Baptistic Theologies, 2009

t the Almighty is sovereign in giving revival; and in association with an awakening, either before, during or afterwards, there was normally teaching about the principles of the faith. Conversion was commonly expected to be gradual, with persistent distress 4 Brian Stanley, The History of the Baptist Missionary Society, 1792-1992 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1992), p.275. 5 Gary Dickson, 'Revivalism and Populism in the Franciscan Observance of the Late Quattrocento’, in Kate Cooper and Jeremy Gregory (eds). Revival and Resurgence in Christian History (Studies in Church History, Vol. 44), pp. 62-76. Revivals, Revivalism and the Baptists 3 before a person discovered the certainty of faith. There was often less firmness about the teaching of assurance than in other traditions. It was sometimes considered to be an actual advantage to be uncertain about one’s acceptance with God, because then one would persist in seeking until the goal was definitely reached. And the Lord’s supper was frequently a stimulus to revival. Among Presbyterians, the sacrament was a rare event, usually twice a year, and so it turned into a major occasion, a communion season. Many thronged to the parish where it was taking place, creating what the poet Robert Burns called a ‘holy fair’. 6 7 8 There were services of preparation from Thursday onwards, the actual reception of the elements on Sunday and a thanksgiving service on the Monday afterwards. At the final thanksgiving in particular there were often signs of anxiety as those who were uncertain of their entitlement to receive communion became concerned about the state of their souls. The minister might well decide to hold further meetings, and a revival might break out. The result of all these characteristics was a distinctive Presbyterian style of awakening. The tradition emerged as part of the development of radical Presbyterianism in the early seventeenth century. The attempts of James VI of Scotland and I of England to assimilate Scottish religion into English patterns generated stout resistance and heightened spirituality among the more convinced Presbyterians. In 1625 revival broke out at Stewarton and Irvine in Ayrshire. Five years later, on the Monday after a communion season at Kirk O’Shotts, Lanarkshire, John Livingston preached for two and a half hours, many of his hearers fell to the ground as though dead and nearly five hundred were said to have been converted. The tradition became deep-seated and continued into the next century. At Cambuslang near Glasgow in August 1742, more than thirty thousand people were o present at probably the most famous Presbyterian revival of all. Revival became specially strongly rooted in the Highlands of Scotland during the nineteenth century. Nor was it confined to Scotland, for it spread wherever Scots moved. Thus in 1857 in Moore County, North Carolina, a Presbyterian church sprang to life with a series of meetings begun on