Baptistic Theologies, 2009

ning of the career of Evan Roberts, but he was the central figure: a twenty-six-year-old ex-miner, just starting preparation for the Calvinistic Methodist ministry, a man with the disposition of a mystic. Roberts emphasised the need to confess Christ publicly, to obey the Holy Spirit’s prompting, to confess known sin and to put away doubtful things - all themes that recurred in many subsequent awakenings. As Roberts carried his message round the chapels of Wales, many of the Baptists were stirred. Thus R. B. Jones of Porth, already known as an able preacher, travelled about to kindle the flame of revival 3 Kathryn Teresa Long, The Revival of 1857-58: Interpreting an American Religious Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998). Revivals, Revivalism and the Baptists 11 24 almost as much as Evan Roberts.' Events were so dramatic that visitors came to witness them and take the atmosphere back to their congregations elsewhere. The excitement of the revival spread round the world, especially to lands where there were Welsh expatriates such as Pennsylvania, Madagascar and Patagonia. Thus the spark ignited the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Mission in Mizoram, reinvigorating the Baptists on the adjacent mission field in 1907. In many places the revival impulse coalesced with the novel phenomenon of Pentecostalism, marked by speaking in tongues. The Pentecostalists, in their early days, stressed that theirs was a revival movement. They looked for unprompted visitations by the Spirit, but before long they settled down to more organised ways. The normal church planting technique in the inter-war years was the holding of a planned revival and the gathering of the converts into a congregation. Here was a vast global force in twentieth-century Christianity propagating revival. There were many other regional revivals that made a profound mark during the twentieth century. A predominantly Baptist instance took place in 1921 in East Anglia, the easternmost counties of England. It was the result of a week of special services conducted in the fishing port of Lowestoft by Douglas Brown, a London Baptist minister. The news of many converts led to invitations to visit adjacent towns and villages, so that between March and June Brown preached no fewer than three hundred and seventy times.' The spiritual impulse was carried by returning fishermen to the north-east of Scotland, where a similar awakening broke out. Later awakenings were even larger in scope. The East African Revival began in 1933 in the Rwanda Mission of the Church Missionary Society. Emphasising ‘walking in the light’ through mutual confession of sins, the movement bound together its adherents in tight-knit fellowship and persisted over many years. As early as 1935 its impact was felt by the Baptist Missionary Society stations on the River Congo. 30 Nor did remarkable awakenings die out in the later twentieth century. In Arnhem Land in norther