The Third Great Awakening began in 1857-1858 has been called by many names including the Businessman’s Revival, the Layman’s Revival, and the Union Prayer Meeting. But it is most widely known as the Revival of 1857-1858. We must briefly distinguish between a revival and an awakening. Revivals tend to be localized events (church, village, town, or city), but an awakening affects a much larger area (district, county, or country), can last for years or decades, and significantly affects the moral standards of a society. [Backholer, p. 7.] Although popularly called the Revival of 1857-1858, it bore all the marks and qualifications of a general moral and spiritual awakening in America. Its distinguishing features were the absence of clerical leadership, broad inter-denominational support, and focus on prayer. However, the meetings included brief corporate prayers, religious testimony, and singing. [McClymond, p. 362.]
The revival sprang from an initial meeting at the noon hour on September 23, 1857 in the upper room of the Dutch Reform Church in lower Manhattan. Jeremiah Lamphier had advertised the prayer meeting, but only six came that first day. Three weeks later, a financial panic that had been building since August exploded on October 13th when banks were closed and did not reopen for two months. Attendance soon mushroomed as businessmen from nearby Wall Street began attending. The prayer meetings quickly spread to other churches, auditoriums, and theaters. [McClymond, pp. 362-363.] During the winter months the crime rate dropped even as in mass unemployment caused by the financial panic engulfed the large city and where one would expect the crime rate to rise under such circumstances. [Backholer, p. 62.]
The greatest intensity of the revival occurred between February and April of 1858. The initial effects of the revival were felt in New York City where the revival began. The prayer revival also sparked local church revivals in New England, the Midwest, and upper South (beginning particularly with New Year’s Eve “watch night” services); in separate women’s prayer groups; and on college campuses across the nation (including Oberlin, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Rutgers, Princeton, the University of Michigan, Ohio Wesleyan, the University of Virginia, Davidson, the University of North Carolina, and several others). Net growth in membership of Protestant denominations for the period 1857-1859 grew by 474,000, more than twice the number of the preceding three years. The greatest influence of the Revival of 1857-1858 was felt in the North, but the revival spread through the South, into the Canadian provinces, and crossed the Atlantic to the British Isles where it lasted until 1862. [McClymond, pp. 362-363.]
The character and results of the Revival of 1857-1858 were described by Matthew Backholer.
The lay influence predominated to such an extent that ministers were overshadowed. This awakening was not a remote piety in little corners of churches, but to the fore of everyday business life, college life and home life. It was right there in the nitty-gritty of everyday work, not just a Sunday affair. [Backholer, p. 63.]
This lay influence of the revival was remarkably demonstrated when a group of Pennsylvania lumbermen visited Philadelphia and were converted at a Charles Finney evangelistic meeting. The men returned to their families in the lumber region and five thousand people were converted in an area of about eighty miles without the attendance of a single minister. [Backholer, pp. 62-63.]
After considerable and careful research, J. Edwin Orr, one of the twentieth century’s foremost revival historians, confirmed estimates that over one million solid, long-lasting conversions occurred during 1858-1859 out of a population of less than thirty million. [Backholer, pp. 62-63.]
Historians have debated the impact of the Revival of 1857-1858 as it related to nineteenth century social reform efforts. Some historians strongly connect the revival with concerns for the ills of society and the need for social reforms that were beginning to ferment in the last half of the nineteenth century. Others pointed to the revival prayer meeting practice of avoiding any discussion of controversial topics such as slavery and abolitionism as evidence of little direct social impact caused by the revival. [McClymond, p. 365.] The reality was that the 1857-1858 Revival was about personal religious transformation but with which society greatly benefited. It must be remembered that the ordering of society and the addressing of its social ills must begin with the individual and an ordering of his soul in right relationship with God. This must certainly be the greatest impact of the Revival of 1857-1858 as the nation was soon to be immersed in its greatest struggle for survival. It was the Revival of 1857-1858 that caused men and women, in both the North and South, to be spiritually prepared for the coming struggle in which the nation would exorcize the demon of slavery and recover its national unity.
We have noted that the Great Awakening was the formative moment in American history and that the Second Great Awakening was the stabilizing moment that saved the new nation from political and moral destruction. We can also say that the Third Great Awakening was the sustaining moment that made possible the survival of the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War. We shall examine the consequences of this providential moment in Part II.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
Matthew Backholer, Revival Fires and Awakenings, (www.ByFaith.org: ByFaith Media, 2009, 2012), pp. 7, 62-63.
Michael McClymond, ed., Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, Vol. 1, A-Z, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp. 362-363, 365.
