221 Years Ago, Kentucky Had Another Revival

One Preacher Called That Revival An 'Ejaculation of Prayer'

It's been nearly impossible to escape the online chatter about what's been happening at Asbury University. What started as a regularly scheduled college chapel service on February 8 has turned into the chapel service that never ends. As I'm writing these words, that spiritual gathering is still going on. In fact, it's still growing, still evolving, still inspiring Christian-celebrities to make pilgrimages from all across the country to the little town of Wilmore, Kentucky.

This week, I posted a Tweet and a short video about how the conversation surrounding what many are calling a revival is triggering for me, conjuring up images and expectations I experienced as a kid growing up in a denomination that embraced "revival culture" fully and often. Those revivals at my church inspired grandiose "awakenings" among the members of our church. The evangelist's sermons, laced with unhealthy doses of hellfire and brimstone, inspired a multitude  of conversions, double-check conversions, and many just-in-case-the-first-six-times-didn't-work conversions. These revivals inspired crying, surrendering, and sometimes even large bonfires in which we'd toss our records and cassette tapes into the flames.

That was my experience. And that was many other people's experience. While the inescapable conversations about the very very very long Asbury chapel service have been triggering for me to engage, I'm not going to project my opinions or experiences onto those students's stories.

But like the spiritual events of my childhood and the movement that is happening right now in Wilmore, revivals have been a part of the American Evangelical experience for nearly 300 years.

And it's caused me to ponder another revival that happened in Kentucky, perhaps one of the most influential spiritual gatherings in America's history, a revival that took place more than 200 years ago.

Before I started writing books for children, I wrote Christian books for adults. The last book I wrote for adults was Our Great Big American God: A Short History of Our Ever-Growing Deity. If you're interested, you can buy it for your kindle for $1.99.

One of my favorite parts of my research for that book was my study of The Cane Ridge Revival of 1801. That revival, an event that most historians believe was the largest spiritual gathering of the Second Great Awakening, happened in the hills of Kentucky, outside a small town called Cane Ridge.

And that revival is one of the most fascinating spiritual events in American history. In fact, from my perspective, the Cane Ridge Revival might be the "awakening" that helped to inspire a purely Americanized encounter with God.

My favorite perspective about the Cane Ridge Revival comes from the memoirs of Reverend James  B. Finley. Finley attended the Cane Ridge Revival. He was 19 or 20 at the time. And in the beginning, he was a skeptic of large spiritual gatherings.

This is how he attempts to describe what happened at Cane Ridge...

"Language is utterly impuissant to convey any thing like an adequate idea of the sublimity and grandeur of the scene. Twenty thousand persons tossed to and fro, like the tumultuous waves of the sea in a storm, or swept down like the trees of the forest under the blast of the wild tornado, was a sight which mine own eyes witnessed, but which neither my pen nor tongue can describe."

Remember, this was before Pentecostalism formed in the US. This is before Benny Hinn. The Assemblies of God denomination did not exist yet. This is long before anybody found gold dust at Bethel Church in California.

According to Finley, a group of haters on horses showed up at Cane Ridge in hopes of causing a big ruckus. This is what happened according to Finney:

"During the religious exercises within the encampment, all manner of wickedness was going on without. So deep and awful is man's depravity, that he will sport while the very fires of perdition are kindling around him. Men, furious with the effects of the maddening bowl, would outrage all decency by their conduct; and some, mounted on horses, would ride at full speed among the people. I saw one, who seemed to be a leader and champion of the party, on a large, white horse, ride furiously into the praying circle, uttering the most horrid imprecations. Suddenly, as if smitten by lightning, he fell from his horse.

At this a shout went up from the religious multitude, as if Lucifer himself had fallen. I trembled, for I feared God had killed the bold and daring blasphemer."

Finley has such a wonderful way of describing things. Here's what happened to the man that Finley believed God had killed.

"[The blasphemer] exhibited no signs whatever of life; his limbs were rigid, his wrists pulseless, and his breath gone. Several of his comrades came to see him, but they did not gaze long till the power of God came upon them, and they fell like men slain in battle. I was much alarmed, but I had a great desire to see the issue. I watched him closely, while for thirty hours he lay, to all human appearance, dead. During this time the people kept up singing and praying."

But you guys... he wasn't dead. After 30 hours, Finley says this happened...

"At last, he exhibited signs of life, but they were fearful spasms, which seemed as if he were in a convulsive fit, attended by frightful groans, as if he were passing through the intensest agony. It was not long, however, till his convulsions ceased, and springing to his feet, his groans were converted into loud and joyous shouts of praise. The dark, ferd-like scowl which overspread his features, gave way to a happy smile, which lighted up his countenance."

According to Finley, the Blasphemer found God. But Finney was impressed with what he witnessed at the revival.

A few pages later, he writes:

"These meetings exhibited nothing to the spectator unacquainted with them but a scene of confusion, such as scarcely could be put into human language. They were generally opened with a sermon or exhortation, at the close of which there would be a universal cry for mercy, some bursting forth in loud ejaculations of prayer on thanksgiving for the truth; some breaking forth in strong and powerful exhortations, others flying to their careless friends with tears of compassion, entreating them to fly to Christ for mercy; some, struck with terror and conviction, hastening through the crowd to escape, or pulling away from their relations, others trembling, weeping, crying for mercy; some falling and swooning away, till every appearance of life was gone and the extremities of the body assumed the coldness of death. These were surrounded with a company of the pious, singing melodious songs adapted to the time, and praying for their conversion."

Ejaculations of prayer!! Has there ever been a better description of a God experience than that?

Finley says that this revival inspired children to become "under the impression" of God...

"Children were often made the instruments through which the Lord wrought. At one of these powerful displays of Divine power, a boy about ten years old broke from the stand in time of preaching under very strong impressions, and having mounted a log at some distance, and raising his voice in a most affecting manner, cried out, "On the last day of the fenst Jesus stood and cried, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink." He attracted the main body of the congregation, and, with streaming eyes, he warned the sinners of their danger, denouncing their doom, if they persevered in sin, and strongly expressed his love for the salvation of their souls, and the desire that they would turn to God and live. By this time the press was so great that he was taken up by two men and held above the crowd. He spoke for near an hour with that convincing eloquense that could be inspired only from heaven; and when exhausted, and language failed to describe the feelings of his soul, he raised his handkerchief, and dropping it, cried, "Thus, O sinner, will you drop into hell unless you forsake your sins and turn to God."

And that's why I'm fascinated by the Cane Ridge Revival. And as the 20,000 attendees left that hillside in Kentucky, they took with them their stories, their experiences. They went back to their towns and churches and homes having encountered God in a way that none had before.

Cane Ridge didn't change much about everyday life in American. It didn't fix or remedy America's greatest, most insidious sins. Slave trade continued. Racisms continues. Colonization westward went on.

But how it did affect people was that it inspired Americans to begin to experience God in new and different ways. Rumors about Cane Ridge spread far and wide, inspiring small revivals in towns across the US.

In America, revivals do inspire change. It's not often the kind of change people expect or anticipate. America's religious history is riddled with moments when a revival or big spiritual experience began to shift the landscape of faith and how we celebrated our faiths. Sure, sometimes they're benign. Sometimes they only inspire individualism. Sometimes they grow into bigger, more potent movements of religiosity.

Will the ejaculates of praise happening at Asbury influence American life? Will it inspire a movement?

That's very much a possibility.

Will it be the type of change that's rooted in justice?

If history is any indication, probably not.

Will it have consequences? Time will tell.

But Finney's descriptions about the Cane Ridge Revival are far more insightful for us today than he probably intended at the time.

Because the thing about ejaculation--it feels good when it happens. But how it changes things is dependent upon where the ejaculate lands, how it got there, and if consent was given.