life of Morris, 112—14.

24 Jones, Owen, Some of the Great Preachers of Wales, London 1885, 252–9Google Scholar. For Elias (1774–1841), the great Calvinistic Methodist preacher of his age, see Morgan, E., A Memoir of the Reverend John Elias, London 1844Google Scholar; DNB.

25 See, for example, Jones, Character of the Welsh, 49; Congregational Magazine, xii (1829), 410—11; Revivalist (1841), 66—9. Sometimes fasting was employed.

26 Baptist Magazine, xxix (1837), 260. It was the opinion of one society member that ‘of all places o n earth, there was none & so much like heaven as the Calvinistic Methodist society’: Jones, Character of the Welsh, 49–50.

27 Morgan, Memoir of Elias, 167—8; Jones, Great Preachers of Wales, 250–1. Instrumental in the revival was the fear of cholera: ibid., 483. The enormous force of Elias'spreaching and personality should not be underestimated: on various occasions he proved able to stop the progress of fairs, plays and other kinds of ‘irreligious’ entertainments. It was said ‘that in almost every country place, village, or town, one could find some one ascribing his conversion to the preaching of this man’: ibid., 236, 240–4, 283, 476—7.

28 For Evans (1766—1838) and Williams (1781–1840), see the works by Evans, Rees and Stephen, already cited, and Morris, R., Christmas Evans, London 1870Google Scholar.

29 Davies, Religion in the Industrial Revolution, 75.

30 Evans, Christmas Evans, 205.

31 When Evans of Tydai, renowned lay preacher of the eighteenth-century revival, first saw the Bristol Channel ‘he was almost overpowered with a sense of infinity’: ibid., 15. Rule, John, ‘Methodism and Chartism among the Cornish Miners’, and especially the ensuing discussion, in Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, xxii (1971), 8—11Google Scholar, notes the importance of the geographic isolation of Cornwall and North Wales. Dodd, A. H., The Industrial Revolution in North Wales, Cardiff 1933, 89 ffGoogle Scholar, describes the poverty of communications which contributed to this isolation.

32 Native commentators would have agreed with Calvin Colton'sverdict in 1834 that ‘The poison of modern infidelity has hardly found its passage into Wales. The people generally believe in Christianity, and respect it’: New York Observer, 7 March 1835. There was very little ‘infidel’ or scientific publishing in Wales: Jones, Character of the Welsh, 65.

33 Kendall, James, Rambles of an Evangelist, London 1853, 41Google Scholar.

34 Evans, Christmas Evans, 2—26.

35 ‘Terrible accidents and fearful deaths [are] not uncommon in these iron and coal districts& [H]ence funeral sermons are frequent, and are often attended with good moral and religious effect’: Kendall, Rambles of an Evangelist, 42–3. Cf. Nottingham, Elizabeth K., Methodism and the Frontier: Indiana Proving Ground, New York 1941, 19ffGoogle Scholar.

36 The phrase is Christmas Evans’s: Christian Advocate and Journal (New York), 24 July 1844.

37 ‘[T]he whole style of [the preacher’s] speech was thickly inlaid with scriptural figure, simile, and metaphor, indicating the fact of [his] restricted training and his complete baptism in the element of the Book’: Evans, Christmas Evans, 208–9.

38 The widespread dissemination of the Bible through the Sunday Schools (attended by some 20—25 per cent of the population in 1833) meant that ‘adults among the poorest class are far better acquainted with the Bible than persons of the same class in England’, according to Commissioner Johnson, quoted in Artegall: or remarks on the Reports of the Commissioners of the Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, London 1848, 30Google Scholar; Jones, Evan, A Vindication of the Educational and Moral Condition of Wales&, Llandovery 1848, 12Google Scholar.

39 Jones, Character of the Welsh, 67–8; New York Observer, 7 March 1835.

40 There were similar manifestations in the earlier revivals of 1803 and 1815: Wilkins, Charles, The History of Merthyr Tydfil, Merthyr Tydfil 1867, 221–7Google Scholar.

41 Jones, Great Preachers of Wales, 252–9.

42 Many preachers grew to depend on congregational response as an integral part of their preaching: Evans, Christmas Evans, 205ff. Taken to extremes it could prove disruptive. See, for example, Young, David, The Origin and History of Methodism in Wales and the Borders, London 1893, 571Google Scholar.

43 See for example, Rees, Williams of Wern, 118–19.

44 For their prominence in the revival of 1828—9, see Congregational Magazine, xii (1829), 224–5, 510–1; Evangelical Magazine, n.s. vi (1828), 564.

45 Evans, Christmas Evans, 133–43.

46 New York Observer, 7 March 1835. Cf. Colton, Calvin, History and Character of American Revivals of Religion, 2nd ed., London 1832, 10ffGoogle Scholar.

47 Christian Witness, i (1844), 949. For Christmas Evans'santicipation of revival in 1837, see Y Traethodydd, January 1846.

48 Conway, Alan (ed.), The Welsh in America. Letters from the Immigrants, Cardiff 1961, 3–13, 51–93Google Scholar. In 1820 a Welshman described America to his nine-year-old son as ‘a great and good country beyond the ocean, where there is no King, no tithes, and where poor people can get farms, and where apples abound’: Chidlaw, Benjamin W., The Story of My Life, Philadelphia 1890, 17Google Scholar.

49 Evans, Christmas Evans, 227–8. For the introduction into Wales of American-style protracted meetings, in the early 1830s, see the letter of the Rev. Jenkin Jenkins to the New York Evangelist, 2 February 1833.

50 Chidlaw, Story of My life, 14–89.

51 Jones, R. Tudur, Hanes Annibynwyr Cymru, Swansea 1966, 216Google Scholar.

52 Davies, Religion in the Industrial Revolution, 62–3.

53 Chidlaw, Story of My Life, 75.

54 Michael Jones and other North Wales Congregationalists to C. G. Finney, 27 February 1840: Finney Papers.

55 Chidlaw, Story of My Life, 94–6, 89–100.

56 Baptist Magazine, xxix (1837), 260Google Scholar, describing the Brecon revival of 1836.

57 Chidlaw, Story of My life, 100–10.

58 M. Jones and others to C. G. Finney, 27 February 1840: Finney Papers; Rees, Williams of Wern, 64–7; Christian Witness, xii (1855), 19–20.

59 Jones, Hanes Annibynwyr Cymru, 200–1

60 Rees, Williams of Wern, 18ff.; Rees, Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, 418–23.

61 Rees, Williams of Wern, 80–1; Jones, Great Preachers of Wales, 486.

62 For Jones (1768–1835), see Dictionary of Welsh Biography [DWB]. Arguably the later modifying of Calvinism simply squared formal theology with popular practice.

63 See, for example, Young, Methodism in Wales, 272–5, 533, 561–2, 592, 708.

64 Williams, History of Modem Wales, 173—5, 251; Morgan, Wales in British Politics, 14.

65 Williams, History of Modern Wales, 175.

66 For Samuel Roberts (1800–85), see DWB.

67 Williams, David, The Rebecca Riots: a Study in Agrarian Discontent, Cardiff 1955, esp. 122–36Google Scholar; and his ‘Chartism in Wales’ in Chartist Studies, ed. Asa Briggs, London 1959, 220ff.; Davies, Religion in the Industrial Revolution, 76–87.

68 This was the case with John Hughes of Flint (1796–1860) and William Rees of Denbigh (1802–83), for example. See DNB; DWB; Jones, Great Preachers of Wales, 382–3. R. L. Hugh, ‘The Theological Background of Nonconformist Social Influence in Wales, 1800–50’, Ph.D. thesis, University of London 1951, especially 189–234, suggests a relationship between liberal theology and movements for political and social reform.

69 ‘Those Theologians who represent the Supreme Being as arbitrary in his decrees and the dispensations of his grace, and who entertain contracted views of the atonement of Christ and of the provision of the Gospel, will always be found of a lordly and despotic temper’: Rees, Williams of Wern, 19–24. Rees was describing both Welsh and American (Old School Presbyterian) hyper-Calvinists.

70 Williams, Rebecca Riots, 126.

71 Thomas, Owen, Cofiant y Parch: John Jones, Talsam &, Wrexham 1874Google Scholar; Jones, Great Preachers of Wales, 382—4, 486–9, 491–4.

72 But there could well be schism within individual churches. See, for example, Wilkins, Merthyr Tydfil, 224—7.

73 For Jenkins (1779–1853), see Rees, Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, 446—8; for Davies (1786–1836), see DWB.

74 Stephen, Christmas Evans, 108—9; Jones, Character of the Welsh, 40–1.

75 For Roberts (1767–1834), see DWB.

76 Rees, Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, 431–2.

77 Owen, W. T., Edward Williams, D.D. 1750–1813: his Life, Thought and Influence, Cardiff 1963, 125Google Scholar.

78 Rees, Williams of Wern, 98–104, 124–6.

79 Robert Everett'sletters helped to keep his countrymen informed about American revivals, and help to explain why Jones could tell Finney that ‘your name is familiar to us: with your Christian Labours we are also acquainted &’ : M. Jones and other to C. G. Finney, 27 February 1840: Finney Papers.

80 J. Griffiths to C. G. Finney, 13 July 1840: Finney Papers. Griffiths (1782–1858), as a friend of John Roberts and a Blue Book essayist, had borne the brunt of ‘Old System’ hostility in South Wales: Congregational Year Book (1859), 196–8; Owen, Edward Williams, 136–7.

81 J. Griffiths to C. G. Finney, 13 July 1840: Finney Papers.

82 Davies, Evan, Revivals in Wales: facts and Correspondence supplied by pastors of the Welsh Churches, London 1859, 21Google Scholar.

83 Christian Witness, i (1844), 949.

84 Y Tyst A’r Dydd, 10 September 1875. Cf. Howell'sobituary in Y Methodist (1852), 63.

85 It was thought by some ‘that there was more of man than of God in the movement’: Rees, Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, 429–30.

86 See, for example, Thomas Rees to C. G. Finney, 19 April 1850, 10 and 17 January 1859; David Rees to C. G. Finney, 17 and 22 March 1859; Joseph Morris to C. G. Finney, 23 April 1859: Finney Papers.

87 See, for example, Primitive Methodist Magazine, xxv (1843), 99–102. I have not attempted to examine here the precise relationship of the revival movement to the economic recession and accompanying social tension that affected, in particular, the industrial areas of Britain in the late 1830s and early 1840s. This major subject deserves investigation in its own right. Although revivalistic religion could provide comfort in a harsh world, and although some ministers looked to revivals as a means of combating social disharmony, economic recession should not be seen as a fundamental ‘cause’ of revivals.

88 The author is happy to acknowledge the financial assistance of the University of Sheffield Research Fund in preparing this article.