Worship And Evangelism In Nineteenth-Century Revivalism

In America, nineteenth-century revival movements forged a relationship between worship and evangelism that continues to be widely influential today, even in worship traditions not traditionally associated with revivalism. Understanding the history of this relationship provides a context in which its current influence can be appreciated and critiqued.

Throughout the early history of American Protestantism the Lord's Supper has been very much a part of revival movements. The emphasis upon experiential religion and conversion has gone through several stages, included in the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century and the Western Revivals of the nineteenth, climaxed by the Cane Ridge Meeting in 1801. A Presbyterian Approach to Evangelism Until midway through the nineteenth century American revivalism took place in the framework of the Presbyterianism brought to this country from Scotland and Ireland. From early in the Reformation Scottish churches developed a pattern of annual celebrations of the Lord's Supper in each congregation. These day-long events were preceded by several days of preparation in which people were instructed about the meaning of the sacrament and brought back into a reconciled relationship with the church. Large numbers of people from both the immediate and surrounding communities were active participants. In the background of these sacramental seasons was the immensely popular but not prohibited feast of Corpus Christi, also a public festival honoring the Eucharist (see Leigh Eric Schmidt, Holy Fairs: Scottish Communions and American Revivals in the Early Modern Period [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989]). It was Presbyterian practice to seat people at tables for the Lord's Supper, during which time the Communion liturgy would take place. When large crowds attended, the tables would be set up in the church building so that the central sacramental act could take place there successively until all communicants had participated, with the celebration often extending into the evening hours. The entire congregation, communicant and otherwise, often several thousand strong, would remain outside where preaching services would continue throughout the day. It was advantageous to schedule the service on a Sunday near the full moon. Or they would break off the service at a convenient time and resume the following Sunday. Moving to America The tradition of annual sacramental seasons came to this country, spreading from the eastern settlements across the mountains into the Ohio Valley. Joseph Smith gives a romanticized account of Presbyterian beginnings west of the Alleghenies. The normal custom was for a minister to conduct the Eucharist annually in each of his two or three congregations. People from one church would go to neighboring congregations on Communion Sundays, thus enlarging the crowd and increasing their frequency of communicating. Thursday served as the day of preparation, with much preaching and an active process of reconciliation. The Sunday celebration itself usually took place outside in a grove near the church, where large trees provided shade. A wooden covered platform called a tent was constructed, six or eight feet wide, ten or twelve feet long, and about four feet high. The space in front of this tent was reserved for the Communion tables, rough hewn logs at table height, with plank or log seats around them. At the central point of these tables, a table of more finished character held the Communion elements and was the place from which the Communion ceremony itself was conducted. On Communion Sundays the tables were "?covered with snowy linen, all radiating from the large Communion table, containing the vessels of the sacred symbols, and all this covered with white napkins?" (Joseph Smith, Old Redstone: Historical Sketches of Western Presbyterianism [Philadelphia, 1854], 154). Smith describes seating for the full congregation, with a large block of log benches spread in front of the tent, and smaller sections on either side, also facing toward the tent. The drawing that he includes is evenly balanced, suggesting that these occasions were highly ritualized. We know from later studies that this tightly controlled environment and a tightly controlled set of activities were characteristic of the camp meetings throughout the rest of their history (see Dickson Bruce, They All Cried Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800–1845 [Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1974]). The service began as the presiding minister in the tent offered prayer, the congregation all standing. They sang a psalm; another prayer was offered, and another psalm sung. Then came the sermon. Following these preparatory parts of the service, the Communion itself was administered to successive tables of worshipers. Earlier revivals along the Atlantic seaboard, such as those led by the Tennent family, followed a similar pattern, and sermons from at least one of their sacramental seasons are extant. What makes the Kentucky Revival exceptional is that for a brief period of time these sacramental occasions became climaxes for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Even this phenomenon was not new, however, for earlier in Scotland a similar development had taken place. The greatest revival in Scottish history took place at Cambuslang in 1642. Here, as would later be at Cane Ridge, some 30,000 people were reported to have participated, and remarkable spiritual exercises took place. James McGready and the Camp Meetings This Kentucky version of this charismatic phenomenon began in churches pastored by Presbyterian James McGready in southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee. The major steps in traditional sacramental seasons took place in much their usual way and the behavior of the people was serious and ordinary until the sacrament had been concluded. Then would come the thanksgiving service in the evening after a very long day. By now the emotional energies generated by several days of strong teaching and exhorting would be compressed to the highest pressure that the crowd could contain. All that was needed was for someone to pull the cork so that the power could explode. In the first of McGready's camp meetings, a visiting Methodist preacher did what none of the Presbyterians knew how to do. Sensing the power present in the crowd, he sprang to his feet, shouting out his message; and the night broke open with the cries of terror and exclamations of joy. From this point on until dismissal the next day, the Eucharist itself was forgotten as large numbers of people experienced directly and dramatically the very salvation which the Lord's Supper had portrayed. Thus the spiritual exercises were God's way of applying to specific people the redemption that the Eucharist presented in a more general way. Or so one of those communicants concluded, young Barton W. Stone, who went back to his own Presbyterian churches in northern Kentucky. That August he presided over the Cane Ridge sacramental season. The more explosive the post-eucharistic awakenings, the more authentic the sacramental celebration was seen to be. Seeing God's Spirit at work convulsing sinners, who could doubt that in the bread and wine God had powerfully communicated Christ-crucified for the sins of the world? Our knowledge of what was preached during these revivalistic celebrations of the Lord's Supper is limited; nor do we know what was prayed in the eucharistic prayers. A few sermons are extant, especially a group prepared by McGready himself. The central term in his eucharistic theology, as offered in these sermons, is meeting Christ. McGready states unequivocally that at the sacramental table Christians meet Christ. By this language he means that in the Eucharist there is a direct, sensible encounter with the fullness of Deity. In an "?action sermon?" he says?" "?every place where God and the believing soul hold communion … is solemn and dreadful; but as the sacrament of the supper is one of the most affecting institutions of heaven, and one of the nearest approaches to God that can be made on this side of eternity, and in which believers are permitted told intimate conversation with our blessed Jesus, we will particularly accommodate the subject to that occasion?" (McGready, Posthumous Works, ed. James Smith [Louisville: W. Worsley, 1831], 175). McGready stand in the center of the Anglo-American tradition in which covenant and discipline are the formative images. The Eucharist functions as the occasion for the exercise of the church's moral discipline in personal life and as the vehicle for the most intense awareness of union with the Holy. The heightened sense of discipline in McGready's system seems to have been the catalyst for the more intense experience of union with Christ. In McGready, and also in Barton W. Stone, we look in vain for traditional catholic and Anglican ideas about eucharistic presence. The leading themes of Calvin's doctrine of union with Christ in heaven are also missing, but in their place is a vivid phenomenology of eucharistic life that makes these other theologies of the Eucharist seem lifeless and pale. The Separation of Sacrament and Revival It was not long, however, before this union of sacramental and revivalistic religion dissolved. A similar separation had already begun in Scotland near the end of the eighteenth century under the leadership of James Alexander Haldane, Robert Haldane, and Greville Ewing. Their "?new measures?" evangelism included itinerant preaching, done by laity rather than by ordained clergy alone, and the establishment of large tabernacles in cities where crowds of people would come to hear this stream of evangelical preaching. These preachers were committed to reproducing biblical Christianity, which included baptism by immersion and frequent celebrations of the Lord's Supper. There was quite a variety, however, in the pace of development and the enthusiasm of their adoption of these new sacramental practices. Although several generations of Presbyterian immigrants to the United States had been formed by the earlier Scottish practice, a new wave of immigrants were influenced by the new measures movement. Particularly interesting among this group of newcomers is the young Alexander Campbell, who soon took charge of the movement which his father had initiated. Within two decades after the beginning of the Campbell movement, it had also absorbed much of the earlier movement initiated by Barton W. Stone. Although there is no evidence that Alexander Campbell had deliberately abandoned the earlier Scottish practice, with its emphasis upon sacramental seasons, it is clear that before immigration he had been greatly influenced by the new measures leaders. In its early years the Stone movement had sought to retain the older pattern; but around 1830 most Stone preachers and congregations gave in. The price they paid for amalgamation with the Campbell movement was the abandonment of the connection of Eucharist and revival. Alexander Campbell and the New Formation that he led were eucharistic, but they emphasized the "?every Lord's Day Lord's Supper?" rather than the annual sacramental season. Thus they regularized the Eucharist, pulling it away from the explicitly revivalistic setting that had been so common in the Presbyterianism they had known. Regular Presbyterians, who had been central figures in the sacramental seasons, soon recognized the tension between eucharistic piety and camp meeting spiritual exercises. Most of them decided that the two were contradictory and sought to redo their eucharistic patterns in order to rule out the kind of religious exercises that had emerged in the camp meeting. The other side of this same development is the participation of Methodists. Not only did Methodists take the lead in turning sacramental seasons into camp meetings, but they also became the major preservers of the camp meeting format. Often the quarterly or annual conference was set up in the camp meeting format, which meant that the Lord's Supper would be administered. Yet Methodists were less interested in the sacramental aspect of the weekend and more interested in the revivalistic experience. The Significance of the Relationship Between Eucharist and Conversion The basic question to be considered is the significance of the relationship between Eucharist and conversion. Was the revival the result of the fact that great crowds of people came together to listen to preaching? Or was the revival the direct outcome of the fact that the crowd had come together to celebrate the Lord's Supper? One support for an argument that Eucharist led to conversion is the fact that for a long time in the history of American Christianity, the Eucharist had been looked upon as a converting ordinance. The long and intense debate in eighteenth century New England between Solomon Stoddard and Increase Mather revolved around this very question. Mather represented orthodox Puritan doctrine when he insisted that only those who discerned the Lord's body, which meant that they had already experienced salvation, could come to the table without risking damnation. In contrast, Stoddard argued that the very nature of the Eucharist is evangelical and that it is given for the purpose of leading to conversion. He believed that everyone who was orthodox in theology and obedient to churchly canons of behavior could properly come to Communion. Then it would be God's own doing if these persons were to be converted and from time to time in Stoddard's ministry this converting experience took place. My conclusion is that the sacramental setting was a strong contributor to the probability of conversion. Preachers in the Reformed tradition had regularly emphasized the importance of means in the conversion of sinners. Foremost among these means had been preaching that emphasized the terror of the law and the sure resolution that came from the gospel. Preaching during the sacramental seasons focused with special clarity upon the center of the Christian gospel, the death and saving work of Jesus. This preaching would have been especially poignant and forceful since it emphasized sacrifice and the shedding of blood, the awesomeness of God, and the divine mercy, and provided a way of insisting upon the importance and the possibility of being saved. Then would come the eucharistic celebration itself in which this sermonic message was graphically expressed in strong and powerful symbolism. The combination of very clear exposition and strongly emotive liturgical form provided a strong intensification of the possibility of conversion. This combination of Eucharist and conversion led to the relocation of the outward signs of divine presence. One of the religious questions that persists through the generations is: How can we experience the direct presence of the Holy Spirit? The traditional answer is that the Eucharist exists for the very purpose, the bread and wine being tangible signs of the presence of God. By contemplating these physical things, we come again into the presence of the Crucifixion and the other events surrounding the passion of Christ. By eating and drinking, we share in the very life of Christ that was given for the life of the world. Although our senses continue to experience bread and wine, the various theologies have asserted, our spirits experience the direct and true union with God revealed in Jesus Christ. According to McGready's description of the revival, the question of tangible experience was important among his parishioners in Kentucky. They were formed by Calvinist theology, which insisted that God saved those whom God desires to save. Thus the long standing question remained: how do I know if I am one of the saved? Among people who believed in the objective power of sacraments, the answer had always been that baptism and reception of Eucharist in a worthy manner were the proofs that God had saved them. After the revivals were over, representatives of the Stone movement could argue that they did not need the spiritual exercises because they had already been baptized. Here is a clear indication of the mentality of the sacramentalists. Yet the effect of the camp meetings was to shift the outward signs of divine presence away from the objectivity of baptism and Eucharist to the objectivity of physical and psychological experience. The people would know that they were saved when some power other than themselves took control and drove them to do things which could not be explained in any other way. I am not sure if McGready had intended this to happen, but finally the answer that he gave to his parishioners was: if the Spirit seizes you, drives you to do the remarkable things, totally transforms your emotional life, then you will know that you have been saved. This answer is clearly a precursor to later developments in American Protestantism in which the spiritual exercises are the decisive evidence of regeneration. Another aspect of the significance that comes from this episode in American religious history is that it represents a shifting of the Godward focus from Christ to the Spirit. Classical Christian theology argues that God is revealed most fully in Jesus, whose life and teaching depict God's will and God's presence in a full and complete way. By yielding ourselves to Christ, we enter into a full and complete relationship with God. Jesus promised the Spirit as a down payment for that inheritance in heaven that would someday come to all of us and as a comforter during the time when Jesus is physically absent. Thus, the Spirit would continue to make present the reality of God's self-revelation in Jesus. Clearly, the Eucharist in its classical texts maintains this point of view. It becomes the continuing power of the Christian life because of the full and complete identification of worshipers with Jesus. The Holy Spirit is an instrumentality that helps maintain the completeness of this union of Christian and Christ. What seems to have happened in the camp meetings is that the union with Christ became the subsidiary element and possession by the Spirit became the dominant one. From that time on, at least in the churches shaped by the revival, the chief means whereby God is revealed to people today is the Spirit that transforms the psychological makeup of those who encounter the word.