CHARLES GRANDISON FINNEY
1792 - 1875
Charles Grandison Finney,
"American clergyman, revivalist preacher,
and educator. Finney was born in Litchfield
county, Conn., on Aug. 27, 1792. He studied
law from 1818 to 1821, when he had a sudden
conversion experience. After this he began
to preach and was licensed to preach by the
Presbyterian denomination in 1824. Wherever
he traveled he started extensive religious
revivals.
Finney was criticized because
he emphasized the will of man in the process
of regeneration and employed revival techniques
that became known as "New Measures",
calculated to evoke a highly emotional response.
Impatient with Presbyterianism, he became
a Congregationalist, serving New York City's
Broadway Tabernacle.
Finney was appointed professor
of theology at Oberlin College (1835), minister
of the First Congregational Church at Oberlin
(1837), and was named president of the college
in 1852. His Lectures on Revivals (1835) became
a handbook for American revivalists, and his
Lectures on Theology (1846) indicate the modifying
influence of evangelicalism on American Calvinism.
Finney died at Oberlin on Aug. 16, 1875."
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