I was in Oberlin, Ohio recently. Every once in a blue moon, we take a trip over to Cleveland, and I've been meaning to do the little side-trip over to Oberlin for years. I'm not fan of Charles Finney but (like him or not) his influence on American Church history has been nothing less than profound.
One can trace his influence (in connection to the Second Great Awakening) in a line through figures such as DL Moody, Billy Sunday, Billy Graham, and even tangentially to the Seeker Movement and leaders like Rick Warren.
I
am often in Western New York and the legacy of the Burned Over
District is alive and well. The term generates confusion. For some
it's simply a reference to the religious intensity that took over in
the 19th century.
Others will speak of this intensity and how it
fizzled, leaving aside doctrine and orthodoxy and then turned to
social activism along with utopian and progressive-type movements.
The region is most definitely associated with Temperance, Abolition,
Feminism, the Underground Railroad, and the like. Oberlin (though in
nearby Northeast Ohio) was something of an extension. Western New
York hosts Seneca Falls as well as the graves of figures like
Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, and others.
Western New York (along with the Western Reserve of Northeast Ohio) are like extensions of New England and the old Yankee Culture. It's the kind of region that makes Southern Presbyterians spit - I can attest to this as I knew many of them during my time in South Carolina.
But in addition to the deformed version of the faith that the Finney-ite revivals produced, that energy (once it lost its way) also morphed into something else. The region was also the launch-pad for numerous cults (such as Mormonism), and the Spiritualist Movement.
In the south-west corner of New York, one can visit the Chautauqua Institution which was one of the outgrowths of the Second Great Awakening and Finney's quest for social improvement, and the general Christian culture of the time. This is a remarkable place to visit - made globally famous in 2022 when Salman Rushdie was stabbed on the stage of amphitheatre. We visit there at least a couple of times a year - though we never are there during the events - they cost a fair bit. We come during the off times and like to walk around the place when it's nearly empty in the off-season. There's a resort-type feeling to the place with one of the few grand hotels that remain on the shores of Lake Chautauqua. Last time I was there (in the spring) I stood on the stage and thought about the chaos of that moment. We've known a lot of people over the years that visit Chautauqua and I've even looked at doing work there - but turned it down. It's too far for a daily commute and it's not my scene.
Just thirty minutes away is Lily Dale, which is basically the Spiritualist version of Chautauqua. It's a haunt of mediums, New Age seminars, and the like. The cottage where the Fox Sisters heard the 'rappings' was moved from outside of Rochester to Lily Dale in 1916, but burned down in the 1950's. The site is still marked - one could even say venerated.
The region is also known for its various communes, (Christian and otherwise) as well as various strange cult-like groups and a host of other oddities. And it's often expanded to include a larger area that we might just call 'Upstate New York' - though this often excludes the North Country which is the Adirondack region up to the St. Lawrence River and around Lake Champlain.
Churches abound but like everywhere are in decline. And I must say there are very few sound churches to be found. Most are either Mainline-types with female pastors and rainbow flags or Evangelical pop-concert/therapy session varieties. There are a few Confessional Lutheran churches around and even fewer Confessional Reformed - and these latter bodies are mostly located in the metropolitan areas around places like Buffalo and Rochester. Just across the Niagara River in Southern Ontario, there are far more options, even though Canada's secularism outstrips that of Western New York.
So to my mind, the Burned Over District refers to the post-revivalist spiritual malaise which resulted in a turn to esoteric and occult-like syncretism as well as crusading (though mostly secular) social reform, and ultimately to the general secularism that dominates today. One might say it's as if the region is inoculated against Biblical Christianity.
One could also expand the discussion into the zeitgeist of America in the 19th century, especially in the Northeast and the influence of Swedenborgianism, Romanticism, Transcendentalism, and their connection to the arts. Abraham Davidson's The Eccentrics and Other American Visionary Painters, is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to explore these connections. All of this was rattling around in my mind as I was in the Cleveland Art Museum taking in paintings by the likes of George Inness, and Albert Pinkham Ryder.
That said, there are some Reformed narratives regarding Finney and the Burned Over District that I've always found to be questionable. This recent piece I stumbled on at Ligonier exemplifies this kind of almost caricature, and additionally given its connection to Sproul's variety of Reformed Theology, it touches on some additional (and expected) points. Stephen Nichols is no longer connected to Ligonier but that's a separate issue.
Confessionalists will criticize Finney for his denigration of Confessionalism and his accusation that Presbyterians treated the Westminster Confession as a 'paper pope'. While I don't agree with Finney on much of anything, he was right on that point. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
I'm not always so certain that First Great Awakening deserves the praise it often receives and I think there's a fair bit of romanticising that takes place in how it is treated by favourable historians. While the notion of the new birth and sudden conversion are certainly Biblical enough, they can be distorted both in terms of the gospel message as well as in connection to ecclesiology and the Christian life. A degree of subjectivity and even presumption (connected to assurance) entered into these doctrinal realms that became problematic.
The religious enthusiasm associated with these revivals is often dubious if not outright thorny and indicates the gulf between the First and Second Great Awakenings is not quite as wide as some would wish. And while some even believe the First Great Awakening (1730's-1750's) kindled a religious spirit that played out in terms of the American Revolution, there is much that indicates otherwise. This is certainly true in terms of Scripture but also in terms of the historical record in connection to religious idealism and the fact that statistics indicate that the majority of Americans were not even regular churchgoers in 1776.
The Second Great Awakening (1790's-1840's) marked the shift of many Presbyterians away from Calvinism. They also lost a significant portion of the frontier population to Baptists, Methodists, and others who used itinerant preachers. This period also gave rise to variations in Methodism as well as the Restorationist Movements (with all the good and bad they entail). Mormons, Seventh-Day Adventists, and others. I would treat groups like the Stone-Campbell Churches of Christ and the Plymouth Brethren separately.
Nichols is right to mention the Erie Canal which opened in 1825 - flooding the area (and indeed the entire Great Lakes region and ultimately the Midwest) with new economic opportunities and new migrants. There was definitely an energy in the air that must have been palpable to the people living in the region. It's hard to imagine that today as one stands on the banks of the sleepy canal which is mostly used by recreational boaters passing through little (and mostly) inconsequential towns along Lake Ontario's coastal plain.
Nichols emphasizes (perhaps unduly) that the First Great Awakening was Calvinistic and the Second, Arminian. This is to ignore the role of the Arminian Wesleys in the First, and figures like Nettleton in the Second. It's true the Calvinists were probably the big losers in terms of the Second Great Awakening but much of this was connected to their absence on the frontier as well as the general intuitions of those deeply affected by American ideology - which is (I would argue) fundamentally in opposition to Calvinism, though many of its contemporary flag-waving adherents would disagree.
Nichols seems to imply that Arminianism (which is often caricatured) is at fault, the primary driver that led to all the aberrant forms of doctrine that emerged from this time. It's an oversimplification. Rather I would say Arminianism resonated more with Enlightenment-American ideals and the Common Sense Realism of the period.
The region would also become known for controversy surrounding Freemasonry with the disappearance and death of William Morgan and the rise of Anti-Masonic politics. There was a fear of secret societies and the like, and this region (Western New York, Pennsylvania, and the Western Reserve of Northeast Ohio) was in many ways the heartland of the movement.
Ironically, Joseph Smith found his golden plates at Palmyra (near Rochester) and created a religion that in many respects is similar to both the thought and ritual of Freemasonry.
William Miller (of East-Central New York) was deeply affected by Deism and the Enlightenment. His embrace and understanding of Christianity (I think) is shaped by this lingering epistemology and the kind of Baconian sensibility so often seen in American Fundamentalism. Tending to treat the Bible as a book of data points, Miller (and others like him) spend their time seeking out ciphers and constructing chronologies - almost like a mathematically-driven hermeneutic. Later Dispensationalists would become well known for their elaborate charts outlining Bible history and the End Times as they saw it. I've never seen any evidence to suggest Ellen G. White was connected to this immediate area though she was certainly affected by Miller. She did live in Rochester for a few years in the 1850's and there is a 'vision' associated with her at Salamanca in 1890.
I chuckled when reading about the Fox Sisters. Sproul and his followers (and indeed many contemporary Reformed) have departed from their forebears in discounting the supernatural. One thinks of Perkins, Baxter, the Mathers, and Lavater, let alone Lutherans such as Hamelmann, Sennert, Hermann Samson, and of course Martin Luther himself. These theologians all believed (on the basis of Scripture) in the reality of witchcraft and other supernatural activities.
Sproul would frequently denounce it all as a hoax. One gets the impression theologians like Sproul are embarrassed by the prospect and would reduce the supernatural and paranormal solely to miracles in the Scripture - and they downplay as many of those as they can! I think a little Hyper-Calvinism comes into play here as well. Similar arguments are used to discount the traditional New Testament text when it comes to passages like John 5.4 (which as ESV-men they tend to deny as canonical), to their arguments against the Old Testament Book of Tobit, as well as their naturalist interpretation of the Endor Witch and Samuel. Some seek a demonic explanation while others believe it was effectively smoke and mirrors. The text itself is pretty clear - Samuel was called up from Sheol-Hades. It was an abomination to do so, but that's what witches do.
Nichols wants to discount the Fox Sisters as frauds - and perhaps they were. He mentions the fact that their rappings were revealed to be a hoax and even confessed as such by one of them - even though this was later recanted. Arthur Conan Doyle's investigations also raised additional questions that give credibility to the paranormal nature of the episodes. He certainly believed something authentic had taken place - even if at the beginning there was some chicanery and experimentation.
And despite whatever happened with the Fox Sisters, one cannot simply dismiss all paranormal activity as being of the same stripe - as much as they may wish to do so.
In the end, it's right to be critical of Finney and the legacy of the Burned Over District. The area's oddities give it a strange 'vibe' even today. At least I would say so as one who spent a great deal of time there and has dragged my family on some rather strange excursions to investigate these histories. My wife also lived there for several years while attending college.
For that matter, I would also add that in addition to visiting Oberlin, we also (on the same day trip) stopped in Kirtland, Ohio in order to walk around the Mormon Temple built there in 1836 - Smith's house is adjacent to it. He moved there in 1831 to escape his growing troubles in New York. By 1838, he faced numerous legal charges and episodes of mob violence, driving him to migrate to Missouri.
Not a few have argued that Smith's dabblings with the occult and magic opened him up to demonic influence and (as mentioned) it's pretty clear he was also affected by Masonic thinking and ritual. But the impression Nichols seems to give is that all of this was the result of Finney and Arminianism.
Again, Finney cannot be exonerated. His theology is un-biblical and in reality it's actually more akin to Pelagianism than the theology of Jacob Arminius (1560-1609). As I stood over his grave in Oberlin, I reflected on the fact that I do not believe the man to be a saint enjoy the blessings of Christ. Rather, I believe he was one of the more destructive forces in modern Church history and thus ultimately a servant of the enemy.
The Burned Over District constitutes a black mark in American Church history - one of many I'm afraid. But if one wishes to understand this region (as well as parts of Ohio and Pennsylvania) and the ideology and activities that shaped it in the 19th century, then one most look beyond the lame narratives and narrow doctrinal emphasis found in most Calvinist polemics.