In our more or less ongoing series on recent church history and the culture driven church Jonathon Miles mentioned something last week in Revivalism in the Burned-Over District Part 2 that he and I have been talking about in order to help the readers understand the run of history and impact of a variety of events and people which although initially unconnected none-the-less converge in unanticipated ways which then change the course of future events and indeed society and its institutions. Let’s let Jonathon speak to this again:

I like the analogy of the streams rather than dots. Connecting dots could imply direct connection from one thing to another. As I warned earlier, history just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, connecting dots doesn’t show how strong the influence of one thing is on another. But the stream analogy does. When you look at a river, it is made up of streams of water that flow from many different sources–some creeks and some tributaries. Sure the Mississippi has its headwaters in tiny stream dribbling out of Lake Itasca Minnesota but no one would say that Lake Itasca is the one source of the Mississippi. Likewise, the Romanticism of Emerson or Finney’s perfectionism can’t be definitively the source of the ills of the Burned-Over district. But they are tributaries in what would become a river. And like a river the route is seldom straight and picks up all sorts of debris along the way. When I last posted, I thought Finney’s revivalism was just a stream. Turns out that his perfectionism was tributary all its own.

As I pointed out in Training the Mind of Faith in America, there was a major shift in theological focus from Christocentric (Christ centered) to Anthropocentric (man centered) in the early 19th Century. The church opted Continue reading …

In Revivalism in the Burned Over District Part 1 I attempted to illustrate something simple: Philosophical movements often precede and influence religious movements. This was an attempt to connect the dots. But before I illustrate how religious movements precede and influence social and political movements I have to take time to unpack some more of this revivalism. I have discovered that Finney’s perfectionism is far more important than I had originally thought.

I like the analogy of the streams rather than dots. Connecting dots could imply direct connection from one thing to another. As I warned earlier, history just isn’t that simple. Furthermore, connecting dots doesn’t show how strong the influence of one thing is on another. But the stream analogy does. When you look at a river, it is made up of streams of water that flow Continue reading …

California: where those who do not pay what things actually cost mooch off those who pay more than what things are actually worth.

Take the U. of C. at Berkeley, for example. That’s the school that shows off its coolness on its web site’s home page with a photo of students doing high-level math on a blackboard while wearing t-shirts (at least that’s what it displayed when I visited it). But it seems that a facility for higher math doesn’t automatically lead to an appreciation for how numbers work in the real world.

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I grew up in the buckle of the Bible belt. North-east Mississippi. Home of Elvis, Faulkner, and a church on every corner. I have been to more revival services than I can count. As I grew in my Christian walk, I must confess, that I became a bit cynical about revival services. I made jokes about the Holy Spirit coordinating with local pastors to plan the summer revival season. But in all seriousness, I had never wondered about where this–what should we call it? tradition? practice? habit? comes from. Over the last few weeks we have been exploring the intellectual and ideological history of protestant Christianity. I want to continue that with some commentary about Revivalism in the 1800s. Ron Henzel and Don Veinot have discussed the so-called “Burned Over District” in upstate New York as the watershed location for millennial heresies like the Millerites, the visions of Joseph Smith, and the spiritualism of New Thought. When I started delving deeper into that particular time and place what I found was fascinating and disturbing. History, it seems not only repeats itself but is chock full of intricate traps and snares Continue reading …