Charles Finney
American evangelist whose Lectures on Revivals of Religion, published in 1835, taught that a revival is not a miracle but the result of the right use of means, and defended measures such as the anxious seat.
In the preface to his Lectures on Revivals of Religion Finney describes himself as a pastor who no longer has the health to labour as an evangelist and who has been given “some experience in revivals of religion” (Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, preface). The lectures hold that a revival is the result of the right use of the means God has appointed (Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, Lecture I) and defend the measures used in his meetings, among them protracted meetings and the anxious seat (Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, Lecture XIV). See the Second Great Awakening.
In the timeline
- August 1801, firm dateThe Second Great Awakening
In August 1801 a great crowd camps for a week of preaching at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, the church of the Presbyterian minister Barton Stone, and carries the revival home. In the 1830s Charles Finney teaches that a revival is the result of the right use of means.