THE BIOGRAPHY OF CHARLES G. FINNEY

Charles G. Finney was born in Warren, Connecticut in 1792, Finney was the youngest of nine children.

The son of farmers who moved to the upstate frontier of Jefferson County, New York after the American Revolutionary War, Finney never attended college. His leadership abilities, musical skill, six-foot three-inch stature, and piercing eyes gained him recognition in his community.

He and his family attended the Baptist church in Henderson, where the preacher led emotional, revival-style meetings. Both the Baptists and Methodists displayed fervor through the early nineteenth century. He “read the law”, studying as an apprentice to become a lawyer, but after a dramatic conversion experience and baptism into the Holy Spirit in Adams, he gave up legal practice to preach the gospel.

In 1821, Finney started studies at age 29 under George Washington Gale, to become a licensed minister in the Presbyterian Church. He had many misgivings about the fundamental doctrines taught in that denomination.

Finney was twice a widower and married three times. In 1824, he married Lydia Root Andrews (1804–1847) while living in Jefferson County.

They had six children together. In 1848, a year after Lydia’s death, he married Elizabeth Ford Atkinson (1799–1863) in Ohio.

In 1865 he married Rebecca Allen Rayl (1824–1907), also in Ohio. Each of Finney’s three wives accompanied him on his revival tours and joined him in his evangelistic efforts.

Finney was active as a revivalist from 1825 to 1835, in Jefferson County and for a few years in Manhattan.
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In 1830-31, he led a revival in Rochester, New York that has been noted as inspiring other revivals of the Second Great Awakening.

He was known for his innovations in preaching and the conduct of religious meetings.

These included having women pray out loud in public meetings of mixed sexes; development of the “anxious seat“, a place where those considering becoming Christians could sit to receive prayer; and public censure of individuals by name in sermons and prayers. He was also known for his extemporaneous preaching.

He moved to New York City in 1832, where he was minister of the Chatham Street Chapel and introduced some of the revivalist fervor of upstate to his urban congregations. He later founded and preached at the Broadway Tabernacle.

In addition to becoming a popular Christian evangelist, Finney was involved with social reforms, particularly the abolitionist movement.

The movement was strongly supported by the Northern and Midwestern Baptists and Methodists with Finney frequently denouncing slavery from the pulpit.

In 1835, he moved to the free state of Ohio, where he became a professor at Oberlin College.

After more than a decade, he was selected as its second president, serving from 1851 to 1866 (He had already served as acting President in 1849). Oberlin was the first American college to accept women and blacks as students in addition to white men.

From its early years, its faculty and students were active in the abolitionist movement.

They participated together with people of the town in biracial efforts to help fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad, as well as to resist the Fugitive Slave Act.

Many slaves escaped to Ohio across the Ohio River from Kentucky, making the state a critical area for their passage to freedom.

Finney was a primary influence on the “revival” stylgy which emerged in the 19th century. Though coming from a Calvinistic background, Finney rejected tenets of “Old Divinity” Calvinism, which he felt were unbiblical and counter to evangelism and Christian mission.

Finney’s theology is difficult to classify. In his masterwork, Religious Revivals, he emphasizes the involvement of a person’s will in salvation. He did not make clear whether he believed the will was free to repent or not repent, or whether he viewed God as inclining the will irresistibly.

(The latter is part of Calvinist doctrine, in which the will of an elect individual is changed by God so that he or she desires to repent, thus repenting with his or her will and not against it, but the individual is not free in whether to choose repentance as the choice must be what the will is inclined toward.) Finney, like most Protestants, affirmed salvation by grace through faith alone, not by works or by obedience.

Finney affirmed that works were the evidence of faith.

Acts of unrepentant sin were signs that a person had not received salvation.

Finney continued to preach and to lecture to the students at Oberlin until two weeks before he was eighty-three years of age, when he was called up higher to enjoy the reward of those who have “turned many to righteousness.” Finney died at Oberlin on Aug. 16, 1875.

Blessed jesus we thank you.