The Origins of the Altar Call and the Sinner’s Prayer

David Bennett, The Altar Call: Its Origins and Present Usage. University Press of America, 2000. 261 pages.

David Malcolm Bennett, The Sinner’s Prayer: Its Origins and Dangers. Even Before Publishing, 2011. 178 pages.

When did preachers start using the altar call and the sinner’s prayer?

In some quarters of evangelicalism, evangelistic preaching is synonymous with the altar call and the sinner’s prayer. But despite their widespread use, they’re relatively recent innovations in church history. David Bennett has explained the origins of these practices in The Altar Call, a revision of his M.Th. thesis at the Australian College of Theology, and The Sinner’s Prayer. Both books are historical investigations into the origins of these practices and offer a critique of the theological and methodological principles behind them.

This article isn’t a traditional review of Bennett’s books. Instead, I’m going to summarize Bennett’s findings and give interested pastors a quick answer to the question: when did the altar call and the sinner’s prayer begin?

The Altar Call

Bennett notes “it had become increasingly common in the eighteenth century on both sides of the Atlantic for ministers to pray with and counsel those concerned about their spiritual well-being, either immediately after sermon or sometime during the following week” (The Altar Call, 31). These conversations often took place at the initiative of the inquirer and not in response to an invitation to “come forward.” Nevertheless, the practice of post-sermon counseling likely prompted the beginnings of the public invitation. As Bennett explains, “Once counseling after sermon had become common it was probably inevitable that some preachers would look for quick and efficient methods to get those showing spiritual concern in a counseling situation” (The Altar Call, 32).

The need for counseling seems to be the impetus for what Bennett has identified as the first instance of an altar call. On November 1, 1741, Eleazer Wheelock preached a sermon in Taunton, Massachusetts in which certain attendees became disruptively distraught over the state of their souls and Wheelock was unable to finish the sermon. He invited those under conviction to the front so he could more “conveniently converse” with them (The Altar Call, 33). As Bennett notes, this first instance of a public invitation to come forward “was not premeditated, but, seemingly, a desperate solution to a particular set of circumstances” (The Altar Call, 33).

Wheelock’s first “altar call” may have been unintended, but other preachers soon began to use the practice to address the need for post-sermon counseling. The historical record, however, at this point is somewhat unclear as to who was employing the altar call and how frequently. Bennett concludes, “It is possible . . . that some Separate Baptist churches were regularly using a form of the altar call by the 1770s, but it is, perhaps, more likely that at that time their usage of the public invitation was occasional rather than frequent and they probably did not use it regularly until the end of that century or the beginning of the next” (The Altar Call, 36).

Bennett notes that the altar call became a more frequent and “systematized” practice through the Methodist evangelistic camp meetings of the early nineteenth century that typically took place in rural settings among the ever westward moving population of America. Interestingly, for the first several years, these camp meetings did not include an altar call. Instead, one of the main features of these camp meetings was the unprompted public displays of emotion and religious experience. In the midst of these often-disruptive displays, “calling people forward was not only unnecessary, but frequently impossible” (The Altar Call, 70). Bennett notes that when these unprompted public displays of contrition, faith, or religious experience declined, “the public invitation seems to have become common” (The Altar Call, 70). By the 1820s the practice had become so commonplace that “invitation to the altar” began to be printed in the order of service for some camp meetings (The Altar Call, 71).

These Methodist camp meetings also explain the origin of the phrase “altar call” as something synonymous with “public invitation.” Bennett explains that in early Methodism, lay preachers could not administer the sacraments so “if people wished to take communion . . . they had to go to the local Church of England church . . . [where] communicants usually went forward to kneel around the altar to take the elements, a practice later followed in Methodist churches” (The Altar Call, 73). The origin of the term “altar call” most likely came from this similar looking practice of congregants “coming forward” to the altar to receive communion.

Later developments further propelled the widespread popularity and embrace of the altar call as an effective form of evangelistic preaching. Two figures chiefly propelled the altar call into the mainstream. First, Charles Finney, often wrongly attributed as developing the altar call, was a catalyst for the widespread dissemination of the practice. “His intelligent, theological rationale for the public invitation system appears to have a been a major factor in the widespread acceptance of the practice” (The Altar Call, 113). Second, D. L. Moody, “the first to use modern mass evangelism” practice (The Altar Call, 139), employed the altar call thereby modeling the practice to an even wider community of denominations and churches in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

The Sinner’s Prayer

Despite its widespread use today, Bennett demonstrates that the sinner’s prayer is an even more modern innovation and didn’t establish any meaningful foothold within evangelicalism until after World War II. Just as the genesis of the altar call reflects an evolutionary development, so too does the origin of the sinner’s prayer. Finney, for instance, did not employ the sinner’s prayer, but he did “establish a type of thinking from which the Sinner’s Prayer could emerge” (The Sinner’s Prayer, 54). The seedbed of sinner’s prayer theology can be found in Methodist preacher James Caughey (1810–1891) who advocated for sinners to “pray for salvation and receive it soon, if not necessarily immediately . . . though he does not seem to have advocated a set form in the Sinner’s Prayer mould” (The Sinner’s Prayer, 60).

Later revivalists such as William Booth and D. L. Moody continued to pave the way theologically and methodologically for the emergence of the sinner’s prayer. Their ministries do show some evidence of employing something like a sinner’s prayer in their evangelistic appeals.

Nevertheless, the practice, at least as we know it, was not a regular feature of revivalist ministries or used consistently or widely within evangelicalism. In fact, Bennett notes that the earliest printed sinner’s prayer only dates back to 1922 in Albert Gage’s book Evangelism of Youth (The Sinner’s Prayer, 135). Even still, Bennett notes that the sinner’s prayer was not mainstream. Not a single sinner’s prayer can be found printed by the American Tract Society between 1825–1950 (The Sinner’s Prayer, 137).

The two most significant catalysts for the widespread use of the sinner’s prayer were Billy Graham and Bill Bright. Bennett chronicles Graham’s use of spoken sinner’s prayers in his crusades which catapulted the sinner’s prayer into more frequent use in evangelistic preaching. Additionally, Bennett notes that Bill Bright’s publication of Have You Heard of the Four Spiritual Laws?, which contains “the most used form of the sinner’s prayer,” had enormous influence on popularizing the use of the sinner’s prayer—particularly as Bright’s evangelistic methodology was carried out by Campus Crusade for Christ all over the world (The Sinner’s Prayer, 147). Bennett concludes, “Sinner’s Prayer evangelism, therefore, can be regarded as first emerging in the late nineteenth century, developing in the first half of the twentieth, before becoming a major form of evangelism from about 1960” (The Sinner’s Prayer, 150).

Pastors interested in further details on the origins and history of the altar call and the sinner’s prayer should consult Bennett’s works. His detailed research explores not just the individuals and events that gave rise to these practices but the cultural and theological transitions taking place in the Western world which made them plausible. Bennett’s biblical and theological critiques of both practices are also instructive. Pastors reforming their own church’s practices should consult Aaron Menikoff’s excellent article “Evangelism Without an Altar Call.”