Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Revive us again

Revive us again

Last updated on: April 9, 2018 at 2:02 pm by Fred Clark

Revive us again 2018-04-09T14:02:55-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

John Turner, who writes at the wonderful Anxious Bench blog, grew up in Rochester, New York. That’s part of what was once called the “burned-over district” — a nickname bestowed by Charles G. Finney, the great evangelist of the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s. Western and central upstate New York, Finney meant, had been so saturated with the gospel and the message of revival that it had no one left to evangelize. There was no untouched fuel left for the fires of revival to burn.

Finney was an enormously popular and successful evangelist. He was also an innovative one — introducing new techniques like the designation of the “anxious bench” or “anxious seat” down front, where those hesitant or undecided about conversion could be subjected to a harder sell — or, um, to the greater proximate power of the Holy Spirit. So in addition to naming the “burned-over district,” Finney also provided the name for Turner’s blog.

After the death of Billy Graham this winter, Turner wrote about his own personal experience “coming forward” at a Billy Graham event in the 1980s in Rochester:

I was a fourteen-year-old Christian. Two years before Graham’s visit, I had come forward to dedicate my life to Jesus Christ at a church revival. I was active in Young Life. By active, I mean that I encouraged my high school classmates to come to weekly YL meetings and come to the summer camps at which they would be asked to accept Jesus into their lives.

While most people probably think of Billy Graham as a crusader who sought to convert non-Christians, Graham mostly converted the already converted. More precisely, he persuaded nominal, lapsed, and lukewarm Christians to dedicate and rededicate their lives to Christ. Again and again.

And as others have commented, his methods were both shrewd and masterful. Graham’s message was simple but not simplistic. We all die, and we have to prepare for that inevitability. We all live, and we should live with purpose. We all sin, and we all need forgiveness. Christ gives us eternal life and purpose of life. Christ forgives our sins. Come. Now is the time. You come.

I think this captures a lot of what is misunderstood about the mass-evangelism epitomized by Billy Graham and practiced by hundreds of other evangelists and countless local pastors now. As Turner says, it mostly converts the already converted. And as Turner’s own example shows, this wasn’t restricted to the “nominal, lapsed, and lukewarm.”

Graham and his heirs developed a new trick that Finney thought was impossible or unnecessary: they learned to “evangelize” the burned-over districts of America.

“How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent?” Paul writes in the book of Romans. But Finney didn’t see the point of sending a preacher to evangelize those who had already heard and already believed. Billy Graham did.

And he did it by, as Turner says, extending his invitation not just to new converts, but to the already converted, inviting them to “dedicate and rededicate” and to re-re-re-re-rededicate “their lives to Christ. Again and again.”

Radio evangelist William Ward Ayer conducts an altar call in a room full of people who are already Christians. (Photo via Wikimedia)

For Graham and his many imitators, the invitation starts with the unconverted. With every head bowed and every eye closed, the faithful are asked to pray as the not-yet-faithful are invited to come forward. But then the invitation expands outward. Or maybe it expands inward. Backsliders are invited to rededicate their lives to Christ, reigniting their burned-over, lukewarm faith. Then others are invited — those who may already be active and “on fire,” but not burning as bright perhaps as they once did. Then still others who are invited to come forward to express a newfound zeal for zealousness. And on and on.

Sometimes this will continue until everyone has come forward — whole congregations. It can be very moving, even if no one is entirely sure just what it means. From my personal experience of this, I can vouch for what Turner says, based on his personal experience, that it means something — something potentially important or lasting, if hard to define.

But even granting that such rituals of rededication and re-re-dedication can be meaningful, they’re still quite distinct from the conversion or “salvation” we think of as the primary goal and outcome of mass evangelism. It’s certainly some form of revivalism, but it doesn’t entail people “getting saved” or being “born again.” Yet this is rarely how we talk about the work these “evangelists” are doing. We talk about them as though they were missionaries newly arrived in some foreign land that had never before heard any word of the gospel — even when what they’re really doing is giving a pep talk to fire up devout Young Life members in the burned-over district.

Consider this recent headline from Christianity Today*: “Billy Graham’s Death Leads 10,000 to Pray for Salvation.” But that’s not what the story itself says:

More than 1.2 million have visited BillyGrahamMemorial.org in just a month, according to the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA). The online memorial features a link to a site with a clip of Graham inviting crowds at his crusades to make a decision for Christ, followed by a list of steps for online visitors who want to pray to accept Jesus as their Savior.

More than 113,000 have visited that site, StepstoPeace.org, in the month since Graham’s death, and 10,500 indicated they prayed to either profess faith for the first time or to renew lapsed faith, according to the BGEA.

“Renew lapsed faith” covers a lot of territory there. It may be someone reclaiming the faith they had completely abandoned years ago, but it also may be some unwaveringly devout Christian re-re-recommitting themselves as something like a New Year’s Resolution. Counting all of the latter as part of a ministry’s “soul-winning” tally is how we end up with those dubious statistics touting the success of all these evangelistic endeavors. Add up all the claims of all the evangelists and ministries proclaiming the gospel here in the U.S. and it seems the entire country gets converted every year — even as church attendance declines and the proportion of “nones” steadily rises.

This is why, as I mentioned the other day, I’m skeptical about references to a “Third Great Awakening,” and why I utterly reject the claim that Graham and other post-war 20th-century evangelists produced a Fourth.

The Third Great Awakening purportedly occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Maybe. That time did mark the arrival of some popular and influential revival movements — from Dwight L. Moody to the Azusa phenomenon that birthed 20th-century Pentecostalism. But claims for a third “awakening” tend to include more than that, sweeping in things like the Social Gospel movement. If we’re to view it that broadly, then how should we regard the backlash phenomenon of “The Fundamentals” — the intellectual manifesto of anti-intellectualism that launched the infamous fundamentalist/modernist controversy? Was that effort a part of this “Third Great Awakening” or was it a reaction against it? The answer would seem to be both — which is why I don’t find the construct of a third “awakening” very helpful.

As for the alleged Fourth Great Awakening, I simply can’t say that I remember it. I should — it supposedly occurred within my lifetime. But it seems that I, like most Americans — Christian and non-Christian alike — slumbered through it. And every attempt I’ve seen to point to any evidence of its aftermath — its bearing fruit — comes across as implausibly strained.

I think that’s due to what Turner describes as this “again and again” phenomenon with Graham and his contemporaries and heirs. Their efforts to rekindle the burned-over districts of American revivalism tended, more often, to produce mainly only brief sparks of re-re-dedication among the already converted. It awakened mainly only those who were already awake.

We could make a strong case for that same time period as a sort of Great Awakening, but only if we turn away from figures like Billy Graham or the charismatic revivalists of the era and look, instead, to the Baptist preacher who was assassinated 50 years ago this month. The Civil Rights Movement may have seen Christians revived and mobilized by a “Pillar of Fire,” but those Christians have never been the ones at the center of our historical narratives of revivalism. Fitting their struggle for justice and dignity into the rubric of Great Awakenings would require us to radically redefine and reimagine what we mean by “revival.”

We probably should do that — such a reimagined understanding of revival is desperately needed. But I don’t think we’re ready to do that. Our idea of what constitutes a Great Awakening just isn’t that woke.

Previous Post

April 8, 2018

Foxes have holes, birds have their nests

Next Post

April 10, 2018 'As It Is Written, There Are No Good Guys, No Not One'

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which prophet had a vision of God standing beside a destroyed altar?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Amos Joel Micah Ezekiel