The Welsh Revival, 1904-05

You are reading the brief version. Switch the depth control to Complete for the full treatment.

In the autumn of 1904 a young former coal miner named Evan Roberts, aged twenty-six, came home to Loughor in South Wales and began holding meetings for young people in his chapel. Within weeks the meetings had spread across the valleys. They had no set order and often no sermon: people prayed aloud, confessed sins, sang hymns for hours, and stayed until the early morning. Pubs emptied, debts were repaid and football matches were cancelled. Over the following year something like a hundred thousand people were reported converted.

Roberts led with four simple demands: confess every known sin; put away anything doubtful; obey the Spirit promptly; confess Christ publicly. He also claimed visions and direct guidance from the Spirit. He would sometimes refuse to speak, announce that someone present was blocking the Spirit, or name a person's spiritual state from the platform. A Welsh minister, Peter Price, publicly called part of the movement a "sham revival" in January 1905.

By 1906 Roberts had collapsed in exhaustion. He went to live with Jessie Penn-Lewis and her husband in Leicester and withdrew almost completely from public life. In 1912 the two published War on the Saints, which argued that many supernatural experiences in revivals - including some in Wales and in the new Pentecostal meetings

• were the work of deceiving spirits. Roberts lived quietly for nearly forty more years

and died in Cardiff in 1951.

The Welsh Revival mattered far beyond Wales. In Los Angeles, the journalist Frank Bartleman read the reports, wrote to Roberts, received replies urging prayer, and expected the same in California. A year later came Azusa Street. Welsh missionaries carried the revival to the Khasi Hills in north-east India in 1905.

The revival produced real repentance and lasting change in many lives. It also showed, early and clearly, the pattern that recurs in later chapters: a gifted young leader, direct guidance claimed apart from Scripture and the ministry of the Church, extreme physical and emotional strain, and a collapse.

Verdict: repentance and renewed faith are always to be welcomed. Leadership by private visions, and meetings directed by one man's sense of the Spirit's promptings, are not how the Church has ever been guided - and Roberts himself came to warn against them.

What is believed

Those who look back to the Welsh Revival as a model would put it like this:

• Revival is a sovereign outpouring of the Holy Spirit on a church that has prayed and repented.
• In true revival, the Spirit Himself leads the meetings. Human programmes, sermons and orders of service should give way to His direct guidance.
• The conditions of revival are confession of all known sin, separation from doubtful things, prompt obedience to the Spirit, and public confession of Christ.
• God can speak directly to His servants in visions and impressions, and show them what He is doing in a meeting.

Where it came from

Wales before 1904

Wales had a long history of revivals, especially among the Calvinistic Methodists, whose eighteenth-century preachers - Howell Harris and Daniel Rowland - had led awakenings within the Church of England before their movement separated in 1811. By 1904 Welsh Nonconformity was strong in numbers but anxious about secularism and the younger generation. Prayer meetings for revival were already being held in several places, notably at New Quay, Cardiganshire, under Joseph Jenkins, from early 1904.

"Bend me"

Evan Roberts (1878-1951) was born in Loughor, near Swansea, and went down the pit at the age of eleven. He was a devout member of Moriah Calvinistic Methodist chapel, and for years prayed for revival. In 1904 he began training for the ministry at Newcastle Emlyn. In September 1904, at a meeting at Blaenannerch led by the evangelist Seth Joshua, he heard the prayer "Bend us, O Lord" and cried out "Bend me!" - an experience he afterwards regarded as his baptism with the Spirit.

He went home to Loughor at the end of October 1904, believing he had been told in a vision to speak to the young people of his chapel. The first meetings were small. Within a fortnight they were packed, and the revival spread through Glamorgan and beyond.

The meetings

Contemporary reports - the Western Mail published daily accounts - describe meetings lasting until two or three in the morning, with no programme. Hymns would start spontaneously; people prayed aloud, sometimes many at once; there was weeping and public confession. Roberts often sat silent for long periods, and sometimes did not speak at all.

His four points became the revival's creed:

1. Confess all known sin to God and put right any wrong done to others.
2. Put away anything doubtful from your life.
3. Obey the Spirit promptly.
4. Confess Christ publicly.

The social effects were widely reported: drinking fell, magistrates in some districts had few cases, debts were repaid, and miners' ponies reportedly could not understand their drivers without the swearing.^†

Visions and claimed guidance

Roberts claimed visions: of a great harvest, of Satan grinning at him from a hedge, of the moon with a hand reaching out. He believed the Spirit told him where to go and when to speak, and he would cancel meetings or refuse to enter a chapel if he felt forbidden. In some meetings he announced that an unsaved person or a person in disobedience was present and that the Spirit could not work until he or she yielded; at times he claimed to know who it was. He spent a week in silence in February 1905 on what he said was the Spirit's instruction.

These features troubled many sympathetic observers. On 31 January 1905 Peter Price, a Congregational minister in Dowlais, wrote to the Western Mail distinguishing between the true revival he had seen in his own district and what he called the "sham revival" of Roberts's meetings, with their "exhibitions" and claims of direct guidance. The letter caused a storm; many defended Roberts, but the questions it raised did not go away.

Collapse and War on the Saints

By 1906 Roberts was physically and emotionally exhausted. Jessie Penn-Lewis, a Welsh evangelical writer associated with the Keswick movement, and her husband invited him to recover at their home in Leicester. He stayed there for years, withdrew from public ministry, and gave himself to private prayer.

In 1912 he and Penn-Lewis published War on the Saints. Its argument is that believers who surrender their minds and wills passively, seeking supernatural experience, open themselves to deception by evil spirits who counterfeit the Spirit's work. It says plainly that counterfeit manifestations had appeared in the Welsh Revival and were appearing in the new Pentecostal movement. Penn-Lewis became one of British Pentecostalism's most influential critics. How far the book represents Roberts's own mature judgement on his revival experiences has been debated; he later withdrew support from some of its claims.^†

Roberts returned to Wales in the 1920s and lived quietly in Cardiff, writing poems and letters, until his death on 29 January 1951.

From Wales to Azusa Street

The Welsh Revival was reported around the world. In Los Angeles, the Holiness journalist Frank Bartleman read the accounts, wrote to Roberts in 1905, and received replies urging him and his friends to pray; he published them and distributed thousands of copies of a pamphlet on the revival. The Baptist pastor Joseph Smale visited Wales in 1905 and returned to Los Angeles to lead prayer for revival. Bartleman later wrote that "the present world-wide revival was rocked in the cradle of little Wales". When the meetings at Azusa Street began in April 1906, many of those present had been praying for a revival like the Welsh one.

Welsh Presbyterian missionaries in the Khasi Hills of north-east India reported a revival beginning in 1905, and news of Wales fed the revival at Pandita Ramabai's Mukti mission near Pune the same year (see The history of tongues).

What the historic Church taught

On revival. The Church has always prayed for renewal and has seen many seasons of it - the monastic movements, the friars, the Catholic and Protestant reformations, the missions. But it has never taught that the Spirit's work is chiefly measured by extraordinary meetings, or that it bypasses the ordinary means of word and sacrament. "Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17).

On guidance. "Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God" (1 John 4:1). The Church has long experience of discernment: the Desert Fathers' warnings against trusting visions, Augustine's distinctions between kinds of vision, and the later rules for discerning spirits. The common counsel is that private impressions must be tested by Scripture and the Church's teaching, and submitted to a spiritual director or the Church's pastors; that those who seek visions are most easily deceived; and that humility and obedience are surer signs of the Spirit than extraordinary experiences.

On leaders. Scripture warns against laying hands on a novice, "lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil" (1 Timothy 3:6). Roberts was a young layman with a few weeks' training, thrust into national leadership. The strain was foreseeable.

The verdict

The Welsh Revival produced real repentance, reconciliation and moral change, and many of its converts persevered. The four traditions have no reason to deny that God was at work.

But its method - meetings without the word preached or the sacraments given, led by one man's visions and impressions, with public naming of hidden sinners - is not how the Church has ever been guided, and its own leader came to warn that much of what passed for the Spirit's work in such meetings was counterfeit. The pattern it set - revival expected as an extraordinary event, sought by intense prayer, led by a gifted young figure, followed by exhaustion and decline - recurs in almost every later chapter.

How the four traditionsthe Catholic Churchthe Orthodox Churchthe Lutheran Churchthe Anglican Communion responded

Key personalities

Answering a modern Christian

"We need another Welsh Revival. Look at what God did in 1904." Repentance, reconciliation and the conversion of many are always to be prayed for. But it is worth knowing the whole story: Roberts's meetings were directed by his visions, he publicly named people he believed were blocking the Spirit, he collapsed within eighteen months, and he later co-wrote a book warning that much of what passes for the Spirit in such meetings is deception. The ordinary means - preaching, the sacraments, catechesis, pastoral care - are less dramatic and more durable.

"The Spirit should lead our meetings, not a liturgy." The Spirit led the Church into the liturgy. Christians have prayed set prayers since the Lord taught one, and Paul told a church full of spontaneous gifts to do everything "decently and in order". A liturgy does not quench the Spirit; it protects the congregation from mistaking one person's impressions for the Spirit's voice.

"Evan Roberts knew things about people that only God could have told him." Perhaps. But Scripture tells us to test the spirits, not to trust them because they seem supernatural, and Roberts himself came to believe that supernatural guidance in revival meetings was often counterfeit. The test of a spirit is whether it confesses Christ and agrees with the apostles' teaching (1 John 4:1-6), not whether it is impressive.