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Asahel Nettleton (April 21, 1783 – May 16, 1844) was an American theologian and Evangelist from Connecticut who was highly influential during the Second Great Awakening. The number of people converted to Christianity as a result of his ministry was estimated by one biographer at 30,000.Tyler, Bennet and Andrew Bonar, "The Life and Labours of Asahel Nettleton" (Carlisle, Pennsylvania: The Banner of Truth Trust, reprint 1975) He participated in the New Lebanon Conference in 1827, during which he and Lyman Beecher opposed the teachings of Charles Grandison Finney.Thornbury, John F., "God Sent Revival" (Darlington: Evangelical Press 1993)
In the autumn of 1800 Nettleton came under powerful conviction of sin. This conviction deepened as he began to read the writings and sermons of Jonathan Edwards, but yet he remained unconverted.Tyler, Bennet and Andrew A. Bonar, Nettleton and His Labours (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark 1854), 20-27 It was in 1801 that a revival came to North Killingworth, and by December of that year, 32 new converts were added to the Church; by March 1802 "the congregation had been swelled by ninety-one professions." Among them was Nettleton, who, becoming "exceedingly interested" in mission societies, soon had "a strong desire to become a missionary to the heathen."Tyler and Bonar, Nettleton and His Labours, 34-35.
He attended Yale College from 1805 until his graduation in 1809 and was ordained to the ministry in 1811.Thornbury, God Sent Revival.
During these early days of his career, in 1813, he is believed to have written the music for the gospel song eventually to be called "I'm a Soldier Bound for Glory" (music by Asahel Nettleton 1813, words by William R. Phillips 1922), a hymn in the Songbook of the Salvation Army.
Beginning in 1821, and frequently for the remainder of his life, health problems limited Nettleton's travels and ministry. During one of those periods he compiled and edited "Village Hymns for Social Worship," a popular hymnal in New England for many decades.Tyler and Bonar, Nettleton and His Labours.
In 1826, he became alarmed by the "new measures" being employed by many Presbyterian ministers in western New York state, especially by Charles Grandison Finney. Nettleton's theology was distinctly Reformed. He believed that salvation was a work of God alone and therefore rejected Finney's practice of giving during church services and revival meetings. The introduction of the altar call, Nettleton believed, exemplified a denial of the doctrines of original sin and total depravity.
He became Finney's most vocal critic and was the driving force behind the New Lebanon Conference in July, 1827, in which he, Lyman Beecher, and other more conservative ministers attempted to persuade Finney and his allies to change their methods. The conference essentially ended in a stand off, and Finney's approach to evangelism became increasingly popular among Presbyterians and Congregationalists, to Nettleton's frustration.Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E., "Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Revivalism" (Wm. B. Eerdmans 1996)
Although the means and theology of Charles Grandison Finney were to have a greater impact on the history of American evangelism,Sweeney, Douglas A., The American Evangelical Story (Baker Academic 2005) Bennet Tyler wrote of the effects of revivals of which Nettleton was the instrument:Tyler and Bonar, Nettleton and His Labours, 331-333
Another historian has written of the effects of the Second Great Awakening as a whole (although not specifically of Nettleton): "Could Thomas Paine, the free-thinking pamphleteer of the American and French Revolutions, have visited Broadway in 1865, he would have been amazed to find that the nation conceived in rational liberty was 'in the grip of' the power of evangelical faith. The emancipating glory of the great awakenings had made Christian liberty, Christian equality and Christian fraternity the passion of the land. The treasured gospel…passed into the hands of the baptized many. Common grace, not common sense, was the keynote of the age… Religious doctrines which Paine, in his book The Age of Reason, had discarded as the “tattered vestment” of the past, became the wedding garment of many."Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York: Abingdon Press, 1957), 7.
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