The Asbury Revival: An Old Light Perspective

On Wednesday, February 8th, 2023, in the chapel of Asbury University, what began as a routine morning chapel service transformed into what is now being called the “Asbury Revival.” For two weeks, the town of Wilmore, KY was the scene of nearly 400 hours of continuous prayer and worship, drawing thousands of visitors from across the state and beyond.

The revival drew national attention and has been written about extensively, with excellent summaries appearing in Christianity Today and The Gospel Coalition. With this attention has come a plethora of opinions, not just on the events in Wilmore, but also on revivalism in general. For this reason, in order to understand what occurred at Asbury, it is important to have some knowledge both of the history of Asbury and of American revivalism as a whole. 

The roots of revivalism run deep through American Christianity. Spread through the Colonies by the efforts of George Whitfield and John Wesley during the 1740s and 50s, the “First Great Awakening” was a movement of Christian revival in which thousands of people in both England and the Colonies were called to a renewed evangelical faith. It was during this nationwide awakening that many common characteristics of revival—field preaching, impassioned homilies, and a message of born-again Christianity—became established. The start of the 19th century saw the rise of another revival, now deemed the “Second Great Awakening,” during which Methodism, the movement founded by John Wesley, proved particularly successful. Over the course of the next hundred years, there would be many more revivals and awakenings, most prominently through the preaching of Dwight L. Moody in the 1870s and 80s, and in the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, which led to the development of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements. 

Asbury University is uniquely situated within this revivalist heritage. Asbury is associated with the Wesleyan Holiness Movement, which grew out of mainline Methodism during the time of the Second Great Awakening. Methodism itself was a product predominantly of John Wesley’s work and evangelism during the First Great Awakening. The University’s namesake, Bishop Francis Asbury, was a prominent traveling preacher during both Awakenings and is considered by many the father of American Methodism. Not only is Asbury well situated in the legacy of American revival and Wesleyan Holiness, but within its own history there have been several revivals of some significance, including in 1950, 1958, and 1970.

Many look on the American history of revival as a legacy to be proud of. In the last few years, calls for revival have been made consistently, and by prominent figures. Interestingly enough, this Tim Keller piece, arguing for the need for revival within the American church, appeared in The Atlantic three days before the Asbury Revival began. But from the start, revivalism has had its critics. Members of the established church during the Great Awakenings (the so-called “Old Lights) looked on revival with suspicion and ill-ease, considering the theological commitments of its promoters to be dangerous and unbiblical.

The revivalists (or “New Lights”) insisted that in order to be a Christian, one must have a dramatic experience of being born again, which the Old Lights viewed as a dangerous slip into experientialism which disregarded the non-dramatic, everyday functions of the church. The New Lights accused the traditionalists of being unbelievers who were more concerned with maintaining the boundaries of class and rank than with the proclamation of the Gospel, while the Old Lights accused the revivalists of misdirecting the faithful. 

When it comes to revival, I generally find myself agreeing with the Old Lights. I am similarly critical of many of revival’s theological underpinnings, including the necessity of conversion experiences and the priority of emotion, and of many of the practices which spring from these theological commitments, including emotional altar calls and “fire and brimstone” preaching. I look askance at big time preachers who, in the vein of George Whitfield, use force of personality and performance, and not the force of the Gospel to capture the attention of their congregation. My teenage years, spent in a denomination well endowed with the legacy of revival, were filled with the pursuit of “mountaintop experiences,” which were often induced by emotional music and preaching rather than the true movement of the Spirit. I believed that the only authentic religious experience was emotive and spontaneous, and yet much of what I experienced as the movement of the Spirit was actually the carefully planned manipulation of emotions on Sunday morning. 

What has happened in the Asbury Chapel over the past few weeks, however, has made me pause. Nothing at Asbury was planned, there (intentionally) was no big-time preacher or music group, and the testimony of the attendees attests with power to the movement of the Spirit of God in Wilmore. It seems that God chose an inauspicious time and place to move in an unusual way amongst His people. What’s more, His people have responded. The thousands of pilgrims who descended upon Wilmore demonstrate a desire for the presence of God which is a hopeful sign for the future of the church in America.  

There is a reason that Asbury has been the site of so many revivals. While true revival only occurs where God wants it to, it is more likely to occur where people are open to the movement of God’s Spirit and actively praying for His intervention. Asbury stands in a tradition of believers who understand the potential for the experience of the divine and are open to it. This is the contribution that the New Lights of American revivalism have to make to the church as a whole: a belief that God’s Spirit can and will come among His people in unique and powerful ways. 

While I still hold to many of my criticisms of revivalist theology and practice, to overlook this truth will put me in just as much error as those I pass judgment on. It is true that the church needs to remain steadfast amid religious fervor and not turn its back on traditional understandings of Christian life, but it is equally true that the church needs to be open to spiritual encounters and events, like revival, which stand outside of its everyday ministry.