The following quote is from
Dictionary of Christianity in America
Revivalism, Protestant. Revivalism is the movement that promotes periodic spiritual intensity in church life, during which the unconverted come to Christ and the converted are shaken out of their spiritual lethargy. Often leading to social and moral reform activities, revivalism was one of the chief characteristics of American Protestantism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and still retains a powerful influence in many quarters. Unevenly distributed among the denominations, revivalism has been strongest in Baptist, Methodist, Holiness and Pentecostal groups and weakest among Lutherans and Episcopalians. Theologically, it has been closer to conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism than to liberalism.
Debate over the meaning of terms like revival, awakening and renewal has prompted much dialog, but confining revivalism to frontier conditions and emotional appeals is an unhistorical understanding of the movement. Revivalism is both urban and rural, rational and emotional, cutting across all class lines.
Renewal often refers to changes in church life that include revivals but also include other changes like liturgical and parish movements as well. Revival and awakening are virtually synonymous terms, though awakening is usually used to refer to extensive revival movements. When do local revival movements become general awakenings? The question is variously answered, some even doubting whether general awakenings have occurred. At the very least, general awakenings are never total in their reach, whether vertically through socioeconomic levels or horizontally in their geographic extension. In historical parlance, however, the conventions of Great Awakening in the mid-eighteenth century, Second Awakening early in the nineteenth century and the Prayer Meeting Revival, or Awakening, of 1857–1858 are standard descriptions.
The general sources of revivalism are the Protestant emphasis on preaching, the Puritan emphasis on a noticeable conversion experience and the pietistic emphasis on warmhearted faith. To these may be added Solomon Stoddard's belief that the Spirit works in "seasons of harvest." By the early eighteenth century, the notion of periodic awakenings in reponse to preaching and resulting in renewed spiritual life had emerged.
The Beginnings of Revivalism. The Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s traces its beginning to 1720, with the arrival of Theodore Frelinghuysen in New Jersey. A Dutch Reformed pastor influenced by Puritanism, his preaching divided the Dutch congregations but also led to revival in several of the churches in his charge. At about that same time, the Tennent family—William, Sr., and his four sons, most notably Gilbert—preached a revival message that influenced Reformed and Presbyterian churches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey in the 1720s and 1730s. Similar effects were realized during the years 1734–1735 in the Congregational church in Northampton, Massachusetts, under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards, successor to his grandfather Solomon Stoddard.
Though the revival in Northampton waned fairly quickly, Edwards was extremely influential because of the books he wrote on revival issues. His work, substantial portions of which were reprinted and commented on by John Wesley in England, laid out several important principles: the whole heart (intellect, will, emotion) is affected by conversion; revivals are surprising works of God; the true marks of conversion are in a holy life; and changed hearts have social effects (thereby laying the groundwork for social and moral reform movements).
The Great Awakening reached its zenith in the 1740s with the preaching tours of the Grand Itinerant, George Whitefield. His powerful delivery and strong appeals, often given in outdoor settings, made him a popular and effective preacher and set the model for other itinerants to follow. Whitefield continued to itinerate, and the revival moved South in the 1740s and 1750s, but by 1750 its influence had ebbed.
The effects of the Great Awakening were clear enough. Belief in awakenings became the commonly held legacy of the movement, based largely on Edwards's apologetic work and on the experience in scores of churches. Detractors also came to the fore, producing Old (anti-revival) and New (pro-revival) Lights, indicative of the dividing effects that revivalism was always to have among American Protestants. Education also was affected, with several colleges founded by revival advocates. And in many congregations experiential piety replaced the religious formalism that had threatened Protestantism earlier in the century.
Whether the Great Awakening created the national consciousness needed for the Revolution is debated, but it clearly created a church consciousness among the majority of Protestants that helped make revivalism the staple of church life it became in the Second Awakening.
Revivalism Reaches Maturity. Instances of revival occurred throughout the revolutionary generation, with strong local expressions at times, but the Second Awakening is usually dated from 1800, with the appearance of the camp meeting. The Cane Ridge, Kentucky, meeting in the summer of 1801 was attended by thousands and set the stage for the camp-meeting approach with its emotional appeals, use of the mourner's bench and the holding of periodic meetings at which the Spirit moved. Begun by Presbyterians and Baptists as well as Methodists, the camp meeting became an almost exclusive Methodist domain after 1810. It also moved East, became more settled and eventually merged into Bible camps and conference grounds as it assumed more permanence.
Revival came to New England after 1800 as well, both in the cities and towns and at the schools, such as the series of revivals at Yale during the presidency of Timothy Dwight, grandson of Jonathan Edwards. New England revivalism was more sedate than its Western counterpart, producing debate on the nature of revivals that was settled, but never fully resolved, by the career of Charles G. Finney.
Converted as an adult, Finney was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1824 and soon began his evangelistic work. By 1835 his revivalist career had peaked, though he continued holding meetings even after his attachment to Oberlin College in that year. In his Lectures on Revival, Finney argued that the Scriptures laid out the principles which, when followed, would result in revival. A revival was not a miracle (a surprising work); God used the regular agencies of providence, the Holy Spirit and human beings to bring about revival.
Finney created opposition when he elaborated the role that persons could play as God's agents and when he hinted that revival could come as often as every year. The means that Finney was faulted for—called "new measures"—included prayer language that was over-familiar with God; the public naming of saints and sinners who needed spiritual change; preaching for immediate decision; and the use of the anxious (mourner's) bench, an area at the front of the meeting place where those who were anxious about their souls' condition could struggle through to resolution.
Finney believed that the crucial component inhuman nature was the will. A person begins life in a morally neutral state, with the will facing decisions posed by the sensibilities and the understanding: "Sin is in the sinning," not in the personas original sin. At conversion, the will is faced with a decision and, aided by the grace of God, the right moral choice can be made. Finney's emphasis on the will laid the groundwork for the new measures: the church and the revivalist arranged the situation in which the decision can be made.
Finney stated that means would not produce a revival without the blessing of God on them, and he used new measures in a relatively restrained manner. Some revivalists were not so careful. But from the time of Finney on, most advocates of revivalism believed that revival could be "worked up"; revivals were not simply "sent down" from God. Modern revivalism was now fixed: protracted meetings held once or twice yearly; preaching for decision; professional itinerating revivalists; techniques for the preparation and conducting of meetings; and even a special musical form, the gospel song.
Revivalism moved through the frontier camp meeting into towns and small cities and into large urban centers. The move to the urban center was embodied in the Awakening of 1857–1858, sometimes referred to as the Prayer Meeting Revival, or Laymen's Revival. Beginning in New York City in the fall of 1857, run by local businessmen, the revival soon spread to other East Coast and then to Midwestern cities. Aided by the telegraph and various branches of the YMCA, both of which dated from the 1830s, the movement peaked in the spring of 1858, when thousands were meeting each noontime for prayer and witness, and the effects spilled over into the churches as well. Perhaps a million members were added to church rolls as a result of the Awakening.
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