This week in Christian history: Indian missionary dies, Rochester Revival ends, Zurich bans Anabaptists

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, March 03, 2024

Rochester Revival concludes – March 6, 1831

A portrait of Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), the famous 19th century revival preacher. | Wikimedia Commons

This week marks the anniversary of when the Rochester Revival, a series of worship gatherings held in the Rochester, New York, area from September 1830 through March 1831, concluded.

Famed 19th century evangelist preacher Charles G. Finney oversaw the gatherings, preaching nearly 100 sermons in three churches and nearby towns over the course of six months.

“This revival made a great change in the moral state and subsequent history of Rochester. The great majority of the leading men and women in the city, were converted,” Finney later recounted in his memoirs.

“The inhabitants were intelligent and enterprising, in the highest degree; but as the revival swept through the town, and converted the great mass of the most influential people, both men and women, the change in the order, sobriety, and morality of the city was wonderful.”