Dynamics of Revival: New Research - Spring 2006
Among the many studies sparked by the centennial of the Azusa Street, Welsh, and other early 20th-century revivals, two recent dissertations are of particular note.
Emmanuel Hooper’s thesis at the University of Birmingham, “An Investigation into the Effects of the 1905 American Revival on Missions with Special Reference to the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions: 1905–1920” (Ph.D., 2005; 333 pp.) offers a comprehensive analysis of the interplay between revival and missions a century ago. Hooper’s work is in the spirit of J. Edwin Orr. Following Orr’s analysis, Hooper considers the 1858 and 1904–05 revivals in America and elsewhere to be “the fourth and sixth Great Awakenings.” He links 1905 revival currents back to the 1858 awakening, particularly in terms of the “many youth movements” of the period––especially the YMCA, YWCA, and later the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (SVMFM). Hooper shows how revival gave fresh impulse to the Student Volunteer Movement, documenting the extensiveness of revival in America in 1905 and then tracing the history and impact of the SVMFM. Combining quantitative and qualitative methods, Hooper explores the links between revival and student volunteer mission involvement. His method includes examining such unpublished records as SVMFM declaration cards and application forms. This study is thus a significant contribution to movemental analysis of revival and mission and of mission organizations.
Vivian Grigg of New Zealand has become well known in Evangelical circles for his work among the poor of Manila, Calcutta, and other cities and his networking of urban workers and church planters globally. He previously authored Companion to the Poor (1984, 2004) and Cry of the Urban Poor (1992, 2004). Long interested in revival in relation to urban evangelism, Grigg has now completed a Ph.D. thesis at the University of Auckland, “The Spirit of Christ and the Postmodern City: Transformative Revival among Auckland’s Evangelicals and Pentecostals” (2005; 215 pp.). This is a theological and theoretical case study of revival in New Zealand in the light of emerging urban postmodernism, but with broader implications. Grigg proposes “a postmodern hermeneutic of ‘transformational conversations,’ an interfacing of faith community conversations and urban conversations.” Seeking a holistic missional theology of revival, Grigg notes that “the link between preaching the Kingdom and socio-economic transformation” has been “distant from the mainstream evangelical mindset,” but he sees that changing. Grigg seeks to go beyond “largely ‘spiritual’ Western formulations” to a “holistic Kingdom vision of the spiritual, communal and material aspects of the postmodern city.” He defines his “transformation” model largely in terms of the 1983 Wheaton Consultation statement.
The study is theoretically rich, drawing on the work of Paul Pierson, J. Edwin Orr, Howard Snyder, Rodney Stark, Donald McGavran, Ralph Winter, Anthony Wallace, H. Richard Niebuhr, Walter Rauschenbusch, Jürgen Moltmann, Miroslav Volf, and others. It gives some attention to revival and renewal movements throughout history, noting in the 20th century the significant work of Kagawa in Japan.
-Howard A. Snyder
