Paul E. Johnson. A Shopkeeper's Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837. Hill and Wang: New York, 1978 (Revised in 2004).

Book Review By: Jaquelyn McEwen

Paul E. Johnson, a professor of history at the University of South Carolina, is an established author. His book: A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837, has been around since its original publication in 1978 (revised in 2004). This book was published by Hill and Wang, which publishes books that focus on American history, world history, and politics. The revised addition of the book, in 2004, allowed Johnson the ability to write and include a preface. He used the preface as an opportunity to communicate with his readers about what he felt was wrong and write this much criticized book. Within the pages of this book Johnson has tried to argue that the relationship changes between work and domestic life were at the center of religious change in Rochester. He specifically follows revivals led by Charles Finney. He does this by focusing on, “biographies of the converts themselves. reconstructed from church records, newspapers, genealogical materials, tax lists, city directories, census schedules, petitions sent from Rochester to various agencies of government, and...diaries and letter left by participants in the revival” (14). Johnson has broken this book down to six main topics of interest and within each of those he has created sub-topics to help further the understanding.

The first chapter of his book centered around developing an understanding of the economy of the time. Johnson described the economic situation of the time fully enough to be understood by the reader and then tied Charles Finney to the economic outcomes of many of the successful men that attended Finney’s church. I felt that his writing in this section became slightly confusing. Johnson began the chapter about Finney, and then diverged away from Finney to and earlier date within the time period. He then built back up to Finney’s arrival. This was the only section within the first four sections that really mentioned Finney and his impacts on the revival.

The following three sections included society, politics, and impasse. While each of these chapters entailed a mass amount of detail and facts they became very jumbled and confusing. As mentioned earlier within each chapter there were sub-chapters to further elaborate on a specific detail. While Johnson’s intentions to make the information easier to understand and systematic, I feel he really just lost the reader’s understanding. Since each sub-chapter started around 1815 and ended around 1837 making timeline correlations between the different sub-chapters became very difficult. I also felt that this writing technique had a lot of redundancy making the facts less powerful and making it seem as though Johnson had run out of material to write about. Although the redundancy definitely made the points that: (1) There were drastic changes in the employer-employee relationship, (2) This is the time that the middle-class developed, (3) Drinking was an issue, and (4) Political rivals, jealousy, turmoil and corruption came about.

The next sections of the book really dove into Charles Finney and the role he played in the revivals in Rochester. To support his main argument Johnson states that the men who attended Finney’s church were of a higher class and more successful, but he then also states that there are not adequate records on church attendees and the majority of the records that are available come from “blue-collar” churches which severely underestimates the number of workingmen that attended the churches (157). I feel that this in a way ruins the power of the point and puts the validity of his argument into question.

While this book serves as a good learning guide for the economics, society, and politics of the time according to men it severely falls short including the impact women played in the revivals between 1815-1837. Johnson does not bring women up in his book as playing any role whatsoever. He fails to mention that in the upper-class home the wives stayed home and ran the household, thus having major impacts in the home. He also fails to mention that in lower class and single women often worked in the factories, thus having an impact on the working class. Once again, Johnson fails to mention that the majority of the church goers were women - which directly affects his arguments that religious men were the main contributors of the revivals. His disregard to note the influential impact women had during the time brings his argument into question. Johnson has completely left out an entire side to the full picture, thus not giving a completely clear image of how the revivals really came about.

It seems that Johnson has written this book the way that he would like to see it, leaving out the parts that don’t support his main argument. This makes me wonder what other aspects he may have looked over and failed to mention.

Overall, I feel it is important to mention that this book does contain a lot of valid historical information about the male working class, male politics, and influences of evangelical men. As Johnson mentions in his newly added preface this book is a good learning tool for undergraduates, but not as powerful of a learning tool for graduate students. Undergraduates can still benefit from the book since its pages contain many interesting facts and descriptions of how the middle-class developed in Rochester, New York. Also, looking at the length of time this book has been used as learning tool in college courses (over three decades), one can see that it obviously contains important historical information that teachers want their pupils to know.

Although Johnson has received countless amounts of criticism for this book he has obviously written a book that still effective in the classroom today. Regardless of its several shortcomings, Johnson’s book has persevered and is still being read today. Even though his correlation between society, religion, and revivals was not as clear and fully developed as it could have been he has made an extraordinary attempt to illustrate his argument.