America's Resilience Through Crisis and Moral Decline

These United States have been through difficult times in the past. It must have been a heartbreak to some people when the country threatened a split in two and five years of bloody war in the war between the states. United States faced enemies on both sides of the oceans in World War II. We've just come through a crisis of an unpopular war and government scandal. But did you know there was a time when most Christians felt convinced that if God did not intervene, Christianity would die out in the United States? It seems incredible, but it's true.

In the wake of the War of Independence, with a surge of revolutionary influence from France, there came a great moral decline in the life of the United States. In a population of five million, they had 300,000 drunkards, and they were burying 15,000 of them annually. They even had a whiskey rebellion in Pennsylvania, and George Washington had to call out the National Guard of four states to put it down by force. You can put down armed rebellion, but what can you do with moral decline? With an increase of sexual license, there came a rise in the illegitimacy rate and infertile disease. There was a surfeit of lawlessness, and bank robberies were a daily occurrence. Profanity was prevalent and truthfulness had declined. A committee of Congress reported that in the state of Kentucky, only one court of law had been held in five years. They simply couldn't administer the law there. In fact, vigilantes armed themselves and fought a pitched battle with the outlaws and lost. Conditions were deplorable.

Now, of course, statesmen were alarmed at this. The alarm of statesmen became the concern of churchmen. Timothy Dwight, president of Yale, complained that the dregs of infidelity had been vomited upon this nation. Frenchmen in revolutionary France were contributing millions of francs to propagandize and seduce young Americans. In the Christian colleges, according to Timothy Dwight—by that I mean in Harvard and Yale, Amherst, Princeton, and others—the undergraduates welcomed the revolutionary doctrines, not so much because of any promise of social justice, but because of the invitation to unrestrained license and debauchery. According to Lyman Beecher, the college church was practically extinct. While gambling, intemperance, profanity, and licentiousness were common. They took a poll at Harvard and found the typical student an atheist. They took a poll at Princeton, which had a much more evangelical background, and they discovered only two believers in the whole student body, and only five that didn't belong to the filthy speech movement of that day.

Christians were so few in number and so unpopular, they used to meet in secret like a communist cell and keep their minutes in code. Students burned down buildings, they forced presidents to resign. A mob of radical students wrecked a Presbyterian church in New Jersey, took out the pulpit Bible and burned it to ashes. Students were known to interrupt Holy Communion by spitting on the floor. I could give you many instances of this. At Williams College, for example, Western Massachusetts, the students had a mock communion, a kind of Protestant black mass to make fun of Jesus Christ. At Yale, the dean opened the Bible on Sunday morning to read the scriptures in chapel, a pack of playing cards fell out. Some smart aleck had cut a square hole through each page of the Bible and fitted in a pack of playing cards. These were the tricks and the pranks that they were up to.

What about the churches? The fastest-growing and largest American denomination of that time was the Methodist, and for several years they were losing thousands a year. The Baptists, the second largest, confessed that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians met in General Assembly in Philadelphia and denounced the debauchery and loose indulgence so prevalent that the languishing Lutherans were in such distress they considered uniting with the exhausted Episcopalians. In other words, they wanted to unite because they were both falling down. The ten-annual provost, Episcopal Bishop of New York, quit functioning. He had confirmed no new members for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he looked for other employment. John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States, wrote to Bishop Madison, Bishop of Virginia, and said that the Church is too far gone ever to be redeemed. Tom Paine said, that's just what we're trying to tell you, fellas. Thomas Jefferson was a gentleman, but a skeptic. He was a deist. On the other hand, General Charles Lee, who was a very popular revolutionary general, wanted to tear down the churches. He said they stand in the way of progress. Voltaire boasted that Christianity would be forgotten in thirty years' time.

You may think this was the hysteria of the moment, but Dr. Kenneth Scott Latourette, the great Church historian who died a few years ago, summed it up by saying, it looked as though Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men. The infidelity of the French Revolution represented the greatest challenge to Christianity since the days before the Emperor Constantine. Christians had endured the threat of the northern barbarians and the assault of armies of the Crescent and the terror of the hordes from the steppes. They had an Eastern schism and a Western Reformation that split the Church. But until 1789, there had never been such a threat against the foundations of the faith. A popular Parisian—let's say it bluntly, a prostitute—was crowned Goddess of Reason in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. A majority of churches in France were closed, even those of the Protestant minority. The German lands were undermined by rationalism, just the same as in Switzerland and the Netherlands. England was afflicted by a sophisticated skepticism. Many people have heard of David Hume, the skeptic. They still use his arguments on campus against Christianity. Scotland was subverted by what was called moderatism, a kind of rationalism. Ireland was in turmoil, and in Scandinavia they just mixed their formalism with infidelity.

Now, what's the answer? We are conditioned to think perhaps the Christians weren't using the right methods. They were using the right methods all right, but they had their back to the wall. They were suffering a spiritual assault comparable, say, to Hitler's invasion of France. What could the French do against Hitler's Nazi hordes? It looked as if infidelity was winning in the world. How did it come about that things changed?

Way back in 1784, John Erskine of Edinburgh published a plea for prayer to all Scottish Christians and Christians elsewhere for an effusion of the Holy Spirit—that's what he called it in those days—an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He sent a copy of his plea to Jonathan Edwards, the great American scholar. Edwards was so deeply moved, he wrote a reply that became not merely letter-length or pamphlet-length but finally became a book. You'll find it in his collected works. The title of the book, if my memory serves me correctly, is A Humble Attempt to Secure Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Extension of Christ's Kingdom. That was the title, not the synopsis of the book. At least you could say in those days when they wrote books you knew what was inside. If any of you students are interested in meteorology, you want to study the weather, you don't want to look for a title like Gone with the Wind. It's got nothing to do with weather.

Now let's take the title again. A Humble Attempt—that was New England congregational modesty—to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of All God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the Advancement of Christ's Kingdom. To Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union. In these past few years we have had an endeavor to rally evangelical forces, but not on this principle. The attitude has been this—you Southern Baptists, you do your thing, and you Missouri Lutherans, you do your things. You don't have to associate with them and they don't have to associate with you, but surely we can put on a simultaneous crusade. No, I don't suggest that prayer for a spiritual awakening should bring about a union of the churches as far as organization is concerned, but it should promote agreement and spiritual union. That was the thing in Jonathan Edwards' mind.

After Jonathan Edwards' death, John Erskine published his plea and Jonathan Edwards' response in a single book. And he sent a copy to Dr. John Ryland, whom we might describe as the British Mr. Baptist. He was editor of the Baptist Register. If some one of you wants to identify him in your mind, do you remember hearing a story about William Carey when he read his paper on the obligation of evangelizing the heathen? The chairman said, sit down, young man. When God decides to evangelize the heathen, he'll do it without any help from you or me. That was John Ryland. John Ryland, I suppose, thought, what will I do with this pretty good stuff on prayer? I might as well send it to some praying man. So he sent a copy to two pastors, Andrew Fuller, who took leave of absence from his church to carry it out, and John Sutcliffe, who didn't travel, but in his congregation he had a remarkable layman called William Carey, a shoemaker, and they took it up.

First of all, they persuaded the Baptist Association to set aside the first Monday of each month to pray for a spiritual awakening at home and the advancement of Christ's kingdom abroad. Then the whole Baptist denomination took it up. The Baptists and the Congregationalists over there were quite friendly, and so the Congregationalists took it up. Then the Evangelicals in the Church of England and the Evangelicals in the Church of Scotland. The Methodists, of course, were within the Church of England at that time. They took it up with great enthusiasm.

And within seven years, Britain was laced with a network of prayer. Every Monday, simultaneously, all the Christians were praying for God's intervention in national and international affairs. When the French Revolution broke out, most English-speaking people were sympathetic. But when the blood began to flow, when people were being guillotined, whenever the terror began, then they became frightened. The British were only twenty-one miles away, so they were frightened first. They decided to fight. The second year of that revolution, John Wesley died.

Now this second great awakening to sweep the English-speaking world—in fact, the Evangelical world—began in the industrial cities of Yorkshire in late 1791. You don't know much about towns and cities over there, but we'll mention one place—Leeds. It's quite a big city today. No means and every kind of means were used. Some people came to the meetings to make fun of the inquirers and were broken down. Some people even mimicked them and were thrown into convulsions. Some meetings were quiet, some were very noisy. But in the Methodist Church alone in Leeds, there were more than a thousand converts in that beginning of the movement.

This revival crested among the Methodists, who weren't afraid of the phenomenon of the revival. But it also touched the Baptists and the Congregationalists. Baptists and Congregationalists in those days didn't believe in instantaneous conversion. They thought it would take at least three months of challenge and then maybe three months of teaching to find out whether or not the man really had become a Christian. That a drunkard could go to a Methodist meeting and come away a Christian they couldn't believe, until they saw it happening among themselves. And you could say that this second great awakening revolutionized the thinking of Congregationalists and Baptists.

It also strengthened the Evangelical party in the Church of England, led by Charles Simeon and William Wilberforce. And it broke out in Scotland under two very famous men, Robert and James Haldane, wealthy men who sold their estate and toured Scotland in their own coaches, printed their own tracts, turned Scotland upside down. At that time, Wales was overrun by a movement of revival. Wales is a rural part of the country. Yet Thomas Charles preached to as many as 20,000 in the open air.

Now this same revival touched Norway. I don't know if there's anyone here of Scandinavian background, but every Norwegian has heard of Hans Nielsen Hauge. He was the John Wesley, Martin Luther, Roland One of Norway. In fact, I don't think there's a more influential figure in Norwegian national history than Hans Nielsen Hauge. To this day, Norway has more missionaries per head of population than any country in the world, and you can trace it back to the revival that began through the conversion of Hans Nielsen Hauge in 1796. The same kind of thing broke out in Finland in 1796 under Paavo Ruusselainen.

A remarkable thing about outpourings of the Holy Spirit is they are spontaneous and they are simultaneous. In other words, you can't attribute them to Christian propaganda, writing letters and so forth. Now, of course, this period of revival brought a host of new agencies—the British and Foreign Bible Society, the first of the Bible Societies. Thomas Charles, whom I mentioned, knew a little girl called Mary Jones, a servant girl who saved up her pennies. She walked barefoot 30 miles to buy a Bible. She got there, they were all sold. She came back in tears. Thomas Charles was so moved, he took a coach to London and he begged them to print Bibles. Nobody would do it, so they formed a committee to do it called the British and Foreign Bible Society. That was the beginning of all the Bible Societies.

Out of that period came the Religious Tract Society, the Baptist Missionary Society, the London Missionary Society, the Church Missionary Society, and so on. It also produced a lot of social reforms, such as the abolition of the slave trade and schools for children and a whole host of institutions to care for the bodies as well as the souls of men. Now, I will take no time to describe this movement throughout the rest of the world, but we must realize that at that time, in the 1790s, the tide was out in the United States and Canada.

The movement began in Boston in 1792, and it began in the First and Second Baptist Churches. At that time, every congregational church in Boston had apostatized, with one exception—the Old South Church. All the rest had become Unitarian. Someone asked me the other day at Fuller, what about Park Street? Park Street Chapel was started as a result of the revival that began in 1792. I think it was actually founded about 1808. But conditions were utterly deplorable throughout New England. New England, of course, was a congregational stronghold. Take for instance Lennox, Massachusetts. Not a single young person had been received into a membership for sixteen years. The pastor said the prospect seemed altogether melancholy.

In 1794, Isaac Backus, a New England pastor, Stephen Gaynor, and other pastors in the area sent out a letter addressed to the ministers of every Christian denomination in the United States, inviting them to engage in what they called a concert of prayer. We use the word concert in entertainment today. When we talk about concerted action, meaning all working at the same time, they were adopting the British idea. Maybe that's why the Baptists in Boston picked it up first from the Baptists in England. How was it received? The Presbyterian synods of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania adopted it en masse. St. Francis Asbury recommended it to every Methodist Episcopal Church. The Congregational Associations, the Baptist Associations, the Moravians, the Reformed, and so on, all took it up. And soon practically every Christian congregation in the United States was praying one Monday a month for an awakening. And they prayed rather desperately.

That began 1795, and within three years came the Second Great Awakening that swept this country generally. There were already awakenings beginning locally in 1792, but in 1798 it became general, and it started in Congregational New England. I might point out that in every record that I've read there was no emotional extravagance whatsoever. This is rather significant, because in the wake of the First Great Awakening and Jonathan Edwards Day, there was a man called Davenport who was an utter exhibitionist. He bitterly repented before he died, but he did an awful lot of damage by exaggerating the emotional extravagances that happened in times of revival.

The revival swept New England, turned the tide there. It swept New York and Philadelphia. I remember reading of a Dutch Reformed church in New York City with 80 members, and they had three years' sustained revival. Their membership became 720, which is what Dr. McGavin calls satisfactory church growth. In the western parts of New York and Pennsylvania there were more emotional scenes. But I'd like to point out that the population of the eastern states at that time was about three million, and the extent of the revival there was three times more considerable than in the frontier territories. Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio had about 300,000 population.

You may wonder why I mention this. I find that most scholars today make a bold statement that the Second Great Awakening began in the camp meetings of Kentucky and Tennessee. I've often wondered why they're so addicted to this theory. I think it's simply because there were extravagances in the frontier. I told you how bad conditions were. Conditions were bad there, but when the people responded, they responded with deep, deep conviction—weeping, trembling, fainting, and then dancing for joy afterwards. It was traceable to the prayers of one great man of God. There was a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian called James McGrady whose chief claim to fame was that he was so ugly he attracted attention. Nowadays you've got to be good-looking to get anywhere. If Abraham Lincoln had run for president in 1960, he would never have made it against Jack Kennedy. But in those days, McGrady was so homely that people would stop in the street and say, Did you see that face? What does he do? And when they said, He's a preacher, they had the opposite effect. They said, A man with a face like that really must have something to say. They said not only was his appearance unprepossessing, but he had a coarse and tremulous voice. His manner was altogether inelegant and uncouth. For anyone on the frontier of Kentucky to call him uncouth meant he really was lacking in couthness.

Now he moved to Kentucky and was pastor of three little churches that looked just like outhouses. I've seen pictures of these little churches that seated maybe forty people. He said the winter of 1799, for the most part, was weeping and mourning with the people of God. It was like living in Sodom and Gomorrah. But then in 1800 came this extraordinary outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So many people came to take communion that James McGrady hollered loud and long for any minister of any denomination in the neighborhood, Please come and help me. He had as many as 17,000 at a time. They would come in their Conestoga wagons, they would camp for maybe three or four days, and seventeen to twenty preachers would be preaching simultaneously all the time. It was in these meetings that some of these extravagances occurred. But the revival didn't begin there.

Professor John Bowles in a recent book says that these extravagances were grossly exaggerated by critics to denigrate the revival. But nobody can deny that it completely changed Kentucky and Tennessee. Dr. George Baxter, a Presbyterian minister, went up from Philadelphia and he said he found Kentucky the most moral place he'd ever been in his life. Scarcely ever hear a word of profanity. Our religious awe seemed to hover over the whole countryside. Out of this movement came a great movement for the evangelization of the West.

They were converted in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. They'd go back east for their education. In the meanwhile, revival had begun in the colleges, and they would be thoroughly evangelized, thoroughly indoctrinated, come back, and they would start colleges. I think La Tourette pointed out that three-quarters of all the colleges in the United States in the Middle West in the year 1860 were the result of the work of evangelists and revivalists of this great movement.

Now, I did mention the terrible conditions in the colleges. I mentioned Williams College. At Williams College, half a dozen young Christians met in a maple grove for prayer. Maples are very leafy trees, so they were not liable to be spied on or ragged by the ungodly students. A thunderstorm threatened, so they raced to a haystack for shelter. Underneath that haystack, they promised God they'd go anywhere in the world He would send them. Now, you may say, but that happens every summer at Forest Home and at Mount Hermon and places like that. But in those days, there were no missionary societies. To my knowledge, there wasn't one American outside the United States preaching the gospel. The only exception I can think of was an American black who was evangelizing Jamaica. His name was George Lyle, but he was a runaway slave. He got out fast and got to Jamaica, so he was what you might call an involuntary missionary.

These young men, after they finished their education at Williams, went down to Andover, the Congregational seminary, to finish their theological education. Then they went to Boston and asked their denomination to send them overseas. The reaction was very mixed. One minister said, this is presumptuous. Who do they think they are? Another minister said, it's utterly premature. We don't have funds to do it anyway. But one man said, if God has spoken to these young men, we should do something to help them. So following Henry Edimere's idea, he got some of his Congregational friends together, and they founded the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the first of the American missionary societies. Its leader was a young man called Samuel J. Mills, a minister's son, a young Congregationalist. Samuel Mills became the dynamic of the American missionary movement.

They had one little diversion, however, in their program. The first team they sent out was led by Adoniram Judson, but when he got to India, he got baptized by William Carey. Sort of awkward, you know, to go out as a Congregational missionary and become a Baptist when you get there. So he sent back one of his friends, Luther Rice, and he raised funds from the Baptists, and thus began the American Baptist Missionary Union, the second missionary society. Then denomination after denomination followed suit.

Now, this great awakening swept the frontier and then broke out in the South—Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia—attracting crowds so huge that no church could possibly accommodate them. So they'd just meet in forest glades with 5, 10, or 15,000 people, and they'd end up with a communion service. And the Negroes were removed equally with the whites. I'll give you an example. In May 1802, at a place called Old Waxhall near what's now called Spartanburg, South Carolina, 3,500 believers arrived in wagons and carts and horseback and foot. But they were joined by a host of scoffers from the dregs of the frontier, some of them fortified by strong drink. The prostrations or faintings occurred chiefly among the scoffers.

Someone asked me in class, these prostrations, are they like what happens in Kathryn Kuhlman's meetings? And we Fuller students are nothing if they're not thorough. We discussed it, and we discovered that in Kathryn Kuhlman's meetings, they fall on their back, whereas in these meetings, they fell on their face. Mostly the scoffers that were waving whiskey bottles and shouting profanities and obscenities, they were simply knocked down like ninepins, like trees fell in the forest. I knew of a case of one man who was lying, conscious but helpless, when a minister came to pray with him about two o'clock in the morning. The minister said, pray, brother, you must pray yourself. And he said, I'll be damned if I pray. He was still defiant. The last they saw of him was crawling like a crab sideways into the woods, pulling himself along by bracken and ferns. This had a very salutary effect upon the ungodly.

Now, of course, in the wake of this movement came all these great societies for the evangelization of the world and for social reform and the like. The War of 1812 interrupted it for a bit, but it turned the tides and made this a Christian nation again.