REVIVALISM IN AMERICA
Without an Understanding of Which One Cannot Grasp
the Nature of Modern Christian Music and Worship
THE GREAT AWAKENING
Jonathan Edwards 1703-1758
“Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God” (1741)
Strongly Calvinist: You need salvation
but God may or may not grant it.
Revivals were characterized by “travail”
as souls awaited manifestations of grace.
SECOND GREAT
AWAKENING
 First half of 19th century
 Far more Arminian: it’s up to you to accept Christ, which you can do
if you want to
 Postmillenial: the world is getting better by getting converted, and
when things are truly in order, Christ will return
 Resulted in sweeping social reform regarding working conditions,
abolition, alcoholism, morals, care for the poor, and founding of colleges
and schools. “The Benevolent Empire.”
CHARLES FINNEY 1792 -1875
INNOVATIONS
 Justified the use of “measures” to aid in evangelism
 Discovery that song contributes to arc of the revival service
 Innovations: anxious bench, extemporaneous preaching and
praying, calling out individuals in the crowd, working the crowd
individually, lay preaching and praying, women testifying, house-tohouse “prep”
CANE RIDGE
 A massive revival meeting in Cane Ridge, Kentucky, over a week in
August, 1801. Estimated attendance of 10,000-20,000.
 Came to be seen as the inception of the Second Great Awakening.
 Emotional displays of crying out, fainting, falling down
 Not typical of Presbyterians at all
 “Lord, make it like Cane Ridge!”
BILLY SUNDAY
BILLY SUNDAY
 Converted baseball player
 Conducted massive evangelistic services nationwide with custom-
built “tabernacles”
 Dramatic, pugilistic, and folksy rhetorical style
 Emphasized “manly” religion
 The sworn enemy of the liquor trade
 In the early 1900s, Billy Sunday sold what was then a unique brand of muscular,
testosterone-laden Christianity.Today, ministered in some of the country's largest
churches and preached in shirtsleeves about God in terms of football or golf. Billy
Sunday was one of the first to do this. He was a professional baseball player turned tent
preacher who became the richest and most influential preacher of his time. Sunday was
"one of the most acrobatic evangelists of the age." One newspaper columnist at the time
estimated that Sunday traveled about a mile during each sermon. The physicality of
Sunday's sermons was an outgrowth of the preacher's stint as a pro baseball player. As a
young man, he moved from rural Iowa to Chicago to play for the Chicago White
Stockings (later the Cubs).
 There, he not only wowed the crowd with his considerable athletic skills, but he won
the public over with his "squeaky clean Christian image," says Martin. Baseball proved to
be a "convenient entrée into the hearts and minds of his audience," Martin says. And the
transition to preaching was almost seamless. He often employed football and baseball
metaphors (sometimes in the same sentence) in his sermons. The prohibition movement
gave Sunday a political platform. In arguing for prohibition, Sunday was particularly
animated — and sometimes vitriolic. The "muscularity" and movement of his sermons
was meant to counter the view by some that Christians were docile and fragile. Sunday,
Martin says, wanted to prove that Christians could be "as strong and as tough as anybody
else.
NPR summar:y “Billy Sunday, Man of God”
YOSEMITE SAM
MARK DRISCOLL
 “Those who want to portray Jesus as a pansy or a pacifist are
prone to be very selective in the parts of the Bible they quote. But the
God of the bloody Old Testament is Jesus Christ. When he became a
man, he walked the earth as a working-class carpenter. The
European, long-haired, dress-wearing, hippie Jesus is a bad
myth from a bad artist who mistook Jesus for a community
college humanities professor.”
HOMER RODEHEAVER
 Billy Sunday’s music leader
 Led immense crowds in song with
trombone and voice
 Founded first sacred music
publishing company
 Commercially successful
recording artist
 By now, Angelus Temple was beginning to appear a bit shabby. The biggest project
in the remodeling of the Temple was the installation of the beautiful proscenium arch
flanked by two choir lofts. This change afforded greater opportunity for the
presentation of my illustrated sermons and all of the sacred operas the Lord gave me.
 The development of this type of message came as a result of my disappointment
that many left my meetings unconverted, in spite of the fact that hundreds and
sometimes thousands flocked to the altars. The thought struck me that perhaps if
people could see the messages as well as hear them, more would come to Jesus.
 In the beginning, the illustrations were quite elementary compared with their
later development. My first sermon to be presented in this way was titled, “Weighed
in the Balances.” A large pair of scales was erected on the platform, over which a
structure of wood canopied by velvet was built. Inside, a man was hidden.
 I placed toys representing worldly amusements on one of the scale pans: a toy
automobile to represent a joyride, a little house for a dance hall, a miniature oil
derrick to represent the search for worldly riches, and so forth. As each object was
added, the operator inside would tip the scales further downward.
 Then a tiny girl clad in white and carrying a huge family Bible came forward. With the
aid of a chair and a lift, she got into the opposite pan. The pan with the girl was lowered.
 The illustration brought to the hearts of the people the assurance that the Bible,
when received as a little child, outweighs the world with all its riches and amusements, no
matter how high they are piled.
 As time passed, these sermons were worked out much more elaborately and
effectively. Beautiful paintings and pastel lightings, planned and prepared by artists and
construction experts, were brought into use, and the musical programs were coordinated
with the themes of the messages.
 Through the years, these illustrated sermons proved to be a joy to the hearts of
thousands, besides a delight to the eye and ear. Through them, countless souls who
otherwise might not have come to Christ were born into the kingdom of God.
 Forty days before Christmas in 1939, God gave me the idea of Regem Adorate—“O
Worship the King”—my first sacred opera. It commenced with the creation and fall of
man, and continued to the Christmas story. The opera had eight showings at the Temple.
 Other sacred operas followed as the years ensued: The Iron Furnace, The Crimson
Road, The Rich Man and Lazarus. And individual songs multiplied. Sometimes incidents
in my ministry prompted a song, such as when someone commented that I could not be
sincere, because I smiled so much on the platform. So I wrote, “Should Christians
Smile?”
 Another interesting event resulted in my song, “In the Center of
God’s Will.” This I wrote on a paper sack retrieved from the floor of a
railroad train when I heard newsboys hollering an extra heralding that I
had been killed in an airplane crash. (I had missed that plane and taken the
train.)
 Adapted from Aimee: The Life Story of Aimee Semple McPherson by
Aimee Semple McPherson, copyright 1979. Published by the International
Church of the Foursquare Gospel.
AND YOUR POINT IS?
 Revivalism is among the most important formative movements in
American evangelicalism. It is our history, and it has formed us.
Much of what we take for granted as common sense Christianity was
invented between 1801 and 1950.
 Our practice of music in the church developed in tandem with
revivalism. Important musicians such as Ira Sankey (Moody’s guy),
Rodeheaver, McPherson, and later Dino Kartsonakis (Kathryn
Kuhlman’s pianist) and countless others learned their craft in the
midst of revival culture.
 The formation of music within revival culture means that with our
musical heritage we import cultural aspects of revivalism. We usually
do this without knowing it.
WHAT DO WE IMPORT?
 Music as supporting the emotional arc of a revival service.
 Music as a calculated means to a specific end. What is the end?
 The free and ambitious acquisition of popular culture forms
(radio, Hollywood, publicity, evolving forms of pop music,
theatricality, spectacle, glamour, folksiness, image cultivation)
TWO WEIRD EXAMPLES
 Rez Band sounds like AC/DC (video)
 Dino poses on a motorcycle:
BORROWED FROM
JUDAS PRIEST?
WHAT ARE WE TO DO?
 Interestingly, our impulse to make a list of action items (boycott
Disney, burn some records, start our own cable channel, etc) is itself a
culture inheritance from the tradition of evangelical preaching and
teaching which must always culminate in “application”. The
implication is that within the space of one hour we know all we need
to know to go into action.
REMAIN CALM AND
LEARN MORE
 Read
 Listen
 Learn about your history
 Be slow to judge
 Gradually become self-aware without becoming a snob
CAN’T WE BE BIBLICAL?
 If revivalism is the story of the Gospel importing cultural
influences, let’s just stick with the pure Gospel.
 That has never worked and that is not a problem.
 The task is not to live a-culturally, but to live both culturally and
wisely.