Calling Down Fire: Charles Grandison Finney and Revivalism in Jefferson County, New York, 1800-1840

3. The Foundations of Fervor

 The Foundations of Fervor F ervor arrived early in Jefferson County as a normal expression of piety. This chapter describes two aspects of the environment in which fervor throve. The first section describes the backgrounds of the revivalists who worked in Jefferson County, among whom Charles Finney was the most prominent as well as the only one to achieve great fame. Finney dominates much of the narrative, as he was the only one to achieve great prominence outside of Jefferson County. Certainly, none of his counterparts were ever his equals outside of Jefferson County, but Finney was by no means alone in Jefferson County. And unlike some other regions of New York State that imported revivalists, Jefferson County did not. What is most remarkable in the biographies of Jefferson County’s revivalists of varying levels of fame is that all of them had experienced notable formalist and antiformalist influences. In most cases, the names of these revivalists do not reappear often in the rest of the narrative. Most of them worked in Jefferson County only a short time before moving to other areas. Although they clearly had an impact on Jefferson County, and although they provide a clear context for understanding Finney’s work as well as the mentalities of the churches throughout Jefferson County, their names do not reappear frequently or consistently in the church records. Finney’s name, for example, only appears in the records of the church in LeRay for a short time. The second section of this chapter backtracks from the time of the revivalists’ prominence to the formation of the churches in Jefferson County in order to describe the interest of some churches in fervor, and the interest of others in orderliness. The tripartite organization of Jefferson County played a notable role in determining which churches favored fervor and which favored orderliness. By and large, Presbyterian churches were formalist, and they favored orderliness and orthodoxy; and by and large, Baptist and Methodist churches were antiformalist, and they encour-  The Foundations of Fervor aged fervor and egalitarian relationships. Hence, in accord with George Thomas’s conception of isomorphism, Presbyterians dominated commercial areas where orderliness and correct behavior were valued the most highly; while Baptists and Methodists dominated egalitarian, agrarian areas. However, Baptists and Methodists did thrive in the commercial centers where they allowed for some formalism, and Presbyterians did succeed in agrarian areas where they did allow for some antiformalism. This lack of a strict and constant delineation between formalists and antiformalists is important to recognize, since, as I note much more completely in the next chapter, the delineation began to crumble after . Revivalists in Jefferson County Charles Grandison Finney Finney’s family moved from Warren in Litchfield County, Connecticut and from Paris, in Oneida County, New York to Henderson, New York in Jefferson County in . Finney received his education in Connecticut, taught in New Jersey, and eventually returned to and remained in Jefferson County at his mother’s request because of her ill health. He moved to Adams, a town adjacent to Henderson, and studied law under Benjamin Wright.1 In the course of these years, Finney heard the preaching of the staid Calvinist preachers of New England and of a rural Baptist minister in Henderson in Jefferson County, Emory Osgood. Although Osgood’s influence on Finney’s life occupies little space in Finney’s Memoirs, it is important not to diminish the significance of the influence of the preaching of an ignorant Baptist minister on Finney’s early development. Although Finney later is supposed to have ridiculed the ignorant preacher, Osgood no doubt provided an example of the value of lively preaching.2 While working under Wright, Finney led the choir in the First Presbyterian Church of Adams, and attended prayer meetings regularly. Nonetheless, the local church-going population and their pastor, George W. Gale, regarded him as an unlikely convert and a hindrance to the religious development of the choir members. The time he spent with the church, however, did influence him, and after two or three years, in , he experienced a sudden conversion experience, during the course of which he prayed, “If I am converted, I will preach the Gospel.”3 On  The Foundations of Fervor December , , Finney went before the church session, where he and nine other people “were examined as to their hope in Christ & knowledge of his gospel”; they were then...