Asahel Nettleton

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.

[4] 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."

Operating in contrast to many modern evangelists, he would often move into a community for several weeks or months and study the spiritual condition of the people before attempting any revival work.

He believed that salvation was a work of God alone and therefore rejected Finney's practice of giving altar calls 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.

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.

[12] Although the means and theology of Charles Grandison Finney were to have a greater impact on the history of American evangelism,[13] Bennet Tyler wrote of the effects of revivals of which Nettleton was the instrument:[14] 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.