It was the great nineteenth-century American revivalist, Charles Grandison Finney, who invented the altar call—that practice whereby people stirred by the gospel physically step up at the end of a revival meeting to publicly exhibit their commitment to Jesus. For Finney, however, the altar call was much more than a public, bodily exhibition of belief. Reportedly, the main reason Finney came up with the altar call was so that he could sign up new converts at his revival meetings to assist with his anti-slavery campaign. Finney asserted that revival wasn't revival unless it changed the society in which it occurred.
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