Revival in the USA During the Early 1800s

We are contemplating how revivals started in history. Not many realize that, despite the awakening before the American Revolution and its success, a moral decline happened about twenty years later, in the early 1800s. During this period, drunkenness, like drug use today, became widespread. Out of a population of five million, 300,000 were confirmed alcoholics, with fifteen thousand dying each year. Profanity was extremely shocking. For the first time in American settlement history, women were afraid to go out at night due to the risk of assault. Bank robberies became a daily concern.

What about the church across America? The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said they were experiencing their coldest season. The Presbyterians in the general assembly lamented the nation's ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennox, Massachusetts, hadn't taken a young person into fellowship in sixteen years. The Lutherans were so struggling that they considered uniting with Episcopalians, who were in worse shape. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, stopped functioning because he hadn't confirmed anyone in so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took other employment. John Marshall, the U.S. Chief Justice, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, saying that the church "was too far gone ever to be redeemed." Voltaire alleged, and Tom Paine echoed, "Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”

Look at the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard found not a single believer among the entire student body. They conducted a survey at Princeton, a much more evangelical place, and discovered only two believers and just five students who did not belong to the filthy speech movement of that day. Students rioted. They held a mock communion at Williams College and performed anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down the prayer room in Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of Harvard's president, took a Bible from a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey, and burned it in a public bonfire. Christians were so scarce on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret, like a communist cell, keeping their minutes in code so no one would know. To counter any thought that this was just hysteria of the moment, Kenneth Scott Latourette, the great church historian, wrote: "It seemed as if Christianity was about to be ushered out of the affairs of men." The churches had their backs against the wall, appearing as if they were about to be wiped out.

How did the situation change? It started with a concert of prayer that began in September 1857; a praying Christian businessman named Jeremiah Lanphier initiated a prayer meeting in the upper room of the Dutch Reformed Church Consistory Building in Manhattan, New York City. In response to his advertisement, only six people out of a population of a million showed up. However, the following week, attendance grew to fourteen, then twenty-three, and they decided to meet every day for prayer. By late winter, they were filling the Dutch Reformed Church, the Methodist Church on John Street, and Trinity Episcopal Church on Broadway near Wall Street. In February and March 1858, every church and public hall in downtown New York was filled. The famous editor Horace Greeley sent a reporter with a horse and buggy to observe the prayer meetings; he managed to visit only twelve meetings in one hour but counted 6100 men attending. Soon, a wave of prayer spread, overflowing into churches in the evenings. Many people began to convert, with some reports of ten thousand conversions a week in New York City alone.

The movement spread throughout New England, with church bells ringing to call people to prayer at 8:00 a.m., at noon, and at 6:00 p.m. The revival soared up the Hudson and down the Mohawk, where Baptists, for example, had so many to baptize that they went to the river, cut a large hole in the ice, and baptized them in cold water: when Baptists do that, they are on fire!
 When the revival reached Chicago, a young shoe salesman approached the superintendent of the Plymouth Congregational Church and asked if he could teach Sunday School. The superintendent replied, "I am sorry, young fellow. I have sixteen teachers too many, but I will add you to the waiting list." The young man pressed on: "I want to do something now." "Well, start a class."
"How do I start a class?" "Get some boys off the street, but don't bring them here. Take them out into the countryside; after a month, you will have control of them, so bring them in. They will be your class."

He took them to a beach on Lake Michigan, where he taught them Bible verses and played Bible games; then, he took them to the Plymouth Congregational Church. The young man's name was Dwight Lyman Moody, marking the start of his forty-year ministry. For example, Trinity Episcopal Church in Chicago had 121 members in 1857, but by 1860, its membership had grown to 1,400. This was typical of many churches. Over a million people were converted to God in one year out of a population of thirty million.

Then, that same revival crossed the Atlantic, appearing in Ulster, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and then England, as well as parts of Europe, South Africa, and South India—anywhere there was an evangelical cause, sending mission pioneers to many countries. The effects were felt for forty years from the start of a prayer movement; it was sustained for a generation by a movement of prayer. [J. Edwin Orr. Personal Notes.] Keith Thomas

These writings on revival are part of a series on the Holy Spirit’s work through His people. It is found on the All Studies page. Scroll down until you come to Be Filled With the Holy Spirit. Click on Holy Spirit Revival.