Great Revivalists in American Religion, 1740-1944 : The Careers and Theology of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney, Dwight Moody, Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson

This book presents a historical and theological understanding of how and why Christian revivalism came to be what it is, mainly a series of ineffective meetings. The work shows how revivalism moved from the Edwardian emphasis on the amazing works of God, as the Puritans would have put it, to the "e;new methods"e; of Charles Finney and revival as the reasonable works of man as befits Jacksonian democracy. Later, D.L. Moody concentrated on methodology to such a degree that revivals became big business and the focus of the Gilded Age. With Billy Sunday, revivalism has lost all content and has become nothing more than entertainment.