Christian Revival Research Articles

Portable Potency: Christianity, Mobility and Spiritual Landscapes among the Kelabit

In this paper I explore religious conversion and Christian identity among the Kelabit, an indigenous group from the interior of Borneo. The main thesis of the paper is that Christianity facilitates wider geographic mobility and urban migration and, over time, has led to a re-inscription of spiritual meanings in the local landscapes of rural homelands in the Kelabit Highland region. Beginning with a brief sketch of contemporary Kelabit life, presented through the lens of two individuals, I offer a history of Kelabit conversion and the ways that pre- and post- conversion beliefs are linked to issues of mobility and place. To illustrate how conversion has led to re-inscription of new spiritual meanings in the local landscape, the paper highlights the emergence of Christian revival movements in and around the Kelabit Highlands, including worship on nearby Mount Murud, which has become a highly significant site of spiritual practice.

Were the Jesus People Pentecostals?

This paper considers the nature of the short-lived Jesus People movement and its historical contribution to Christian revivalism by over-viewing the rather fragmented documentation provided by extant surveys, along with further contextual information and evidence provided by more recent sources.

The Revival of Practical Christianity: the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Samuel Wesley, and the Clerical Society Movement

Reflecting on the early endeavours of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) following its establishment in 1699, John Chamberlayne, the Society’s secretary, confidently noted the ‘greater spirit of zeal and better face of Religion already visible throughout the Nation’. Although Chamberlayne clearly uses the language of revival, through the nineteenth century, many historians of the Evangelical Revival in Britain saw it as a ‘new’ movement arising in the 1730s with the advent of the evangelical preaching of the early Methodists, Welsh and English. Nineteenth-century historians often confidently propagated the belief that they lived in an age inherently superior to the unreformed eighteenth century. The view that the Church of England from the Restoration to the Evangelical Revival was dominated by Latitudinarian moralism leading to dead and formal religion has recently been challenged but was a regular feature of Victorian scholarship that has persisted in some recent work. The traditional tendency to highlight the perceived dichotomy between mainstream Anglicanism and the Revival has served to obscure areas of continuity such as the fact that Whitefield and the Wesleys intentionally addressed much of their early evangelistic preaching to like-minded brethren in pre-existing networks of Anglican religious societies and that Methodism thrived as a voluntary religious society. Scores of historians have refuted the Victorian propensity to assert the Revival’s independence from the Church of England.

Boss Christians: The Business of Religion in the "Wenzhou Model" of Christian Revival

The Wenzhou model of church is used as a central metaphor for examining the cultural linkage between the boss Christians and local church development. The model is an important element of the local bosses' cultural strategies and it reflects a widespread pattern of elite desire for cultural and economic capital.

Renewed by the Word: The Bible and Christian Revival since the Reformation (review)

Renewed by the Word: The Bible and Christian Revival since the Reformation (review)

'Disturbing the Complacency of Religion'? The Evangelical Crusades of Dr Billy Graham and Father Patrick Peyton in Britain, 1951-54

This article explores some little-examined aspects of the widespread revival of religion in Britain in the 1950s through a close examination of the evangelistic crusades of the Baptist minister Dr Billy Graham and the Irish-American Roman Catholic priest, Fr Patrick Peyton. Against the backdrop of the ‘secularization debate’, which continues to dominate the existing historiography of the period, it suggests that a re-examination of the role of religion in English society might provide new and valuable insights into the broader social and cultural preoccupations of the post-war era. Employing a cross-denominational approach it argues that, much to the surprise of some contemporary commentators, the considerable appeal of these religious crusaders lay in their ability to articulate common fears and anxieties about the individual, the family, and Cold War society within a religious context. Moreover, from a contemporary historical perspective, it questions whether the appeal of Graham's and Peyton's evangelism is better viewed not as an instance of an ‘illusory’ religious revival of old-fashioned Christianity before a plunge into ‘secularism’, but rather as an illustration of a broader and hitherto unexplored shift in post-war England towards new configurations of religiosity.

Mystics and missionaries: Narratives of the spirit movement in Eastern Nigeria*

This paper combines insights from de Certeau's writings on mysticism, history and possession, along with Africanist perspectives on new religious movements to inform a case study of a Christian revival movement in late 1920s south-eastern Nigeria. The paper focuses on the events and fallout of the so-called Spirit Movement of 1927 in which bands of young men and women entered states of spiritual possession, paraded along the roads, attacked elders and secret society members, and killed suspected witches. Accounts of the origins and meaning of the Spirit Movement were highly contested and contradictory. This paper asks how we account for the mystical in historical ethnography, what light this event throws on colonial subjectivities, how we negotiate dominant missionary and colonial versions of such events, and how the problematic disjunction of sensorial experience and written account can be approached.

Renewed By The Word: the Bible and Christian Revival Since the Reformation – By J. N. Morris

Renewed By The Word: the Bible and Christian Revival Since the Reformation – By J. N. Morris

Worlds of power: religious thought and political practice in Africa

With Christian revivals (including Evangelicals in the White House), Islamic radicalism and the revitalisation of traditional religions it is clear that the world is not heading towards a community of secular states. Nowhere are religious thought and political practice more closely intertwined than in Africa. African migrants in Europe and America who send home money to build churches and mosques, African politicians who consult diviners, guerrilla fighters who believe that amulets can protect them from bullets, and ordinary people who seek ritual healing: all of these are applying religious ideas to everyday problems of existence, at every level of society. Far from falling off the map of the world, Africa is today a leading centre of Christianity and a growing field of Islamic activism, while African traditional religions are gaining converts in the West. One cannot understand the politics of the present without taking religious thought seriously. Stories about witches, miracles, or people returning from the dead incite political action. In Africa religious belief has a huge impact on politics, from the top of society to the bottom. Religious ideas show what people actually think about the world and how to deal with it. Ellis and Ter Haar maintain that the specific content of religious thought has to be mastered if we are to grasp the political significance of religion in Africa today, but their book also informs our understanding of the relationship between religion and political practice in general.

Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and the Pacific Islands

Michael E. Harkin (ed.), Reassessing Revitalization Movements: Perspectives from North America and Pacific Islands, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.In 1956, Anthony F.C. Wallace introduced concept of revitatization to draw attention to what he perceived as uniform process underlying such apparently diverse religious and political as Christian revivals, Utopian communities, cargo cults and revolutions (1956: 264). Around same time and into 1960s, other sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists introduced their own schemes and terminologies, although few surpassed Wallace's model in terms of its empirical and theoretical ambitions. While has gained some limited popularity as a general label for religious movements, particularly among North American ethnohistorians, concept remains closely associated with Wallace, whose elegant study of Handsome Lake movement amongst Iroquois provides its primary exemplar (Wallace 1970). The reassessing in Reassessing Revitalization Movements thus carries a double load: it refers to extension of Wallace's model into new terrain of Oceanic where it has rarely been applied and it refers to a critical re-examination of model itself.The book is comprised of a short graciously written Foreword by Wallace, an Introduction by Michael E. Harkin and twelve case studies. The first of descriptive chapters, running to more than 60 pages, is a tour de force by Maria Lepowsky that juxtaposes a detailed analysis of a 1785 mission Indian uprising in Spanish California with reflections on cargo cult activities in eastern Papua New Guinea that first appeared in 1880s. The remaining chapters rotate between Native North America and Pacific Islands, examining that date from late 18th century to present. All but two of contributors are anthropologists, but all make excellent use of documentary and oral evidence to present fine-grained historical perspectives on these varied movements.The case studies are uniformly excellent, written in engaging prose at a high level of theoretical sophistication. Taken on their own, they are worth price of admission. The juxtaposition of studies from two regions is often very revealing, especially as one moves closer to present That said, readers who come to volume expecting to find a sustained engagement with revitalization theory or creation of an updated comparative framework based on it will be disappointed. All of authors use revitalization movement as a general label and all comment upon aspects of Wallace's 1966 model. This provides chapters with a common touchstone. Yet only three of authors actually attempt to update and apply model as an analytic tool and even then only in most general way. Everyone is very polite. Jennifer S.H. Brown's comments on relevance of revitalization theory for an appreciation of an early prophetic movement amongst Hudson Bay Cree, however, reveal what I suspect is consensus opinion: model is useful as a rough starting point but a distraction from deeper issues of documentation and meaning (pp. 121-22).Harkin asks in Introduction, Why Revitalization? (p. xi). It's a good question, although one that he never answers clearly. Harkin states, as a belief, that is most sophisticated theoretical lens through which to view [religious] movements (p. xxv). He does not say why he believes this. Indeed, he does not even provide a synopsis of Wallace's model Instead, Introduction rambles between postmodern critiques of cargo cult studies, colonialist legacy of revitalization theory, dialogic approaches to understanding movements, role of deprivation in Wallace's theory and so forth. His most direct defence of Wallace appeals to the classic virtues of anthropology as a social science-empiricism, holism, comparison of institutions and so forth-rather than details of model (p. …

Erinnerungen an «die vielen rothgeweinten Thränen» | Memories of «the many red tears shed»

The cause of the famine of 1816/17 is generally attributed to the eruption of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia. A newly discovered memorial hand writing from Langenbruck commemorates,in a self-willed way, the catastrophic consequences of the failed harvest. The text can be divided into four parts, which are briefly described. Noteworthy are the indications of an instrumentalisation of the famine by the still young Christian Revival Movement in Basle.

Book Review: Dora Yu and Christian Revival in Twentieth-Century China

Book Review: Dora Yu and Christian Revival in Twentieth-Century China

Book Review: Dora Yu and Christian Revival in Twentieth-Century China

Book Review: Dora Yu and Christian Revival in Twentieth-Century China

Church, Minjung, and State: The Revival of Protestant Christianity in North Korea

The issue of church and state takes us to the heart of mission because the Gospel is the good news in every part of human life and society. Throughout the history of the church in Korea, the issues of church and state, religion and society have been deeply connected to the development of the Korean churches. Indeed, an important factor in Christianity’s success in Korea has been its frequent identification with political movements promoting Korean nationalism, independence, democracy, and Korean reunification. Especially in Northern Korea before the division of the peninsula in 1945, and in North Korea after it, the church–state relationship has been one of the crucial issues determining the fate of the churches. It is the purpose of this article to introduce the revival of Protestant Christianity in North Korea in the Communist context, with special reference to issues of church and state.

The Law and the Song: Hebraic, Christian and Pagan Revivals in Sixteenth-Century France. By Ehsan Ahmed. Birmingham, AL, Summa Publications, 1997. 162 pp.

The Law and the Song: Hebraic, Christian and Pagan Revivals in Sixteenth-Century France. By Ehsan Ahmed. Birmingham, AL, Summa Publications, 1997. 162 pp.

:The Law and the Song: Hebraic, Christian, and Pagan Revivals in Sixteenth- Century France

:<i>The Law and the Song: Hebraic, Christian, and Pagan Revivals in Sixteenth- Century France</i>

Cristo-Helios americano: la inculturación del culto al sol en el arte y arquitectura de los virreinatos de la Nueva España y del Perú

Tomando como punto de partida el culto al Sol instituido en las principales civilizaciones americanas, Jaime Lara propone que la labor de los misioneros españoles en América consistió en revivir ciertos aspectos sensuales del cristianismo medieval para acercarlo a las creencias religiosas indígenas. De este modo, más que un sincretismo natural, lo que hubo fue una modificación del cristianismo y de su liturgia para hacerlos empatar con los principales cultos solares de las civilizaciones americanas.

Christianity and the Irish Landscape in Lady Augusta Gregory's A Book of Saints and Wonders

As the heavily industrialized cultures reassess their environmental ethics in the face of a new millennium, many of their religious responses to environmental degradation have sought to renew ancient religious traditions of earth care. This is not a recent trend, but is deeply rooted in Romanticism and Euro-American thought. Almost invariably, modern admirers restructure the older religious traditions, adapting Iron Age or medieval myths and artistic motifs to current social concerns. The revival of Celtic Christianity in the last two decades has a better scholarly foundation than many similar experi-ments with pre-Christian European religions. Twentieth-century interpretation of religious rituals and literature, however, has different emphases than that of pre-modern Celts.

Earthen Vessels and Transcendent Power: American Presbyterians in China, 1837-1952 (review)

Reviews 59 G. Thompson Brown. Earthen Vessels and TranscendentPower: American Presbyterians in China, 1837-1952. American Society ofMissiology Series, no. 25. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1997. xxiii, 428 pp. Hardcover, isbn 1-57075-150-1. Thompson Brown's knowledge ofthe American Presbyterian missionary movement in East Asia is extensive and intimate. He was born in China, where his parents ' missionary service spanned the tumultuous half-century from the old empire through the Nationalist period and on up to the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. As a young boy in China, Brown experienced the nationalist revolution of the 1920s and 1930s. His own missionary career was in Korea, and he later served as director of the International Mission Program of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and as China Consultant to the Church during the 1980s. Brown has previously drawn on these experiences to write articles on the missionary movement in China and Korea and a book on the revival of Christianity in contemporary China. For this volume on the Presbyterian Church's missionary work in China, he has carefully researched the archives and official records of the northern (PCUSA) and southern (PCUS) branches of the denomination to provide the reader with a comprehensive account ofthe mission from its inception in 1837 to its expulsion from China in 1952. As Brown traces the history ofPresbyterian missions in China, he provides the reader with two essential contexts: the developments within the home church that affected mission work and the key events and changes, many of them quite dramatic, that occurred in the host country of China in these 115 years. While these accounts cannot capture all the complexities of their subjects, they are sufficient to highlight the opportunities and problems faced by the missionaries as they sought to create a Christian church in China and promote far-reaching changes in the politics and society that would nurture that church. From the beginning, there were controversies in the Presbyterian Church over the nature ofmission work. Should it be undertaken by the church itselfor by independent missionary societies such as the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions? In 1837 the General Assembly of the denomination decided on the former position and chose China as its initial mission field because ofits size, the availability of a common written language through which to reach the masses with printed literature, and the almost total lack ofpracticing Chris9 by University t^ans ^eK xheri) as superior Western military organization and weaponry opened up China in the 1840s and 1850s, Presbyterian missionaries had to find a satisfactory working relationship with the colonial powers that would provide a protective framework for their evangelizing efforts and yet not tarnish their work 6o China Review International: Vol. 6, No. i, Spring 1999 as being imperialistic. At the same time, the question ofpresbyteries in China arose. Should presbyteries be in the form ofa church government imposed on the Chinese Christian community, should they be linked with the mother church in the United States, and should missionaries be members ofthese Chinese presbyteries ? The General Assembly answered affirmatively in each case—decisions that were later to bedevil the missions when nationalism became the rallying cry of the Chinese. The Presbyterian Church and its mission work in China split in the 1860s as a result ofthe American civil war. The Southern branch sent its first missionary to China in 1867 and established its missions along the Grand Canal in the lower Yangzi valley province of Jiangsu and to a lesser extent in Shandong. Despite the conflict at home, the Northern and Southern branches in China cooperated in evangelistic campaigns, in establishing institutions ofhigher education, in publishing a common weekly newspaper, and in establishing a united Chinese Presbyterian Church. Arriving later, Southern Presbyterian missionaries usually patterned their mission work and structures after their northern counterparts. Brown's study is divided into two parts, covering, respectively, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But this is more than a chronological convenience. A qualitative change in missions accompanied the entrance into a new century. The Boxer Rebellion of 1900, with its attacks on numerous Chinese and Western Christians and the martyrdom among them, "tested...

The Early Christian Revival at S. Miniato al Monte: The Cardinal of Portugal Chapel

The Cardinal of Portugal Chapel in S. Miniato al Monte at Florence has been thought to be based solely on Brunelleschi's architecture, a view which has left its lavish interior ornament a little understood anomaly. This essay demonstrates that richly decorated cruciform martyria and mausolea of the Early Christian period were sources for conception of the chapel. Its formal and symbolic assimilation with the church of S. Miniato is elucidated, and Brunelleschi's influence is reassessed. The cardinal's chapel emerges as a monument of key importance in the Early Christian revival in fifteenth-century Florentine art.