Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wg55d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-16T15:41:09.478Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Religious Revival of 1857–8 in The United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Richard Carwardine
Richard Carwardine*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In August 1858 an American minister described the current revival in that country as a ‘Fourth Great Awakening’ to be likened to pentecost, the sixteenth-century reformation and the eighteenth-century awakening in colonial America. His historical judgment was weak, but his euphoria typified the mood of American evangelicals after a year of mass conversions. Particularly through denominational ‘protracted meetings’ and inter-denominational or ‘union’ prayer meetings, all the protestant churches throughout the country shared in the excitement. Even many of the more cautious episcopalians, Unitarians and universalists showed sympathy for a wave of revivals which seemed remarkably well-ordered and free of the ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘human machinery’ of earlier ‘ingatherings’. By the end of annus mirabilis each of the evangelical denominations could report huge accessions: of the largest bodies, the presbyterians (old and new schools) added almost thirty thousand members by examination, the major baptist churches baptised almost one hundred thousand new members, while the two main branches of methodism reported a staggering net increase of nearly one hundred and eighty thousand, a growth of sixteen per cent over the previous year. What had moved Americans to flock to revival meetings and ‘get religion‘ in these numbers?

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 15: Religious Motivation Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian , 1978 , pp. 393 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 There is no definitive study of the revival of 1857-8. The most helpful treatment is provided by Smith, [Timothy L.], [Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War] (New York 1965) pp 63–79 Google Scholar. McLoughlin, William G., Jr, Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New York 1959) pp 163-4 is too dismissiveGoogle Scholar. See also Francis, Russell E., ‘Pentecost: 1858. A Study in Religious Revivalism’, unpublished PhD thesis (University of Pennsylvania 1948) and Spicer, [Carl L.], [‘The Great Awakening of 1857 and 1858’], unpublished PhD thesis (Ohio State University 1935)Google Scholar.

2 Mcllvaine, Charles P., Bishop Mcllvaine’s Address to the Convention of the Diocese of Ohio on the Revival of Religion (Cincinnati 1858)Google Scholar; Huntingdon, Frederic D., Permanent Realities of Religion and the Present Religious Interest (Boston 1858)Google Scholar; [Adoniram J.] Patterson, [A Discourse on the Revival . , .] (Portsmouth, New Hampshire 1858).

3 Weber, Herman C., Presbyterian Statistics through One Hundred Years 1826-1926 (The General Council, Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. 1927) pp 18, 44Google Scholar; Orr, J.Edwin, The Second Evangelical Awakening in Britain (London 1949) p 36 Google Scholar; [Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the] M[ethodist] E[piscopal] C[hurch] (1858); Peterson, P.A., Handbook of Southern Methodism (Richmond, Virginia 1883) p 115.Google Scholar

4 Goss, Charles C., Statistical History of the First Century of American Methodism (New York 1866) p 110 Google Scholar; Dike, Samuel W., ‘A Study of New England Revivals’, The American Journal of Sociology 15 no 3 (Chicago 1909) pp 361-78.Google Scholar

5 C[hristian] A[dvocate and] J[ournal] (New York) 2 October 1856; S[outhern] C[hristian] A[dvocate] (Charleston, South Carolina) 8 January 1857.

6 CAJ 19 June, 30 October 1856, 19 November 1857; SCA 14 May 1857.

7 CAJ 15 January 1857; Alexander, [James W.], [The American Sunday School and Its Adjuncts] (Philadelphia 1856) pp 70, 327.Google Scholar

8 Spicer, p 57; CAJ 30 October 1856; N[ew] Y[ork] Observer] n September 1856; Wardle, Addie G., History of the Sunday School Movement in the Methodist Episcopal Church (New York 1918) p 89.Google Scholar

9 NYO 3 June 1858. There were extensive revivals in schools and colleges in 1857-8. See, for example, CAJ 26 November 1857, 8 and 15 April 1858, 17 February 1859.

10 Laqueur, Thomas W., Religion and Respectability: Sunday Schools and Working Class Culture 1780-1856 (London 1976) pp 166–7 Google Scholar; Argyle, Michael, Religious Behaviour (London 1958) pp 59–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Mears, David O., An Autobiography 1842-1893) (Boston 1920) pp 12–14.Google Scholar

12 CAJ 5 June 1856; SCA 24 September, 10 December 1857. For parental opposition to Sunday school conversions, see Roche, John A., The Life of Mrs. Sarah A. Lankford Palmer . . . (New York 1898) pp 50–3.Google Scholar

13 CAJ 17 January 1856; Alexander, p 327.

14 MEC (1857-1858).

15 CAJ II and 25 March, 22 April 1858.

16 Ibid 11 February, 4 March 1858.

17 Ibid 14 January, 25 March 1858.

18 NYO 27 May 1858.

19 Ibid 1 April 1858; 0[berlin] E[vangelist] (Oberlin, Ohio) 24 March 1858; Humphrey, Heman, Revival Sketches and Manual (New York 1859) pp 278–9.Google Scholar

20 NYO 25 March 1858.

21 Ibid 1 July 1858; CAJ 18 March 1858, 28 July 1859.

22 Wayland, Francis and Wayland, H.L., A Memoir of the Life and Labors of Francis Wayland, D.D., LL.D., 2 vols (New York 1867) 2 p 213.Google Scholar

23 [James W. Alexander and others, The] Man of Business [Considered in his Various Relations] (New York 1857); Fish, Henry C., Primitive Piety Revived. . . (Boston 1855), especially pp 34–64 Google Scholar; Arthur, William, The Duty of Giving Away a Stated Proportion of our Income (Philadelphia 1857)Google Scholar; Arthur, William, The Successful Merchant (London 1852)Google Scholar, which went into numerous American editions in the 1850s; Cold and the Gospel (New York 1855).

24 NYO 29 October, 24 December 1857.

25 Ibid 19 March, 24 December 1857; CAJ 2 July, 15 October, 12 November 1857; James W. Alexander, ‘The Merchant’s Clerk Cheered and Counselled’, p 20, in Man of Business; SCA 24 December 1857.

26 NYO 29 July 1858.

27 Patterson p 8.

28 Conant, [William C.], [Narratives of Remarkable Conversions and Revival Incidents . . .] (New York 1858) p 357.Google Scholar

29 CAJ 15 October 1857; SCA 15 October, 5 November 1857.

30 CAJ 21 January 1858.

31 Spicer pp 102-3.

32 NYO 11 June 1857.

33 CAJ 10 July, 7 and 21 August, 6 November 1856, 22 January, 10 September 1857.

34 Jones, Arthur E., Jr, ‘The Years of Disagreement 1844-61’ in The History of American Methodism, ed Bucke, Emory S. and others, 3 vols (Nashville, Tennessee 1964) 2 pp 196–9 Google Scholar; CAJ 5, 12 and 19 June, 7 August, 9 October, 25 December 1856, 22 January, 5 February, 30 July 1857.

35 NYO 12 and 19 March, 2, 9 and 30 April, 21 May, 11 June, 2 July 1857; CAJ 11 June, 3 December 1857; Griffin, Clifford S., ‘The Abolitionists and the Benevolent Societies, 1831-1861’, Journal of Negro History 44 no 3 (Washington, D.C., 1959) pp 195–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 CAJ 26 June 1856.

37 Ibid 7 January, 4 February 1858; NYO 3 and 24 June, 1 July, 5 August 1858; SCA 13 May 1858.

38 Spicer pp 87-9, 132, 210-11; OE 17 March 1858.

39 CAJ 30 October 1856; Formisano, Ronald P., The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 1827-1861 (Princeton, New Jersey 1971).Google Scholar

40 CAJ 9 October 1856, 2 April 1857; NYO 31 January, 13 November 1856, 2 July 1857.

41 CAJ 30 October 1856.

42 Ibid 2 and 16 October 1856.

43 NYO 30 October 1856; Francis, [Russell E.], [‘The Religious Revival of 1858 in] Philadelphia’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 70 no 1 (Philadelphia 1946) P 57.Google Scholar

44 CAJ 5 February 1857.

45 Ibid 6 and 13 November, 11 December 1856, 5 February 1857, 20 December 1860; SCA 23 October 1856.

46 Philadelphia Press 6 March 1858, quoted in Francis, ‘Philadelphia’, p 64.

47 NYO 6 May 1858.

48 Van Deburg, William L., ‘William Lloyd Garrison and the “Pro-Slavery Priesthood”: The Changing Beliefs of an Evangelical Reformer, 1830-1840’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 43 (Tallahassee 1975) p 235n.Google Scholar

49 CAJ 4 February 1858.

50 Spicer, appendix B; NYO 15 April 1858.

51 NYO 26 August 1858.

52 SCA 21 May, 3 September, 8 October 1857.

53 Ibid 15 January, 27 August, 10 September 1857.

54 Firmey, Charles G., Memoirs (New York 1876) p 444.Google Scholar

55 SCA 10 September 1857.

56 NYO 10 January 1856.

57 ‘Protestant Revivab and Catholic Retreats’, Brownson’s Quarterly Review 15 (New York 1858) pp 289–322 Google Scholar.

58 CAJ 8 January, 27 August 1857, 4 February 1858.

59 Ibid 3 and 31 January, 7 February 1856, 18 June 1857.

60 Ibid 5 November 1857.

61 Ibid 15 May 1856, 2 April 1857.

62 See, for example, CAJ 14 January, 18 February, 4 March 1858; NYO 1 April, 23 September 1858; SCA 15 July 1858.

63 CAJ 22 April 1858; SCA 17June, isjuly, 14 October 1858; NYO 5 August 1858.

64 Smith pp 1S4-62.

65 SCA 25 March, 26 August 1858.

66 Smith pp 64-5.

67 CAJ 1 and 15 April 1858.

68 NYO 19 August 1858. See also Conant pp 376, 380.

69 SCA 23 and 30 September 1858; NYO 11 March 1858.