From Chapter 3:
Unlike [Finney's] system of the [anxious] bench that made the conversion experience “the all in all of the gospel economy,” the [system of the] catechism was designed to care for believers over the entire course of their lives, from birth to death. Nevin’s theory of the catechism did not hide the significant stylistic differences between the bench and the catechism, which involved contrasts such as number of converts versus greater spiritual maturity or mechanical techniques for attracting converts versus natural and organic means of generating faithful devotion. “It is in the kingdom of grace,” he explained, “as in the kingdom of nature; the greatest, deepest, most comprehensive and lasting changes are effected constantly not by special, sudden, vast explosions of power, but by processes that are gentle, and silent, and so minute and common as hardly to attract the notice of the world.” Or to put it another way, “The extraordinary,” in the case of the catechetical system, “is found ever to stand in the ordinary, and grows forth from it without violence so as to bear the same character of natural and free power.” As such, the catechism was not opposed to revivals. Rather, the system of catechetical religion involved a different notion of revival, one where the church enjoyed “special showers of grace” through the regular ministrations of the pastoral office.
- Darryl Hart, John Williamson Nevin : High Church Calvinist (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2005), p. 99.
Nevin and Hart use the term ‘catechism’ as symbolic of an altogether different view of piety, church life, conversion, etc. This view, established (ordained?) long before Finney’s day, revolves largely around the family, pastoral visitation, catechesis, and Word and Sacrament ministry.
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