Corneius Jaenen, in his book The Apostle’s Doctrine and Fellowship, says the various restorationist groups he surveyed represented “a survival in spirit and mentality of earlier communities of true believers” (536) and that they were “imbued with a sense of special historical identity, a truly spiritual fellowship” (537). He references Joachim of Fiore’s emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit which contributed to a “non-instutionalized Spirit-directed universal brotherhood.” (537)

revivalism: coming out of the SGA

Sensationalism - in the sense of appealing to the senses, emotions; ? manipulative?

Finney- “anxious bench”

The "anxious bench" (or anxious seat) was a prominent revivalist technique championed by 19th-century evangelist Charles G. Finney during the Second Great Awakening. Placed at the front of the auditorium near the pulpit, it was used to single out individuals convicted of sin, pressuring them to make an immediate, public decision for Christ. [1, 2]

The Mechanics of the Anxious Bench

Finney viewed this practice as a core part of his "New Measures"—methodological changes designed to manufacture a response rather than waiting passively for conversion. [1, 2]

• Public Placement: The bench was positioned in clear view of the entire congregation to make the act of repentance undeniably public.

• Intense Pressure: Those sitting at the bench were surrounded by already-converted members and the preacher, who offered intense, focused prayers, exhortations, and singing to drive the person to the point of submission.

• Immediate Decision: It forced "mourners" to commit immediately rather than waiting for an eventual, gradual change of heart. [1, 2, 3]

Impact and Controversy

The method was incredibly successful at gaining converts, effectively serving as the precursor to today's "altar call". However, it generated fierce debate: [1, 2]

• Supporters saw it as a practical, actionable tool that broke down resistance to God and provided a definitive moment of salvation.

• Critics (most notably theologian John Williamson Nevin in his 1843 treatise The Anxious Bench) argued that the method relied on emotional manipulation and mass hysteria. They believed it reduced deep spiritual conversion to a forced physical gesture, disrupting the traditional, church-based methods of gradual spiritual nurture

  Charles Finney’s "New Measures" revolutionized 19th-century revivalism [The Mechanics of the Anxious Bench]. He argued that revivals were not miraculous acts of God, but the logical result of using the right promotional tools [The Mechanics of the Anxious Bench]. Beside the anxious bench, his core innovations designed to provoke immediate conversions included [The Mechanics of the Anxious Bench, Impact and Controversy]:

  1. Protracted Meetings

  • The Practice: Finney broke the tradition of standard weekly services by holding continuous, nightly meetings. protracted meetings to maximize the psychological pressure on sinners to make decisions for Christ. https://www.9marks.org/article/how-charles-finney-and-other-overly-emotional-preachers-made-it-difficult-to-preach-the-gospel/

  • The Strategy: These gatherings lasted for weeks at a time to build sustained spiritual and emotional momentum in a community.

  • The Impact: It disrupted daily routines, forced people to focus entirely on salvation, and created an environment of intense spiritual urgency.

  2. Direct and Unflattering Language

  • The Practice: Finney abandoned the formal, academic preaching style common among Reformed ministers of his era.

  • The Strategy: He spoke colloquially, looked audience members directly in the eye, and addressed them bluntly as "you" rather than "they."

  • The Impact: He treated sinners like defendants in a courtroom, using logic and direct confrontation to break down intellectual defenses.

  3. Public Prayer for People by Name

  • The Practice: During services, Finney or his assistants would pray out loud for specific, unconverted community members by their actual names.

  • The Strategy: Ministers would openly petition God to break the hard hearts of prominent local skeptics.

  • The Impact: This public naming caused immense social pressure and embarrassment, often compelling the targeted individuals to attend the meetings and submit.

  4. Women Praying and Speaking in Mixed Assemblies

  • The Practice: Finney encouraged women to pray out loud, give testimonies, and exhort audiences in front of both men and women.

  • The Strategy: He believed women often possessed greater spiritual sensitivity and could deeply move an audience.

  • The Impact: This was highly controversial for the 1820s and 1830s, breaking strict social taboos and paving the way for women's leadership in future reform movements.

  Finney justified these measures through his pragmatism. He famously wrote that if a measure is legal and wins souls, it should be used. He believed human will, not just divine sovereignty, played a decisive role in salvation, meaning a preacher's job was to use every psychological and rhetorical tool available to force a choice.

• In Finney’s words, “The evangelist must produce excitements sufficient to induce sinners to repentance.2 .Finney’s Lectures on Revival , second ed. (N.Y., 1835), 184–204.

  The New Lebanon Convention of July 1827 was a pivotal theological showdown in New York. It brought Charles Finney face-to-face with established Eastern Presbyterian and Congregationalist leaders, most notably Lyman Beecher and seasoned revivalist Asahel Nettleton. [1, 2, 3]

  While the critics were not opposed to revivals entirely, they argued that Finney’s "New Measures" fundamentally compromised historic Christian doctrine. The theological objections raised by the traditionalists focused on several core concern. Critics charged that Finney's methods treated conversion as a psychological product manufactured by human engineering rather than a miraculous, sovereign work of the Holy Spirit. [1, 2]

• Spurious Conversions and False Assurance

  • The Objection: Opponents at the convention argued that the intense pressure of the "anxious bench" led to a high volume of false or superficial conversions. [1]

  • The Theological Core: By demanding an immediate physical action (like walking down an aisle or sitting on a bench) as evidence of salvation, Finney was accused of confusing a physical gesture with true, inward repentance. Critics feared this gave seekers a dangerous, false sense of eternal security based on an emotional moment rather than a long-term fruit of faith

• Violation of Order, Decency, and Church Authority

  • The Objection: Finney’s colloquial, aggressive language and his practice of publicly praying for skeptics by name were condemned as irreverent and slanderous. [1, 2]

  • The Theological Core: Scriptural mandates demand that church worship be conducted "decently and in order" (1 Corinthians 14:40). Opponents argued that naming unrepentant citizens from the pulpit and encouraging emotional outbursts replaced the quiet, holy reverence due to God with theatrical, mob-like behavior

• Usurpation of Biblical Gender Roles

  • The Objection: Finney’s promotion of women praying and exhorting in mixed-gender assemblies ("promiscuous assemblies," as they were called at the time) was a major point of contention. [1, 2]

  • The Theological Core: Mainstream pastors at the convention argued this directly violated the New Testament directives regarding church order and gender roles (such as 1 Timothy 2:12). They feared it introduced social radicalism into the church and disrupted the biblically mandated structure of family and ecclesiastical authorit

• • The convention ended in a deadlock. While resolutions were passed cautioning against over-emotionalism and the public naming of individuals, Finney refused to compromise his methods. Ultimately, the New Lebanon Convention failed to stop the spread of the New Measures; instead, it formalized the theological rift that would eventually split the Presbyterian Church into the Old School (traditionalists) and New School (revivalists) in 1837

• although the SGA was in America, I wonder if William Irvine read Writing almost precisely one hundred years after Edwards, Finney's Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1834) 10 and Memoirs (1878) 11 became a second corpus on revivalism both in North America and around the world

• • To McLoughlin a revival is not a spiritual awakening at all but rather a socio-cultural movement in a nation's life of mind. So-called "religious motives" are interpreted with skepticism. To McLoughlin revivals are cathartic transformation periods which occur in the intellectual development of all cultures. They are not uniquely religious. "They are essentially folk movements, the means by which a people or a nation reshapes its identity, transforms its patterns of thought and action." McLoughlin, Revival, Awakening and Reform, - as quoted in Stratton, page 5

  • . “to McLoughlin, Finney's genius was his ability to put an end to the "head religion" of Calvinism and replace it with "heart religion" McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism 67. as quoted in Stratton, page 7

  • Finney’s conversion experience...at that moment, entirely unexpected by me, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul. I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me. Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love- -for I could not express it in any other way. And yet it did not seem like water, but rather as the breath of God. I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings; and it seemed to me, as these waves passed over me, that they literally moved my hair like a passing breeze. No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart. It seemed that I should burst. I wept aloud with joy and love; and I do not know but I should say I literally bellowed out the unutterable gushings of my heart. These waves came over me, and over me, and over me one after the other, until I recollect I cried out, 'I shall die if these waves continue to pass over me.' I said to the Lord, 'Lord, I cannot bear any more,' yet I had no fear of death. Finney, Memoirs, Rosell, ed. — all as quoted in Stratton, Gary David (1998) "Worked Up or Prayed Down? Spiritual Awakening in the Theologies of Jonathan Edwards and Charles G. Finney,” Plenary Address (Two parts) Congregational Studies Conference, Council of Conservative Congregational Churches, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.

• • ==========================

Jaenen writes that the foundation of primitive Christianity was that “revelation from God was to be the bedrock of the church, and the direction of the Holy Spirit was the confirmation of the individual Christian. Another assumption was that the distinguishing characteristic of the community of believers was caritas, a divinely inspired love” (536)

Everyone likes to think they’re “special”.

“The doctrine of the early church was based on the ‘sayings of Jesus’ and the teaching of the Apostles. The emphasis, therefore, was not on a correct form of belief - although right doctrine was important - but rather on a correct disposition of heart and will to the teaching” —→ WTF?

Such an emphasis on assuming the Holy Spirit’s direction did, in fact, not lead to a “universal brotherhood”. For example, the Stone-Campbell Movement in the United States degenerated in to competing factions that separated themselves on the basis of multiple disagreements, including disagreements on whether there should be instrumental music during worship services.

William Irvine developed “increasingly erratic behavior” (524) and eventually thought the world was going to end in 1914. When did the Holy Spirit stop speaking to him? the 2×2 Fellowship grew out of a rejection of clerical abuses - is this just a pattern that’s going to repeat itself?

Edward Cooney approached William Irvine in March 1898 “claiming the liberty to follow Jesus as he received progressive light from God by the Spirit” (524)

As a boarder at a Jesuit college, Jaenan himself “experienced a deep spiritual awakening” (25)

Christianity today cannot ignore the past, it origins, if it wishes to be true to itself” (26)

“A truly spiritual fellowship in contrast to to a formal and traditional religious organization” (537)

“Christianity cannot be divorced from history, yet I do not believe its truth can be proved from historical data alone. It has always been a revealed religion founded on faith” (27)

he admits that primitive Christianity is a “counter-culture in some respects” (29)

THE DANGERS OF HALF TRUTHS

“Seed will not germinate unless both soil and climatic conditions are favourable” (520)

Anti-establishment: Ireland’s religious revival, “especially among its Protestant population” became more unionist and anti-liberal, “tended to distrust the religious establishment” (517); Instability—> at this time Ireland was “at the centre of contact and conflict” (519) between the Catholic Church and Protestant denominations; there was also “an economic crisis, social unrest, and external political domination” (520); there was a precedent for “an anti-establishment unconventional response to the status quo existed throughout the Irish countryside” (520); some of both Catholics and Protestants felt “resentment…toward the priestly caste” (520); the ministerial movement “refused to limit spiritual knowledge and virtue to an elite” (526); Jaenan quotes an account written by Alfred Magowan depicted as moving against “the giant of Mammonistic Christendom” in their “revolution against the respectable and comfortable members of the community”, they were “uncompromising towards Christendom’s institutions” , “we despised clericalism and fought against it” and “we spoke ill of the church and clergy”

martial tone

Anti-intellectual: Protestants during Ireland’s religious revival in the nineteenth century tended “to avoid an intellectual approach to religion” (517) Around the same time in Scotland “many people were confused by their clergy who preached…secular education and higher criticism of the bible” (518); converts in a November 1897 meeting “encountered God directly through some manifestation of God’s grace, or revelation, rather than through the pursuit of knowledge about God and the scriptures” (520); “the ministerial movement adopted a populist stance and a certain degree of anti-intellectualism” (526); Magowan wrote that “we had no theology to propound” , “we broke idols” ; Jaenan quote George Walker’s presentation to the American Selective Service authorities in 1942 , the 2×2s were “deeply concerned about spiritual things”; Jaenan quotes statements by Edward Cooney emphasizing the need to “get his revelation of the Christ to our hearts” and of “turning again to this childlike trustfulness that we had in the beginning” ; Magowan said “we were so zealous that no arguments made against us could have made the slightest effect. Minds were unalterable and irrevocably made up”

— which is it? “spirit” and revelation or pursuit of knowledge from the scriptures? they claim to base their beliefs on scripture, so…..?

Emotional: Lady Powerscourt was “so impressed” by meetings that she arranged similar meetings at Powerscourt House in County Wicklow; many members of the Faith Mission “became disillusioned” with the apparent unscriptural basis of their ministry so Mr. and Mrs. Robert Todd formed their own meetings; Jaenan quotes an unpublished manuscript that speculates that their move could have been a “revolt” or a “rival show” (521); there was a “mystical element” “in a November 1897 meeting of converts from Nanagh and Roscrea; John Pattison wrote in a letter to his son that William Irvine had a “stronger and more masculine character” (523) than John Long when preaching; Robert Hamilton and David Donaldson became “so dissatisfied” with their Methodist church that they started holding home meetings (524); Jaenan quote another letter from Ida West ascribing a heroic nature to the early Workers who were “pioneers groping their way out of darkness” (525); “close fraternal bonds” (526); Magowan wrote that they were “fanatical” and spoke of carrying “the war into the enemies’ lands”; “ours was an honest-hearted revolt”, framing it as “a chance to live heroically in an age affected by dullness” George Walker outlines the requirements for consideration of becoming a Worker - that the person “must first establish very definitely their religious character…they must be upright and of high principle”; William Irvine and Edward Cooney “established a limited personality cult” (530).

J talks about during a revival in Nenagh in November 1897 at the mission in Cloughjordan Methodist church attended by converts from Nenagh and Roscrea, “there was a mystical element involved as the believers encountered God directly through some manifestation of God’s grace, or revelation, rather than through the pursuit of knowledge about God and the scriptures as in the case of the Plymouth Brethren” (522)

“The Bible was not taken as literally infallible in its various translations; it was the revelation of God that was inerrant.” (533)

C. J. Jaenan (2003). The apostles’ doctrine and fellowship: a documentary history of the early church and restorationist movements. Legas Publishing

Unpublished manuscript (May 1925). “The Work of God in Ireland in 1898”

Copy of letter from John Pattison, Cloughjordan, Ireland, to his son, John Pattison Jr., in South America, May 1925

“Testimony of Ida West”, August 1954 in Patricia Roberts, ed, The Go Preacher Movement: An Anthology (Enniskillen: The Print Factory, 2000), p. 107

Alfred Magowan, “Outline of the History of a Peculiar People from 1900-1931, Unpublished manuscript. Quoted from Jaenan page 527.

Copy of Statement to Director of American Selective Service Board from George Walker (1877-1981), 24 March 1942.

Statements of Edward Cooney following his exclusion [from ministry] in October 1928, as reported to Patricia Roberts, The Life and Ministry of Edward Cooney, 1867-1960 (Enniskillen: William Trible Ltd., 1990), pp. 156-162