The 1904–05 Welsh Revival: Modernization, Technologies, and Techniques of the Self

Church History

Volumn 73, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 792-827

  Gitre, Edward J ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 85008556013     PISSN: 00096407     EISSN: 17552613     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0009640700073054     Document Type: Article

References (123)

1. Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge, 1980), 19; originally published in 1925 under the title How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles.
2. Augustus Cerillo, Jr., “The Beginnings of American Pentecostalism: A Historiographical Overview,” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, eds. Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).
3. Rhodri Hayward, “From the Millennial Future to the Unconscious Past: The Transformation of Prophecy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” in Prophecy: The Language in History 1300-2000, eds. Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton (Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton, 1997), 161.
4. See Rhodri Hayward, “Popular Mysticism and the Origins of the New Psychology, 1880-1910” (Ph.D. diss., University of Lancaster, U.K., 1995), esp. chap. 4.
5. See, esp., William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902). For a more extreme example, see Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). Of course there are exceptions to this, most notably William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978); or Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965). Yet even McLoughlin opts for a functionalist paradigm, arguing, “In short, great awakenings are periods when the cultural system has had to be revitalized in order to overcome jarring disjunctions between norms and experience, old beliefs and new realities, dying patterns and emerging patterns of behavior” (10).
6. Rhodri Hayward, “Popular Mysticism,” 336.
7. Holmes, Religious Revivals, xvii. This discursive predilection is not restricted to revivalspecific histories. “To explain [what happened in 1904-06],” Russell Davies argues in a local Welsh study, “we need to examine some of the personal and psychological aspects of the revival, and to examine how the people themselves perceived the causes” (Russell Davies, Secret Sins: Sex, Violence & Society in Carmarthenshire, 1870-1920 [Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996], 206).
8. Although Ann Taves {Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999]) does not examine the Welsh revival specifically, she does so by implication, employing an interpretive framework that takes in those normative practices of the Welsh revival. In so doing, she, too, privileges psychology, especially the works of William James. See, for instance, by way of contrast, her discussion of James versus Durkheim (276-78). I have relied upon biographical material, which to a certain degree marks the subject; however, I have explored the life of Roberts not to ferret out his biographical peculiarities or, as a so-called postmodern, to deconstruct “the subject.” This essay will attempt to respect both the integrity of the subject and historical contingency, equally, and will argue that though Evan Roberts was a central figure in the revival, he was not its cause. Surveying the historiography of modern revivalism, Kenneth Jeffrey has well argued that, “It is generally accepted that revivals have not occurred in response to any one single aspect, but rather they have arisen as the result of the interplay of a variety of external and local factors” (Kenneth S. Jeffrey, When the Lord Walked the Land: The 1858-62 Revival in the North-East of Scotland [Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 2002], 37). For a valuable effort to ferret out some of these various factors, see the much-anticipated recently translated R. Tudur Jones, Faith and the Crisis of a Nation: Wales 1890-1914 (Cardiff, U.K.: University of Wales Press, 2004).
9. On Roberts's life, see Brynmor P. Jones, An Instrument of Revival: Complete Life of Evan Roberts, 1878-1951 (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge, 1995).
10. I make this claim, that it was the first completely modern revival, advisedly. In many ways the earlier mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic revival was also modern, harnessing technologies like the telegraph, railroad, and daily press. (Cf. Jeffrey, When the Lord Walked the Land.) Yet, I shall argue that modernization and “the modern” were not merely technological or material but also perceptual and ideological. The most dramatic social and cultural reimagining of time and space, which is central to this essay's argument, took place well after railway travel had been introduced. See, for instance, Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983); and Peter Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003). The cultural meanings assigned to technologies, or rather read from technologies, changed over time. So, as well, did attending sociocultural practices.
11. Raymond Williams, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961), esp. intro. and pt. 2, chap. 3.
12. See Bruno Latour, Aramis-the Love of Technology, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), esp. introduction.
13. See Nikolas Rose, Toward a Critical Sociology of Freedom, Inaugural Lecture delivered May 5, 1992 at Goldsmiths College, University of London: Goldsmiths College Occasional Paper; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977); Foucault, “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Graham Burchell and others (London: Harvester Wheatshef, 1991); Andrew Barry and Thomas Osborne, eds., Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationality (London: University College London Press, 1996); and Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London: Verso, 2003).
14. Richard Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1985); Aled Jones, Powers of the Press: Newspapers, Power and the Public in Nineteenth-Century England (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar, 1996); Laurel Brake, “Writing, Cultural Production, and the Periodical Press in the Nineteenth Century,” in Writing and Victorianism, ed. J. B. Bullen (London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997), 54-72; and Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siecle Paris (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998). ‘
15. See, for instance, Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999); Henri Lefebvre, The Critique of Everyday Life, vol. 1, trans. John Moore (London: Verso, 1994); Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: Zonebooks, 1995); and Elisabeth Sussman, ed., On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment of time: The Situationist International, 1957-1972 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989).
16. G. Hall Wallis, “A Denominational Revival,” Free Methodist, 12 January 1905, 18-19; W. L. Taylor, “The Welsh Revival: Its Origin, Character, and Results,” Aldersgate Primitive Methodist Magazine 86 (1905): 134-38. Cf. Edith L. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 58.
17. New Testament scripture references taken from the King James Version unless otherwise indicated.
18. Several prominent evangelicals tried to bring leadership from the outside, such as “General” Booth and F. B. Meyer; however, they failed. See, for instance, on Meyer, “Origin of the Revival: Mr. Meyer's Claim,” WM, 13 December 1904, 5; “An Account of the Conversion of Evan Roberts,” WM, 7 January 1905, 7; and “Rev. F. B. Meyer at Penarth,” WM, 23 February 1905, 6.
19. Evan Roberts, “A Message to the World,” in The Story of the Welsh Revival: As Told by Eyewitnesses Together with a Sketch of Evan Roberts and His Message to the World, Arthur Goodrich and others (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1905), 5.
20. D. M. Philips, Evan Roberts, The Great Welsh Revivalist and His Work, 5th ed. (London: Marshall Brothers, 1906), 117.
21. The Great Welsh Revivalist and His Work., 120.
22. W. T. Stead, “Mr. Evan Roberts,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 55.
23. Reprinted in Philips, Evan Roberts, 519.
24. Philips, Evan Roberts, 74. Cf. Brynmor P. Jones, Voices from the Welsh Revival 1904-1905 (Bryntirion, Bridgend, U.K.: Evangelical Press of Wales, 1995), 18-20. Cf. H. Elvert Lewis, With Christ Among the Miners (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906), 62.
25. Philips, Evan Roberts, 142. Cf. S. G. Jenkins, “Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival,” Bible Christian Magazine 84 (April 1905): 145-52.
26. Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 21.
27. Reprinted in Philips, Evan Roberts, 448.
28. W. T. Stead, “Mr. Evan Roberts,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 55.
29. On early Christology, see J.L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought: from the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon, vol. 1, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), esp. chaps. 16-18.
30. New American Standard Version (hereinafter NAS), the Lockman Foundation, 1995.
31. Thaddeus A. Schnitker, “Dove,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, eds. Erwin Fahlbusch and others (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 1:884.
32. Timothy Gorringe, “Pneumatology,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, ed. Alister McGrath (Maiden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993), 448.
33. John 3:8 (NAS).
34. “The Revival in Wales,” WM, 19 November 1904, 5-6.
35. See Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 8, for the “one-hour” comment.
36. “The Revival Movement,” WM, 21 November 1904, 4.
37. Kern, Culture of Time and Space, chap. 5.
38. Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 16.
39. Dan Roberts, Letter to Evan Roberts, 14 November 1904, repr. Philips, Evan Roberts, 215.
40. Evan Roberts, Letter to D. M. Philips, 8 November 1905, repr. Philips, Evan Roberts, 450.
41. Repr. and trans. Philips, Evan Roberts, 420. Note the inferential link to the passage from the Gospel of John quoted earlier.
42. “Mr. Evan Roberts Breaks Down,” WM, 14 December 1904, 5. Supportive journalists noted this fact quite openly, without accusing leaders of manipulating the crowds: “Owing to the great secrecy to which his movements were subjected, Mr. Evan Roberts's intention to attend Tabernacle Welsh Congregational Chapel was known only to very few persons, with the result that the building was far from being full at two o'clock, the hour at which the meeting had been announced to begin” (”Mr. Roberts Visits Hirwain,” WM, 19 January 1905, 6).
43. Philips, Evan Roberts, 484.
44. By the end of November, the strain was already showing; Roberts became ill. Here was the doctor's order: stop running from one hot meeting out into the cold then back into another (hot, as in temperature) (”The Revivalist Recovering,” WM, 28 November 1904, 5).
45. Philips, Evan Roberts, 268. Cf. WM, 19 November 1904, 4-6; WM, 21 November 1904, 4-5.
46. “The Revival Movement,” WM, 21 November 1904, 5.
47. See, for instance, “Wales Day by Day,” WM, 6 March 1905, 4; and “The Welsh Revival in a Court Sermon,” WM, 30 January 1905, 6.
48. Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 8.
49. “Chapels and the Revival,” WM, 21 November 1904, 6.
50. When asked about this mystique, Roberts resolutely denied the rumors: “I want to keep myself in the background. I saw in one paper that the success of these meetings was attributed to my personal magnetism. Nonsense!” (”The Revival Waves in Wales,”
51. WM, 19 November 1904, 5).
52. D. S. M. Barrie, A Regional History of The Railways of Great Britain: South Wales (London: Newton Abbot, 1980), 12:221.
53. Taylor, “Welsh Revival,” Aldersgate: 135. Cf. “The Welsh Revival/’ Free Methodist, 9 March 1905, 160.
54. Richard Pike, ed., Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extended Over More Than Fifty Years, 2nd ed. (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1887), 17.
55. Ian Carter, Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2001), esp. 1-47. He argues that it in fact became a metaphor for human experience itself.
56. Michael Freeman, Railways and the Victorian Imagination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 20.
57. Figures taken from George A. Wade, “The Growth of Railway Passenger Traffic: A Review of It During the Queen's Reign,” Railway Magazine 6 (May 1900): 455-560.
58. Figures taken from George A. Wade., 457.
59. For an exceptional discussion of how the railway network altered the physical and mental landscape, see Schivelbusch, Railway Journey.
60. T. R. Gourvish, “Railways 1830-1870: the Formative Years,” in Transport in Victorian Britain, eds. Michael J. Freeman and Derek H. Aldcroft. (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1988), 57-58.
61. P. J. Cain, “Railways 1870-1914: the Maturity of the Private System,” in Freeman and Aldcroft, Transport in Victorian Britain, 92.
62. For an exceptional discussion of how the railway network altered the physical and mental landscape, (emphasis added). Cf. Kern, Culture of Time and Space, 213.
63. Freeman, Raihvays and the Victorian Imagination, esp. 38-55.
64. Barrie, Regional History of The Railways, 13.
65. Michael Robbins, Raihvay Age (Manchester, U.K.: Mandolin, 1998), 9.
66. Railway Magazine 9 (August 1901): 192.
67. Kern, Culture of Time and Space, 12-13. Several years prior, in 1880, the Definition of Time Act required that the time recorded at the Greenwich Observatory east of London set the legal time for all of Great Britain. As elsewhere, British railway companies standardized time-keeping long before this legislated date. In November 1840, the Great Western Railway ordered London time for all stations, a move that other companies would follow. In 1847, the Railway Clearing House, which coordinated aspects of the national railway system, issued a similar recommendation. Cities and towns would quickly follow suit. See Derek Howse, Greenwich Time and the Longitude (London: Philip Wilson, 1997), chap. 4.
68. David S. Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), esp. 325.
69. For a discussion of the latter, in relation to governmentality, see Patrick Joyce, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City, esp. 166.
70. Estimates of output production are taken from R. A. Church, “Nineteenth-Century Clock Technology in Britain, the United States, and Switzerland,” Economic History Review 28 (November 1975): 625. Cf. F. J. Britten, “Watches and Clocks,” in British Manufacturing Industries, 2nd. ed., ed. G. Phillips Bevan (London: Edward Stanford, 1878), 73.
71. Kern, Culture of Time and Space, 110.
72. Culture of Time and Space., 111.
73. Culture of Time and Space.
74. Schivelbusch, Railway Journey, 130.
75. For a corrective to Schivelbusch, see Kern, Culture of Time and Space.
76. Though at first castigated for his “vulgar” naturalism, Zola had, by 1900, a fairly broad audience in England. See Clarence R. Decker, “Zola's Literary Reputation in England,” PMLA 49 (December 1934): 1140-53. Cf. Mark Seltzer, Bodies and Machines (New York: Routledge, 1992).
77. Marcel Proust, Sodom and Gomorrah, In Search of Lost Time, trans. C. K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, rev. D. J. Enright (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992), 457-78. He likens travel by car to taking a theatergoer backstage and revealing all, which strips the experience of its mystery. The motorcar pinpoints the passenger's location in space and time and maximizes the perception of distance traveled; the express train does just the opposite, feeding this sense of spatial-temporal magic.
78. See Peter Galison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps.
79. Barrie, Regional History of The Railways, 15.
80. Schivelbusch, Railway Journey, 130.
81. One might argue that a mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic series of revivals was the first to be markedly modern. Although they utilized the press, telegraph, and railway, the relationship of technologies to revivalism was yet to be cemented in the way that it was in 1904. Even commentators at the time of the 1904-05 revival who had participated in early revivals noted the differences, especially the rapidity with which the latter spread. Also of note was the way in which it spread-seemingly with little to no human “interference.” The appearance of technology does not, I argue, make the revival modern; rather, it is a confluence of forces, the cumulative effect of intersecting technologies, and the interpretation of those interpenetrations by the populace.
82. Philips, Evan Roberts, 168.
83. G. Campbell Morgan, “Lessons of the Revival,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 43.
84. See, for instance, “The Revival in Wales and Elsewhere: Some Moving Stories,” Methodist Times, 2 February 1905, 68.
85. “The Welsh Revival: Drunkenness and Blasphemy Disappear,” Methodist Times, 5 January 1905, 5. The Times reported a similar though not exact decrease: from 446 in 1903 to 217 in 1904 (”The Religious Revival in Wales,” Times, 13 February 1905, 9). Cf. “The Religious Revival in Wales,” Times, 24 January 1905, 8; “Police-Court Effects. ‘Business’ in the Bridgend District,” WM, 26 December 1904, 6; “Crime in Glamorganshire,” Lancet, 5 August 1905, 409. Argued one correspondent: “The revival has caused the mightiest upheaval in the social life of the people that living generations have ever seen. Magistrates, policemen, journalists, and employers of labour give the same testimony” (John Whittle, “After Keswick,” Primitive Methodist, 24 August 1905, 198).
86. Roberts, “Message to the World,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 6.
87. Arthur T. Guttery, “The Hour is Come!!” Primitive Methodist, 21 September 1905, 249-50.
88. For a discussion of the political effects, see Hayward, “Transformation of Prophecy,” in Taithe, Prophecy, 169; and Andy Croll, Civilizing the Urban: Popular Culture and Public Space in Merthyr, c. 1870-1914 (Cardiff, U.K.: University of Wales Press, 2000).
89. Alfred Jones, “The Great Revival,” Free Methodist, 2 March 1905, 136.
90. Guttery, “The Hour is Come!!”
91. Taylor, “Welsh Revival: Its Origin,” 136.
92. Philips, Evan Roberts, 218. Large crowds had attended revival services before the Western Mail started its coverage; yet their reporting was significant for the revival's proliferation, as will soon be discussed.
93. Philips, Evan Roberts., 275.
94. “The Revival,” Methodist Times, 9 March 1905, 156.
95. “Striking Scenes At Tonypandy,” WM, 22 December 1904, 5.
96. “Awstin,” “An Underground Prayer Pentecost,” WM, 23 December 1904, 5.
97. S. G. Jenkins, “The Welsh Revival, No. 1,” Bible Christian Magazine 84 (1905): 73.
98. Daniel T. Rogers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 47 (emphasis added).
99. T. Ferrier Hulme, “Wales Revisited: Converted Atheists in the Pulpit,” Methodist Times, 16 March 1905, 174.
100. Hulme, “Wales Revisited,” 174.
101. E. W. Moore, “What I Saw and Heard in Wales,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 79.
102. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age, 4.
103. Margam Jones, “The Power of the Spirit,” WM, 17 December 1904, 4.
104. Stead, “Story of the Awakening,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 62.
105. “Mr. Evan Roberts's Conversion,” WM, 17 December 1904, 5.
106. “Mr. Stead on the Revival,” WM, 10 March 1905, 6. See J. Edwin Orr, The Flaming Tongue: Evangelical Awakenings, 1900-, rev. ed. (Chicago: Moody, 1975). Cf. “Italy and the Anglo-Saxon,” Lancet, 24 December 1904,1800. For an example of foreign coverage, see “Evan Roberts: Le Jeune Prophete,” La Presse, 19 January 1905, 2.
107. “The Spread of the Revival and Its After Mission: Interview with Mr. W. T. Stead,” Methodist Times, 9 March 1905, 153.
108. See, for instance, “An ‘Express’ Conversion,” WM, 17 January 1905, 5.
109. Terdiman, Discourse/Counter-Discourse, 119. Although focused on France, Terdiman's theoretical assessment can, appropriately, be applied to British practices. Content varied by region, editorial predilections, style, and tone; however, especially after the 1860s and 1870s, enterprises wanting to “commodify” news for popular consumption made themselves aware of, and incorporated, international practices and technological innovations. Cf. Harold A. Innis, “The Newspaper in Economic Development,” journal of Economic History 2 (December 1942): 1-33.
110. For an excellent introduction, see Jones, Powers of the Press. See, also, Williams, Long Revolution; and Brake, “Writing, Cultural Production, and the Periodical Press.”
111. Williams, Long Revolution, 178.
112. Aled Jones, Powers of the Press, 49.
113. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities, 26.
114. “Indeed,” Terdiman argues, “the daily paper was arguably the first consumer commodity: made to be perishable, purchased to be thrown away” (Terdiman, Discourse/ Counter-Discourse, 120).
115. “A Band of Pontypridd Revivalists,” WM, 26 December 1904, 6.
116. H. Maldwyn Hughes, “The Revival and the Normal,” Methodist Times, 12 January 1905, London, 18.
117. Schwartz, Spectacular Realities, 27-28.
118. “Mr. Sidney Evans at Ogmore Vale,” WM, 28 November 1904, 5.
119. See, again, Debord, Society of the Spectacle.
120. Jones, Voices from the Welsh Revival, 123.
121. Helen S. Dyer, Pandita Ramabai: Her Vision, Her Mission and Triumph of Faith (London: Pickering and Inglis, n.d.), 100-101. See, also, Gary B. McGee, “‘Latter Rain’ Falling in the East: Early-Twentieth-Century Pentecostalism in India and the Debate over Speaking in Tongues,” Church History 86 (September 1999): 648-65. 132. See Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited, 44-45, 64-65.
122. “Concerning This Movement,” Apostolic Herald (Seattle, Wash.), October 1901, 3.
123. Stephen Kern's own version of the banal secularization thesis in this regard is typical. He argues, “Modern technology. collapsed the vault of heaven. Never before the age of the wireless and airplane did the heavens seem to be so close or so accessible-a place of passage for human communication and for human bodies in man-made machines. The omnipresence and penetrating capacity of wireless waves rivaled miraculous action and reversed the direction of divine intervention. Planes invaded the kingdom of heaven, and their exhaust fumes profaned the realm of the spirit. Upwards still the direction of growth and life, but in this period it lost much of its sacred aspect” (Kern, Culture of Time and Space, 317).