American Revival Worship

A definite pattern of worship developed in the revival movements of the American frontier and in the campaigns of American evangelists. This "revivalistic" approach to worship has continued as the dominant tradition in the "free churches" of America, and is found today particularly within the fundamentalist and evangelical communities. Interest in religion waned in the years immediately following the American Revolution. Westward expansion certainly did not help matters. It dispersed sparse populations across vast expanses of the West, away from formal, organized communities and away from organized parish life. The revivalists of the early nineteenth century initially sought to provide this scattered population with the essentials of religion. The revival camp-meeting developed as a means to provide the most basic rudiment of all: conversion. Charles G. Finney, the leading revivalist of the early nineteenth century, adapted the format of the backwoods revivals and brought this fron…