Replies

Smith was a sort of quack who dabbled in get rich quick schemes and looked for gold through a crystal in his “magic hat,” but he had been brought up in what was called the Burnt Over District, an area of Upstate New York and bordering states that had had so many wandering preachers and ecstatic revivals that there was nobody left to revive anymore. The nature of Evangelical Christianity is anti-institutional, so there was no way to make the results of the revivals last; people had no church to join, so it would all wear off.

This is a very, very excellent and succinct summary of the heritage of the religious history of the area traversed by the Erie Canal. Its fervence was so stirred by the The Second Great Awakening and the likes of Charles Finney, as well as evangelists and religious sects coursing back and fothe between New England and the midwest, that people got very tired and numbed to the emotional levels and sin-socking preachers.

It was that area in which I was born and grew up, that is only now becoming approachable by sincere and warm Truth-bearers of New Testament Christianity.