In his famous autobiography the former slave and abolitionist campaigner Frederick Douglass offered a rather negative assessment of religious revivals. Douglass asserted, “Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave-trade go hand in hand together,” being “devils dressed in angels' robes.”Footnote 1 Although revivals appeared to be advancing the cause of religion, Douglass believed that they were a demonic distraction which served to undermine the efforts of abolitionists to proclaim the glad tidings of slave emancipation. One particularly remarkable thing about Douglass's Narrative is that an evangelical Presbyterian clergyman from Belfast wrote a letter of recommendation for the Dublin edition.Footnote 2 This clergyman was the Reverend Isaac Nelson (1809–88) of Donegall Street Presbyterian Church.
Nelson emerged as a radical abolitionist during the 1840s, but is primarily remembered for being the leading orthodox opponent of the 1859 evangelical revival in Ulster. He is also infamous for his support for Irish Home Rule and his tenure as the Member of Parliament for Mayo between 1880 and 1885. Nelson's opposition to the 1859 revival has often led to him being branded an enemy of evangelicalism in popular accounts of the movement.Footnote 3 Such judgements are understandable, because the 1859 awakening has been regarded by various historians as the consequence of evangelical dominance within Ulster Presbyterianism over the previous thirty years.Footnote 4 An objective assessment of Nelson's career does not sustain this conclusion, as he was a devout evangelical pastor whose opposition to slavery was an outgrowth of his commitment to biblical authority and evangelical activism.Footnote 5 Strange as it may seem, he was opposed to revival not because he was heterodox, but owing to the fact that he viewed revivalism as a threat to orthodoxy and to the sacred cause of abolition.Footnote 6
The main objective of this article is to employ Isaac Nelson's critiques of transatlantic revivalism in order to add nuance to the idea that abolitionism and revivalism were inextricably linked and to correct the notion that all evangelicals endorsed revivalism. Although various historians, such as Richard Carwardine, John Wolffe, George Marsden, Lewis Perry, and James McPherson, have argued that abolitionism was profoundly influenced by revivalist religion, this broad generalization is in need of some qualification.Footnote 7 On the one hand, the rhetoric and techniques of the advocates of immediate abolitionism sometimes closely resembled those of revivalism. For instance, Mark Noll has argued that William Lloyd Garrison used a distinctly revivalist tone when he proclaimed abolition evangelistically through The Liberator newspaper.Footnote 8 Lewis Perry also suggests that political abolitionists often came from revivalist backgrounds and, no less than the Garrisonians, shared the objective of evangelizing the American people in the truth of anti-slavery.Footnote 9 Hence there are some credible grounds for seeing immediate abolitionism as a politicized version of revivalism, as the “revivalists' plea for the immediate abandonment of sin strikingly resembled the abolitionists' demand for the immediate end of slavery.”Footnote 10
On the other hand, revivalism was not always conducive to promoting abolitionist opinions. Although revivalists such as Charles G. Finney wanted slavery abolished, there was a tendency on the part of some revivalists to view radical abolitionism as an obstacle to soul winning. Moreover, revivals were a central part of the life of southern evangelicals who also defended the peculiar institution on the basis that it was biblically sanctioned. For these reasons, it is too simplistic to assume that revivalism and abolitionism were one and the same.Footnote 11 Instead this article seeks to significantly enhance our understanding of the links between religious revivals and pro-slavery religion. The essay further substantiates Professor Carwardine's thesis that the relationship between revivalism and evangelical attitudes to slavery is complex and incompletely resolved.Footnote 12
In popular nineteenth-century thought, moreover, an assumption was often made that all evangelicals supported religious revivals.Footnote 13 And in their recent survey, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism, Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe have suggested that David Bebbington's definition of evangelicalism is perhaps lacking owing to its failure to stress the centrality of revivals to evangelicals.Footnote 14 One is not persuaded by this argument, as various evangelicals were either critical of or opposed to revivals. The purpose of this article is to qualify such assertions by examining the response of one prominent Irish evangelical both to revivalism in the United States and to its emergence in his native Ulster. It is imperative that such studies are undertaken, because Kathryn Long has noted that historians have paid little attention to voices of dissent.Footnote 15 By considering the perspective of Irish Presbyterianism's leading critic of American and Ulster revivalism, this article seeks to make a substantial contribution to the historiography of religious anti-revivalism.
The question may arise why it is important to even consider the reaction of an Irish evangelical clergyman to religious movements outside Ireland. However, this objection fails to recognize the transatlantic and even global nature of evangelicalism during this period. Transatlantic linkages were particularly strong owing to developments in transport and communications. Moreover, clergymen from the United Kingdom regularly visited the United States, while Americans often visited Britain and Ireland. Religious literature was also widely dispersed throughout the English-speaking world, hence it was possible for those who lived outside a particular region to be highly conversant with its ecclesiastical and religious affairs. It is consequently historically naive to assume that what went on in one region of the evangelical world was of no interest to those who lived elsewhere, or that the viewpoints of those who resided within different national boundaries were automatically superfluous.Footnote 16 For this reason, Nelson's critique of American revivalism cannot be dismissed as irrelevant to those with research interests beyond the parochial boundaries of Irish religious history. Instead his analysis should be of interest not only to historians of abolitionism, but also to scholars with interests relating to revivalism and evangelicalism within a transatlantic context.
What has often been forgotten in analysis of Nelson's reaction to the 1859 revival is that he first came to prominence as a campaigner against American slavery in the 1840s. He promoted militant abolitionism through the Belfast Anti-Slavery Society in its campaign against the Free Church of Scotland's policy of fellowship with slaveholding churches in the wake of the Disruption of 1843.Footnote 17 Furthermore, he also played a leading role in debates surrounding the formation of the Evangelical Alliance in 1846 over the propriety of excluding slaveholders from the organization.Footnote 18 In Belfast, Nelson was joined by leading American abolitionists, including Henry C. Wright, Frederick Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison.
Although his connection with abolitionism may, at a prima facie level, appear irrelevant to his later opposition to the Ulster revival, this is not the case. While it is true that Nelson had more overtly theological objections to the 1859 Ulster revival, especially in relation to physical manifestations, to its downgrade of Calvinist orthodoxy, and to its aberrations in worship and church order, he was also deeply concerned about the movement's perceived links with American slavery. In fact, understanding Nelson's opposition to American pro-slavery religion is germane to comprehending why he was so opposed to the religious movement in Ulster. Consequently, we shall do this by considering a number of issues. First, the article will examine Nelson's problems with American evangelicalism and revivalism in general and the effect it was having upon biblical morality. Second, it will consider his critique of the 1857–58 revival in the United States, especially in relation to the issue of slave emancipation. Third, the article will analyse Nelson's critique of the Rev. William Gibson's perceived role in bringing the American revival to Ulster.
AMERICAN REVIVALISM AND PRO-SLAVERY RELIGION
Nelson had long been suspicious of American revivalism, notwithstanding his earlier commitment to the broad evangelicalism of the Evangelical Alliance. Speaking before the Free Church Anti-Slavery Society in 1847, he complained that Christian slaves were being used as “marketable commodities, bought and sold in the land of revivals.”Footnote 19 If such suspicions were latent in the 1840s, they became explicit by the time Nelson wrote the fourth chapter of The Year of Delusion in January 1861.Footnote 20 In Nelson's opinion, the link between slavery and revivalism was a long-standing problem within American evangelicalism. He observed that since 1734 scarcely ten years had passed without America having witnessed “some kind of religious excitement, ostentatiously announced to other countries as a Revival.”Footnote 21 This was a reference to the beginnings of the First Great Awakening at Northampton, Massachusetts under Jonathan Edwards.Footnote 22 The First Great Awakening did not lead to abolition; in fact Edwards and George Whitefield, a visiting English evangelical, were slaveholders.Footnote 23 Nelson concluded that things had not improved by the early 1860s, despite ongoing religious fervour since the First Great Awakening. Instead, the United States presented the “singular spectacle of a people calling themselves Christian” while tolerating “the most gigantic and revolting of human villainies.”Footnote 24
Nelson was entirely unconvinced that the piety of American evangelicalism was conducive to promoting biblical morality. He was of the opinion that, in addition to tolerating slavery, revivals in the United States served as a pretext for debt repudiation and had even led to the emergence of Mormonism.Footnote 25 Furthermore, he was not impressed by claims concerning American missionary endeavour. Nelson argued that it was hypocritical for “reverend Atheists” to work for the conversion of heathens while they had four million human beings on their own shores held as “the chattelized victims of cruelty and lust.”Footnote 26 In particular, he criticized the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions for conniving at laws restricting slave literacy, while hypocritically complaining about the degradation of British factory workers.Footnote 27
Nelson also pointed out that abolitionist ministers were treated so poorly in America that they were blamed by revivalists, such as Henry Van Dyke, for causing the sectional strife that was agitating the American Union on the eve of the Civil War.Footnote 28 Such men, Nelson reasoned, were “traitors to the Gospel … and the enemies of the human race.”Footnote 29 Mark Noll has pointed out that Van Dyke's commitment to the assumptions of Common Sense Realism meant that he was amazed that abolitionists could read the Bible and miss its simple advocacy of slavery.Footnote 30 What is significant to note here is that Nelson shared a commitment to Common Sense Philosophy with pro-slavery biblicists, despite coming to radically different conclusions as to what this meant for the peculiar institution.Footnote 31
In light of Andrew Holmes's research, it is probable that Nelson imbibed Common Sense Realism while a student at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution.Footnote 32 Nelson certainly uses terminology which at times chimes with this type of thinking, mentioning on one occasion man's self-evident right to the pursuit of happiness under divinely bestowed powers of reason.Footnote 33 Since according to this outlook human beings intuitively know that certain actions are immoral, the pro- and anti-slavery adherents to Common Sense Realism could not but look upon their opponents as morally perverse.Footnote 34 Moreover, Nelson believed that chattel slavery was a sin so obvious that it could even be condemned on the basis of the suppositions underlying America's Declaration of Independence.Footnote 35 This is an important consideration in relation to Nelson's opposition to revivalism, because his commitment to Enlightenment modes of thought means that he can be distinguished from other Reformed anti-revivalists who rejected Common Sense Realism and were influenced by rival philosophies such as Romanticism and German idealism.Footnote 36
THE AMERICAN REVIVAL OF 1857–58
In light of his general disdain for American revivals and pro-slavery evangelicals, it is not surprising that Nelson disapproved of the 1857–58 revival in the United States. This revival took place against a background of severe economic distress which resulted from the financial panic of September 1857 and the subsequent depression that seriously affected urban America.Footnote 37 Richard Carwardine is correct to observe that religious revivals are not always contingent upon economic conditions; nevertheless, the historical evidence would suggest that the rapid demise in financial prosperity was a leading factor behind the mass conversions of 1857–58.Footnote 38 According to the economic historian Philip Ollerenshaw the financial collapse in the United States had repercussions in Ulster, as the demand for linen fell sharply and Belfast trade was brought to a standstill.Footnote 39 The awakening in America was characterized by interdenomination cooperation, lay participation, support from urban business and professional classes, and a comparative absence of physical excitement.Footnote 40
For Nelson, the major problem with this religious movement was that it had not led to emancipation or even to the American churches disciplining slaveholders.Footnote 41 Even William Gibson, the author of the official history of the 1859 revival (entitled The Year of Grace), had admitted that the “monster evil of slavery … sought to prolong its existence even under the shadow of a revived and quickened church.”Footnote 42 As with the evangelical New York Congregationalist George B. Cheever and the Boston Unitarian Theodore Parker, Nelson believed that a genuine spiritual awakening would have led to an increased interest in anti-slavery.Footnote 43 Nelson's point about genuine spiritual vitality leading to abolition needs to be cautiously understood. It is clear from other statements he makes in The Year of Delusion that Nelson did not believe that the forsaking of one sin equated with genuine conversion.Footnote 44 Thus it should not be assumed that Nelson was arguing that had 1857–58 been abolitionist it would automatically have been genuine. Instead Nelson's point was that if the forsaking of a gross sin does not, in and of itself, constitute genuine revival, then how much more does the continuation in a heinous sin such as chattel slavery constitute evidence that a revival is spurious.
Nelson alleged that, in some cases, revivalists had even forbidden prayer on behalf of slave emancipation.Footnote 45 Indeed, unity was maintained during the 1857–58 revival by forbidding controverted points (including slavery) being discussed at prayer meetings.Footnote 46 Furthermore, there were even reports of racial segregation occurring when African Americans sought to attend the Fulton Street prayer meetings in New York.Footnote 47 Indifference on the slavery question on the part of revivalists was probably owing to a perception that revival was a means of soothing sectional tensions, which had reached a new level of intensity over disputes surrounding Kansas, the Sumner–Brooks affair in Congress, and the Dred Scott decision.Footnote 48 Unsurprisingly, the revival was dismissed by Garrison as an “emotional contagion” that promoted a “pharisaical piety” which diverted people's attention from “practical righteousness.”Footnote 49 Some Irish Presbyterians, such as the Rev. William Magill of Cork, had welcomed the revival despite expressing concerns about the continued existence of slavery.Footnote 50 As far as Nelson was concerned, however, the American revival was a total sham. He maintained that “there can be no revival in the Church of a nation, so long as it connives at, does not point to, and root out, national iniquities.”Footnote 51 Judged by this standard, the revival of 1857–58 was found wanting owing to its failure to promote abolition.
THE ULSTER IMITATION OF AMERICAN REVIVALISM
Nelson attributed the blame for importing American revivalism into Ulster to his fellow Belfast Presbyterian the Rev. William Gibson, who was then professor of Christian ethics at the Presbyterian College Belfast.Footnote 52 Gibson and the Rev. William McClure of Derry had been appointed by the General Assembly in 1858 as a deputation to visit mission stations in British North America (Canada).Footnote 53 Gibson later acknowledged that after the delegates had discharged their duties, they took the opportunity to observe the American revival. Upon their return to Ulster, Gibson and McClure rehearsed the experiences they witnessed in the United States throughout the province.Footnote 54 In the midst of a lecture at Second Coleraine Presbyterian Church in December 1858, McClure confessed to having seen slaves sold at auction when he visited Richmond, Virginia. After witnessing the sale of two young women, McClure said, “We hastened away, the sight was so revolting.”Footnote 55 Gibson also republished a tract, Pentecost, or the Work of God in Philadelphia. Nelson surmised that this blasphemously titled pamphlet was a device introduced to convince Irish Presbyterians that if they would only imitate American monster meetings, then the interests of religion would be advanced.Footnote 56
It is noteworthy that when the Ulster revival commenced with the extraordinary scenes at Ahoghill, County Antrim in March 1859, a reporter observed that “the present state of matters is generally attributed to the influence of well-intended lectures, sermons, and addresses, recently delivered throughout various portions of this country, descriptive of the religious revivals in America.”Footnote 57 Moreover, various revival-supporting clergy, including William Richey, James Morgan, and Thomas Toye, admitted that news of the American awakening stirred up a desire for a similar revival in Ireland.Footnote 58
In light of this link, Nelson concluded that “[t]o America must we look as the rock from which Revivalism has been hewn.”Footnote 59 His analysis comports with Professor Carwardine's comment that the tendency of British evangelicals to look to America for inspiration “meant that once the American revival had burst into flame a British conflagration was assured.”Footnote 60 This connection was also made by an Anglican critic of the 1859 revival, the Rev. William McIlwaine of St. George's Parish, Belfast.Footnote 61 It appears to be an accurate assessment, and not only for theological or evangelistic reasons. As S. J. Brown has observed, it should be remembered that some Ulster Presbyterians in the mid-1850s were looking to American revivalism as a means to restore the communal identity which they felt was being lost in the midst of urbanization, industrialization, and changing agricultural patterns. However, the communal identity which 1859 promoted was not that of the self-contained communities of preindustrial Ulster, but that of a larger Protestant evangelical culture in Ulster and the wider transatlantic world.Footnote 62
Nelson looked with disdain upon Gibson's tales concerning American religion and condemned the fellowship that Gibson maintained with pro-slavery revivalists in New York and Philadelphia.Footnote 63 The highlighting of New York by Nelson is especially significant, because it was the epicentre of the revival and it was also the nation's first city when it came to religion, commerce, and print media. New York, moreover, was closely tied to the South economically and so opposition to abolitionism was particular strident in this city.Footnote 64 Hence the pro-slavery element in New York had much to gain by supporting a religious movement that offered hope of sectional peace. Indeed, some northern evangelicals even wanted a revival in order to combat abolitionism and preserve church union.Footnote 65 And it is not without significance that the Old School Presbyterian Samuel I. Prime was keen to stress that revival had occurred in southern cities such as Richmond, Charleston, Savannah, Vicksburg, and New Orleans.Footnote 66
Understanding this connection, Nelson sneered at Gibson's account of hymn singing with the Americans, describing the participants as “reverend hypocrites” who refused to pray for slaves trying to escape to Canada while being hunted as fugitives.Footnote 67 Yet, in the midst of all this, Nelson alleged that Gibson did not rebuke them for their pro-slavery views. Alluding to biblical precedent, Nelson claimed that had John the Baptist been content with Gibson's prudent silence in the face of gross sin, he might have had “Herod for his friend, and Pharisees as his eulogists.”Footnote 68 He also believed that Ulster revivalist ministers had neglected to support George Cheever, who by 1858 had become the leading evangelical spokesman against slavery, in his struggle for abolition.Footnote 69 This contrasted unfavourably with those in Scotland, including several prominent Free Church ministers, who had signed a letter in Cheever's favour in January 1860.Footnote 70
Ever since the controversies in the Free Church of Scotland and the Evangelical Alliance in the mid-1840s over fellowship with slaveholders, Nelson had discountenanced any religious or ecclesiastical fellowship with those who either participated in or connived at chattel slavery.Footnote 71 It is little wonder that he viewed Gibson's compromise with the Americans as deeply injurious to the cause of Christianity, and thus it is not surprising that he looked with scepticism upon what he saw as attempts to mimic American revivalism in Ulster. In light of its links with pro-slavery religion, Nelson concluded that the 1859 revival in Ulster could not have been of God. Not only was it deemed to be tinged with pro-slavery religion, but it was exported from a nation which Nelson considered to be guilty of promoting infidelity more than any other.Footnote 72 He believed that God would not bless a movement that was an imitation of “periodical spasms” which served as a cloak for the sin of holding men as personal chattels.Footnote 73
At one level, Nelson's analysis might appear to be unfair as the 1859 revival was not overtly pro-slavery. And it should be kept in mind that supporters of the revival, such as the Rev. George Hay Shanks of First Boardmills, were fervent abolitionists who opposed the pro-slavery arguments of American divines such as Charles Hodge of Princeton Theological Seminary.Footnote 74 Nelson, however, would probably have regarded this objection as irrelevant to the point he was making. Whether or not 1859 was overtly pro-slavery was, for him, immaterial; the fact that it was linked to a revival that permitted the pro-slavery party to continue in sin was enough to render it spurious in his eyes.
Nelson also claimed that Gibson received money from the Americans in order to promote evangelism among Irish Roman Catholics.Footnote 75 This is an important point, because it was the Free Church's receipt of monies from pro-slavery sources in 1843–44 that appears to have been the instigating cause behind Nelson's involvement in abolition. Since he perceived that Gibson and other revival supporters were guilty of doing likewise, the fierceness of his reaction to such compromise is rendered more understandable. Nelson believed that taking money from slaveholders and their apologists for the conversion of Roman Catholics was simply another form of priest-craft and religious trickery.Footnote 76 He may also have been referring to the desire of American evangelicals to see Roman Catholics, whom they tended to blame for America's moral degradation, converted during the awakening.Footnote 77
Nelson also criticized Gibson for allegedly receiving advice not to meddle with American slavery from Dr. Nicholas Murray of New Jersey, an Irish American Presbyterian who had converted from Roman Catholicism and who had visited Ulster in 1860.Footnote 78 Nelson asserted that had Gibson maintained a consistent witness against slavery he would have received very little money. Had that been done, Nelson argued that Gibson would have seen the Americans in their true colours:
Tell the American Revivalist, as he is about to start with the bloodhounds in pursuit of his run-away chattel, that he is a disgrace to humanity, to say nothing of Christianity, and you are more likely to see the glitter of his bowie knife than the colour of his gold.Footnote 79
Instead of accepting such gifts, Nelson suggested that Gibson should have followed the example of the Free Church of Scotland minister Dr. Thomas Guthrie.Footnote 80 Guthrie refused to ever visit the United States, despite repeated offers of money, because he could not have stood in silence when fellow men were being sold at auction. He feared that he would lose his temper and meet the same fate as John Brown of Harpers Ferry owing to his opposition to racism and slavery.Footnote 81 Guthrie also appears to have shared Nelson's scepticism concerning American revivals; he argued in February 1860 that the best evidence of a true revival would be the granting of freedom to the oppressed.Footnote 82 As with Nelson, Guthrie also questioned why ministers in the free states were not lifting up their voices against such oppression.Footnote 83 This is a relevant point, which helps to partially explain Nelson's lack of enthusiasm for the northern states in the Civil War.Footnote 84
Nelson also observed that such was the paucity of evidence for a real revival in the United States that the American edition of The Year of Grace, Gibson's official account of the 1859 revival, was even distorted for the benefit of the pro-slavery market. For instance, Nelson claimed that the dedication to Thomas Sinclair, a Belfast merchant and Presbyterian ruling elder, was deliberately omitted from the Boston edition because Sinclair was an abolitionist.Footnote 85 Had there been one word in Gibson's narrative condemning American slavery, Nelson maintained that it would have been excised by Baron Stow (a Boston editor and Baptist cleric who had visited Ulster in 1859).Footnote 86 This would make sense, as the revival in Boston was supported by merchants and clergymen who refused to antagonize southerners by speaking against slavery.Footnote 87 Nelson's point was that such was the baseness of the American slavocracy that literature had to be corrupted in order to serve its purposes. Such censorship was comparable only to that of the Church of Rome, though done in a more businesslike fashion.Footnote 88
Nelson's problems with American revivalism cannot be reduced merely to slavery, however. He was also concerned about the notion, which he alleged was popular in the United States, that physical manifestations were a chief means of promoting conversions and spreading revivals. Such fanaticism, Nelson argued, should be shunned by Ulster Presbyterians and left to the sects.Footnote 89 There can be no doubt that physical manifestations were important in the history of American revivalism, a point which was conceded by Bishop Charles P. McIlvaine when he defended the Ulster prostrations.Footnote 90 Nelson's point, however, was overstated as the 1857–58 revival was largely free of such physical manifestations, though its supporters admitted that some excesses did occur.Footnote 91 This divergence from the scenes at earlier revivals may, in part, be explained by differences in geography and gender. The earlier revivals had tended to take place in rural settings and attracted a greater proportion of females, whereas 1857–58 was predominantly urban and often male-dominated.Footnote 92 Moreover, class also appears be a factor in explaining why the Ulster revival had more physical manifestations than the revival in America. In Ulster the prostrations largely occurred among the lower orders, whereas in the United States the revival, at least in its urban stage, reflected the orderliness of corporate culture.Footnote 93
Nelson's comparison between Ulster and America is not as irrelevant as it might first appear. Even John Edgar, a moderate supporter of 1859, recognized the similarities between the Ulster revival and the revival in America at the turn of the nineteenth century – especially in terms of the prostrations.Footnote 94 Likewise, the historian Richard Carwardine has concluded that the beginning of the revival at Ahoghill in March 1859 was reminiscent of the convulsions on display at Kentucky in 1801.Footnote 95 Although Nelson was overstating the case concerning the similarities between Ulster and American revivalism, it would be going too far to say that he erected a straw man of 1857–58. To assert this would be to read more into Nelson's comments than is actually there. Nowhere in his writings does Nelson allege that 1859 was an exact replica of 1857–58. Instead, Nelson claimed that Gibson imagined that a similar awakening to that which he witnessed in the United States could be “got up in Ulster.”Footnote 96 Nelson asserted that Gibson's preface to the pamphlet Pentecost sought to convince Irish Presbyterians that if Ulster could only imitate the monster prayer meetings of America, then the interests of vital religion would advance.
Even the General Assembly's report on the state of religion in 1858 commented that the American revival had drawn thousands together in prayer and argued that if Irish Presbyterians wanted to experience similar blessings, “It is prayer that we chiefly need – not so much preaching as prayer.” Moreover, it was thought, “The spirit of grace and of supplication which now prevails so widely in America is that which shall universally prevail, before the expected Millennium comes … This is the spirit that shall prepare for the universal reign of Christ upon the earth.”Footnote 97 A similar movement in Ireland would therefore be essential if Ulster Presbyterians were to play their part in ushering in the latter-day glory.
The problem for Gibson was that 1859 was not the orderly revival that he had witnessed in America; it was instead one of the last great folk revivals in British history and brought with it a large amount of chaos.Footnote 98 The implication in Nelson's criticism appears to be that, having imported American revivalism to Ulster, Gibson got more than he bargained for and he ended up importing a form of revivalism that was less congenial to his own tastes. So although there were significant divergences between 1857–58 and 1859, Nelson saw this as no obstacle to his conclusion that the Ulster revival was an imitation of American religion.Footnote 99
Nelson's opposition to American revivalism was also linked to a controversy that emerged over Christian assurance in the wake of the Ulster revival. Basically, some revivalists had asserted that assurance of salvation was of the essence of faith and that infallible assurance could be immediately conferred by the Holy Spirit upon conversion. Nelson, by way of contrast, took the view that assurance was not essential to faith and was contingent upon evidence of obedience to the law of God.Footnote 100 When tried by the rule that obedience is the evidence of true Christianity, Nelson concluded that American revivals were a pretentious lie.Footnote 101 Only when they forsook the sin of slavery, as opposed to exporting revivals to other lands, would their respect for the Gospel really be taken seriously.Footnote 102 Nelson's central point was that if the Holy Spirit granted people immediate infallible assurance, this would mean that they could continue in sin without having any doubts as to the reality of their salvation. In light of this, Nelson concluded that revivalist views of assurance logically led to antinomianism and would only bolster the Americans in continuing their lawless system of chattel slavery.Footnote 103
Nelson also believed that it was spiritually dangerous for Gibson to chronicle accounts of the Ulster revival for an American audience in the Year of Grace. He argued that the Americans loved to hear of revival in “poor Popish Ireland” and “over dead Presbyterian Portrush, Ahoghill, and Ballymena” in order to reassure them that American Christianity was not in gross sin concerning the issue of slavery.Footnote 104 News that American revivalism had been the means of provoking an awakening in Ireland would only serve to further blind them to their blatant hypocrisy in both religious and political affairs. Such was the degraded state of American Christianity on account of slavery that Nelson thought it had no spiritual vitality to export to other nations.Footnote 105
The depravity of pro-slavery religion was so pronounced that Nelson reasoned, “We consider a man in fellowship with the Latin Church as infinitely safer for eternity, than a professed disciple of Christ, holding a Bible in one hand and a slave-chain in the other.”Footnote 106 This was obviously hyperbolic, as Nelson was not condoning Roman Catholicism. Indeed, he contended that race-based chattel slavery and Roman Catholicism were two aspects of the “mystery of iniquity” (antichrist) which would be destroyed by the judgment of Christ.Footnote 107 In making this point, he further confirms Andrew Holmes's observation that figures in Ulster Presbyterianism such as Nelson and the Rev. David McKee of Anaghlone, an idiosyncratic political radical, sought to broaden the meaning of antichrist so that it could be used to characterize anything that diminished Christ's supremacy.Footnote 108 Since Nelson viewed American slavery as an infidel notion, which undermined orthodox views of religion and morality by its distortion of biblical anthropology, it thus made sense for him to identify it as a manifestation of antichrist.Footnote 109
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, what are we to make of Nelson's assessment of the links between Ulster revivalism and pro-slavery religion in the United States? Nelson's rejection of 1857–58 owing to its failure to promote emancipation perhaps reflected the long-standing suspicions of British evangelicals about the sincerity of American religiosity. Since the American espousal of liberty in the political realm was regarded as fraudulent owing to their toleration of slavery, some thought that their professions of religious fervour might also prove hollow.Footnote 110 Nelson's problems with revivalism were probably an outgrowth of a more general disdain which he had for the American nation. Although he was friends with abolitionist orators such as Douglass and Garrison and had spoken highly of Covenanters in the United States, these were people on the fringes of American society.Footnote 111 Many British people disliked the notion of American exceptionalism and literary figures such as Fanny Trollope believed Americans to be vulgar, violent, and vainglorious, while Charles Dickens regarded the United States as a disappointment to democratic republicanism.Footnote 112 Nelson appears to have imbibed similar prejudices, as he described America as “that wretched land” where everything “is on a grand scale, even dishonesty.”Footnote 113
Nelson's analysis of the link between slavery and revivalism was emphatically rejected by the evangelical historian of revivals, J. Edwin Orr. He complained of Nelson calling American revivalists hypocrites for tolerating slavery while “ignoring the fact that the best-known American Revivalist of all time was Charles G. Finney, an abolitionist.” Dr. Orr also claimed that Nelson's reasoning was fallacious because evangelicals in both Britain and America had prepared the way for emancipation.Footnote 114
Even though this objection appears plausible it suffers from some fatal weaknesses. First, Nelson does not deny the existence of abolitionist revivalists. Instead, the point he was making was that the revivals were shams because they did not result in emancipation, the views of the revivalists themselves notwithstanding. Second, it does not sufficiently recognize the divergence of opinion between British and American evangelicals on the slavery question. Nelson himself had been involved in heated disputes with American evangelicals at the Evangelical Alliance in 1846 over the propriety of Christian fellowship with slaveholders.Footnote 115 Moreover, supporters of revivals were sometimes enemies of abolitionism. For instance, Gardiner Spring of New York was both anti-abolitionist and a zealous promoter of revival.Footnote 116 Third, 1857–58 was not an exclusively Finneyite affair as even the Old School Presbyterians offered it fulsome praise and their ministers such as Samuel I. Prime and James W. Alexander were its apologists.Footnote 117 Hence appealing to Finney's abolitionism proves too much, as the revival was supported by those in a denomination that was certainly not abolitionist. Fourth, both of Dr. Orr's arguments fail to actually answer Nelson's objection to American revivalism and to 1857–58 in particular. Finney and other evangelicals may have been anti-slavery, but this does not mean that 1857–58 promoted abolition. While Nelson's omission of any explicit mention of Finney appears to be a glaring oversight, it could be argued that Finney's support for abolition only served as further evidence of the ethical poverty of revivalism. Since Finney believed that the only way to end slavery was through a national spiritual revival, the failure of 1857–58 to end slavery could have been credibly interpreted as representing the inability of revivalism to usher in social and moral reform.Footnote 118 Hence we must conclude that Dr. Orr was evading Nelson's objection rather than successfully refuting it.
Although Nelson's contention about pro-slavery influence on the Ulster revival may appear to be somewhat strained, as there were no chattel slaves in Ireland, it is vital to keep in mind that the 1859 revival took place within a context of transatlantic revivalism. This began in the United States in 1857 and then spread from America to Scotland, Wales, England, and Ireland. Hence the Ulster revival can credibly be seen, and was seen by some of its supporters, as an extension of a movement which originated in the United States.Footnote 119 The close links established between Ulster and America owing to successive waves of immigration meant that the Ulster Presbyterian community was particularly susceptible to religious excitement from across the Atlantic. Furthermore, the news that one million people had been converted in America by 1858 only increased the expectation for a similar experience at home. Evidence of this could be seen in light of the increased number of prayer meetings throughout Ulster as a result of hearing news of the awakening in the United States.Footnote 120 The close economic ties with America may also have caused some Ulster revivalists to yearn for a similar awakening as a means of promoting their own financial salvation. However, since indulgence in chattel slavery was regarded by Nelson a sin incompatible with a credible profession of faith, it was logical for him to believe that the by-product of such pro-slavery religion was equally spurious.
When one considers that America quickly fell into the most destructive Civil War, Nelson's argument about the specious nature of the 1857–58 revival appears accurate.Footnote 121 If so, is it going too far to suggest that its Ulster equivalent was also specious? No doubt such a conclusion was unpalatable to revivalists in Ireland, yet from the point of view of an abolitionist zealot such as Nelson it was a reasonable one. As far as Nelson was concerned, the American Civil War represented the supreme proof that 1857–58 was a sham. If 1857–58 had been a true revival, then, according to Nelson's reasoning, it is not likely that the American states would have been plunged into a brutal war only a few years later in 1861. When speaking on the Civil War in 1863, Nelson recalled Gibson's compromise on slavery when in America and looked with disdain upon his support for the Union in the conflict. Evidently, Nelson thought that Gibson would have done better either by not visiting America or by condemning slavery when there than by supporting an armed struggle against the South conducted by many of the same people who had earlier opposed abolition.Footnote 122
