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In our Modern Age, the idea of Revival or the concept of a Great Awakening may sound like fanatical religious folklore steeped in mystery and myth, but they're actually well-documented historical events with lasting cultural impact. We're now living in one of the most contentious times in human history. War, divisive politics, mental illness, despair, loneliness—they're at all-time highs.
What if I told you that this isn't actually new? Not really. That over the past hundreds of years, the same exact thing happened. People went away from God, their faith got stale, things got bad, but then God revived them. Fast forward to 2024. We have dead things in our lives and in our country that need to be brought back to life. As followers of Jesus, we have reason to believe that not only is Revival possible, it's actually part of God's design, his rescue plan for every generation. And that based on history, we're actually overdue. Revivals and Awakenings are real, radical, and history-changing. They bring dead things back to life, and they're still happening.
Dr. Michael McMan, one of the foremost experts on the topic, says spiritual revivals and Awakenings have happened in the history of America every 50 years or so. Let's look at five of the biggest Revival movements in America that just might uncover how we can be part of the next movement of God.
In the early 1700s, when America was still just a ragtag group of colonies, the faith that brought many settlers here had died, corrupted by greed and ambition. The future of the new world? Bleak. Then, a revolutionary thing happened that no one expected. A radical spiritual wave swept through the young colonies, and their dead faith wasn't dead anymore. It undied. It was revived. This historical reality was called the Great Awakening, and it changed the course of history forever. It even played a large role in kickstarting the American Revolution and the founding of our country. Speaking in 1818, the second President of the United States, John Adams, said, "The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people. A change in their religious sentiments was the real American Revolution."
Rewind to the early 1700s. As the colonies of America went through severe growing pains, far from the religious devotion of the original pilgrims, church membership had tanked, and culture had become corrupt. One historian wrote that it was a time when businessmen cut corners, political leaders distorted the truth to win votes, and town fathers slighted the needs of the community to enrich themselves. Sound familiar? The European Enlightenment, or Age of Reason, had made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the American colonies. Christians were feeling complacent with their method of worship and were disillusioned with how wealth and rationalism were dominating the culture. God's people needed to be brought back to life. The stage was set for renewal of faith, and in the late 1720s, an awakening began to take root.
A young man named George Whitfield came to America. Unlike the monotone preachers of the day who taught the Bible like a dry, academic religious lecture, George Whitfield was a performer. He was dramatic and commanding, with a booming voice said to be able to reach 15,000 people without amplification. He brought new life to teaching the word of God. Breaking with tradition, Whitfield held meetings outside in the open air, where large crowds flocked around him, and passerbys were drawn in. It offended many of the traditional preachers of the day, but it worked. It's estimated that 80% of American colonists personally heard Whitfield preach during The Awakening. Church attendance swelled from 14% to 55%. The gift of the first Great Awakening of faith was understanding that God was not a disapproving father looking for an opportunity to punish his children, which is how it felt to serve this guy, but a merciful, pursuing, personal God. It supported important Bible-based values like human dignity, education, missions, humanitarianism, inclusion, and equality. The Revival also led to the establishment of several renowned educational institutions, including Princeton, Rutgers, Brown, and Dartmouth universities. By the time the first Great Awakening died down, the seeds of a new country had already started to bloom.
But humans are nothing if not predictable, and so the pendulum swung again. By the end of the 18th century, the Industrial Revolution brought huge technological advancements, but many educated Americans no longer professed traditional Christian beliefs. Church attendance had plummeted again, with only 6% of America's population belonging to one. It was in reaction to this growing imbalance that a REV spread westward. In the first half of the 19th century, a Second Great Awakening had begun. Where would you least expect a Revival to start? How about Bourbon country?
In August 1801, a Presbyterian minister named Barton Stone, living in the wilderness of Kentucky, prepared for a communion service at Cane Ridge. While it was common for this tiny community of churchgoers to spend days preparing for these services, this particular meeting exploded far beyond anyone's expectations. The faithful planning of a small community let the supernatural wave of the Spirit of God, and it's estimated that 20,000 people showed up. That was 10% of the entire population of Kentucky at the time. People camped around the Cane Ridge meeting house for over a mile. The sound of the crowd was described like the thunder of Niagara Falls. Cane Ridge is found in Bourbon country, so the spirit flowed in every sense. The event was so disruptive that the military helped with logistics, water, tents, and order. One pastor reported that after Cane Ridge, not a single month passed for the next 25 years without news of a Revival happening someplace in America. It might have started small, but the ripple kept growing.
The Second Great Awakening really reached its peak with Charles Finney. Despite looking more like a pirate than a preacher, Finney brought the lessons learned at Cane Ridge to the heart of America's greatest cities: Philadelphia, Boston, and New York. Historians estimate that as many as 500,000 people came to faith through Finney's urban gatherings. Emphasizing our potential to do good in the world, Finney was an early advocate of the Abolitionist Movement against slavery, and many of his converts joined in that work. By the mid-1800s, the population of America had increased fourfold, but church attendance surpassed it, growing 10x over the same period of time, all while simultaneously laying the tracks that would eventually lead to the end of slavery.
While the first two Great Awakenings were started by the experts, led by professional clergy, the next wave of Revival would be in response to a regular person who had the boldness to ask God to move. Imagine this: What would happen if we simply asked God, "What would you have me do?" America was a nervous wreck leading up to the Civil War. Tensions between the states, widespread labor disputes, and regular bank crises made anxiety and stress a way of life. Jeremiah L. Fear lived in New York City in the midst of this crisis. Jeremiah earnestly prayed, "Lord, what would you have me do?" Working with his local church, he started weekly prayer meetings during the lunch hour. No preaching, no music, just a quiet space to pray together. It became so popular the prayer meetings moved from weekly to daily, with the original location bursting at the seams. Other local churches began to host lunch hour prayer at the same time. The New York Times apparently tried to count all the people coming to these meetings, but they couldn't count them all before the hour finished. But it's estimated that 10,000 men prayed on a regular basis during this time throughout the city. The meetings continued to grow, eventually spilling out of New York and springing up all around the country with Revival breaking out alongside it. Sometimes called the Great Prayer Meeting Revival, historians estimate that as many as 1 million people swelled into American churches, all prompted by the desire of one businessman to see hope and peace come to his peers.
In the first years of the 20th century, a Black pastor named William Seymour, blind in one eye, traveled from Mississippi to Los Angeles in hopes of getting a job at a local church. They rejected him, but undeterred, he started prayer meetings in a nearby house. Born at the end of the slave era and living during Jim Crow, Seymour routinely experienced racism, even among other Christians. Known for his humility and commitment to prayer, he would spend hours each day seeking God on his knees. Things began to change when he invited others to join him. Daily prayer meetings started in a house, but when attendees swelled, they moved into a broken-down building on Azusa Street. It was a ramshackle place with people sitting on old benches, crates, and barrels, yet historians believe anywhere from 300 to 1,500 people would cram into this 2,400-square-foot building on Azusa Street daily. A mixed crowd of all races, which only intensified much of the racism that Seymour was experiencing. For the next three years, people gathered there daily to pray together, and many had supernatural experiences, including healings, speaking in other languages, intense emotional outpouring, singing, and shaking. It grew to such a pitch that it made the front page of the LA Times. Hundreds of missionaries came out of the Azusa Street Revival, known as the missionaries of the "one-way ticket." They flew off to far-flung countries across the globe without a return ticket. Their goal: to introduce others to the God that they met on Azusa Street.
In 1941, a young seminary student named Jim Rayburn started Young Life, doing things that had never been done, like establishing summer camps and busing kids from all over the country to attend in order to reach teenagers with the hope of Christ. A decade later, Bill Bright started Campus Crusade for Christ with a similar intent to reach college students, using methods considered revolutionary for the time. Around that same time, a young preacher named Billy Graham started holding Crusades, filling football stadiums and coliseums with people eager to hear his message. Graham became one of the most effective evangelists of all time, with historians estimating some 21 million people attended one of his more than 400 Crusades all over the world.
As the Vietnam War raged overseas and young people saw their friends and colleagues sent off to war, at home, the Civil Rights Movement was sweeping across the country. Hearts were ready for a spiritual awakening, beginning with people that traditional churches of the time were disavowing: hippies, stoners, and the counterculture. The Jesus Movement was born out of the hunger of young people to experience personal Revival. In the years that followed, God's Spirit poured out over a broken and hurting nation. Much like the ministry of Jesus's disciples in the book of Acts, young people took to the streets, preaching the gospel to anyone who would listen, and thousands were saved and baptized right on the spot, on beaches or in bathtubs. Many saw miracles and supernatural manifestations of the Spirit of God that radically transformed a disenfranchised generation into passionate Jesus followers.
If personal revivals and Awakening movements really do happen every 50 years or so, we are perfectly primed for one in our lifetimes. In fact, we're overdue. The question we have to ask ourselves is: Do we really want it? John Tyson, a pastor in New York City and student of revivals who has visited the site of many great Awakenings, summarizes his learnings as, "God comes where he's wanted." It's often assumed the movement of God comes spontaneously and organically without planning. While we can't control what God does, every Revival is built around planning and methods. Whether it's gathering daily for prayer, preaching outside, or gathering people into football stadiums, an Awakening is strengthened, not weakened, by deliberate actions taken to fan the flame of God's movement.
So how can our planning and preparation meet up with the move of God's Spirit across our country? Sometimes it involves dramatic outdoor preaching like with George Whitfield. Other times, it's focused on prayer in the inner city, like on Azusa Street. Sometimes revivals begin among teenagers and college students, and sometimes among businessmen. Revival is equally possible in the rural areas of Kentucky and in booming metropolises like New York and Philadelphia. Revival isn't even a 20th-century idea. It shows up throughout the Bible, from God rescuing a whole nation out of slavery in Exodus to rebuilding city walls in Nehemiah to the unexpected outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts. It's a play that God has run again and again because he is unrelenting in his pursuit of his people. The world would say there's no way to turn the tides, but a look back at history shows that God has done it over and over again. Practical wisdom would tell us to hunker down and protect ourselves from the onslaught we're in, but by learning about the history of Awakenings, it's clear a move of God can heal an entire nation. Safety says the risk isn't worth it, but Awakenings—there's always a price to pay. L. Fear gave up his lunch hour for years. Seymour endured ridicule and racism. Church leadership told Jim Rayburn and Bill Bright their methods were too radical. Yet all signed on the dotted lines. Revival can be a messy business. Coming back to life is always worth the price. It's time to make history.