Shopkeepers Millennium: Society and Revivials

¶ … Shopkeepers Millennium: Society and Revivials in Rochester, NY 1815-1837

"A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837" presents a complex analysis on the nature of early 19th century economic and social shifts in one of New York most complicated areas of that period -- Rochester.

In describing shifts in economic models, Johnson creates the framework for a clear perspective on societal and mentality changes. The commercialization of agriculture, the new manufacturing models of business had profound effects on Rochester's population and its inner composition, transforming it profoundly over the years. Johnson makes use of two models of analysis: a class based one and religious effects one, with a clear emphasis on the way religion was used in sustaining a new economic model.

The new prosperity possibilities that emerged after the Eerie Canal linked the Genesee Valley to New York at the beginning of the 1820s produced a working class with a different view of social behavior. Growing in number and power, the new community engaged into violence, drinking and a dysfunctional working relation from worker to manufacturer. The elites' efforts to control and retain hold of the city were in vain, as insufficient and ineffective laws and social pressures were not enough. As more and more disruptive forces emerged in the city, the business elite found support in reasserting themselves as leaders by the help of evangelist Charles G. Finney. He influenced the city to introduce a better model of community, based on Protestantism. The religious revival brought individuals closer to the Church and morals and made them preach outside the Church growing attendance in a self-control manner, opposite to the coercion type.

Johnson argues that revivals provided entrepreneurs tools to reform those that they were working with, the new low working class. Religious reforms acted as a powerful social control mechanism for a society that lost authority and order.

As the authors clearly states, religion was not used in a conscious manner by entrepreneurs as a social reform tool. As various attempts were made by the minority elite to regain control, Finney's approach provided the correct answer, as it did in other parts of the country. The 1830s saw a large increase both in Church attendance but also in the level of preaching. Finney offered not only inspiration to people but also the desire to become convertors. Focusing not on control and top-down order but on voluntary action and self-awareness, the new idea offered labor the possibility to feel like they are building a free yet well regulated society.

Labor and business relations based on servility and dependence became sinful in the words of preachers and the new economic model began to be explained by religion. Individual freedom, as basis of Protestantism, created a sufficient base for the new industrial capitalism to take place.

What Finney preached and made others preach as well in their communities was that Christians should unite as free agents and work in a moral way as to become a perfect society. One in which a person that does not put on effort or is corrupt should be return to the good path. The mission and goal that more and more had in mind was to work hard in order to remake society as God wanted it to be. Johnson shows that the power of religion, but most of all, the power of a personal and group that, if with the right motivation, can change society's face.

Johnson proposes in the beginning of the book, as well as the end, that the early 19th century industrial reform of society was fought with religious weapons. Business, in order to retain power and to influence on its own terms the functioning of the modern society, began to envisage ways in which to convince the others. One of them was religion, through which the middle class became what is now bourgeois or democratic. Business and the middle class was able to create moral rules that, as Johnson describes, become social autonomous rules. He uses in his analysis Emile Durkheim's theories that religious beliefs and social activities are interconnected. Yet in this case, as in others, Johnson goes even deeper into arguing that business, or entrepreneurs, were the first beneficiaries of these religious tools, even if a plan was not necessarily established to use religion solely for that purpose.