Charles Finney

Charles Grandison Finney was born on August 29, 1792, in Warren, Connecticut. When he was two, his family moved to the frontier of upstate New York, where he grew up in the rough country near Lake Ontario. His family was not especially devout, and he had little religious training. He was a bright and strong young man, and he went on to study law in the office of a lawyer in Adams, New York. He was a good student and began a legal career.

He began to read the Bible as a source for the law, since many of the legal ideas of the day were based on the law of Moses. His reading troubled him. He attended the local Presbyterian church, whose minister taught the strict Calvinist doctrines, and he found the teaching confusing. In the fall of 1821 he went through a crisis of conscience. He felt his need for forgiveness and decided to settle the matter. On the morning of October 10, 1821, he went into the woods outside town and prayed, and he gave himself to Christ. That night, in his law office, he said that he received a mighty baptism of the Holy Spirit, and that waves of love flowed over him.

The next day he told a client that he had a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead His cause, and he gave up his law practice. He began to preach, first in his own neighborhood and then in neighboring towns. He had no formal theological training, and he studied under a local minister for a short time. In 1824 he was licensed to preach by the Presbyterian church. He was a forceful speaker, direct and personal, and he addressed his hearers as a lawyer would address a jury.

Between 1825 and 1835, he conducted a series of revivals across western New York and in the cities of the East, including Rochester, Utica and New York City. Thousands were converted, and whole towns were changed. He used methods that were new to the churches, which his critics called new measures. These included long meetings held for days, the use of an anxious bench at the front where those seeking salvation could sit, women praying in public and a direct style of prayer that named people. He taught that revival was not a miracle that God sends when He pleases, but the right result of the right use of means.

He was opposed by many in the churches. Asahel Nettleton and Lyman Beecher were among those who thought his methods were harmful and would lead to excess and to shallow conversions. A conference was held in New Lebanon in 1827, in which the two sides argued over the matter. Finney's approach won the day in practice. His book Lectures on Revivals of Religion, published in 1835, laid out his views and was widely read. It also had a great influence on later evangelists.

In 1835 he was called to teach theology at the new Oberlin College in Ohio, and he served as its president from 1851 to 1866. At Oberlin he trained many of the leaders in the cause against slavery. He stood against slavery and held that the church must not accept it. He also supported the right of women and of Black students to be educated at Oberlin, which was one of the first colleges to admit them. He wrote a Systematic Theology in which he developed his own doctrines.

His teaching has been questioned. He held that the human will is free and that sinners can respond to the gospel by their own choice, which led him away from the Calvinist doctrines of his heritage. He taught a form of Christian perfection, and some of his statements on the atonement and on original sin have troubled many. He was also an intense person, and he worked himself hard. He lost his first wife, Lydia, in 1847, and he married twice more.

He died on August 16, 1875, in Oberlin, at the age of eighty-two. His impact on American Christianity has been very large, and it has been debated ever since. His life shows both the power of a man with a burning message and the need to test every method and doctrine by the Word of God.