Paul E. Johnson uses his book, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, to examine the causes of the Second Great Awakening from a Marxist perspective. Johnson writes, “The Rochester revival was generated in the problem of social class.” Johnson argues that the culture of religious fervor and revivalism stemmed from the interaction of the economic and religious motives of Rochesterians rather than from purely religious motives. Johnson’s self-appointed task in examining religion and economic forces is “to define how they made each other in history.” Johnson structures his argument to explain how the economic forces at work in Rochester fostered a revivalist culture, eventually forcing the bourgeoisie to adopt the evangelical language of the proletariat and use it to their advantage.
Johnson divides his argument into six sections: Economy, Society, Politics, Impasse, Pentecost, and Christian Soldiers. In Economy, Johnson illustrates Rochester’s burgeoning market culture, in which the bourgeoisie mingled with the proletariat. Johnson begins to lay out how religion became a tool of the upper class, writing, “More than others, Finney’s converts were firmly engaged in the country trade and in the elaborate and stability-inducing relationships through which it was conducted.” Johnson writes in Society about effect of the economic transition from household to factory, arguing, “The whole pattern of society…separated class from class: master and wage earner inhabited distinct social worlds.” Johnson uses Politics and Impasse to write about the social and political movements that grew from the distancing of the classes, including the Anti-Masonic Party and the “introduction of organized party warfare into village politics.” Johnson demonstrates how religion, as Marx understood it, worked to the advantage of the bourgeoisie. Johnson writes of the wealthy temperance reformers, “They preferred to translate power into authority.” The propaganda “promised masters social peace, a disciplined and docile labor force, and an opportunity to assert moral authority over their men.” Johnson writes in Pentecost, “Charles Finney’s revival was strongest among entrepreneurs who bore direct responsibility for disordered relations between classes.” The bourgeoisie, having disrupted the traditional order, felt responsible for the proletariat that had once lived in their house under the old patriarchal order. Finney’s message of individual salvation absolved the bourgeoisie of their guilt, laying the responsibility for the proletariat’s salvation in the proletariat’s own hands. Finally, in Christian Soldiers, Johnson writes, “The Rochester elite had divided on the question whether working men could or should be reformed by force.” The elite instead combined economic with religious power and limited credit to those who met their religious standards, thereby regulating “the membership of their own class, and to a large extent of the community as a whole.” Through Finney, the bourgeoisie realized the power of religion in economics.
Johnson, echoing Marx’s lamentations for the loss of the old feudal order, writes, “a nascent industrial capitalism became attached to visions of a perfect moral order based on individual freedom and self-government, and old relations of dependence, servility, and mutuality were defined as sinful and left behind.” Johnson explains the fervent religiosity Rochester experienced in the early nineteenth century through economic and class. Johnson argues that religion served as a new class-bound means of social control. To Johnson, Rochesterians, while outwardly preparing their community for the second coming were more interested in implementing social controls in the burgeoning proletariat as the city industrialized.
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