We’ve been here in Hughes Auditorium for over a hundred hours — praying, crying, worshiping, and uniting — because of Love. We’ve even expanded into Estes Chapel across the street at Asbury Theological Seminary and beyond. I can proclaim that Love boldly because God is Love.
— Alexandra Presta, Asbury University
Asbury University, an Evangelical institution in Wilmore, Kentucky, is presently experiencing what is commonly called in Evangelical circles a “revival.”
The Lexington Herald Reporter reports:
As you may have heard in news reports, a spontaneous religious revival broke out Feb. 8 at an ordinary, scheduled chapel service at Asbury University in Wilmore. As I write this, nearly a week later, it’s still going, 24 hours a day. The faithful and the curious have flooded into Wilmore from around the state and the nation to be part of the experience.
“It’s not winding down,” said Craig Keener, a widely regarded biblical studies scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary, which is across the street from the university. “People have been praying for it for years,” he said. “I was hoping it would happen before I retired.”
At some points the university’s chapel has been so crowded the seminary’s chapel is being used as an overflow site. The two schools are separate institutions. Keener emphasized he wasn’t involved with the revival’s outbreak and isn’t a leader of the ongoing events. But he’s attended services at the university multiple days. “It started with the students,” he said. “I think they’re the most important component.”
He said the gathering has been marked by prayer and worship, mainly, with an occasional sermon, too. This past Saturday, Feb. 11, roughly 1,000 people took the Lord’s Supper together.
The awakening began with an ordinary, regularly scheduled 10 a.m. chapel service. For some reason, this one didn’t end. People didn’t want to leave. They felt what they interpreted as an unusually palpable presence of God.
Students felt an “unusually palpable presence of God.” More on that in a moment.
Charisma News reporter Anna Lowe adds:
I sit in the back row of the Hughes balcony. My legs are starting to ache from stiffly sitting in the same position for so long. Voices echo throughout the high ceilings as the pounding beat of a drum rattles my bones. The light shifts with the sun through the yellow, artfully crafted, stained-glass windows facing me.
“Our affection, our devotion, poured out on the feet of Jesus.”
Over and over again, this refrain repeats.
I sat here on Wednesday, I sat here on Thursday and I sat here on Friday. Hopeful to connect with Jesus in the earth-shattering way it seems everyone else has. Or at least in the way their Instagram stories make it seem.
After my 1 p.m. class on Wednesday, I felt called to go to Hughes. Lately, my heart has been incredibly hardened. It was full of frustration due to so many situations in my life that I felt unheard and unvalued. For the sake of complete transparency, it had even been impacting me physically with a tightening in my chest, a bodily response from being unable to access my emotions. When I arrived at Hughes, my immediate inclination was to take photos and record what was happening through interviews, as my job typically requires. In my heart, I felt an outer nudge to be still. And so that’s what I did.
Nothing immediately happened to me or changed in my heart. A beam of light did not cast itself upon me, and thank goodness, the Lord did not immediately smite me out of existence even though I deserved it. I did not let the lack of immediacy deter me, even though I thought about leaving. All that mattered at that moment was our Creator. The transfer of my focus nudged me to ponder how infinitesimally small we are. The situations that enraptured my mind were mere specks on the horizon compared to eternity.
My heart shifted, and a resentment that had followed me for months was lifted by the grace of God alone. Walls of bitterness and agitation released themselves from my mind. I felt them cast out of my mind and heart to the point where I have almost completely forgotten the prior feeling. Knowing myself, I am confident this shift is not of my own volition. I was set and satisfied in my resentment, but God had different plans for me.
This moment of absolute peace shifted my reality. My conversations with friends are deeper. Reconciliation is genuine and pure in heart with no intent to harm. God-prompted, open discussions are strengthening beliefs in ways I never could achieve on my own.
Evangelical Peter Greig had this to say about the Revival:
Having preached here in Kentucky’s Asbury chapel, where I had the privilege of leading hundreds of students in prayer late into the night, I am thrilled to hear the credible reports of a significant new work of the Spirit breaking out there over these last six days, and now beginning to spread to other universities.
I am particularly grateful to those who seem to be stewarding this humbly, wisely and well. (Some of them will be joining me tomorrow night for a time of impartation at an online seminar organised by @reviveeurope and @247prayer)
Let me also say that I understand the cautious questions being asked in some quarters. These are natural and sensible.
But after a quarter century thinking and praying about such things, and with much on my heart, for now I simply want to say just two things:
Firstly, as has often been said, when it comes to reports of revival I would far rather be gullible than cynical. As Gamaliel said to the Sanhedrin: “If this teaching or movement is merely human it will collapse of its own accord. But if it should be from God, you cannot defeat them, and you might actually find yourselves to be fighting against God!” (Acts 5:38-39, J.B. Phillips)
Secondly, we need this. What’s happening at Asbury is not everything but it is something and right now we need something to shock the system so that this generation can experience for themselves the life-changing power of God. We need repentance and holiness. We need the kind of outpouring of the Spirit on campuses that can incubate and detonate a new generation to preach the gospel with greater confidence, fight injustice with greater defiance, and transform society with greater intelligence.
Beyond human programs, products and personalities, we need God’s power, presence and perspective. In other words we need a sovereign inbreaking of the Holy Spirit.
America was built on such awakenings. The UK was saved by them. And they always, always, always begin in precisely this way: with seasons of concerted prayer.
The desire and need for revival (renewal or awakening) is baked into the DNA of millions of Evangelicals. Churches regularly pray for revival, pleading with God to set their souls on fire again.
Those of us raised in Baptist churches likely sang the nineteenth-century hymn Revive Us Again countless times:
We praise thee, O God, for the Son of thy love,
for Jesus who died, and is now gone above.Refrain:
Hallelujah! Thine the glory, hallelujah! Amen!
Hallelujah! Thine the glory, revive us again.We praise thee, O God, for thy Spirit of light
who has shown us our Savior and scattered our night. [Refrain]We praise thee, O God, for the joy thou hast giv’n
to thy saints in communion, these foretastes of heav’n. [Refrain]Revive us again, fill each heart with thy love.
May each soul be rekindled with fire from above. [Refrain]
My wife, Polly, and I attended Midwestern Baptist College in Pontiac, Michigan in the 1970s. Revival was on the lips of professors and students alike. We pleaded with God to send revival, and, at times, he did. Virtually every week, we would sing Set My Soul Afire during daily chapel services:
Set my soul afire Lord, for Thy Holy Word,
Burn it deep within me, let Thy voice be heard
Millions grope in darkness in this day and hour,
I will be a witness, fill me with Thy pow’r (chorus)Chorus
Set my soul afire Lord, set my soul afire.
Make my life a witness of Thy saving pow’r.
Millions grope in darkness, waiting for Thy Word.
Set my soul afire, Lord, set my soul afire!Set my soul afire, Lord, for the lost in sin,
Give to me a passion as I seek to win;
Help me not to falter never let me fail,
Fill me with Thy Spirit, let Thy will prevail. (chorus)Set my soul afire, Lord, in my daily life.
Far too long I’ve wandered in this day of strife;
Nothing else will matter but to live for Thee,
I will be a witness for Christ lives in me. (chorus)
For those reading my writing for the first time, I was raised in the Evangelical church, particularly the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) church movement. I pastored Evangelical churches in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan for twenty-five years. I spent fifty years in churches where talk about revival was common. The churches I pastored held one or more revival meetings every year. In one church I pastored, we had protracted revival meetings — fifteen days, three Sundays of non-stop preaching, singing, and testifying. I have witnessed and experienced firsthand God’s “unusually palpable presence.” Souls saved, lives transformed, sins confessed, wrongs made right. People lingering for hours after church, not wanting to leave. There were numerous days when we saw the Shekinah glory of God and felt his presence in our midst.
I have been a student of revivals all of my adult life, both as a pastor and now as a vocal critic of Evangelicalism. I have read and studied the source materials for the First Great Awakening, Second Great Awakening, the Azusa Street Revival, the New Hebrides Revival, the Brownsville Revival, and other mighty moves of God. I read countless biographies of the lives of notable revivalists such as George Whitefield, Nikolas Count Ludwig Von Zinzendorf, Jonathan Edwards, David Brainerd, John and Charles Wesley, Barton Stone, Asahel Nettleton, Charles Finney, Christmas Evans, William Williams, Hudson Taylor, David Livingstone, DL Moody, CT Studd, Billy Sunday, Andrew Murray, Evan Roberts, and others. I am confident that I understand the history and nature of revivalism, both from what I have read and heard, but also from what I have experienced firsthand. I have personally felt the presence of God in my life; felt the Holy Spirit come upon me in unusual and powerful ways. The question now, for me — now that I no longer believe in the existence of God — is what do I make of my own personal experiences and that which college students are presently experiencing at Asbury?
Is the revival at Asbury an “unexplainable” event? Defenders of the revival will point to its spontaneity and suddenness as evidence that God is the primary mover and shaker. However, I am convinced that there is an earthly explanation for the Asbury Revival, and every other revival before it. Every revival can be explained from a sociological and psychological perspective. Indoctrination, conditioning, and tribalism naturally prepare Evangelicals for experiencing “revival.” Is it any wonder that the primary recipients of revival at Asbury are young adults, many of whom have been raised in revivalistic homes and churches their entire lives? Some of them were homeschooled or attended private Christian schools. My wife and I have six adult children, all of whom were homeschooled and/or attended a private Christian school operated by their parents. They spent their formative years hearing about and experiencing “revival.” Our children read countless biographies about the great revivalists. They were primed and ready for revival.
Years ago, our two oldest sons went to a conference in Louisville, Kentucky sponsored by People of Destiny (PDI)/Sovereign Grace Ministries. Both boys were serious about their faith, and this conference was an opportunity for them to spend several days with like-minded young adults. Upon their return, it was evident the conference had made a difference in their lives, especially son number two. He was on fire for God. He came to Polly and me and informed us that he was packing up his stuff and moving to Louisville. He was certain that was what God wanted him to do. Fortunately, I was able to talk him off the ledge, telling him to wait awhile; that if he still felt that way later, I would support his move. Sure enough, several weeks later, the “voice” of the Holy Spirit receded and his desire to move abated. As I talked to my son tonight about this time in his life, he told me, “truth be told, I think the real reason I wanted to move was that there were a lot of girls in that church. As you remember, Dad, our church didn’t have many girls my age.” He is not the first Evangelical young person to feel revival in his genitals.
My son’s revival experience can easily be explained by looking at the various earthly factors that led him to believe God wanted him to move away from his family and join up with a new, exciting megachurch. Mom and Dad, at their country storefront church, couldn’t compete with that.
What happened at this conference? Preaching, music, and personal testimonies were used to emotionally manipulate those in attendance. This is exactly what is happening at Asbury. The methods of revival have always been the same: use powerful preaching, extended singing, and passionate testimonies to stir the emotions of attendees. Used correctly, these things will always produce “revival” — no God needed. Young adults, in particular, are vulnerable to emotional manipulation.
I was a pastor for twenty-five years. It was not long before I learned to use the tools of my trade to produce “revival” — particularly at Somerset Baptist Church in Mount Perry Ohio, a congregation I pastored for eleven years. Over six hundred people were saved and countless Christians got right with God during my time at Somerset Baptist. People would drive from as far as an hour away to hear me preach and experience God’s mighty work at our humble country church (which had grown to be the largest Protestant church in Perry County). At the time, I thought God was using me to do his work. What else explained what was happening in our midst?
Of course, all “good” things come to an end. Revivals come and go. By the end of my tenure at Somerset Baptist, things returned to “normal.” Attendance dropped and people stopped driving for an hour to hear me preach. I became just another country preacher declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ on a rural hilltop. In time, I moved to San Antonio to co-pastor a young, fast-growing Sovereign Grace church. God was in our midst again. Today, both pastors are gone and the church is a shell of what it once was. Where did God go?
If the Holy Spirit (God himself) lives inside of every believer, why is there a need for revival? If God is all Evangelicals claim he is, why do believers need revived? Evangelicals hear two to four sermons a week, read their Bibles, and consume countless books that purport to tell them how to have fulfilled, Holy Spirit-powered lives. Yet, despite all of these things, Evangelicals still need revived. Why is that?
When we study revivalism from a sociological and psychological perspective, we can easily see the human causes of “revival.” What is attributed to God can just as easily be attributed to human influence. Polly and I have been married for almost forty-five years. We have experienced a lot of ebb and flow in our years together; times when passions ran hot, and times when they didn’t; times when we craved intimacy, and times when we were consumed with other things. So it is in churches. There will be times when it seems the whole congregation is on fire for God. There will other times when the church settles into a comfortable marriage. I pastored Our Father’s House in West Unity Ohio from 1995-2002. I loved this church. Great people. Over the course of seven years, we only lost three families (they didn’t like that we were using praise and worship music). It was all love, peace, and kumbaya at Our Father’s House. Attendance reached the 50s. Few people were saved. We were just another boring Evangelical church filled with good people, loving people; a church where nothing meaningful was happening and no one seemed to mind.
Both what happened at Somerset Baptist and Our Father’s House have human explanations. Believers willing to honestly examine their spiritual experiences will come to the same conclusions: that human instrumentality is behind everything. Of course, for those presently experiencing revival at Asbury University, no amount of rational explanation will change their minds. When you are dealing with alleged supernatural experiences, reason and rationality play no part. When faith and the supernatural are invoked, no rational discussion can be had.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I, too, remember attending many revivals. And I agree, with one addition: the people there are high on their emotional experience. I would take these God experiences more seriously if the people involved started helping the poor, the widows, the rejects from good society. But that’s not what happens. Instead, most of these people will double down on their theology and continue to reject most of society as godless, liberal, communist, Democratic, gay/trans, Muslims, POC, immigrants etc. They will just feel even happier about it, since they had their BRAND! NEW! GOD! EXPERIENCE!–which means they can only be doing God’s work. /s
It will be interesting to measure how many of these converts are still church-going after one or two years. It took secular historians some years to research and publish the truth about the much-vaunted welsh revival of 1904. They found what x-tian preachers never mentioned in sermons glorifying it – that many of the churches that filled in 1904 had emptied again by1906. Doubtless some, or many, at Asbury will find they can’t maintain the supernatural and emotional highs that they’re promised will happen daily. And certainly answers to prayer to pass those exams, when, instead of revising they went out to revival shindigs every night, will go unanswered! Those poor deluded young folk!
Full marks, Bruce for giving Christmas Evans a mention. I live by the bridge from the mainland over to the beautiful Isle of Anglesey where he planted many chapels and love to hike there. I see two, long closed chapels called after him. I always think that surely, a god who wants our worship and devotion would get islanders to maintain that level of church-going and faith, if it was so powerful and he’s so powerful….but instead there are hundreds of closed chapels. Each of course believing they alone were repositories of The True Gospel, so had split from others just down the street from them! A handful of x-tians, elderly of course, still do prayer walks there regularly, though haven’t heard they’ve restarted in 2023, the walkers being older and frailer than last year….but when they did them, the leader told me they were always aware of the ‘spirit of darkness’ over their region! Poor ole Xmas must be turning in his grave!
This is not the first revival Asbury has experienced. I attended Asbury for one year and we were constantly reminded of the great Asbury revival. A major goal was to replicate this(so it’s no wonder they finally pulled it off.) Chapel attendance was mandatory and as expected it was manipulative and fundamentalist at its core. Alter calls were regular and I often saw the same people go forward to confess whatever they felt guilty about at the time. Although I came from a sheltered home I was worldly compared to the average student but even so I got sucked into the hyper spirituality prevalent on the campus. Planning to return to Asbury after taking a year off to make some money I returned for a visit and saw things through different eyes. Rather than this being a spirit filled welcoming campus it was just a closed community for very young adults to be protected from the outside world. Although still a Christian at the time I had seen enough of this world.
Thank you for explaining some about revivals and their history. This is something on my list to study at some point (I have a lot of things to study). At fundamentalist Christian school we learned about the Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening which were presented as pivotal in the growth of the US. I suppose they were, but the school of course presented them as revivals instigated by a real live deity instead of emotional outpouring dependent on social factors.
I had never heard of Azusa or any of the others until I started studying evangelicalism a few years ago.
I can still recall the emotions of revivals. At the time as a teen and young adult, I thought they were the real moving of a deity. Having experienced those types of emotions with non-religious events, I understand now that they’re emotions of a crowd sharing in some excitement brought on in an orchestrated environment.
Sounds like Woodstock for evangelicals
My thoughts exactly!
“He is not the first Evangelical young person to feel revival in his genitals.”
That has to be the line of the week.
What Bruce says about the social component of revivals is so important. It explains, in part, why most participants are young. What I wonder, though, is what about America has made it the stage for so many revivals.
I can’t comment about the USA, but here in Wales, I find the history of revivals interesting. The great one of 1904, still in the folk memory here can be explained by the fact that life was harsh, men worked in slate quarries or coal mines and died in their 40s from emphysema leaving families destitute. So alcohol was a relief from that. But these were men who knew their addiction meant that they drank away their wages so their families nearly starved. No Al-Anon back then, so a preacher who came along and claimed jesus could deliver you, was just what you needed to hear. Of course then you became a member of the Temperance Movement, but my own welsh father told of deacons who preached against the ‘demon drink’ on Sundays being seen to go to the back door of the village pub after dark with a jug to buy ale in the week. X-tian hypocrisy…twas ever thus!
My first thought: a mediocre academic institution, midterm exams coming up, student think “why not have a revival?”. Evidently Cedarville is trying the same thing. I’d expect a few more copycats to pop up at Christian colleges that pay lip service to academic integrity. I’m not the only one to think this, a quick search showed the Babylon Bee also came up with the idea.
https://babylonbee.com/news/report-asbury-revival-started-night-before-huge-group-project-was-due
Decades ago, Husband and I visited Hawai’i and I picked up a lighthearted but respectful book of short stories and cartoons, directed at us clueless Mainland visitors, with the intent of helping us understand the local cultures. One cartoon showed a figure praying at the base of a smoking volcano near school buildings, with a conversation caption that went something like, “Why is he out there praying so hard to Madam Pele?” “He didn’t study for his exam today.”
The message was something about the commonality of human cultures, I suspect, but it resonated with me, especially since by high school I’d concluded that praying for a good exam took time that I could spend studying or sleeping.
I despise large group events and avoid them whenever possible (which is almost all the time now). My housemate is a science/science fiction/fantasy nerd and loves to attend a major, multi-day convention in Atlanta every year (Dragoncon) that is about all those things. For reference, we’re in California. Getting there, finding hotel roommates, and all that is a major hassle. In her mid-50s, she still does it faithfully. This year she even did some cosplay, and listening to her in the dining room, talking out the details of that in the weeks ahead, was a joy for me.
She comes home from Dragoncon in joyful low-earth orbit. Even this year, bringing COVID home–which she managed to not share with either Husband or me–she was uncomfortably sick and STILL bouncing off the ceiling. She has experienced so much…and yet, when she talks about it, my reaction is oh, that’s nice, I’m really glad you enjoyed it. Which I am. I love to see a friend so happy. I”m also not immune to the lure of the genres, I write some of it. But those conversations tell me that these are EXPERIENCES, driven by psychology and socialness, and only secondarily by substance. Barring intervention by Loki, she’ll attend again this year.
If that isn’t revival, I don’t know what is, and yet she’s an atheist like me.
“why is there a need for revival?” That’s an interesting question. One thing about the fundie life, it isn’t particularly natural. We are animals and doing God stuff all the time isn’t our main motivation such as the urge to merge and the need to feed. Maybe the revival might be a good place to ahem “meet chicks” or as Desmond Morris would put it “parading”. (And of course they’d be members of your own tribe) In which case it was never about God at all. In fact most religious proceedings aren’t, they are about “me”.
This happens on a smaller scale with summer church camp. Pack up the teenagers in the bus for a one-week intensive experience together, do a few evening campfire meetings toward the end with the worship choruses, emotions (and hormones) running high, and voila! People start sharing these personal testimonies, crying, rededicating their lives to Jesus, etc. They come back “on fire for God!” …and it lasts a few months, and then it’s back to normal. I witnessed (and experienced) this first-hand several times when I was growing up in the church.
As you said, there are social/psychological group dynamics at work here, as they are during worship services.
What was the last big one? That one in Lakeland FL? With that weird guy who would kick and punch people while laying hands on them? I remember the Toronto Blessing revival, my pastor got the anointing from it and came back and spread it around our fellowship and everyone was falling over and whatnot.