"A Shopkeeper's Millennium": Critical of 1830 or 1980?

A Shopkeeper’s Millennium takes an approach to history that we seldom hear about. The approach of looking into census data and church records to produce a novel-like reader of a historical event certainly increases such a memoir’s memorability, though there is much to be called into question about its’ credibility in spite of its’ paper trail. All in all, A Shopkeeper’s Millennium is an accessible read that adds to the conversation of how we do historical analysis.

In the book, Johnson cites many things that may have influenced the start of revival, specifically the “boom town” economy and the class struggle that come with that set up.

Growth of capitalism is always accompanied by at least a discussion of class structure, if not symptomized by the ever-darkening lines between classes. In spite of what modern media may suggest, the very nature of capitalism produces inequalities. The expansion of labor into new terms also assists in expansion of inequality, as was seen in Rochester. There, the inequality caused a lot of tension along family lines as well as along the newly divided class lines. This led to a boom town in uproar, classes divided. This is also evident in the clear divides between denominations in the late 1820’s. 

The revivals played into class divides as well as the further inequalities between them. The Finney revivals of 1830-1831 were an upper class hay day, and it seems as though they used their newfound/rededicated religious fervor to further dictate the daily lives of the working class that were under them.

With this in mind, it is hard to imagine this revival as actually beneficial to the working class at all. I cannot help but to compare this modern echoes of the Occupy Movement, the demands from the “Christian right” to uphold businesses and government to perceivably higher moral ground, as well as the demands of the “Christian left” to love the neighbor and lift up the poor. With these examples, “A Shopkeeper’s Millennium” could almost be a handbook for the understanding of the evangelicalisms of the late 1970’s.