The revival at Asbury University in Kentucky remains a head-scratcher for Christian insiders and agnostic outsiders alike. Indeed, the Asbury revival has even mystified Protestants who stress a “born-again” experience — the very type of life-changing moment that revivals are supposed to produce.
Analysis from Christianity Today’s authors conveys both caution and hope. Mike Cosper is impressed the Asbury revivals didn’t rely on celebrities and that its promoters avoided wading into the culture wars. The revived “confessed their own sins and asked for holiness,” while “the word ‘humility’ came up again and again.”
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Russell Moore acknowledged a pervasive cynicism prevents believing the revival is authentic. He could have added that ties between white, born-again Protestants and former President Donald Trump are another reason for lower expectations. For now, Moore recommends reserving judgment. “The full effects of the Asbury revival will take years to see,” Moore noted. Still, he said he hopes that “God might just hear, as he has before, our earnest plea: ‘Revive us again.’”
Michael McClymond, a historical theologian who specializes in the study of such revivals, highlighted Asbury’s positive qualities, again noting the dearth of celebrities and that the weeks of services happened in person. The revival also displayed “marks of spontaneity and fidelity to Scripture.”
Ross Douthat put his finger on the problem of assessing a phenomenon such as Asbury. How do modern people conditioned to live by empirical data use those same skills to evaluate something that defies the five senses? In the study of religion, Douthat wrote, secular academics “emphasize the deep structural forces shaping practice and belief — the effects of industrialization or the scientific revolution, suburbanization or the birth control pill.” In contrast, theologians inclined to believe in spiritual phenomena “emphasize theological debates and evangelization strategies.” Neither intellectual approach, he concluded, can determine whether “the mystical has suddenly arrived.”
Seldom remembered in discussions about revivalism is a point British historian David Bebbington made over three decades ago about the ties between awakened Protestantism and the Enlightenment. In a book often used to define evangelicalism, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, Bebbington made a historical connection that bears directly on the Asbury revivals. The confidence that evangelicals such as John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards had about revivals as genuine works of God stemmed from the appropriation of Enlightenment ideas about the acquisition of knowledge leading to truth.
Whereas Puritans exercised caution when it came to the authenticity of religious experiences, 18th century Protestants channeling Enlightenment ideas about scientific modes of exploration spoke with greater certainty about the sincerity of revivals. Thanks to increased confidence in our ability to know and understand the world around us, the fame and importance of revivals had risen. Instead of science and faith moving in opposite directions, they walked in tandem.
Christians are wise to heed Christ’s own caution about trusting our five all-too-human senses. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warned against “practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them.” What really mattered was what God “who sees in secret” observes. And yet, God also historically has given his people many signs to reveal his divine authority.
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According to this more extended history of evangelicalism, the Asbury revivals are evidence of God’s continued presence. Roman Catholics may not see how the bread in the Mass becomes the body of Christ. Presbyterians may not be able to hear when a pastor’s sermon becomes, as one Reformation creed put it, “the very word of God.” But thanks to the signs and wonders of revivals, including the crowds, the long services, and the obvious emotions, and help from the eyes of faith, one can know God is at work in the world.
The Asbury revival is a reminder that the most emotional and experiential of Christian religious experiences have been, for at least three centuries, evidence that some Protestants are simply following the science.
D. G. Hart teaches history at Hillsdale College and is an associate scholar at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.