Christian revivalism is increased spiritual interest or renewal in the life of a Christian church, congregation or society with a local, national or global effect. This should be distinguished from the use of the term "revival" to refer to an evangelistic meeting or series of meetings (see revival meeting). Proponents view revivals as the restoration of the church to a vital and fervent relationship with God after a period of moral decline.
Within Christian studies the concept of revival is derived from biblical narratives of national decline and restoration during the history of the Israelites. In particular, narrative accounts of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah emphasise periods of national decline and revival associated with the rule of respectively wicked or righteous kings. Josiah is notable within this biblical narrative as a figure who reinstituted temple worship of Yahweh while destroying pagan worship. Within modern church history, church historians have identified and debated the effects of various national revivals within the history of the US and other countries. During the 18th and 19th centuries, American society experienced a number of "Awakenings" around the years 1727, 1792, 1830, 1857 and 1882. More recent revivals in the 20th century include the 1904–1905 Welsh Revival, 1906 (Azusa Street Revival), 1930s (Balokole), 1970s (Jesus people), 1971 Bario Revival and 1909 Chile Revival which spread in the Americas, Africa, and Asia among Protestants and Catholics.
Many Christian revivals drew inspiration from the missionary work of early monks, from the 16th-century Protestant Reformation (and Catholic Counter-Reformation) and from the uncompromising stance of the Covenanters in 17th-century Scotland and Ulster that came to Virginia and Pennsylvania with Presbyterians and other non-conformists. Its character formed part of the mental framework that led to the American War of Independence and the Civil War.[citation needed]
The 18th-century Age of Enlightenment had two camps: those who identified humans as only intellectual beings, Rationalists, and those who believed humans to be only passionate beings, followers of Romanticism. The philosophy of Earl of Shaftesbury III led to a proto-Romanticism that mixed with Christian worship to produce a tertium quid. The Methodist revival of John Wesley, Charles Wesley and George Whitefield in England and Daniel Rowland, Howel Harris and William Williams Pantycelyn in Wales and the Great Awakening in America prior to the Revolution. A similar (but smaller scale) revival in Scotland took place at Cambuslang (then a village), and is known as the Cambuslang Work.[1]
In the American colonies the First Great Awakening was a wave of religious enthusiasm among Protestants that swept the American colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, leaving a permanent impact on American religion. It resulted from powerful preaching that deeply affected listeners (already church members) with a deep sense of personal guilt and salvation by Christ. Pulling away from ancient ritual and ceremony, the Great Awakening made religion intensely emotive to the average person by creating a deep sense of spiritual guilt and redemption. Historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom sees it as part of a "great international Protestant upheaval" that also created Pietism in Germany, the Evangelical Revival and Methodism in England.[2] It brought Christianity to enslaved Americans[citation needed] and was a ground-breaking event in New England that challenged established authority. It incited rancor and division between the traditionalists who argued for ritual and doctrine and the revivalists who ignored or sometimes avidly contradicted doctrine, e.g. George Whitfield's being denied a pulpit in Anglican Churches after denying Anglican Doctrine. Its democratic features had a major impact in shaping the Congregational, Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, and German Reformed denominations, and strengthened the small Baptist and Methodist denominations. It had little impact on Anglicans and Quakers. Unlike the Second Great Awakening that began about 1800 and which reached out to non-believers, the First Great Awakening focused on people who were already church members. It changed their rituals, their piety, and their self-awareness.
The Hungarian Baptist Church sprung out of revival with the perceived liberalism of the Hungarian Reformed Church during the late 1800s. Many thousands of people were baptized in a revival that was led primarily by uneducated laymen, the so-called "peasant prophets".[3]
During the 18th century, England saw a series of Methodist revivalist campaigns that stressed the tenets of faith set forth by John Wesley and that were conducted in accordance with a careful strategy. In addition to stressing the evangelist combination of "Bible, cross, conversion, and activism," the revivalist movement of the 19th century made efforts toward a universal appeal – rich and poor, urban and rural, and men and women. Special efforts were made to attract children and to generate literature to spread the revivalist message.
Gobbett (1997) discusses the usefulness of historian