A Fresh Revival is Coming

"The 2019 Carroll Ellis Symposium, "America's Greatest Revival: Cane Ridge Reconsidered," was held August 13, 2019 at the Hillsboro Church of Christ in Nashville, Tennessee, hosted by Scott Sager of the Office of Church Services at Lipscomb University. The event coincided with the 218th anniversary week of the great Cane Ridge meeting led by Barton W. Stone from August 6th to 12th, 1801 in Bourbon County, Kentucky, at the meeting house of the Presbyterian congregation he served at Cane Ridge. Answered in Fire preserves the authors' presentations from that day for wider distribution and it provides something not available in the oral presentations: documentation of sources used by the presenters, including scattered eye-witness accounts of Cane Ridge and other revivals, as well as scholarly interpretations. It offers readers in one volume bibliographic pointers toward the literature about the revival's events, context, and impact. Through the narrative, analysis, and reflection takes a deeper look at a seminal event of the Second Great Awakening in America and ponders its meaning for its heirs today. The Cane Ridge revival can be considered the remarkable beginning of a reform movement in American Protestantism that under the initial leadership of Stone, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, and Walter Scott grew rapidly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Cane Ridge meeting attracted thousands of participants and observers from a wide variety of Christian groups in the region. Despite their differences, participants joined in fasting, prayer, singing, and preaching to seek repentance and renewal, compelled by a unifying sense of divine presence and awed by manifestations of the power of the Spirit of God. Yet, for the most part, the experiential narratives of this and similar revivals during the Second Great Awakening in America have not persisted in Churches of Christ, which have for nearly two centuries emphasized cognitive apprehension of the biblical message, conformity to scriptural examples in matters of church life, and obedience to the ethical demands of the New Testament"--

What happened at or near the Cane Ridge meeting house in central Kentucky in August 1801 has become a legendary event in American religious history. Never before in America had so many thousands of people gathered for what became much more than the planned Presbyterian communion service. Never had so many families camped on the grounds. Never before had so many people been affected with involuntary physical exercises--sobbing, shouting, shaking, and swooning. And never before in American had a religious meeting led to so much national publicity, triggered so much controversy, or helped provoke such important denominational schisms. Paul Conkin tells the story of Cane Ridge in all its dimensions. The backdrop involves the convoluted history of Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism in America, the pluralistic religious environment in early Kentucky, and the gradual evolution of a new form of evangelical religious culture in eighteenth-century America. The aftermath was complex. Cane Ridge helped popularize religious camps and influenced the subsequent development of planned camp meetings. It exposed deep and developing divisions of doctrine among Presbyterian clergy, and contributed to the birth of two new denominations --Christians (Disciples of Christ) and Cumberland Presbyterians and furthered the growth of a new revival culture, keyed to a crisis-like conversion experience, even as it marked a gradual decline in sacramentalism.

In Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform, McLoughlin draws on psychohistory, sociology, and anthropology to examine the relationship between America's five great religious awakenings and their influence on five great movements for social reform in the United States. He finds that awakenings (and the revivals that are part of them) are periods of revitalization born in times of cultural stress and eventuating in drastic social reform. Awakenings are thus the means by which a people or nation creates and sustains its identity in a changing world. "This book is sensitive, thought-provoking and stimulating. It is 'must' reading for those interested in awakenings, and even though some may not revise their views as a result of McLoughlin's suggestive outline, none can remain unmoved by the insights he has provided on the subject."—Christian Century "This is one of the best books I have read all year. Professor McLoughlin has again given us a profound analysis of our culture in the midst of revivalistic trends."—Review and Expositor

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Religion, race, and American history. America's Religious History is an up-to-date, narrative-based introduction to the unique role of faith in American history. Moving beyond present-day polemics to understand the challenges and nuances of our religious past, leading historian Thomas S. Kidd interweaves religious history and key events from the larger story of American history, including: The Great Awakening The American Revolution Slavery and the Civil War Civil rights and church-state controversy Immigration, religious diversity, and the culture wars Useful for both classroom and personal study, America's Religious History provides a balanced, authoritative assessment of how faith has shaped American life and politics.