Finney, Charles G.

Finney, Charles G. (1792–1875), revivalist, reformer, educator.Born in Connecticut and reared in western New York, Charles G. Finney became a schoolteacher and apprentice lawyer. In 1821, while practicing law in Adams, New York, Finney experienced a religious conversion. He received Presbyterian ordination in 1824 and became a missionary in the Lake Ontario region. In 1825 he began a seven‐year series of revivals in Oneida County, New York, that brought him national fame and enabled him to develop new evangelistic techniques. With the exception of George Whitefield, earlier evangelists had usually worked within individual churches. Finney pioneered city‐wide campaigns supported by numerous committees for publicity, prayer, and so forth. After conducting revivals in Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, and elsewhere, he preached in Rochester, New York, for six months in 1830–1831, ushering in the great revival of 1831–1832. Eschewing emotionalism, Finney ministered especially to the professional classes, which responded in great numbers to his dignified meetings. Many of the techniques he pioneered would become standard in mass evangelism. Theologically he was a New School Calvinist, and placed particular emphasis on sanctification, or perfectionism.

In 1832 Finney became pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church in New York City, moving in 1835 to the Broadway Tabernacle, where he remained until 1837. His series of lectures on revivals, published in 1835, enjoyed a wide influence. In 1835 he also became professor of theology at Oberlin College in Ohio, dividing his time for many years thereafter between Oberlin and evangelistic campaigns across the North. He was president of Oberlin from 1851 to 1866. Active in numerous reform movements of the day, especially antislavery, he inspired many to embrace these causes.
See also Antebellum Era; Education: Collegiate Education; Great Awakening, First and Second; Missionary Movement; Revivalism.

Bibliography

Keith J. Hardman , Charles G. Finney, Revivalist and Reformer, 1792–1875, 1987.
G.A. Rosell and R.A.G. Dupuis, eds., Memoirs of C.G. Finney, 1989.
Charles E. Hambrick‐Stowe , Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism, 1996.

Keith J. Hardman