Finney's Aftermath

I recently posted two papers on the legacy of Charles Grandison Finney written by Pastor Tom Chantry. (The link to them is at the top of this blog). Most Christians today haven't a clue who Finney was, or what he was about, let alone the legacy he left us. Not knowing his history has been a costly mistake.

These articles are two of the finest distillations of Finney's disastrous theology I have ever read. If you haven't read them yet you should take the time to do so. Chantry is a Reformed Baptist pastor in Milwaukee.

Pastor Chantry has now written a third article about Finney. You can find it here. Chantry says this:

The one thing Charles Finney thought he knew was the majesty of God. After all, Finney's god was "the moral governor," a severe adherent of absolute standards who demanded absolute obedience of all his creatures. This, to Finney's unconverted eyes, was the majesty of the creator.

The Christian ought to know better.[emphasis mine]  The glorious majesty of God is seen most plainly in His remarkable grace. He is a Judge - and a perfectly righteous Judge whose standards are unimaginably pure. Nevertheless, He is no distant tyrant sending random thunderbolts upon the earth. He is rather a true King, One who rules over and defends His people. That defense of His people extended to their salvation, even when that salvation meant the painful and shameful death of His own Son.

Nowhere in all creation is the true majesty of God more in evidence than in His superintendence of the great plan of salvation! Christian people ought to stand in awe of the gospel as the highest revelation of the greatness of God.[emphasis mine].

"The Christian ought to know better," is such a striking statement coming from a Pastor it should give pause to everyone of us to reflect on what we are doing in the name of God.  Chantry goes on:

First, he devised all of his cunning methodology in order to produce the "decision" which earlier evangelists had attributed to the moving of God's Spirit. Then, whenever he saw that his hearers had made such decisions, he shamelessly took credit for them. He published statistics of how many had been saved through his ministry and he wrote his Lectures on Revival as a way of telling others how they could save as many people as he had. In other words, the part which the Spirit had played in the ministries of both Wesley and Whitefield was a part which Finney endeavored to fill!

The nefarious effect of this crass substitution of the evangelist for the Spirit has all but killed Christian witness in our day. Whereas Christians once proclaimed a Triune, saving God, today's evangelicals become confused as to why the Trinity matters. Once Christians understood that salvation is all about the Father who ordains redemption, the Son who accomplishes it, and the Spirit who applies. Today we say instead that Jesus saves, so long as the preacher can talk you (or trick you) into letting Him do it. If therefore we would have revival, we must have preachers who, like Finney, can produce extraordinary conversion counts.

We no longer evaluate preachers upon how clearly they express the gospel of Christ and how urgently they call on men to turn to Him. Instead we look at the numbers. If an evangelist can get a good percentage of any congregation to come forward, he is a good evangelist. If a preacher can grow a church (something no preacher should imagine himself doing!) then he is a successful preacher. Of course if a seminary president can double the enrollment of his school, then he is an extraordinary president. What other criteria could possibly matter?

And if his methods are not biblical? If, in fact, he must sin in order to produce such extraordinary results? Who dares condemn him! He is (quite literally) doing the work of God. Paul once said he could wish himself accursed in order to save his countrymen, but he understood that he could save no one. Should we be surprised that when evangelists think they can bring about salvation they do not quibble at a little deceit?

What the church so desperately needs is to remember who God is and who preachers are. God saves; we only glorify Him for His salvation.

There is so much more that I can only hope that everyone who reads this blog will read Pastor Chantry's article. When I read it I thought "my God what have we done?"

Caner Fired: Finney to Blame

In my recent post on Finney (Finney's Legacy) I posted two papers by Tom Chantry Pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Milwaukee. In these papers Chantry exposes Finney for the fraud that he was. Chantry says:

By no stretch of the imagination could Finney's Systematic Theology be considered a Christian book, for Christ is as absent from its pages as is God. Finney's christ is the son of god who became man to show us the way to heaven. There is no actual lecture on christ, so the reader might be understandably confused as to exactly what Finney taught about his nature. There are, however, two lectures on the atonement. Most of the material there is a refutation of the Christian doctrine of atonement, which Finney mischaracterizes as a "commercial transaction."

Finney left us with a legacy of deceit and deception. At the end of his manipulative career "...[he] had to acknowledge two facts. One was that the people in the region of western New York where he mainly preached were exhausted with revival and that converts could no longer be generated. The second and grimmer realization was that for all the excitement, the religious character of the region had noticeably deteriorated during [his] day. This area of frontier America became know as the "burned over district." An apt description for the damage Finney did.
Finney's popularity was such that through the years the truth of what Finney had done has beeb softened and morphed to hide that fact that man cannot "choose" to save himself no matter how emotional he becomes nor how many verses of Just As I Am are sung, while "heads are bowed and every eye is closed."
The larger problem, however, is that exageration, emotionalism, hype, and manipulation have become almost standard fare in too many American churches. Billy Graham popularized much of Finney's man-made religious nonsense which has permeated American churches, but now that chicken has come home to roost.
Ergun Caner former Dean of Liberty Baptist University in Lynchburg, Virginia has been fired. Seems he like Finney, embellished, exaggerated, lied, and generally mislead too many people and could not validate his Resume with facts. His lies caught up with him.
Fundamentally Reformed, a blog I read, has now weighed in on the subject. His analysis is well worth the time needed to read it. You can read his post here. In the article he says:

Without Finney, there could have been no Caner. The reason is that Finney’s influence has created an atmosphere within the Evangelical church in which Caner’s style of preaching, and indeed his multiple deceptions, might flourish.

I have argued that the Caner scandal belongs to all evangelicals. His behavior is a reflection on the state of the evangelical church at large, and we must all take ownership of what has happened.
Finney’s manipulation consisted of the “artful, unfair, and insidious” control of the emotional state of his hearers in order to bring about a “decision” which was anything but. We make decisions when we decide to take a certain course of action, generally after thoughtful consideration. Finney’s “decision” had nothing to do with thought. His hearers were whipped into a terror over the thought of hell. This sudden emotional state was a work of Finney’s art, and he knew how to mold it into a decision to follow God. He utilized every form of pressure to bring about the desired end.

So in typical situational ethical fashion, the ends justify the means if the one doing the manipulating is able to further his own prideful ends. Whether it is the "altar call" used to increase the numerical membership count of a church, or the elevation of a nobody into the status of importance of a University Dean, or even a Revivalist like Finney, these men think whatever seems to work for the moment must be right. 
Read what ever you can find about Finney, Caner, revivalism, altar call, etc. It is not a pretty picture.

Chantry on Finney

I was raised in churches which always had altar calls. Like most American Christians I took the word of the preachers and teachers that this is the way Christ had decided to build his church. I didn't question my leaders, I just went along with them as they plied their emotional trade trying my best to "feel good" about my life.

Then something happened. I got into a jam in my life in the midst of which I told God, "I give up. If you don't do it, it doesn't happen." From that point on my life has not been the same. I had admitted to God and to myself - for the first time in my life - that I was not in control of anything. I was at my wits end.

I had to start over and re-think everything about me, particularly my relationship with Christ. I learned the hard way that anything I thought I was doing that might have value to God was viewed by him as "filthy rags."  So I began a journey to understand how it was that I thought just by doing certain things, acting in a certain manner, showing up at the church building each time it was open, being polite, and talking religiously had not protected me from what I had done to myself. After all, I was a Christian, and the churches I attended never talked about Christian suffering: they only talked about doing good, tithing and faith-promise giving and that God would bless everything I did.

I was born, bred, and raised a Pelagian and didn't know it. Everything I had been taught told me I was in charge and that if bad things happened then I had done something wrong. So, I began a journey of self-education to learn if what I had been brain-washed with was actually true. To my profound sadness I learned that most of it was Paganism dressed up as Christianity designed to perpetuate the little empires of the preachers and teachers I had learned from.

Eventually my reading and studies led me to investigate the Reformation. I was stunned by the concepts of Scripture alone and Grace  alone. How could these thing be? I learned that God's Holy Spirit does everything through the "hearing" of His word. I wasn't told I had to do anything. In fact the exact opposite is the message of the Reformation. Inevitably, as I progressed in my search for truth, I came across a guy named Charles Grandison Finney. I learned from his writings that he withheld full disclosure when he was ordained and that was enough for me. He saw no ethical problem with telling a half-truth but I did. So I decided then and there anything he was associated with had to be corrupt. As I read more about him, dug more into his tactics and beliefs, I have no choice but to stay with my conclusions about him. The guy was a fraud and probably not a Christian. But, his legacy as a fraud lives on in most of American Christianity in the "altar call." He invented it, and Billy Graham via television made it famous to modern Americans. Who hasn't heard "every eye closed, every head bowed..."  "your friends will wait for you," followed by "come down the aisle now." Those words are ingrained in Americanized Christianity just as much as "apple pie," and "baseball."

When I have tried to talk to preachers about their use of emotional manipulation begging people to get saved, among other shady tactics, I'm generally blown off as a grouch and trouble-maker. Therefore, I have quietly lived my life - for the most part - putting up with this stuff in the hopes of reaching a friend or two with the truth here and there.

Now comes Pastor Chantry who has written two very good posts about Finney and the legacy he left Christianity in America. Without asking permission, I don't think Pastor Chantry would mind, I have posted his papers under the "Pages" heading at the top of this page as "Finney's Legacy."

I highly recommend everyone read Chantry's papers and finally make an honest "decision." For many it will take a lot of prayer and thinking about things never thought of before, but my prayer is that you will be "quickened" and the truly "narrow way" will be opened to you, as it was for me.