I believe that Paul Johnson\u2019s decision to use Rochester, New York as his focus case study was an excellent decision for many reasons.\u00a0 First, as Dr. Shrout mentioned in class, it is illogical and inconvenient to do a detailed and lengthy study like this with multiple communities.\u00a0 The records that Johnson uses are specific to the locality, and therefore he would have had to travel often to do a study with multiple communities.\u00a0 I like that Johnson admits that Rochester may not be the most representative community for the subject of the great awakening.\u00a0 Rochester is not the typical revival story, but it is such an extraordinary one that we can learn so much from studying it.<\/p>\n
Another reason Rochester is a smart place to study is because Charles Finney spent so much time there.\u00a0 The Second Great Awakening took place all over the United States, but what I remember about the revivals from high school history textbooks is the burned-over region in New York and Charles Finney.\u00a0 Using a place that Finney preached at for so long makes sense to me because I view him as the most famous and accomplished Second Great Awakening minister.<\/p>\n
Rochester was also a blend of so much of the rest of the country.\u00a0 It was the first major inland city.\u00a0 Yet, the canal kept it connected to the powerful cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and even London.\u00a0 At the same time it was connected with the country side.\u00a0 There was also a large amount of diversity in wealth and professions.\u00a0 You had the wealthy land owning farmers who gave Rochester its name and beginnings and there was the growing intercity community that consisted of master workers and shopkeepers along with a fluid and ever-changing group of journeyman craftsmen. \u00a0Johnson gives us insight into all the different types of people living in Rochester so that we are able to see the diversity and how each class of people made their religious decisions.<\/p>\n
Paul Johnson also did a good job balancing specifics with generalizations.\u00a0 He gives individual stories of families that began the city (like Colonel Rochester\u2019s family) and of poor, orphaned men who became the extremely wealthy in Rochester (like Thomas Kempshall and Abelard Reynolds).\u00a0 He balanced this with good statistics and charts that allowed him to make broader generalizations.\u00a0 On the religious side, he gave specific examples of converts with charts of profession and percent change (of church membership).\u00a0 This allowed him to make inferences about why groups of merchants, master shoemakers, doctors, or lawyers did or did not convert with Finney.\u00a0 I found that most of the inferences that he made, I bought.\u00a0 For example, Johnson wrote about the reasons that so many master workmen converted, yet these reasons did not explain why lawyers also had a high conversion rate.\u00a0 Johnson explained this high conversion rate with details about Finney\u2019s past as a lawyer and how most lawyers were politicians that could not resist the church.\u00a0 Overall, I thought that Johnson did a good job using specific details from his research in Rochester to make generalizations and explain some of the reasons for the huge revival in the city.<\/p>\n
Price makes several great comments in his blog this week.\u00a0 The only part I disagree with is his criticism of Johnson\u2019s generalizations and simplifications.\u00a0 While I do agree that some of Johnson\u2019s statements may have oversimplified things, I think that it is alright to do that in a historical paper.\u00a0 It is impossible to study every single person in the town.\u00a0 Johnson studied a few specific people and statistics, and then this allowed him to make broader generalizations.\u00a0 The nature of historical studies will not account for every example.\u00a0 Price argues that Johnson didn\u2019t take into account all of the nuances of the town.\u00a0 I see his point, but I believe that the nature of this topic and history itself doesn\u2019t allow for Johnson to view all the nuances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I believe that Paul Johnson\u2019s decision to use Rochester, New York as his focus case study was an excellent decision for many reasons.\u00a0 First, as Dr. Shrout mentioned in class, it is illogical and inconvenient to do a detailed and lengthy study like this with multiple communities.\u00a0 The records that Johnson uses are specific to … <\/p>\n