Charles Finney formalised the practice in upstate New York in the 1830s with what he called the anxious bench, a seat at the front for those under conviction, and he was explicit that revival was a matter of using the right means rather than waiting for God. That candour scandalised his contemporaries and won the argument: the altar call is now how an enormous share of the world's Christians date their conversion, from Billy Graham's stadiums to Nigerian and Brazilian megachurches. Critics inside evangelicalism — including many Reformed pastors — argue it manufactures decisions, confuses emotion with regeneration, and produces converts who cannot be found a year later. Studies of follow-up rates give that critique real support. It has survived every one of them, because it does something the alternatives do not: it makes an invisible change into a visible act performed in front of witnesses.