Ohio History Journal

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Book Reviews

Book Reviews

 

 

 

The Social Ideas of the Northern Evangelists, 1826-1860. By Charles C.

Cole, Jr. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954. 268p.; bibliog-

raphy and index. $4.25.)

Charles C. Cole, Jr., has written an objective and well-balanced account

of the relation between leading evangelical clergymen and the reform move-

ments which characterized the several decades before the Civil War. The

author recognizes that the evangelists were above all concerned with the

problem of individual salvation. Their social ideals were incidental to their

chief vocation, and they were inordinately preoccupied with spiritual affairs.

Two factors led to their interest in moral reform movements. Like Charles

G. Finney, they had deserted the predestinarian tenets of Calvinism and

earnestly believed that divine grace was available to every man. Secondly,

they were influenced by an age of restlessness attendant upon the transition

from an agrarian to an industrial society. Freed from the pessimism of Calvin

and buoyed up by the general optimism of the period, they became ardent

apostles of perfectionism. Piety came to mean benevolence. As a result, they

initiated a host of movements to raise the level of individual lives. Temper-

ance, prison reform, rescuing women from prostitution, Sabbath observance,

and crusades against such evils as duelling and theaters enlisted their zeal.

Some of them, like Charles G. Finney, were in the forefront of the anti-

slavery movement as early as the 1830's. In all these efforts they were guided

by a vision of establishing an American community of Protestant saints, given

to prayer meetings, concentration on spiritual matters, abstention from

worldly frivolities, and general righteousness.

Their preoccupation with the spiritual and their respect for the middle-

class virtues of their parishioners narrowed their vision and led them

staunchly to uphold conservative political and economic doctrines. They

frowned on the democratic yearnings of the lower classes, defended govern-

ment as divinely sanctioned, and rejected the political teachings of John

Locke. They likewise viewed private property as a divine institution and

usually frowned on the equalitarian tendencies of labor.

This is not the first time a historian has dealt with the influence of