Charles Finney was born 1792, in Warren, Connecticut, as the youngest of seven children.
His parents were farmers and Finney was never able to attend college.
But with his six-foot-two-inch height, musical ability and leadership skills, he gained a good reputation in his community.
He studied to become a lawyer but after a dramatic conversion experience at the age of 29, Finney became a minister of the Presbyterian Church.
He moved to New York City in 1832 where he founded and pastored the Broadway Tabernacle, known today as the Broadway United Church of Christ.
His logical explanations and presentations of the Christian Gospel reached thousands. Some estimate that he led over 500,000 people to faith in Jesus Christ.
Finney is esteemed by Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, singer Keith Green and Jim Wallis of Sojourners’ Magazine.
From the Vineyard movement to political and social crusades, his imprint can be seen.
He was well known for his preaching innovations and allowing women to pray in public.
In addition to his preaching of the Gospel, Finney was active in the abolitionist movement and denounced slavery from the pulpit and denied communion to slaveholders at his churches.
He became a professor and then president of Oberlin College in Ohio. The university became the first American university to allow blacks and women into the same classrooms as white men.
Finney envisioned a church that was large in measure as an agency of personal and social reform.
It was from this thought that the evangelical movement became increasingly identified with political causes. Abolition of slavery, child labor legislation, women’s rights and the prohibition of alcohol became the causes of the 19th century church.
With a huge influx of Roman Catholic immigrants coming to America at the turn of the century, Protestants made desperate efforts to regain institutional power and the glory of “Christian America.”
The church launched moral campaigns to “Americanize” immigrants, enforce moral institution and “character education.”
The church pitched their American Gospel in terms of its practical usefulness to the individual and the nation.
Finney had experienced “a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost” which “like a wave of electricity going through and through me… seemed to come in waves of liquid love.”
The next morning he informed his first client of the day, “I have a retainer from the Lord Jesus Christ to plead his cause and cannot plead yours.”
Refusing to attend any seminary, Finney’s one question for any teaching was, “Is it fit to convert sinners with?”
He instituted the “anxious bench,” a precursor to today’s alter call as well as emotional tactics that led to fainting and weeping and other “excitements” as Finney called them.
Finney reacted to the “Great Awakening” by turning from God to humans and from the preaching of objective content to the emphasis on getting a person to “make a decision.”
His entire theology revolved around human morality.
Finney believed that God demanded absolute perfection, but instead of that leading him to seek his perfect righteousness in Christ, he concluded that perfect justification was only found in full perfect obedience to Christ.
Finney believed that human beings were capable of choosing whether they would be corrupt by nature or redeemed.
He argued against the church’s theology of “original sin,” the doctrine that we have all inherited a sin nature and we will sin anytime given the chance.
Finney attacked justification by grace alone through faith alone.
In his theology, God is not sovereign, man is not a sinner by nature, atonement is not a true payment for sin, justification by imputation is insulting to reason and morality, the new birth is simply the effct of successful techniques and revival is the result of clever campaigns.
Finney’s “New Measures” made human choices and emotions and the center of the church’s ministry and replaced the preaching of Christ with the preaching of conversion.
When church leaders claim that theology gets in the way of growth and insist that it does not matter what a particular church believes, growth is a matter of following particular church principles, they are displaying a debt to Finney.
When churches praise this sub-Christian enterprise and the barking, roaring, screaming and laughing on the basis that “it works” and one must judge its truth by its fruit, they are following Finney.
According to Michael Horton, a professor at Westminister Seminary in California, a Gospel that “works” for zealous perfection one momment merely creates tomorrow’s disillusioned and spent super-saints.
Now if you’ve read this far you’re probably asking what in the world does all this have to do with me?
Allman tells me “I’m too critical of the church today.” I think part of that comes from my belief that a lot of it doesn’t really “work.”
But to find out why it doesn’t work, I think we need to stop pointing fingers at only today’s leaders and look at where we’ve come from and how we got to where we are today.
I personally believe the church should be used to lead the cause in moral change, but I don’t believe the church should lead the charge legislate their morality on others.
If the church truly shines with the “Glory of God” people will see a difference in us and come join the party.
People will want to be a part of what we’re doing, not because of what we’re not doing, but because they see a difference in our lives that they want to see in their own.
If not, we become nothing more than a legalistic party pooper wanting to spoil everyone’s fun.
Portions of this piece were taken from “The Legacy of Charles Finney” by Michael S. Horton, Ph.D. a professor of theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, CA).
