REVIVAL (Protestant [English: revival])
This term designates in Protestantism collective religious movements often accompanied by extraordinary psychic phenomena that result in numerous conversions. It initially provoked mass conversions under the influence of Methodism, and later, through imitation or even direct influence of Methodism itself, also among other Protestant denominations (Lutherans, Calvinists, Baptists, etc.).
### I. MANIFESTATIONS
The first manifestation on January 10, 1739, is recounted by John Wesley: “Messrs. Hall, Kinchin, Whitefield, Hutchins, and my brother Charles were participating in our ‘love feast’ at Fetter-Lane with about seventy others of our number. Around three in the morning, while we persevered in intense prayer, the power of God descended mightily upon us, so much so that many began to cry out, unable to contain their joy, while others fell face down. When we somewhat recovered from the fear and awe that had seized us in the presence of His Majesty, we began to sing with one voice: ‘We praise You, O God, and acknowledge that You are the Lord’” (Journal, cited in bibliography, II, pp. 121-25).
The words “love feast” in the text indicate the origin of Methodist revival. Wesley had borrowed the idea of such gatherings from the Moravian Brethren; immediately sensing the danger of such manifestations, he did not want his followers to be regarded as “enthusiasts” or “illuminati,” whom the Anglican Church treated severely. Moreover, there was a risk of being forbidden to preach, a concern that appears in his Journal (II, p. 130).
Methodists have always attributed great importance to revival as a “testimony” of true “regeneration.” When Methodism spread to North America, Baptists also adopted its methods and achieved similar results. Revival took on a new form there: the camp meeting. Adherents gathered in a field to listen to sermons; the breath of the Spirit manifested itself through sacred dances: “Many visitors,” says one witness, “fall ill and die in the field itself. Amid the anguish of the struggle against sin and the fear of death, all passions seem to erupt” (v. Dixon, *L'Amérique nouvelle*, part 2, chap. 14). Revival reached the violence of a true spiritual storm in these fields or churches. Sometimes it spread throughout the population of a district, resulting in numerous cases of madness and suicide (cf. C. Jannet, *Les États-Unis contemporains*, Paris 1876, pp. 354-58).
However, Methodists had predecessors in their revivals: the Camisard prophets of the Cévennes with similar manifestations, and the Moravian Brethren, who had set the example for Wesley himself. Similar practices had also occurred among Quakers; Baptists imitated them, especially in America. In Lutheranism, there were the conventicles of Pietism (v.); cases of revival are also cited in the Reformed (Calvinist) Church, both in Switzerland and France, though with far more modest manifestations than in the United States, where camp meetings represented the paroxysm of the “revival” type.
In Geneva, where Calvinist confession had lapsed into a kind of diluted Arianism at the beginning of the 19th century, a revival occurred under the influence of Robert Haldane (1764-1842), who in 1816 in Geneva exerted a profound influence over a number of young Calvinists. These young men, not without much contention among themselves, provoked several revival movements first in Switzerland and then in France. Among these young men are remembered: E. Empaytaz (1790-1833), in whom one sometimes notes the influence, prior to that of Haldane, of the famous Madame de Krüdener, confidante of Tsar Alexander I; Henri Pyt (1796-1835), founder of a dissident Calvinist church; François Samuel Gaussen (1790-1863); François Auguste Gonthier (1773-1834), whom Protestants were wont to compare to Fénelon; César Malan (1787-1864), Haldane’s favorite disciple, of individualist tendencies; Henri Merle d’Aubigné (1794-1872), Gaussen’s friend, a prolific and passionate writer, a popular historian of the “Reformed revival,” though not very objective. In France, during the same period, one may mention Bost, Naff, Cook, Roussel, and above all Monod (1802-56), renowned pastor in Naples (where he personally experienced revival), then in Lyon, where he was excommunicated by the Consistory and founded an evangelical church (1833). He later became a professor at the Protestant Faculty of Montauban and finally leader of orthodox Calvinists in Paris against the liberal minority.
### II. THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Above all in Methodism an attempt was made to give theological significance to the phenomenon of revival. However, something of Methodist doctrine can be found, in attenuated forms, in other Protestant denominations. Those who frequented “conventicles of piety” considered themselves Christians different from others. Wesley’s diary shows that he introduced among Methodists the distinction between the baptized and the regenerated. For Wesley, the great event of Christian life is revival. He calls it, using Johannine terminology (John 3:8), “the new birth” (*New birth*). In all other Christian churches, “the new birth” was attributed to Baptism; Wesley’s originality lay in introducing another element besides the justification conferred in Baptism (Works, V, p. 212). Ordinarily, moreover, when Baptism is administered in infancy, revival does not occur until adulthood or at most in adolescence. It confers upon the “regenerated” soul a new sense, the sense of the divine; it grants the faculty of sensing God. Before this great change, even though man exists by God’s work, he does not for that reason experience God; he does not feel His presence, lacks intimate consciousness of it, and does not experience this divine breath of life (cf. Works, V, pp. 223ff.).
Wesley regarded the phenomena of revival as a certain proof, a “testimony” of regeneration. Here precisely the Methodist mysticism is profoundly distinguished from Catholic mysticism because Wesley placed enormous importance on these “physical” manifestations, and when they occurred, he hastened to invite all his hearers to pray for those “touched by grace.” Asking himself, “Can this sudden, instantaneous change be easily distinguished from illusion or imagination?” he answered, “Certainly, as easily as light is distinguished from darkness; such a change brings with it a peace that surpasses all understanding; an indescribable joy, full of glory, the love of God and of all humanity fills the heart” (Works, V, p. 68).