“Holding Up the Light of Heaven”:

Presbyterian and Congregational Reform Movements in Lorain County, Ohio, 1824-1859

Joshua FahlerSenior Honors Thesis Kent State University

Presented May, 2007 Edited January, 2014

jfahler@gmail.com http://jfahler.weebly.com

Although the desire of acquiring the good things of this world is the prevailing passion of the American people, certain momentary outbreaks occur, when their souls seem suddenly to burst the bonds of matter by which they are restrained, and to soar impetuously towards heaven.”

Alexis de TocquevilleDemocracy in America

“

Lorain County, OhioElyria, Ohio

Founded 1816 Census 2000 population:

55,953Oberlin, Ohio

Founded 1833 Oberlin Colony and

Collegiate Institute 2000: 8,195

Wellington, Ohio Founded 1818 2000: Population 4,511

The Connecticut Western Reserve

Lorain County and “Sacred History”

“Society is perfect where what is right in theory exists in fact: where practice coincides with principle and the law of God is the law of the land… [temperance and antislavery] … are the means… the agencies by which the Millennium is to be ushered in.”

Jonathan Blanchard“A Perfect State of

Society”(Speech given at

Oberlin College, 1839)

Robert Abzug, in Cosmos Crumbling (1994), argues that antebellum reformers envisioned themselves on a timeline of divine importance. Antebellum reformers as “religious virtuosos”

Leo Hirrel’s Children of Wrath (1998), along with Abzug, highlights the importance of theology in studying antebellum reform

More recent works by Michael P. Young (Bearing Witness Against Sin, 2007) and T. Gregory Garvey (Creating the Culture of Reform in Antebellum America , 2006) reflect the importance of religious belief in the study of antebellum reform.

My work combines these frameworks, drawing heavily from Abzug and Hirrel, but focusing more on church polity than theology.

Historiography

Charles Finney of Oberlin College is central to this thesis and reform as his understanding of “entire sanctification” provided the basis for a new interpretation of Calvinism known as “Perfectionism.”Born during his revival tours in upstate

New York, “Perfectionism” would allow humans to take more agency in leading “holy” lives.

This would translate well into reform. If one needed to live a holy life, they would be more encouraged to exercise this holiness in the public sphere.

This was highly controversial, and led to Oberlin being excluded from the American Presbyterian-Congregational mainstream.

Theological Shifts and Ecclesiastical Conflict

Primary Sources:Religion and Social

Reform

Wellington First Congregational Church Antislavery Resolution: December 15, 1836.

Henry Cowles (L) and James A. Thome of Oberlin College. Both ministers acted as stated supplies in Wellington’s congregational churches.

Financial ledgers for Wellington Free Congregational Church (L) and Wellington First Congregational Church. Note the difference in antislavery institutions to which each church sends money. Both documents ca. 1856 in each church’s records.

American disestablishment gives way to a “creative exploitation” of the marketplace of ideas

Reform joins the ranks of revivalism as a force which changes the meaning of American religion Found through the sacralization, and to some extent a

canonization, of issuesIssues and events in Lorain County are

representative of the national “religious landscape,” solidifying recent scholarly interest in the religious roots of antebellum reform However, the dynamic nature of American religion must

be considered as these reformers worked within a changing world

Major Roots and Results