MR: Rev. Murray, your book Revival and Revivalism: The Making and Marring of American Evangelicalism 1750-1858 is a marvelous account of the differences between the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening. How does "revival" differ from "revivalism"?
IM: I use "revivalism" as something that can be manufactured, organized, worked up. I think it was the Unitarians who first used and coined the word, and it was very foolish for evangelicals to take it up.
MR: What was the role of Charles Finney in the development of revivalism?
IM: It was quite considerable. The Second Great Awakening began in 1798 or thereabouts, in many locations at once. Finney was ordained in 1824, pretty near the end of the Second Great Awakening. It is significant that the men who had been so prominent in the Awakening, with very few exceptions, were alarmed at Finney's developments. At first, of course, it was thought that he was just advocating different methods. And, people asked, why shouldn't Christians have different methods? But then, within the course of a few years, it became quite apparent that the different methods were founded on a different theology. That's where the division really became more serious.
MR: One thing that we hear a lot in discussions today about revival, and in claims of revivals breaking out all over the place, is that the First and Second Great Awakenings were movements of the Spirit of God. And in these discussions, the names Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and Charles Finney are often spoken of in one sweeping sentence. Do you think that this is an accurate representation of what actually took place?
IM: No, I don't think it is. I think there was a very big change with Finney, that there is a milestone there. Finney's lectures on revival of the 1830s represent a viewpoint that is really quite distant from Edwards or Whitefield or these other men. There's been a lack of literature on the Second Great Awakening, which has led to this problem in some ways.
MR: What do you make of the argument advanced by certain people that Jonathan Edwards himself sowed the seeds for much of this, particularly in his view of the religious affections? It is argued that what we see with his students-their so-called "consistent Calvinism"-is really little more than Pelagianism, with their rejection of original sin and so forth. How do you read Jonathan Edwards' connection to the later developments?
IM: That was a point of issue between Princeton and Finney, with Princeton saying that their Westminster Confession theology was essentially the theology of Edwards. Finney, when he began to preach (and certainly by the time of his preaching in Boston in 1832) claimed Edwards and Griffin as advocates of his position. But Finney did have the honesty to abandon that claim. Personally, I don't think there is any doubt that Princeton represented the theology of Edwards. Now Jonathan Edwards' son, Edwards Jr., was a new departure, of course. He was only an infant when his father died. But I don't believe for a moment that the later developments in New England can be fairly traced to the heart of Edwards' theology.
MR: Did Finney's theology really have a close connection to his methods? The reason we ask is because people today will say that we can have revivalistic practices without the theology. Even Reformed people will say that it is acceptable to be involved in certain revivalistic crusade evangelism events, Promise Keepers, and other movements. Is it possible to divorce our theology from our view of evangelism and discipleship in that way?
IM: I don't believe it is. I believe there have been some eminent evangelists-like D. L. Moody-who didn't have a great deal of theology and who did much good. But Finney certainly had a theology, and it was hostile to historic Christianity in its whole assessment of human nature. Finney's position was that the will decides everything. There isn't a fallen nature in man; there is no need for a man's nature to be changed. All that is needed for a person to become a Christian is for his will to take action. He has got to make a decision, and if he makes that decision, he becomes a Christian. To which the older preachers responded, it's true that to become a Christian, we all have to commit ourselves and receive Christ, but there's a much more serious problem. By nature we are at enmity to God, and we need to be regenerated, and that regeneration isn't in our own hands or power. We can't accomplish it ourselves. Whereas Finney said that this view was heresy; any man who makes the right decision becomes a new creature.
MR: Do you see a marked shift of emphasis in preaching as well-a shift from God to man, and from justification by faith alone (which was so prominent in the First Great Awakening) to man's justification by his own willpower and moral exertion?
IM: Well, over the long term, that is what happened. From the God-centeredness of the earlier Awakening, by 1900 everything had become so man-centered. But I wouldn't say that that was entirely Finney's position. I don't doubt that he believed in the power of the Holy Spirit…. I'm sure Finney didn't intend to move man into the center, but I fear that, over the long term, that is what his theology produced.
MR: How about the article of justification by faith alone, which Finney explicitly denies? He said that it is another Gospel, that you can't have one man's righteousness imputed to another.
IM: One of the difficulties with Finney is putting his thinking in the correct eras of his long life. You are referring to his Systematic Theology of 1851. By that time, when he had been a minister for over twenty-five years, he was really developing his own unique position, and opposing the older orthodoxy at several points. And as you say, at that point too. In his earlier preaching, I wouldn't think that there is anything of that at all. He is simply calling for repentance and speaking of forgiveness of sins in Christ in a general way. He was a multifaceted man. When he came to real theology, he certainly ceased to be an evangelist and said some things that were very detrimental to the faith.
MR: How would you characterize the development of revivalism from Finney to the present? Has Arminianism dominated the American scene ever since Finney?
IM: In my book, I just go up to 1858-60, so I can't speak with any authority on the later time. But the great change that Finney introduced became axiomatic for evangelism. He said that we must get people to a decision-to do something, to stand up, to walk down an aisle. That became accepted, and accepted so widely, that it's continued ever since. Although it has been recognized very often that many of the people who make this kind of decision don't, in fact, become Christians at all. But the argument is that some do become Christians, so shouldn't we rejoice in that and be thankful for that? To which we should reply: it wasn't walking down an aisle that made them Christians. It was the truth and the grace of God that came to them as they heard the Gospel preached, and they would have been saved under Gospel preaching without any addition.
MR: That brings up the question of the "new measures" and the means of grace. B. B. Warfield pointed out that, in Finney's scheme, the evangelist becomes the sacrament. Is there a sense in which-once the supernaturalism has been removed and it is simply the philosophical result of the right use of means-the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit working through the means of Word and Sacrament were then set aside? Were the "old" Sacraments replaced with new "sacraments," if you will, that revolved around the "excitements" or the "new measures"?
IM: Yes, I think there is a lot of truth in that. Yet, I think on the other side as well, it needs to be said that (while not at the time of Finney but a good deal later) Reformed or Calvinistic churches and preachers have tended to be viewed as overly intellectual, with very little passion. Regrettably, it is true that the kind of evangelists who have been so used in church history, like Edwards and Spurgeon, are rare now. It's a great pity in my mind that Calvinism should be identified more with the intellectual-because it is both. The truth comes to our minds, but it has to reach our hearts.
MR: Do you think that that is one of the reasons why people run off to every announcement of revival and awakening, because there isn't an alternative from a Reformation base?
IM: I think that is true. It is noticeable that many of the people that have turned to these things have come out of churches that have been cold and dry and so on.
MR: You title one of your chapters "When Theology Took Fire." Does that summarize how you think our Christianity should look before a watching world?
IM: Yes, it does. If we just hold the truth in a cold way, we are almost telling people that we don't ardently believe it.
MR: Is it overstating it to say that many of the church-growth paradigms that are used, especially in American evangelicalism, are living off of the inheritance of Finney's "new measures" and the pragmatic approach to evangelism?
IM: I do believe there is a line that continues. Because the main theme after Finney was that we have to "influence" people, and it is justifiable for us to do that in any way we can to bring them to salvation. And bringing people to salvation became identified with getting people to do things publicly that presumably committed them. Whereas the older preaching was that man is in a desperate, lost condition. We are utterly dependent upon God; we must go to our knees and pray. We must preach and pray, because God has given us no other means…. The church in a former day would have been looking to God much more than we are today. We are so taken up with the problems of communication and being relevant, and making sure we are understood. We are so absorbed with all of that, that we seem to have lost the emphasis that went before. For we need more of God's presence, grace, and power.
MR: So we are so concerned with being understood, that we have forgotten what it is that we understand.
IM: Yes, and we've underestimated the problem. The problem isn't just that man isn't sufficiently interested. Man is in a worse condition than that: he really is undone.
MR: So it's not just the production of sufficient excitements. It is really is a proclamation of something that is beyond our wildest hopes.
IM: Yes, and which proves its reality by the fact that it lasts. Excitement is a very short-lived thing. Our Lord talks about stony ground hearers, who receive the Word with joy, but it simply doesn't last. When the altar calls came in, simultaneously came in that method of announcing that we had 500 conversions last night. And that is so remote from biblical Christianity. That brought great disrepute upon the church, because everybody knew that many of these supposed converts didn't stand.
MR: What role do you think revivalism had in shaping popular culture, and in being shaped by popular culture? In other days, we saw Puritanism shaping the culture at a much higher level, with Jonathan Edwards as an evangelist but also as the president of Princeton. Today, do you see revivalism, as it becomes increasingly Arminian, especially in America, becoming increasingly anti-intellectual as well? Is it becoming a form of popular American mass culture?
IM: The church in former times was, to a much greater degree, light and salt. And it was that because great care was taken in admitting members into the church, so that the church was different than the world. Part of our problem today is that the church in its way of living is so like the world that it is no longer convicting. Think of Paul saying to the Corinthians that if a stranger comes in, he is convicted by God's presence and he falls down. We don't see that now. The church is so close to the world. And that's come about, the older divines would have said, because we've taken such a superficial view of what it means to be a Christian. Conversion has become demeaned in its significance.
MR: If someone came into many of our churches today and fell down because he was struck by something completely alien to him, we would probably ask what we have to change for next week so that he won't be uncomfortable.
IM: That's right, we'd be concerned that he would be upset or offended!
MR: How do you respond to those who say that the problem is the very notion of revival? I'm speaking not only of modern critics, like Harry Stout at Yale, but also of critics at that time such as Nevin and some others at Princeton. How do you answer those who, even at that time, said that revivalism in any sense is part of the problem?
IM: I think that is a fair question, and we need to address it. Because a number of people now simply believe that all forms of religious excitement come under the heading of revival or revivalism, and that it is an artificial distinction which I draw between the two. It seems to me that if you hold that view, then you wouldn't want revival. You'd actually think that revival could do more harm than good. Now it is true of course that certain types of revival can do more harm than good, but that is what I mean by "revivalism." I think, though, that we need to go back to our biblical theology. Sometimes I think that our defense of revival has rested on the wrong bases. I do believe that we need to present a New Testament theology of revival, which isn't charismatic and isn't Pentecostal, but is straight in the line of Protestant and Reformed theology. Interestingly enough, when Princeton Seminary was founded in 1812, it was actually written into the constitution that it was meant to be a friend of revival. So at that time at least, the word "revival" was perfectly clearly understood, but forty years later, it had become blurred because of what had happened. We need to go back and reconsider what the word originally meant.
