40 pages • 1 hour read
Paul E. JohnsonA Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815–1837
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1978A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Impasse”
In the late 1820s, most of Rochester’s upper-class residents agreed that alcohol and excessive drinking amidst the working population was a social ill. However, Rochester’s elite disagreed on the best way to respond to drinking: some argued that they should use social pressure to encourage abstinence from drinking, while others argued that power and the law should explicitly outlaw the selling of alcohol.
A group of men favoring the usage of “moral authority” formed the Rochester Society for the Promotion of Temperance in 1828 (79). These men believed that workingmen could be dissuaded from drinking through “persuasion rather than by force” (80). Their beliefs followed the teachings of Boston preacher Lyman Beecher, who argued that attempts to use “coercion” to impose temperance upon workingmen would only backfire and cause further social unrest (83). Instead, these temperance advocates believed that their standings as Rochester’s elite would sufficiently pressure workingmen into following their example and quitting alcohol.
Johnson notes that the members of the temperance society were indeed among “the most respectable, wealthy, moral, and influential individuals in society” (80). These men began a campaign to convince Rochester’s merchants and shopkeepers that imposing temperance upon their workmen would lead to “social peace” and greater workplace productivity (81). Many of Rochester’s businessmen chose to cease providing their workers with alcohol, and forbade workers from drinking on the job. However, the result was to merely push drinking outside of the workplace, with workers continuing to drink at their boardinghouses and local grocers. Rochester’s middle and upper classes soon realized that they held far less moral authority over the workers than they had previously thought.
In opposition was a group known as the Sabbatarians, who sought to use “boycotts and proscriptions” to force workingmen to behave properly (83). One of the Sabbatarian’s core campaigns was to outlaw “freight and passenger boats” from sailing through Rochester on Sunday, the Sabbath (84). Sabbatarians encouraged their fellow churchgoers to boycott any boat company that sailed on the Sabbath. Josiah Bissell, the preacher at Third Presbyterian Church, used donations to found a “Sabbath-keeping stage and boat line” called the Pioneer Line (85). Bissell’s Sabbatarian movement soon grew to become a “nationwide” movement, lobbying the US government to cease delivering mail on Sundays (85). However, the campaign ended in failure following a report issued by Senator Richard Johnson decisively arguing against the Sabbatarian’s wants.
However, the Sabbatarians were committed to stamping out immorality in Rochester, and soon joined with the Antimasons to argue for the necessity of using legal “force” to combat the drinking crisis (89). The Democrats, Masons, and anti-Sabbatarians formed an opposing faction, arguing outright coercion would only cause further conflict with the working class. The differing views on temperance formed an ideological line that further fractured Rochester’s middle and upper classes, often dividing congregations in two. Bissell publicly campaigned for the removal of church preachers who failed to follow the Sabbatarian’s boycott calls. However, Rochester’s elite also sensed that their fighting had allowed the drinking crisis to grow out of control. Feeling utterly hopeless, Bissell invited the evangelist Finney to Rochester, hoping that his preaching could help heal Rochester’s bitter divides.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Pentecost”
In “Pentecost,” Johnson describes the religious revival that Finney led in Rochester over the course of six months in fall 1830. Finney’s near daily services instigated a religious furor in Rochester, drawing numerous new converts to Rochester churches and bridging ideological and denominational divides that had developed in the town’s middle class.
Finney’s interpretation of Protestant theology emphasized the role of the individual in securing his or her salvation. Finney believed that no singular person was innately evil, and that each individual must actively choose to devote themselves to Christ “through prayer—through the state of absolute selflessness and submission known generally as transcendence” (96). Finney’s emphasis on each individual’s capacity to follow Christ differed starkly from past Protestant theologians, who taught that some men were innately evil and predestined for hell. Finney also differed from other Protestant theologians by turning prayer from a private activity into a collective and public event. Finney’s services offered congregants the chance to publicly and loudly proclaim their allegiance to Christ, and Finney often invited so-called “anxious sinners” to sit in the front pews and undergo “conversions” for all to watch (101-102). Finney also encouraged his congregants to actively seek out new evangelical converts from their families and neighbors, which helped to draw in numerous of Rochester’s middle-class residents. Finney’s services were often attended by individuals from various of Rochester’s churches, and helped to unify all of Rochester’s churchgoing citizens under one evangelical faith.
Johnson analyzes various church records to determine who Finney’s revival was most popular with. According to these records, the revival’s new congregants came largely from Rochester’s merchants and businessmen, with master craftsman and manufacturers showing the “most spectacular” increase (104). Johnson notes that such master craftsman came from those industries, such as construction and shoemaking, that had most departed from the “traditional organization of work” (104). As such, these craftsman “bore direct responsibility for disordered relations between classes” (106). Similarly, many of Finney’s converts were businessmen who had ceased with the traditional practice of providing their workers with lodging in their own homes.
Over the course of his religious revival, Finney’s preaching became connected to millennialism—a set of beliefs centered around Jesus Christ’s second coming. Finney’s emphasis on individual capacity and the power of prayer convinced many of his congregants that they could “use the same power of prayer to convert the world” and bring about the new millennium (109). These congregants developed an “activist” attitude, and sought to convert as many non-believers to Christianity as possible (111). Fellow Christians who failed to live according to a strict Christian morality were often directly reprimanded by church leaders, as their actions threatened Christ’s second coming. Johnson illustrates the revivalist’s aggressive behavior through an anecdote about Theodore Weld, who delivered a sermon on New Year’s Eve 1830 calling for the immediate outlawing of alcohol. Numerous grocers in the audience immediately pledged to cease selling alcohol, and publicly smashed their liquor barrels the following day.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
In these two chapters, Johnson shifts to directly address Finney’s theological revival in 1830 to 1831. In the prior chapters, Johnson has provided an overview of general social trends in Rochester throughout the 1820s, during which time Rochester grew increasingly class-stratified and succumbed to a crisis over working-class drinking. Even though Finney’s revival movement was a religious phenomenon, Johnson believes that one can only understand the revival as a response to larger societal and class changes in 1830s Rochester.
Throughout these chapters, Johnson emphasizes how Finney’s teachings directly appealed to the values and needs of Rochester’s middle class. By the end of the decade, Rochester’s middle-class residents were anxious over a perceived loss of social norms. Both the gentler temperance advocates and the more forceful Sabbatarians had failed to curb the working-class drinking epidemic, and Rochester’s elite were searching for tools to discipline the seemingly unruly working class. Finney’s evangelical theology offered the middle class an answer for these crises through its emphasis on conversion and individual ability. Traditional Calvinist theology centered on the doctrine of predestination, where God held total control over each person’s fate. Finney preached a revised interpretation of Protestant theology, in which “prayer and individual salvation were ultimately voluntary” (96). Such an emphasis on the individual’s ability to shape his or her destiny on the middle classes’ capitalist values of discipline and individual ambition.
Johnson explores how Finney’s revival encouraged his congregants to develop a “militant” attitude and embrace fervent activism as a tactic for shaping the social order (102). Finney encouraged his congregants to pray together openly, turning collective prayer into the central ritual of his all-night services. After these prayer meetings, churchgoers would seek out non-faithful sinners and invite them to join in prayer, hoping to convert them to the church. Such tactics were quickly successful, and Finney’s services brought in dozens of new believers, with the majority stemming from Rochester’s businessowners and manufacturers.
As Finney’s revival grew and spread to surrounding cities, his congregants’ activism became bound up in millennialism. Finney’s followers now believed that human prayer had the ability to unite mankind under one faith and welcome Christ’s “Coming Kingdom” on earth (111). Finney’s followers became even more emboldened in their activism, and they began an aggressive campaign to permanently stamp out alcoholism. In a church sermon delivered on New Year’s Eve, Rochesterian Theodore Weld told his fellow churchgoers that alcoholics would drag all of society into hell—even the most pious. Such attitudes meant that “temperance […] became a condition of conversion,” and many churchgoing grocers left Weld’s sermon and immediately destroyed their stores of alcohol (114). For Johnson, such an emphasis on temperance cannot be understood as separate from Rochester’s class tensions: “These were open and forceful attacks on the leisure activities of the new working class, something very much like class violence” (115). Johnson argues that the revival movement appealed to Rochester’s middle class as it provided them with the tools they needed to finally curb working-class drinking.
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