American Society of Church History

A New Perspective on the Burned-over District: The Millerites in Upstate New York
Author(s): David L. Rowe
Source: Church History, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Dec., 1978), pp. 408-420
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church
History
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 A New Perspective on the Burned-Over
District: The Millerites in Upstate
New York
David L. Rowe

Whitney R. Cross's The Burned-over District: The Social and Intellectual

History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850, first
published in 1950 by Cornell University Press, has had a puzzling reception
from the scholarly world. On the one hand, its quantity of research and
quality of insight earned the book a reputation as one of the principal studies
of innovative religion in America. On the other hand, despite the frequency
with which historians have cited it, until recently no one has attempted a
systematic consideration of its hypotheses and conclusions.
This discrepancy has arisen because The Burned-over District has two
distinct functions. First, it is an encyclopedic description of the religious and
reform movements in upstate New York during the 1820s, 'thirties and
'forties. At the same time, the book posits a theory that "ultraism"' was
somehow a product of the social maturation of the towns and villages of the
region. But because Cross never illustrated the process involved in the rise of
these religious movements, the book did not provide a thesis unifying its vast
amount of evidence. The opening chapters of the book which propound this
theory remain independent of Cross's monographic description of the rise of
dissenting religion and consequently never connect the social development of
1780 to 1820 with religious ferment from 1829 to 1850. Thus The
Burned-over District offers information and concepts about particular
movements, but its lack of a thesis prevented it from becoming one of the
seminal works on American religious movements.

1. Words such as "ultraist" and "radical," which Cross used to characterize the movements he
described, are vague and loaded with connotations which may not be applicable. They
assume a theological spectrum with a purely subjective "center" of normal, moderate, belief
and practice. Even if we were to accept such a spectrum as a vehicle for discussing
comparative religion, we would have to place our innovators, who as restorationists were
not only conservative but somewhat reactionary, in the right wing. Also, as religious
dissenters, the innovators in the 1830s and forties fit into long-established traditions in
American cultural and social life. Finally, simply in terms of civic behavior, Joseph Smith
was no more ultraist than the mob that murdered him; nor were Millerites assembled
peacefully in prayer meetings more radical than the mockers who jeered at them. So I have
replaced these adjectives with others when talking about dissenting religion in general. I
retain the word "radical," however, when describing left-wing Millerites who were more
extreme than the movement's leaders.

Mr. Rowe is a scholar presently residing in Baldwinsville, New York.

408

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THE MILLERITES IN UPSTATE NEW YORK 409

This uncritical, almost lethargic, acceptance of Cross has given way

recently to a more careful evaluation of the "burned-over district" as an
historical concept. Mormon historiography, particularly the work of Mario
S. DePillis,2 has been especially helpful in rethinking the roles of social
maturation, personal religious needs, and geographic mobility in the rise of
religious and reform movements in New York.
But while this revisionism successfully challenges The Burned-over
District's description of the development of Mormonism and of western New
York society, it has not yet offered a hypothesis for religious innovation in
general. Criticism of the book, like the book itself, has been fragmented,
treating Mormonism as a cultural unit isolated from other movements of the
day and from significant trends in the existing churches. Other scholars
should follow DePhillis's example and investigate particular phenomena to
test Cross's treatment of them-not only the Mormons but the Millerites,
Shakers, Perfectionists, New School Presbyterians, Christian Unionists,
Anti-mission and Old School Baptists, Christianites and Campbellites. At
the same time we must consider broad questions of the nature of innovative
religion in general to provide the theoretical structure Cross's work lacked.
Only then can we test the validity of the concept of the burned-over district
and begin to determine its geographic limits.
One particular model of social development applicable to the rise of
dissenting religion allows us to organize Cross's material and illuminates
important qualities shared by all the movements he discussed. Both Ernst
Troeltsch and H. Richard Niebuhr have suggested that religious bodies
mature from informal, emotional (often mystical), and voluntaristic sects to
formalized, doctrinal, traditional denominations. The resulting victory of
doctrine over sentiment sparks revolts against the developing churches and
ignites new enthusiastic sects which, in turn, proceed toward formalization.3
With these ideas we can draw a theory of "ultraism" to explain the
emergence of radical religion from the social conditions of upstate New
York.

The region was settled by migrants. By picking up stakes and moving

these migrants broke institutional affiliations which were important to them
in ways they often did not recognize, and then faced the task of recreating
them in regions where the resources for doing so were limited. Stephen
Rensselaer Smith, an itinerant Universalist preacher in upstate New York in
the early 1800s, found many people "who had thought little of the
2. "The Quest for Religious Authority and the Rise of Mormonism," Dialogue: A Journal of
Mormon Thought 1 (Spring, 1966): 68-88; "The Social Sources of Mormonism," Church
History 37 (March, 1968): 50-79.
3. Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, 2 vols. (New York, 1956);
see particularly the section entitled "The Sect Type Contrasted with the Church Type,"
1:331-343; H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York,
1929).

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410 CHURCH HISTORY

importance of public worship [in their former homes], when it might be

attended without inconvenience, now felt the absence of the privilege as
among the greatest of their many privations." But because few preachers of
the traditionalist denominations reached the settlers' new homes, the people
were forced to rely on themselves. The situation fostered a stronger emphasis
on emotion and individual creativity than on doctrine or institutional
membership. Smith continued, "When, therefore, a religious meeting was
appointed, it was less a matter of consideration who would preach, or to what
denomination he belonged, than that it furnished an opportunity of attending
church. It recalled the scenes of a distant home, and a thousand tender
emotions."4 Thus in the first decades of settlement, religious practice and
belief was relatively informal, nondoctrinal, and spontaneous, and the
success of revivalism and of the Methodists and Baptists was assured.
In the 1830s, these enthusiastic sects became formal in doctrine and ritual
because they had matured socially. This is evident in debates among the
Methodists over the standardization of prayers during the worship service,5
in the growing authority of intercongregational councils among the Baptists
and Christianites,6 and the apparent increase in professionalism among the
clergy of the evangelical sects. Opposition to these developments gave
ultraism much of its momentum in the 1830s and 1840s, an attempt to
reassert the primacy of spontaneity over rite, a "priesthood of all believers"
over a trained clergy, the spirit over "the word." Mistrust of the churches
weakened clerics' authority and, consequently, their capacity for restraining
innovation. This attitude, coupled with the resurgence of belief that each
person could find truth without the advantage of a theological training,7
ensured success for the prophets of the day.
The foregoing thesis is tentative but enables scholars to discuss the broad
questions of Cross's work in the terms which Cross first proposed. It
illustrates how the process of maturation of religious institutions sparked a

4. Stephen Rensselaer Smith, Historical Sketches and Incidents Illustrative of the Establish-
ment and Progress of Universalism in the State of New York (Buffalo, 1843), pp
244-245.

5. The "Report of the Committee on the State of the Church and the Discipline" of the Oneida
Conference, 1833, Oneida Conference Papers, Methodist Collection, Syracuse University,
compiled lists of ways in which religious services throughout the Conference differed. It
commented that the situation "must unsettle and confuse our society, occasion dissensions
among ourselves, and expose our weakness, inconsistencies, and whims to the ridicule of our
sagacious enemies."
6. Baptist opposition to associational "excesses" is illustrated below. The Christianites (I use
the term to distinguish the group from Christians in general) were wont to meet in regional
conferences. Joseph Badger, editor in the 1830s of the Christian Palladium published in
New York Mills near Utica, was forced several times to defend the use of conferences from
opposition charges that their power was excessive. See particularly his editorials of July 2,
1838, and April 15, 1839.
7. Almost all the radical innovators were laypersons with little or no theological training-
William Miller, Joseph Smith, Mother Ann Lee, Jemima Wilkinson, Charles Grandison
Finney. Alexander Campbell was an exception.

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THE MILLERITES IN UPSTATE NEW YORK 411

revolt against the churches, and thus confirms Cross's suggestion. DePillis
has already taken steps toward such a thesis in his articles on the rise of
Mormonism. Although he rejected Cross's interpretation that Mormonism
was a product of western New York,8 he identified the frontier as a "social
process of settlement... a fluid psychosocial environment," a sort of
Werdenheit. He explained the contrast between the quiet of New England
and the ferment of New York by positing a different "state of society at the
two different places," and cited the "classic rule of sociology" that "profound
social or economic dislocation breeds sectarianism." Finally, his treatment of
Joseph Smith as a seeker, a person striving for a religious identity, opens the
door to inquiries into the psychological motivation of religious dissenters.9
Now we need to use these ideas to illustrate more precisely the rise of
religious movements in the 1830s and 1840s. Although they all differed
theologically, they shared qualities significant for the proposed hypothesis.
Each was a rebellion against the churches; each eschewed sectarianism,
charged the churches with dividing "the body of Christ," and condemned the
clergy for lusting after worldly power and wealth. In turn, each of the
dissenting sects proposed an alternative vehicle to meaningful spiritual,
cosmological, and salvationist experiences, in effect a restoration of the
primitive church.10 Viewed collectively against a background of widespread
frustration with organized religion, these innovative movements appear as a
product of the special social conditions of upstate New York. Investigation of
the Millerite movement there confirms the existence of a particularly strong
area of religious fervor in central and western New York and reveals that one
principal quality of the movement was an evangelical reaction against the
formalization, or maturation, of the evangelical sects.
In 1831 William Miller, a forty-nine-year old farmer of Low Hampton,
New York, delivered his first lecture on the Second Coming of Christ and
end of the world which would occur, he said, "sometime in 1843." Miller
carried this message throughout New England and New York, and volunteer

8. In his articles DePillis makes two contradictory generalizations. First, he states that the
identifying quality of Mormonism was its "quest for authority," the tangible evidence for
which is the Book of Mormon. The Mormons were the only sectarians of the period to go
beyond the Bible and claim a new revelation, and the Book of Mormon, the product of
Smith's experiences in western New York, was the central document of Mormon
experience. On the other hand, DePillis argues that the Mormon Church was given shape
by the Doctrine and Covenants, which was the product not of western New York but of
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. On this basis DePillis says that Mormonism was not a western
New York phenomenon but grew from experiences in the farther west, and asks us to
believe that Mormon religious experience and the Mormon Church are somehow
independent of each other. I would argue that the Mormon Church is an attempt to validate
temporally, i.e. historically, the Mormon revelation and that the Book of Mormon (the New
York experience) remains as central to Mormonism as a keystone to an arch.
9. DePillis, "Social Sources," pp. 51, 62, 72; idem, "Quest for Authority," pp. 72-73.
10. Again, in contrast to DePillis's emphasis on the quest for authority, I believe the crucial
question is how particular movements attracted particular kinds of people.

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412 CHURCH HISTORY

missionaries took his views into Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, and even
across the ocean to England. When 1843 passed uneventfully Miller
accepted a fellow-adventist's forecast that the end of the world would take
place on October 22, 1844. That day thousands of Millerites of varying
degrees of belief and commitment watched the skies expectantly for Christ to
appear, but the rising sun of the new day dashed their hopes once again.
Radical Millerites made use of the frustrations of the believers and preached
that Christ had come to earth, but in a spiritual instead of a physical state,
that he had judged humanity and had sanctified the Millerites, who were
God's elect and would soon be given dominion over the earth. Proponents of
such ideas, which were closely akin to perfectionism, practiced such rites as
feet washing, the holy kiss, and spiritual wifery. Miller and the movement's
other important moderate leaders were horrified by their behavior and met
in a conference at Albany in 1845 to establish an Adventist doctrine and
discipline. Within a year after the Great Disappointment, the process of
denominationalism was well advanced.1t
The course of the Millerite movement demonstrates that there was a
burned-over district, a region of specially strong religious activity, but that it
extended beyond central and western New York. From 1831 to 1839 Miller
preached in northern New York, eastern Vermont, and parts of Upper
Canada. In 1840 he preached in Boston and acquired the services of Joshua
V. Himes, a Christian Connection preacher who became Miller's abbe grise,
founding a Millerite journal there and taking charge of the campaign to
awaken the world to its danger. For the next three years the Millerites
focused their attention upon New England,12 and their movement became
entrenched in New England and eastern New York long before it entered
Cross's burned-over district.

That central and western New Yorkers swiftly accepted Miller's views
shows that they were particularly amenable to his message, and that they
were conscious of themselves as inhabitants of a special geographical region.
In 1843 Himes began publishing a Millerite journal in New York City, the
Midnight Cry. This publication was closer to "the action" in New York, and
it was not long before letters arrived at the editorial office urging that

11. For the evolution of Miller's eschatology see the opening chapters of Sylvester Bliss,
Memoirs of William Miller: Generally Known as a Lecturer on the Prophecies, and the
Second Coming of Christ (Boston, 1853). The best histories of the movement are Isaac C.
Wellcome, History of the Second Advent Message (Yarmouth, Me., 1874), and Everett
Dick, "The Adventist Crisis of 1843-1844," (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1930).
More available but marred by apologetics is Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry: A
Defense of the Character and Conduct of William Miller and the Millerites (Washington,
D.C., 1944).
12. Miller's itinerary is sketched out in two manuscript "Text Books" included in the
Adventual Collection, Miller Papers, Aurora College (hereafter cited as Miller Papers).
Miller wrote in them the dates, locations, and verses (thus the name "text book") of his
sermons in the 1830s.

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THE MILLERITES IN UPSTATE NEW YORK 413

Millerite leaders pay more attention to the people of the western district. A
Millerite lecturer in Onondaga County told of the "great thirst... for light
and truth" there and of his prayer that God send a "faithful laborer into
western New York." Another Millerite in the region complained that he had
"many more calls for lectures than I can possibly answer," and suggested
that a widespread evangelical campaign through western New York would
benefit "many thousands of souls." S. W. Paine of Warsaw complained
directly to Miller, "While our eastern and other states have been flooded
with light on this subject, western N. York has been almost entirely
neglected, while none are more anxious to hear." Accordingly, the Millerite
leaders passsed a resolution at their New York City conference in May,
1843, that in consideration of "the state of affairs, touching this subject
[interest in the approaching end of the world]-and the numerous and
pressing calls from Central and Western New York, we would recommend
that measures be taken to present the claims of Christ's speedy coming,
throughout that populous region."13
Himes responded immediately. He took to Rochester the Great Tent, a
huge portable canopy that had aroused much public interest in Millerism
throughout the east, arranged for the publication there of a new Millerite
journal, The Glad Tidings of the Kingdom of God at Hand, opened a
bookroom where Millerite publications could be read and purchased, and
encouraged other eastern missionaries to follow him. His glowing reports of
success in Rochester and Buffalo impelled lecturers to travel to the region, a
journey which the Erie Canal facilitated. By the end of 1844 the area had
been saturated with Millerite lectures and periodicals-over 160 towns,
villages, and cities had received the warning to repent.14 An annual
enumeration of the number of towns introduced for the first time to
Millerism points out dramatically the shift of activity from eastern to western
New York State.'5 In each year or period before 1843, the Millerites

13. E. E. Paine (DeWitt's Valley), Midnight Cry (hereafter cited as Cry), April 13, 1843; L. P.
Judson (Warsaw), ibid., May 11, 1843; Paine to Miller, April 15, 1843, Miller Papers.
14. My map, appearing as Appendix I in "Thunder and Trumpets: The Millerite Movement
and Apocalyptic Thought in Upstate New York, 1800-1845," (Ph.D. diss., University of
Virginia, 1974), is based on a cross-referenced index of letters to Miller and the three
principal Millerite journals from followers living in and itinerating within New York State.
My figure of 160 is more than twice the number included on Cross's map. Burned-over
District, p. 289.
15. I follow Cross's geographical division of the State, the boundary between east and west
running through Rome, simply to test Cross's count and not because the east-west pattern is
a model for all the movements concerned. DePhillis has shown that for Joseph Smith and
the early Mormons a north-south line of movement is more significant. For the Millerites
both are evident, since from 1831 to 1839 Millerism spread north and west from Low
Hampton, then east to New England in 1840 to 1843, and finally principally west from
1843 to 1845. Obviously there is no single pattern of directional flow for all the movements,
but each one spread in directions determined by transportation routes, local considerations,
and the appeal of the movement.

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414 CHURCH HISTORY

preached in twice as many eastern New York towns as western New York
towns, but from 1843 to 1845 that tendency more than reversed.t6
The change was not merely quantitative. With the explosion of interest in
Millerism in western New York, new leaders arose there, and because they
remained partly independent of the eastern leaders the movement in central
and western New York was more random, and often more radical. Joseph
Marsh of New York Mills moved to Rochester in 1844 and became the
editor of the Millerite journal, changing its name to The Voice of Truth. He
used the paper as a power base to build a personal following, as his refusal to
obey several important Millerite policies shows. His first editorial disagreed
with Himes's recommendation that Millerites not use sectarian labels like
"Adventist" for themselves. When moderate spokesmen urged toleration of
clerical opponents Marsh encouraged Millerites to withdraw from the
"corrupt" churches and set up independent meetings. Yet in 1845 when the
moderates composed an Adventist creed at the Albany Conference (which
Marsh had promised but failed to attend) he attacked the proceeding as too
sectarian!17
The Millerites' appearance for the first time in over thirty towns in central
and western New York (twice as many as in eastern New York) despite the
disappointment of October 22, 1844, is another indication that the movement
was more radical than in the east. The flight of mystical Millerites from
towns where they were well known to smaller villages not yet aroused by
opposition to the movement accounts in large part for the difference. But
there were important radical meetings in Buffalo, Canandaigua, Oswego,
and Syracuse as well. So great was the defection to the left wing that E. R.
Pinney of Seneca Falls, a moderate, said to Miller after traveling around the
state in 1845, "I know of no lecturer but myself that stands on the principles

Year East of Rome West of Rome

1831-39 32 16
1840 2 2
1841 9 5
1842 13 4
1843 25 62
1844 17 61
1845 15 31

16. The figure 16 for western New York in the first decade includes five towns in Chautauqua
County accounted for by Isaac Fuller, an early convert to Millerism who went there in
1833. Before 1843 Miller's views circulated in the region informally. The low level of
activity in New York generally in 1840-42 marks the New England phase of the
movement.

17. Voice of Truth, June 15, 1844, and January 1, 1844.; ibid, May 23, 1845. Himes had long
suspected Marsh of personal ambitiousness. Following one of Marsh's attacks on the
Albany Conference he said to Miller, "You see that Marsh did not stay at home for nothing.
He is determined to have things go at loose ends-or to go to support him, and not the
mutual, or general cause." Himes to Miller, May 3, 1845, Joshua V. Himes Papers,
Massachusetts Historical Association, Boston, Mass. hereafter cited as Himes Papers.

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THE MILLERITES IN UPSTATE NEW YORK 415

of the Advent faith [as set forth by Miller]."'8 In fact, if it had not been for
the single-handed campaign by Elon Galusha, western New York's most
important moderate leader, the moderates might have lost the entire
region. 9
Millerism appealed with particular intensity to central and western New
York, but this distribution does not, however, fully confirm Cross's delinea-
tion of the burned-over district. Other movements developed in different
patterns; the Anti-mission Baptists, for instance, were strongest in the
Hudson Valley.20 Western and central New Yorkers may have embraced
Millerism fervently not because of their own social situation but because they
did not hear the Millerites' message until the very year Miller had predicted
for the end of the world. The closeness of the deadline thus helps to account
for the movement's explosive growth among them. Stronger confirmation
and revision of Cross's idea of the burned-over district must await studies of
the state's other movements.

But a study of Millerism, viewed in the light of the Troeltsch-Niebuhr

thesis, does confirm Cross's notion that social maturation sparked religious
dissent. Millerism's opposition to the churches and the clergy reveals most
clearly the movement's relationship to social forces in the burned-over
district. This in turn was rooted in opposition to practices resulting from the
formalization of the evangelical sects, principally the Baptists and the
Christianites.

The Millerites, spurred by a yearning for a return to the supposed unity

and piety of the apostolic church, showed their anti-institutionalism most
clearly by their condemnation of sectarianism. They saw the contemporary
quarrels among the churches over doctrine and vexing social issues as one of
the tribulations forecast for the Last Days. "Presbyteries-Synods-
Associations-and Consociations are reeking and rocking as if drunk with
the spirit of contention and division," wrote a Rochester Millerite. "Jealou-
sies, strifes of words, heresy-hunting and the like seem to characterize many
of the meetings of ecclesiastical bodies in the region, while the heart of
humble piety is compelled to weep and bleed in secret places." George W.
Burnham of Greenville saw in the "multitude of sectarian divisions which
exist in the nominal church, with all the unhallowed excesses and fruits of
these divisions" certain proof that "as a body, she is corrupt-is not the house
of God, while thus divided against itself-and is not the body of Christ which
cannot be divided."2'

18. Pinney to Miller, August 15, 1845, Himes Papers.

19. Himes to Miller, March 22, 1845, Himes Papers. Himes said of Galusha, "He is right and
has kept things all right at the West."
20. In 1836 their two associations, the Lexington and Warwick, were both in the Hudson
Valley. John Peck and John Lawton, An Hzstorical Sketch of the Baptist Missionary
Convention of the State of New York (Utica, 1837), p. 175.
21. L. P. Judson (Warsaw), Cry, May 11, 1843; George W. Burnham (Greenville), Voice of
Truth, July 27, 1844. This is just a sample of the large number of such statements.

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416 CHURCH HISTORY

But the Millerites saw sectarianism as only the flower of the weed; the root
of corruption was buried in the "worldliness" of the churches and clergy, in
their lust for temporal power and material aggrandizement. These Millerite
suspicions represented a confluence of two streams of anti-clericalism in the
movement, each flowing from a principal sectarian block. One source was the
large number of ex-Christianites for whom opposition to the churches was a
doctrinal tenet. Among the most influential leaders of the Millerites, they
occupied prominent positions as Millerite editors and promoters. Joshua V.
Himes was Miller's most important advisor, and Joseph Marsh had been
editor of the Christian Connection's New York State journal, the Christian
Palladium, until his expulsion from that post for his strong advocacy of
Millerism. Marsh once wrote for the Palladium, "The government of 'the
mother church,' down to her youngest daughter, is aristocratical. The right
of suffrage is taken from the people. The supreme control of all things
pertaining to faith and conscience, and the government of the church, is
vested in a few aspiring ecclesiastics. The great mass of laymen of the
different sects, are ignorant of their bondage, and strangers to the principles
of equal, Christian rights, and the right of free suffrage guaranteed to them
in the gospel. They are mere vassals to their rulers." No wonder that Marsh
was a leader of the "come outerism" among the Millerites in 1844. Himes,
too, contributed articles to the Palladium in the 1830s attacking the
"spiritual despotism and Priestly tyranny" of the churches, and he held these
attitudes when he became a Millerite. While in Buffalo in 1843 he reported
to the Midnight Cry that a Baptist church in Chautauqua County had
organized a pleasure excursion on Lake Erie to raise money "to purchase a
BELL for their chapel," proving that the churches generally were "worldly,
and seeking after worldly show." He concluded, "This is the prevailing
religion of the age!"22
A second and more revealing source of hostility to the churches was the
contingent of ex-Baptists in the movement. Numerically they were the
largest and most influential; Miller himself was a Baptist. Unlike the
Christianites for whom antisectarianism was a tenet, dissenting Baptists
reacted against specific tendencies within their church. In the 1830s and
1840s Baptist churches and associations were torn by the contradictory
requirements of a pietistic, individualistic theology and congregational polity
(including a lay clergy) on the one hand and a growing formalization on the
other. Preachers were becoming settled and demanding more money for their
livelihood; their frequent complaints to associational meetings about the
stinginess of the congregations show that Baptist laymen were dissatisfied
with their demands and that they were sensitive to charges of worldliness.23

22. Christian Palladium, September 2, 1839, October 1, 1839; Cry, August 22, 1844.
23. See particularly the printed minutes of the following Baptist Associations: Lake George,
1840, 12-16; Genesee River, 1842, 13; Genesee, 1844, 18; Union, 1842, 18; Saratoga, 1841,
19-24. These are all available at the American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, New
York.

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THE MILLERITES IN UPSTATE NEW YORK 417

The popularity of Finneyite revivals among the Baptists, which further

strained the relations between preachers and their flocks,24 may show that
the laity was expressing a preference for simplicity and energy over learning
and doctrine. The Anti-Mission defection from the Baptist Church, which
produced two independent associations in New York State, was in part a
fearful reaction by those who suspected that educated clergymen carrying out
missions would attempt to use their knowledge to "bind the yoke" upon the
necks of the unlearned.25 Finally, many Baptists were suspicious of the
apparently growing authority of associational councils which jeopardized the
traditional independence of the local churches.
For all of these reasons many Baptists came to distrust the intentions of
their pastors. This is evident in a trial in the Pittsford Baptist Church in
1844 after the congregation voted one Sunday not to celebrate the Lord's
Supper. The pastor, Elder Shute, repudiated the lay resolution, censured the
congregation, and declared angrily that "he would administer the ordinance
tomorrow if there was not more than three to sit down to partake of it." The
congregation retaliated by suspending Shute from his ministerial duties so
long as he "persist in his assumption of authority," and they ordered the
clerk not to give out the church minutes without approval of the congrega-
tion. A council of neighboring Baptists met to arbitrate the matter, and it
found in favor of the laity. It ruled that the church had been wrong in
suspending Shute, but that the preacher did indeed "on two or three
occasions exceed the limits of his official authority-especially in refusing to
put the Resolutions offered for the Brethren and declaring a Meeting
dismissed against the voice of the majority of the brethren." The council
recommended that Shute preach in some other church.26
The Pittsford Baptists accepted this decision amicably, of course, but in
another case the verdict of an associational council wrecked an entire Baptist
association. In 1840 the church in Pomfret underwent a serious dispute over
some unknown issue of "church discipline on conduct," and it requested a
"mutual council" of brother churches to arbitrate. We do not know the
verdict, but the winning side accepted the solution proposed while the losing
side accepted the council's decision as "counsel merely," and refused to be
bound by it. The first faction then seceded from the other and applied to the
Chautauqua Association for recognition as the Pomfret Church. When the
Association concurred, the dissenters then withdrew from the Association,
formed a Reorganized Chautauqua Baptist Association and sent a circulat-
ing letter to the other congregations in the region explaining their position.
"The church's duties to its members cannot be done by proxy in any case

24. See Cross, Burned-over District, p. 183, and the minutes of the Cayuga Association, 1843, p
11, and the Madison Association, 1845, p. 8, American Baptist Historical Society,
Rochester, N.Y.
25. Peck and Lawton, Historical Sketch, p. 280.
26. Pittsford Baptist Church Records, June 1-August 6, 1844, American Baptist Historical
Association.

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418 CHURCH HISTORY

whatever," it held. Christ had given each church authority over its affairs,
and that "cannot lawfully be transferred to any other tribunal." Church
councils were to be "merely advisory, as advice from friend to friend," and
they could not under any circumstances exercise power over local congrega-
tions.27 Eventually the two associations reunited, but the schism reveals a
strong strain of suspicion about the centralizing of Baptist authority.
William Miller's own church experience reveals how these feelings
directly affected the Millerite movement. An active and ardent Baptist from
1816 until 1830, after that year he exhibited strong anti-clericalism. First,
he resented the growing tendency toward theological education for preachers.
"Pulpit preaching is, and has long been, no more than a trade," he
complained. "The craft," meaning the ministry, was peopled by "the great,
the learned, the eloquent, the popular, the man pleasing," rather than by
those sparked by vital fervor. As an Old School sympathizer, he also resented
the New School revivalists of the Finneyite stamp. He suspected the "new
measures" emphasized means over quality of conversion, tended toward
Arminianism and universal salvation, and produced preachers gifted with "a
quick gab" rather than with piety.28
The Anti-Masonic campaign of the late 1820s and 1830s most impressed
Miller with the injustice of church authority. Anti-Masonic enthusiasm was
so strong within his Washington Baptist Association that it dissolved in 1831
and reformed as the Bottskill [Anti-Masonic] Association.29 A member of the
local lodge, Miller was distressed when his church freely granted letters of
dismissal to three Anti-Masons even though, he said, "these brethren said at
the same time they could not and would not walk with the Ch."30 The
congregation's action indicates sympathy with the Anti-Masons, and Mil-
ler's Masonic membership could not have escaped his neighbors' notice. In
1833 he almost certainly wrote the following to answer criticism of his
membership: "I never said-nor practiced, anything knowingly to injure my
country, the Ch. of Christ-or my fellow creatures. Therefore, if I sinned it
was against God, and to him I am accountable and to him I am bound to
confess."31 The incident made him thoroughly disgusted with church

27. Chautauqua Baptist Association Minutes, 1840, circular letter; Chautauqua Baptist
Association, Reorganized, Minutes, 1845, American Baptist Historical Society. See also
S. S. Crissey, Centennial History of the Fredonia Baptist Church, 1808-1908 (Buffalo;
n.d.).
28. Miller to Truman Hendryx, April 10, 1833, February 25, 1834; ibid., November 17, 1832.
Miller Papers, Adventual Collection, Aurora College, Aurora, Ill. For his defense of Old
School theology see ibid., January 25, 1832, November 28, 1834, and April 2, 1836, Miller
Papers.
29. See the minutes of the Washington Association, 1831, the Bottskill Association, 1832-1835,
and the Washington Union Association, 1836, American Baptist Historical Society.
30. Miller to Hendryx, April 10, 1833, Miller Papers.
31. Ibid. Since Millerism was popular in his neighborhood, he was not referring to his peculiar
beliefs in the letter, but the addition of the phrase about "my country" indicates a political
nature of the complaint against him which accords with the Anti-Masonic condemnation of
the Lodge.

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THE MILLERITES IN UPSTATE NEW YORK 419

discipline. "How many difficulties do you think we have in our Churches

where the spirit of Christ is manifest through the whole trial," he asked, "or
where it began with 'father forgive them for they know not what to
do?'... Oh, how much iniquity is done, in church discipline. The hypocrite
uses it as a tool to make others think he is verry pious-the envious use it as a
weapon to bring down those whom they imagine are getting above. The bigot
to bring others to his faith; the sectarian to his creed."32
Miller argued that the central problem of the churches was not so much a
quest for authority as a quest for power, and this ambitiousness, the
Millerites felt, blinded the clergy to their responsibilities in regard to human
salvation. Charles Cole, a Baptist preacher and a Millerite in Lansingburgh,
believed the Bible "was given to fallen man, so that salvation to sinners might
be known." But he had been "in pain a thousand times while listening to the
ministration of the word to see a veil drawn over the Bible, and all left in
obscurity." He wondered why preachers abdicated their most important
responsibility. Isaac Fuller, a Baptist Millerite preacher in Chautauqua
County, had one answer. "It is perfectly astonishing that our Ministers are
so ignorant, and many of them so willingly ignorant, on a subject of such vast
importance [the approaching end of the world]," he wrote to his friend
Miller, "and you very well know the worldling and the [scoffer] will despise
a system and him that declares it that will so soon blast all his expectations
and worldly prospects."33
These Millerite statements reveal two reasons for their hostility to the
churches. One was the general disillusionment of dissenters with their failure
to convert the world in preparation for the Millennium. The other was a
negative reaction to the clergy's rejection of the doctrine of the approaching
end of the world. As the Millerite movement received increasing ridicule in
the 1840s this retributive quality of their complaints strengthened, and the
positive quest for religious renewal was almost lost in prayers for justifica-
tion and revenge. Miller, who suffered most from the taunts of scoffers, was
sure that the "proud and haughty Priesthood" would not "escape the
damnation of hell." After all, he wrote, it was "The World and the Clergy vs.
Miller."34 As if to sum up all the Millerite vexations with the churches,
O. R. L. Crozier of Canadaigua enumerated all the sins of organized
religion, condemning "the exalted popularity, ease, wealth, and pride of the
nominal church, the form of Godliness, but practical denial of the power, the
great and constant 'learning' [of the clergy] without ability 'to come to the
knowledge of the truth,' their corruptness of mind and reprobacy concerning
the truth; . . .the nonendurance of sound doctrine [i.e. Millerism]; the

32. Ibid.
33. Cole to William S. Miller, January 7, 1838; Isaac Fuller to Miller, September 7, 1834;
Miller Papers.
34. Miller to William S. Miller, April 5, 1844; Miller to Himes, December 7, 1842; Miller
Papers.

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420 CHURCH HISTORY

leaping of teachers 'after their own lusts' to please their 'itching ears' with
flattery and scholastic eloquence; and mockers walking after their own
ungodly lusts."35 It would be difficult to construct a more thorough
indictment, and it is obvious from Crozier's list that most of the complaints
were directed against formal church and professional ministry.
Testimonies from participants in other dissenting religious movements in
New York show that these frustrations were not peculiar to the Millerites,
but were a general feature of the religious ferment of the times.36 Yearning
for redemption, and yet no longer able to look to the churches to provide it,
many of these rebels set up "sects to end all sects" while the Millerites found
their solution to the dilemma by contemplating the end of the world and
creation of an extra-temporal Millennium. These dissenting groups show
that innovative religion of the 1830s and 1840s was rooted in the cultural and
institutional life of a "district," broadly conceived.
Now we must look beyond the burned-over district as a region and as an
idea to test the applicability of this perspective to religious ferment in New
England, Ontario, the Western Reserve, northern Pennsylvania, and the
farther west. At the same time we must study the region itself, viewing
"ultraism" as a response to significant tendencies within the churches instead
of investigating each movement as a cultural isolate.
Cross knew that innovative religion in the burned-over district had a
significance transcending New York State, the relatively limited confines of
religious history, and history in general. His greatest contribution was a
foundation on which others could build, and it is time we did that. His
scholarship deserves the tribute.

35. Cry, May 16, 1844.

36. DePillis has already shown this to be the essential theme of Joseph Smith's first vision
("Quest for Authority," pp. 72-73), and statements from other groups confirm the trend.
For the Shakers see particularly Seth Y. Wells, Testimonies Concerning the Character of
and Ministry of Mnother Ann Lee (Albany, 1827), p. 1; Alexander Campbell's and Thomas
Campbell's Declaration And Address (Washington, D.C., 1809); Silas Hawley, Jr., A
Declaration of Sentiments ... to the "Christian Union Convention" Held In Syracuse,
August 21st, 1838 (Cazenovia, 1839), p. 1; and the newspaper Signs of the Times published
in New Vernon, N.Y., 1832-1835, on Old School Baptists.

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