Charles Grandison Finney

The preachers of the Second Great Awakening softened doctrine with the message that salvation was available to all who sought God. Evangelical Christians used revival meetings – essentially political rallies in support of God’s candidacy – as an event to attract and entertain the curious and they used the press to engage large numbers individually through the printed word. Charles Grandison Finney, a noted revivalist and proponent of revivalist methods, advised ministers to study the measures used by politicians since their “object is to get up an excitement, and bring people out.” Reverend Finney urged people to use these methods not because they were pious or right but because they were “the appropriate application of mean to the end.” He continued:

The object of the ministry is to get all the people to feel that the devil has no right to rule this world, but that they ought all to give themselves to God, and vote in the Lord Jesus Christ as the governor of the universe.