The Founders and Religion
The Second Great Awakening was concentrated near and throughout Whitesboro, New York, through revivals hosted by religious minded people, teachings through schools like the Oneida Institute, as well as church groups like the one led by Knox founder George Washington Gale. This new religious thinking said that everyone could get into Heaven if they professed a Christian faith, and manifested in individuals believing themselves to be ‘born again’.1
Charles Finney was the father of the Second Great Awakening in upstate New York. He attended school at the Oneida Institute, where George Washington Gale was his teacher and inspiration. Finney, converted to the new way of thinking about faith, spread the evangelical word of the Second Great Awakening, and surrounded himself with a group of young boys who came to be called Finney’s Holy Band.2
Before the Second Great Awakening swept through the United States, most Protestants in the United States were Calvinists. Calvinists believed that humans in general were fundamentally bad, that they were so sinful that most of them weren’t worthy of seeing the Lord. Throughout the early 1800s there was a famous saying among the Calvinists that “The road leading to the gates of Heaven is lined with the skulls of unbaptised children.” This was a complete difference from the Second Great Awakening thinking that became popular during the early 1800s through the 1820s. Because the people who subscribed to the Second Great Awakening believed that you got to go to Heaven due to your actions in your life, they didn’t believe that just baptising a child would allow them to go to Heaven. One had to show with their life how one had committed themselves to the Lord, which was the only way to be allowed in Heaven. The Second Great Awakening was driven by anti-slavery sentiment, and adherents preached that everyone could get into Heaven if they lived their lives following the new way of teaching.3
Finney strongly influenced George Washington Gale’s thinking about the value of education and the ability of manual labor colleges to save souls. The combination of education and religion inspired George Washington Gale to explore the possibility of bringing this west.4 This was why Gale wanted to go west and build a college.5 He started his plan in the early 1830s. When exploratory committees sent west found the place that they would call Galesburg, they thought that the Lord had sent them to that place. When George Washington Gale eventually got out to where Knox College and Galesburg would be with the group of people who would call this place home, he wrote that the families were partaking in the spirit of the lord and that they loved their Bibles.6 The plan was to build up a college that could teach people religious thinking today and into the future, which Knox College became.7 Knox College was a manifestation of Second Great Awakening thought.8
By Ryan Earles
1 Owen Muelder, interview with Ryan Earles, 4/23/2021.
2 Owen Muelder, interview with Ryan Earles, 4/23/2021.
3 Owen Muelder, interview with Ryan Earles, 4/23/2021.
4 Gale, George Washington, 1789-1861. A brief history of Knox College, situated in Galesburgh, Knox County, Illinois; with sketches of the first settlement of the town. 1845, page 3. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100910212.
5 George Washington Gale, Knox College Circular and Plan, Knox Manual Labor College, 1843, Special Collections and Archives, Knox College, Galesburg IL.
6 Gale, George Washington, 1789-1861. A brief history of Knox College, situated in Galesburgh, Knox County, Illinois; with sketches of the first settlement of the town. 1845, page 4. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100910212.
7 Gale, George Washington, 1789-1861. A brief history of Knox College, situated in Galesburgh, Knox County, Illinois; with sketches of the first settlement of the town. 1845, page 8. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100910212.
8 Owen Muelder, interview with Ryan Earles, 4/23/2021.
Street scene photo: Unknown, Trinity Church and the First Presbyterian Church, Wall Street, New York, N.Y, First Presbyterian Church in the City of New York, 1825, New York, United States, 1825. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, https://digital.history.pcusa.org/islandora/object/islandora%3A15972.
Church illustrations: Davis, Alexander Jackson, Smith, William D., Public buildings in the City of New-York, 1830, Art and Picture Collection, The New York Public Library, New York, United States, Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America, http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-104f-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99.