Finney, Charles Grandison (1792-1875)

US Protestant religious leader and educator. After his ordination, an eight-year revival campaign took him through New York, New England, and the mid-Atlantic states. He held various pastorships and was professor of theology at Oberlin College in Ohio, later becoming its president.

Born in Warren, Connecticut, he studied for the bar but turned to evangelism after an emotional religious conversion in 1821. A pastor of the Second Free Presbyterian Church in New York City in 1832, he resigned two years later to become pastor of Broadway Tabernacle, a Congregational church organized especially for him. He then accepted the pastorship of the First Congregational Church in Oberlin. His Memoirs (1876), about his lifetime of teaching, preaching, and evangelism, appeared the year after his death.