Presence
The revolution will be livestreamed
I don't know what's happening at Asbury University and a large part of me doesn't want to know. If you haven't heard, bless you, there has been (according to reports) some kind of revival going on, with a student-led meeting of worship going on for days and days and days. I have read a couple of judicious articles about it, and I have also been assailed on social media with various people's hot takes, and I don't want to add another one. I don't know what's going on at Asbury.
"The revolution will not be televised"
You might know this line from the 70s song, or the poem, which was preceded by its use as a catchphrase among 60s Black Power groups. We, however, live in an age of mass media, which is why the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the fall of Russian Communism, were both clear events that I watched on television. We live in an even more bizarre age now, where the Russian Invasion of Ukraine is probably the first war that you can watch on youtube, tiktok, and instagram. Similarly, Asbury (despite its best efforts) is struggling to stay out of the news-feeds.
What is revival anyway? I have been reading up on a far less well-known revival, the Hebridean Revival that gripped the Isle of Lewis, in 1949-1952. It's impetus came in two women, Peggy and Christine Smith, 84 and 82 years old. They prayed, on the basis of Isaiah 44:3, regularly praying in their cottage from late at night into the wee hours of the morning. And, in time, God answered their call.
Duncan Campbell, a minister through whom God was pleased to work at that time said "Revival is a going of God among His people, and an awareness of God laying hold of the community." not a time of religious entertainment, an advertising campaign, not even a successful evangelistic mission, "but in revival the fear of God lays upon the community, moving men and women, who until then had no concern for spiritual things, to seek after God."
Put otherwise, we might call it a corporate outpouring of God's Spirit that involves a heightened sense of God's presence, and leads to (generally) empowered witness, confession and repentance of sin, heighted devotion and pursuit of holiness, and a renewed and revitalised church; very often it also leads to conversion and mission and social reform.
Now, I fall on a fairly uncharismatic end of the spectrum, and I also inhabit a church/cultural context that fought some bitter battles against Pentecostalism and charismatic movements, so that there is a strong suspicion of anything that even vaguely sounds emotionalist, experiential, etc.. Some of that is warranted - I find very many elements of contemporary charismatic theology to be simply unbiblical. Some of it is guilt by association. The only people in Australia that like to talk about revival tend to be on the charismatic > Pentecostal spectrum. And, honestly, I find their interest in revival kind of unhealthy. Because it always seems to manifest as a desire, and an expectation, that there will be some unprecedent revival experience that will just blow people away and virtually usher in the Kingdom in Australia.
Two types of criticism pop up about the current events in Asbury. (A) "It's not real revival if it doesn't include my pet issue", and (B) "Leave those kids alone". Mostly I'm in camp B, I don't think what's happening at Asbury has anything to do directly with my day to day life and my local context, and I don't think criticisms of type A are very valid. That, however, is not to say that revivals and revivalism isn't critiquable though, and here's perhaps my biggest wonder:
I've been listening to the tremendously powerful Forest Whitaker recording of Frederick Douglass "Narrative of the Life of an American Slave". In it, he speaks of one of his masters, Master Auld. I'll quote:
In August, 1832, my master attended a Methodist camp– meeting held in the Bay–side, Talbot county, and there experienced religion. I indulged a faint hope that his conversion would lead him to emancipate his slaves, and that, if he did not do this, it would, at any rate, make him more kind and humane. I was disappointed in both these respects. It neither made him to be humane to his slaves, nor to emancipate them. If it had any effect on his character, it made him more cruel and hateful in all his ways; for I believe him to have been a much worse man after his conversion than before. Prior to his conversion, he relied upon his own depravity to shield and sustain him in his savage barbarity; but after his conversion, he found religious sanction and support for his slaveholding cruelty.
Douglass included an Appendix to his Narrative that makes clear his views on religion. It is a powerful piece of rhetoric.
What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—
Revivals of religion and revivals in the slave–trade go hand in hand together. together. The slave prison and the church stand near each other. The clanking of fetters and the rattling of chains in the prison, and the pious psalm and solemn prayer in the church, may be heard at the same time.
The First Great Awakening in British North America (1730s-1740) led to virtually no impact on slavery, and two of its leading figures who loom large in American Evangelicalism, Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield, were both slaveholders and articulated a slaveholder theology.
(Interlude: there have been revivals in Australia, and we might critically ask here, what impact did revivals have, if any, on the treatment of Indigenous people by Australia settlers?)
Despite both the First and the Second (ca. 1790-1840) Great Awakenings spreading to the enslaved population and leading to revival and conversions, neither did anything to uproot nor dismantle institution of slavery in the US. What does that say about revival? What does it say about God? What does it say about us?
I have two, tentative, thoughts on this. Firstly, that revival, as much as it may involve a particular and dramatic movement of the Spirit, still works very much in the people and contexts it occurs. The sheer and abject moral blindness to the evil of slavery so shaped their experience of revival, that perhaps it was not something they ever conceived of needing to repent of, unlike the more obvious and socially-recognised sins of, say, drunkenness and adultery. Secondly, that the Spirit showing up and doing amazing things doesn't mean that the Spirit shows up and does all things all at once.
Where does this leave us, or me? Honestly, I think the idea that we are meant to await, expect, and pray for revival as some kind of religious cure-all that will magic our problems away, is not what Scripture wants us to be doing or leads us to expect. And yet, when you think about all those elements associated with revival - earnest, deep, long, and committed prayer. praise and worship of God. Repentance, Confession, Increased Devotion, Reconciliations, Conversions, and transformed communities - all those things are the work of the Spirit, whether they show up individually or collectively, over time or all at once. Those are workings of the Spirit that we all ought to long for, deeply desire, and so pray earnestly for. Whatever we think of revivals is almost irrelevant; rather, let us pray for the Spirit to work his works.
Post-Script: If you do want to read some judicious takes on what’s happening at Asbury, here are some things worth reading that aren’t dross: Thomas Lyons via Scot McKnight; Craig Keener, and Keener again responding to some criticism.