REVIVALISM

generally, renewed religious fervour within a Christian group, church, or community, but primarily a movement in some Protestant churches to revitalize the spiritual ardour of their members and win new adherents. Revivalism in its modern form can be attributed to that shared emphasis in Anabaptism, Puritanism, German Pietism, and Methodism in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries on personal religious experience, the priesthood of all believers, and holy living, in protest against established church systems that seemed excessively sacramental, priestly, and worldly. Of the groups that contributed to the revival tradition, the Anabaptists were severely persecuted, and only a few survived the 16th-century Reformation. In England, however, the Puritans protested against the sacramentalism and ritualism of the Church of England in the 17th century, and many migrated to America, where they continued their fervour for experiential religion and devout living. The Puritan fervour waned toward the end of the 17th century, but the Great Awakening (q.v.; c. 172050), America's first great revival, under the leadership of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and others, revitalized religion in the North American colonies. The Great Awakening was a part of a larger religious revival that was also influential in Europe and Great Britain. In Germany and Scandinavia, Lutheranism was revitalized by the movement known as Pietism. The British revival led by John Wesley and others eventually resulted in the Methodist church. Toward the end of the 18th century another revival, known as the Second Great Awakening (c. 17951835), began in the United States. During this revival, meetings were held in small towns and the large cities throughout the country, and the unique frontier institution known as the camp meeting (q.v.) began. The Second Great Awakening produced a great increase in church membership, made soul winning the primary function of the ministry, and stimulated several moral and philanthropic reforms, including temperance, emancipation of women, and foreign missions. After 1835 professional revivalists traveled through the towns and cities of the United States and Great Britain, organizing annual revival meetings at the invitation of local pastors who wanted to reinvigorate their churches. In 185758 a prayer meeting revival swept U.S. cities following a financial panic. It indirectly instigated a revival in Northern Ireland and England in 185961. The preaching tour of the American lay evangelist Dwight L. Moody through the British Isles in 187375 marked the beginning of a new surge of Anglo-U.S. revivalism. In his subsequent revival activity, Moody perfected the highly businesslike techniques that characterized the urban mass evangelistic campaigns of early 20th-century professional revivalists such as Reuben A. Torrey, Billy Sunday, and others. The interdenominationally supported revivalism of Moody and his imitators in 18751915 constituted, in part, a conscious cooperative effort by the Protestant churches to alleviate the unrest of urban industrial society by evangelizing the masses and, in part, an unconscious effort to counter the challenge to Protestant orthodoxy brought on by the new critical methods of studying the Bible and by modern scientific ideas concerning the evolution of man. In the first half of the 20th century most educated Protestant churchmen lost interest in revivalism. After World War II, however, a renewed interest in mass evangelism appeared and was especially evident in the widespread support given to the revival crusades of the American Southern Baptist evangelist Billy Graham and various regional revivalists.