Paper

Joseph Caldara
Professor Rich
HIST 3031
March 18, 2009

In his book A Shopkeeper’s Millenium, Paul E. Johnson tries to analyze the conditions under which religious revivals occur. Focusing on Rochester New York, he examines Charles Finnley’s revival in the 1830s and the state of the city before, during, and after the revival. Ignoring much of what has already been written about the event, Johnson uses almost entirely primary sources to argue his point. His point is that the religious revival of 1830 was, at least in Rochester, a successful attempt by the town’s elites to retain control over the rest of society, which they felt was slipping away. Johnson is an Assistant Professor of History at Yale University who especially enjoys the history of popular religion. (MORE?!?!?) To begin with, Johnson offers the argument of Emile Durkheim that religious beliefs give credence to moral rules, which govern society. By existing outside the individual himself, these rules allow an individual to be obedient to the social order while still retaining his independent identity. According to Durkheim, religion is grounded in certain types of social relationships. When fractures or problems in those relationships occur, there is a period of religious tension and a revival is the way of getting things back on track (p. 10-13). Johnson reasons that if we can identify the relationships between people that existed at the time and how they changed before the revival, we can determine the effects of it. Johnson then proceeds to describe how important social relationships changed in the 1820s and set the stage for a revival in the next decade. Drastic changes in Rochester’s economy, political arena, and power struggles upset the social order and made people in Rochester uncertain about how to keep their city under control. Rapid industrialism, coming into a city that was primarily agricultural and SMALL TIME brought with it swift changes that were unsettling and upsetting to many of the people of Rochester. The example of change that Johnson makes mention of most often is that of the relationship between employers and employees. Before the late 1820s, masters and employees often lived together. The master treated the workers in his household much like his children and took responsibility for their actions as well as guided them in the proper way to live. When masters began to hire more workers and separate their work and home lives, they lost control over their workers. Men now lived and worked in different places and the relationship between employer and employee weakened. Those at the top had lost control over the morality of their society and in order to retain control over their society, elites began to try to convince those under them not to drink and to keep the Sabbath. When convincing didn’t work, they began to implement laws pertaining to drinking and Sabbath-keeping. Drinking became associated with the working class and therefore was bad. This led to intense political divisions between those who wished to coerce others into following their beliefs through boycotts and intense propaganda and those who thought that these were a violation of individual rights. These built on an already rocky political relationship between masons and antimasons and threw Rochester into a state of chaos. Johnson makes it quite clear that those in charge felt they were losing control over their society and that they had no way to control it. Johnson uses many more primary sources to support his arguments than would another historian, largely city directories and tax lists from both the late 1820s and early 1830s. These he uses to compare proportions of different groups of people who made different amounts of money and were of different professions. He also uses quite a few newspaper articles and personal letters from the time period throughout his book. He also keeps careful track of church records of and compares the two, seeing what occupations, social position, and type of people went to church both before and after Finney’s revival. The use of so many primary sources helps Johnson’s argument, since many of his assertions require backing-up. For most sections of his book, Johnson makes a very broad statement and then uses specific examples to back it up. For example, GIVE AN EXAMPLE!!! SEE P. 58-60 for Baker example (not a very good one.) See page 122 for better examples. See p. 140 for a good summary of stuff. For all his research and evidence, it seems that Johnson is looking at the 1830 revival from only one perspective. (METHODOLOGY!!!) That is, from the perspective of social structure based on the prominence of the revival’s participants. The question that comes up over and over in the mind of a reader is this: if Finney’s revival simply satisfied a need that elite’s had to control their society, why did so many working-class citizens participate? Though Johnson does provide evidence that many workers were just following their master into church, quoting one example in which a clerk forced to attend church and revival meetings said “‘I don’t give a d-----n. I get five dollars more in a month than before I got religion.’” (p. 121), Johnson fails to address any aspects of the revival other than class. What about the psychological aspects of those who participated? What about their backgrounds?