Welcome back to another episode of five minutes in church history on this episode we are

visiting the year 1827. It was in fact the year that Ludwig

von Beethoven died. It was also the year where the match, technically known as the friction match was invented, but we're not interested

in either of those things. We are interested in the new Lebanon conference that met in 1827. It met from July 18 to 26 to be specific.

Osahal Nettleton had criticized, actually pretty close to condemned, the new measures of Charles

Grandison Finney that were employed in the Second Grade Awakening.

So Lyman Beecher, Nathan Beeman, along with Charles Grandison, Finney, and several other ministers convened

the conference in New Lebanon, New York in 1827.

First, who was Lyman Beecher?

Well, he was most famous as the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe,

author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and her slightly less famous brother, Henry

Ward Beecher.

He was a Presbyterian minister and father of 13 children altogether. He grew up blacksmithing and farming and he went to

Yale under Timothy DeWight and at the time of the conference Lyman Beecher was a minister in the prominent Congregational Church

in Boston, who was Nathan Beeman.

He was born in New Lebanon, New York, and over his career he served as minister to several congregations.

He even served as the president of what would be the University of Georgia.

But in 1827 he was pastor of First Presbyterian Church, Troy, New York, right on the banks of the Hudson River.

And then there's Charles Grandison Finney. We know him the figure of the Second Great

Awakening leading revivals in Rochester, New York, and New York City, and as his

middle name has it, a grand figure in the first half of 19th century American church history.

Well that's the who. Let's talk about the where. New Lebanon was a small town in New York right on the Massachusetts border.

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