February 10, 1787 • "Beware Revival," Warned Chauncy

here are moments in church history when religion becomes more fervent and emotional than usual. People show an increased interest in faith. They flock to Christian meetings with an insatiable appetite whenever church doors are open. Whole communities recognize the danger of unconfessed sin and grow alarmed for their eternal destiny. Such moments are lumped under the name "revival."

Whenever a revival breaks out, there are always observers who oppose it. One such revival took place in the mid 1700s. Known as the Great Awakening, it was led by individuals such as George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards and Gilbert Tennant.

Charles Chauncy, who would minister at Boston's First Church for sixty years, distrusted the Great Awakening and wrote letters against it. His main objections were that the revivals were accompanied by emotional excess and that lives weren't really changed.

"I deny not but there might be here and there a person stopped from going on in a course of sin," he said, "and some might be made really better. But so far as I could judge upon the nicest observation, the town, in general, was not much mended in those things wherein a reformation was greatly needed. I could not discern myself, nor many others whom I have talked with and challenged on this head, but that there was the same pride and vanity, the same luxury and intemperance, the same lying and tricking and cheating as before this gentleman [Whitefield] came among us."

Chauncy protested that Whitefield was "...spoken of as the angel flying through heaven with the everlasting Gospel..." This verged on blasphemy because (according to Chauncy) Whitefield was a mere ranter who played on the emotions of those terrified by hell and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. According to Chauncy, religion ought to be controlled by reason, not by feelings or impressions. The weeping, falling down, and shrieking so common in revival services disgusted him. Such extravagant behavior could not be of the Holy Spirit, he argued. Neither could the sermons, which he claimed had no discernible logical structure.

If the doctrines of hell and predestination terrified people and caused them to act irrationally, then the doctrines should go. In the last five years of his life (Chauncy died on this day, February 10, 1787) he anonymously published two pamphlets which claimed that all men would be saved and therefore none had to fear the damnation preached by the revival leaders. Did he stop to ask himself if all were to be saved, why worry if a few were suckered by emotional appeals? They would be saved anyhow!

While it was true that the Great Awakening had its excesses (Jonathan Edwards admitted as much) a study of religious biography shows that God often combines emotion with intellect to draw men to himself. Rarely are men won merely by well-reasoned words unaccompanied by feelings. Chauncy's denial of doctrines which Christ and the apostles taught indicates that there was unresolved disturbance in his own heart when he raised objections to the Great Awakening.

Bibliography:

1. American Sermons: the pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Library of America; Distributed to the trade in the U.S. by Penguin Putnam, 1999.
2. Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907 – 21). VOLUME XV. Colonial and Revolutionary Literature; Early National Literature, Part I. V. Philosophers and Divines, 1720–1789. § 3. Charles Chauncy; Edward Wigglesworth. http://www.bartleby.com/225/0503.html.
3. "Charles Chauncy - First Great American Awakening." http://www.piney.com/ColChasChaun.html.
4. Chauncy, Charles. Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion. Boston: printed by Rogers and Fowle for Samuel Eliot in Cornhill, 1743.
5. Corrigan, John. The Hidden Balance : religion and the social theories of Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew. Cambridge [Cambridgeshire]; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1987.
6. Various encyclopedia and internet articles.

Last updated May, 2007.