Chapter VII -- The Revival Campaigns in America

CHAPTER VII

The Revival Campaigns in America

   Moody’s attempt to reach the working class in America through revivalism also failed.  Recognizing this failure, Moody changed his strategy.

   Because of his success in reaching great crowds of people in England,  Dwight L. Moody was seen by American churchmen as something of a national hero.  By 1875 Moody was as surely the rising young tycoon of the revival trade as John D. Rockefeller was of the oil trade of Andrew Carnegie of steel.  America welcomed him home on precisely those terms.  As American home missionary activity began to shift its emphasis from the frontier to the unchurched masses in the industrial urban centers, Moody’s methods seemed to offer a quick and easy system to meet the new need.
Moody’s Failure
   From the outset Moody was besieged with the same problems that confronted him in Great Britain; his meetings were attended largely by the middle class and the well-churched.  As in Great Britain he had to discourage the churched from attending in order to leave room for the non-church-going class.71 Although Moody held special meetings for the unemployed and for “fallen women,” the great bulk who attended the revival meetings were those who shared Moody’s values.72 It soon became apparent, however, to Moody and his more observant supporters that he was no more successful in reaching the urban masses in the United States than he had been in Great Britain.  In Boston the newspapers reported that his audiences were made up of “the better class of people.73
   In New York the Nation’s observer commented, “There are a large number of educated and critical people who attend the meeting, but they are the official religious class or the curious.  With the former being the most in attendance of the two.  Outside these two classes the audience is not in any way noticeable, except from the absence of the very poor.  Roughly speaking, it looks like an audience able to pay its way, to ride in horse-cars, or even on rapid-transit lines, should there ever be any.”74 A reporter for the New York Times also noticed that “many came in carriages.  It was not an assembly derived from the poor and ignorant classes.”75 Even The Christian Advocate , which loyally supported Moody’s campaigns, admitted that in Brooklyn ‘the unwashed masses are not touched by the morning meetings.’  And though the reporter noticed that there were ‘more of them’ at the evening meetings, he described the attenders as being generally a ‘well dressed crowd.’  The reporter also observed a policeman who was guarding the entrance of the Brooklyn tabernacle thrust ‘off by main force a poor scalawag, dirty, and ill clad–a rough–with harsh words, ‘Get out of here; away with you.’76 Thus, the poor seemed out of place at Moody’s meetings and the police thought it their duty to keep them out.  These meetings were for the better sort.”
   Despite Moody’s attempts to reach the masses through his revival campaigns, some people felt that he could have made a greater effort to address the lower classes in their own habitat.  One New York workingman expressed his thoughts in this manner, “There are about ten flights of stairs which you preachers never get down.  Moody and Sankey got down one or two lower than the rest of you, but there are at least eight lower layers that they do not reach.  If you could give me preachers who were not afraid, and really wanted to save sinners, I could take them where they would have a chance to show what religion was good for.77
   The over-all conclusion in regard to Moody’s revivals in the United States was just about the same as that in Great Britain; he boosted the morale of the regular well-to-do churchgoers, but he failed to reach the masses.

Changes Strategy

   Partly for this reason and partly because he found the effect of mass revivalism too ephemeral, Moody changed his procedures in the fall of 1878.  Instead of ten-to-sixteen-week campaigns held in centrally located tabernacles.  Moody tried staying six months or more in a city.  In addition to services in a centrally located auditorium, Moody gave the considerable portion of his time to individual churches.  He followed this new course for the next three years in Baltimore, St. Louis, and San Francisco.78
   Moody’s new approach to revivalism suggested that his concept of his role as an evangelist was shifting.  By speaking primarily in churches, Moody limited himself more than before to the well-churched.  It was not too likely that the unchurched masses would come to a church to hear Moody when only a few would come to hear him in a tabernacle.79
   However, Moody felt that in order to evangelize America successfully, his direct attempts to “save” the workingman were less important than to “quicken” the regular church membership.  Through these church members, in their capacity as personal evangelists, Moody could have a greater cumulative impact than previously.80
   During the 1880's in America Moody seemed to flit from one new project to another.  He played a major role in establishing the Northfield Schools, summer conferences for college students, Y Associations.  He spent much time in raising funds for these various activities as well as others.
   To the casual observer it would seem that Moody’s concern for education was a radical departure from his work as a professional revivalist.  Actually, a consistent pattern of thought lay behind the many activities of the evangelist in the eighties.  Since there was no one of equal stature to share the work of revival, more and more of Moody’s time went into efforts to consolidate his gains–to build up organizations and training schools which would carry on where he left off.  As Weinberger has pointed out, “His life revolved around letters and appeals for funds.  He was actually going backwards from evangelism–back into Christian organizational labor, this time on a vaster scale.  He was now the ‘lightning Christian’ of the United States, as once he had been in Chicago.  There was no longer time for the lengthy campaigns of the seventies.  Once again, the original dynamic of the revival was absorbed into the less spectacular work of perpetuating its results.”81 His purpose was to establish institutions for the purpose of evangelism.