The idea of pilgrimage occupies an important place in the life and thought of Ignatius Loyola. In the autobiography which he dictated to a colleague late in his life he refers to himself throughout as “the pilgrim.” He actually went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and describes in detail his long and difficult journey. His biographers too often use the term and imagery of pilgrimage when they write about his early years, yet the notion of pilgrimage in his life has never been explored to any extent; nor has its significance, I believe, been sufficiently taken into account. In this article I should like to focus on this theme and indicate what I consider to be its role and importance in his religious experience.

In his Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter portrayed eighteenth- and nineteenth-century revivalism in America as part of a “revolt against modernity.” Others, however, have suggested the opposite. For instance, Timothy Smith in his Revivalism and Social Reform saw revivalism as fundamental to much nineteenth-century American benevolence, a progenitor of the very social gospel that Hofstadter associated with modernity. And Donald G. Mathews saw in the Second Great Awakening of 1780 to 1830 an “organizing process” that fostered institutional structuring, mobilization of people for action, and their nationalization—ingredients central to theories of modernization, although Mathews himself did not use the term.1

It is a commonplace of antebellum historiography that the numerous reforms of the age often bore an intimate connection with Protestant evangelicalism, and Charles Grandison Finney is often portrayed as a symbol of this link. In addition to endorsing such causes as antislavery and temperance, the great evangelist inspired numerous converts to work out their salvation through useful service, including reform; and the areas swept by his revivals provided fertile soil for every manner of ultraism. Both as theological innovator and religious activist, he seemed to epitomize a tide of perfectionist optimism surging with great force against institutional restraints.Yet there was a very cautious side to Finney. He seldom committed himself unreservedly to any cause other than revivalism and generally eschewed the most controversial approaches to reform. Viewing this aspect of his career, one scholar has recently argued that “the basic thrust of Finney's thought and activity was conservative, status conscious, and pessimistic about human nature.” Because of these two faces, the historian is tempted to fix on one or the other as the “real” Finney, but it is more profitable to probe his ambiguities than to mitigate them. An examination of Finney offers fruitful insight into nineteenth-century evangelicalism's explosive potential for reform and its equally powerful tendency to limit and contain that impulse.

Over the course of a century, the self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church has undergone a dramatic change, as seen, for example, in the contrasting ecclesiologies of the last two ecumenical councils. The following juxtaposition of representative texts from Vatican I and Vatican II reveals this radical shift.