Vital Contributions of Revivalism 

to the Pentecostal Movement

By Bernie L. Gillespie © December 9, 1994 - All Rights Reserved

INTRODUCTION

Pentecostalism at its heart is a revival movement. This quality is not uniquely Pentecostal. It is inherited. It is bequeathed to Pentecostalism by revival movements long since past on. This is primarily because much of American Christianity is joined to the numerous tributaries of Revivalism which flow through modern Christian history to rush into the rapids of modern Pentecostalism. Whatever we can learn about the history and character of Revivalism will shed light on the study of Pentecostalism.

The purpose of the paper is to identify the vital contributions which Revivalism made to the formation of the Pentecostal movement. The question I will be trying to answer is: What aspects of Revivalism are essential to the origin or formation of Pentecostalism? In the interest of Revivalism, we also ask: Is Pentecostalism a Revivalist movement? What form of revivalism is the Pentecostal Movement? Are there features or dimension of Revivalism that are unique to Pentecostalism? It is hoped that by better understanding the history and makeup of Revivalism we will more clearly understand the nature and character of the Pentecostal movement.

SURVEY OF REVIVALISM

The world revival itself, came into frequent use around 1800. It is a word that can mean several different things to a variety of Christian traditions. The theological presupposition of those who used it determined what was meant by it. The three different theologies at work in the "First Awakening" were Pietistic Lutheranism, Puritan Calvinism, and Wesleyan Arminianism. The revivals of the first great awakening, under T. J. Frelinghuysen, John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards, were heavily influenced by German Pietism. Less so Edwards and Whitefied. Much more so Wesley. They were also predominantly if not exclusively Reformed.  Jonathan Edwards, a chief participant and writer about revival, viewed revival from the Reformed perspective. For him revival was not a special season of extraordinary excitement.

Rather it is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit which restores the people of God to normal spiritual life after a period of corporate declension. Periods of spiritual decline occur in history because the gravity of indwelling sin keeps pulling believers first into formal religion and then into open apostasy. Periods of awakening alternate with these as God graciously breathes new life into his people.

For Edwards, God gave revival out of His sovereign will. According to Reformed (Puritan Calvinistic) theology, human effort had a small, if any, role to pay in the initiation of revival. Just as God sovereignly regenerated those whom he chose for salvation, so too, he sovereignly graced them with a renewal in faith in the Gospel for the harvesting of souls. For the most part, the revivalist leaders understood revival (in keeping with Pietism) as a heart and emotional response or "religious emotion" to the moving of God’s Spirit.

At the turn of the 19th century at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, America witnessed a certain brand of frontier revivalism. The revivalism experienced later in the middle of the century was a form of urban revivalism. In this revival, a large number of business gathered at noon to pray in the churches in the city. With Charles Finney, a more sophisticated or professional type of revivalism came into vogue.

Finney (in the Wesleyan Arminian tradition) moved revivalism from the Reformed view of revival as a sovereign work of God to the concept of "new methods." Some of these new methods were that:

God had clearly revealed the laws of revival in Scripture. Whenever the church obeyed those laws, spiritual renewal resulted...

Preaching was direct, addressed to the individual, and usually delivered without manuscript or even notes. The public nature of the conversion experience was focused by the introduction of the ‘anxious bench,’ by which the serious seeker placed his intentions on record before the congregation.

Between 1835 and 1875 revivalism, under the influence of Holiness groups, developed a perfectionist tradition. The leaders were Finney, Asa Mahan (of Oberlin College) and Walter and Phoebe Palmer.

The movement used revivalistic methods to call Christians to a second crisis of faith and total commitment subsequent to conversion, commonly called among American Calvinists a ‘second conversion,’ a ‘rest of faith,’ or the ‘deeper’ or ‘higher life’; to Methodists it was ‘entire sanctification,’ ‘perfection in love,’ or ‘second blessing.’ Both Calvinist and Methodist wings of the revival ultimately gave prominence to a personal ‘fullness’ or ‘baptism’ of the Holy Spirit in speaking of the experience.

Revivalism was dominated by D.L. Moody from 1875 to 1899. "His mass evangelistic campaigns drew vast audiences in Britain and the United States and set the patterns for a more professional revivalism which demanded extensive organization and substantial budgets." Ira Sankey, his musical director, with gospel musicians, became a part of the revivalistic teams. Moody also sponsored educational institutions such as Moody Bible Institute for the training of ministers for evangelism.

Others who followed in the model of Moody were William "Billy" Sunday, R.A. Torrey, Gypsy Smith, et. al. Revivalism was diffused in its strength after the turn of the century. While many liberal or mainline denominations were turning to a social gospel, and the "fundamentalists" engaged the debates with modernism, the Pentecostals witnessed a phenomenal growth across America and the world.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the most direct heirs of Edwards and Finney were sponsoring the new liberal theology. Thus the American revivalistic heritage fiburcated. While a part of it contributed indirectly to the rise of liberalism and ceased to be revivalistic, the other branch became theologically stereotyped.

Pentecostalism perpetuated a frontier and a lower class urban form of revivalism. They did not identify with the professional revivalism of Finney or Moody (though many such as Parham tried to develop one and failed). A portion of the movement did carry on the perfectionist revivalism for a period of time. This issue was resolved later (as I will mention) through the theological struggles of the Baptistic and Holiness groups.

Billy Graham emerged in the 1950s as a religious leader and a more contemporary example of revivalism. While he followed the method and the theology of revivalism, he downplayed the "more strident emotional and psychological aspects of the method. What he retained was the "direct, forceful sermon appeal, the biblically oriented message, the call for personal, public response, the use of the gospel music and of large mass meetings."

Similar to the diffusion of revivalism that took place at the turn of the century was the one that took place approximately 1960. While the revivalism of Evangelicalism modeled after Graham went one way, the revivalism of the charismatic movement went another. The revivalism of Evangelicalism was more mainstream in American society. This was because its message and method was more public and made familiar through television and religious broadcasting. Graham’s revivalism has been called "traditionalist" revivalism because it was back-warding looking to the models of Finney and Moody.

CHARACTER OF REVIVALISM

Melvin Dieter, in tracing the history of revivalism, has helped to identify a number of the distinguishing characteristics of revivalism. In his descriptions he offers these traits of revivalism:

Revivalism "emphasizes the appeal of religion to the emotional and affectional nature of individuals . . . "

It believes that vital Christianity begins with a response of the whole being to the gospel’s call for repentance and spiritual rebirth by faith in Jesus Christ.

Modern revival movements have their historical roots in Puritan-pietistic reactions to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the formalized creedal expression of the Reformation faith that characterized much of seventeenth century Protestantism.

Lutheran Pietist rejected the depersonalization of the Reformation and "discovered a more experiential personal commitment and obedience to Christ and a life regenerated by the indwelling Holy Spirit. They also emphasized witness and missions as a primary responsibility of the individual Christian and the church. Subjective religious experience and the importance of the individual became a new force in renewing and expanding the church."

Revivalism is a type of American Protestantism that believes the Christian life should be one of personal, experiential, subjective, emotive, and holistic response to the moving or indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This response has a more public than private expression. The public response is usually to preaching, which is often a call to the individual for a personal conversion experience. There is also a heavy stress on missions which is interrelated to the call for personal and public response.

The focus of revivalism was on a form of emotional, subjective, individual response. This response was understood as being in relation to the Holy Spirit. The emphasis on the Holy Spirit in revivalism lead to a concentration or preoccupation with the biblical idea of the "baptism with the Holy Ghost." The subject of the baptism with the Holy Ghost eventually centered many revivalists attention on the story and themes of the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts. The study of the Pentecostal phenomena in Acts drew the revivalist to the motifs of "power from on high" and its relationship to the missionary work of the earliest Church.

The "enduement of power" was understood by some as the power for service in the Christian life. J. Wilbur Chapman (educated at Oberlin and influenced strongly by Moody’s ministry in 1878) wrote a book in 1894 titled "Received Ye the Holy Ghost?" He suggests that "every child of God has received the baptism of the Spirit." He understood the Pentecostal experience of the Book of Acts as a later "infilling" of one already baptized with the Spirit.

A typical creation or formation of a revivalist might follow this scenario: A certain person or persons has a particularly moving or life changing emotional experience which they attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit. This more than likely takes place in a protracted meeting of some type. The elation and zeal over this experience moves the individual/s to share this experience with others. This develops into a public proclamation or testimony of this experience which is given to others. Most often it would be at a protracted meeting and it would be communicated through preaching. The experience is perpetuated as individuals in the gathering have a similar experience to the one which is being witnessed. This response by the group is characterized by physical, emotional, and subjective expression. It is attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit.

REVIVALISM IN THE HOLINESS MOVEMENT

While Methodism was growing between 1820-1840, an increasing emphasis on Christian "perfection" resulted in a holiness revival. The holiness revivalists consisted of those who felt that the changes taking place in the expansion of Methodism were moving members away from important original convictions. Like their patriarch Wesley, they were restorationists, and they wanted most to restore Methodism.

Two forerunners in the Holiness movement appeared at this time. One was Timothy Merritt, whose book, in 1825, The Christian's Manual; a Treatise on Christian Perfection, with Directions for Obtaining That State, revived the idea of Christian "perfection." He felt that rapidly enlarging Methodism was widely neglecting the importance of Christian "perfection." The other was Phoebe Palmer and her Tuesday Meetings for the Promotion of Holiness in 1835. A journal, called Guide to Holiness, started by Merritt in 1839, was purchased by Phoebe Palmer's husband Walter. This journal played a major role in the Holiness revival.

At this time (1836), Charles G. Finney had written in his Lectures to Professing Christians about the "second blessing" or "blessing of Abraham." He asserted it would "sanctify fully those who through regenerating grace had begun to love and obey him [Christ]." In 1837, Finney began teaching at Oberlin College. Along with the president, Asa Mahan, he taught that a Christian could "attain to sanctification in the present life."

The joining of Wesleyan perfection with Finney's revivalism had a dramatic effect upon the Holiness movement. Both his appeal for immediacy in conversion and his emphasis of the volitional element to repentance affected Holiness thinking. This can be clearly seen in the work of a primary leader of the Holiness movement: Phoebe Palmer. Her conviction was that a return to Wesley's entire sanctification was the cure for the flagging Methodist church. She called for it in revivalist fashion.

The definiteness of her urgent revivalism called upon every believer to recognize the biblical promise of the fullness of the Spirit and to receive the experience by consecration and faith - now. The result was that the American holiness revival came to emphasize crisis stages of salvation at the expense of an emphasis on growth in grace. Dramatic and even revolutionary experience frequently became the hall mark of Christian life and witness. This distinctive eventually became a vital element of pentecostalism.

The primary vehicle that propelled the Holiness revival was the use of camp meetings. Their importance was seen in the formation of the National Camp Meeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness. "With the opening of the Vineland, New Jersey, camp meeting on July 17, 1867, the modern holiness crusade began." This, combined with the evangelistic efforts in the later part of the century, through self-supporting inner city "faith missions," caused the Holiness movement to grow dramatically.

Probably the best individual to illustrate the nature and development of Holiness Theology is Phoebe Palmer. It was Palmer who linked the idea of the moment of sanctification with the work of the Holy Ghost in the imagery of Pentecost. By 1857, her messages were filled with terminology that reflected the imagery of Pentecost. She asked at a Methodist camp meeting in Millbrook, Canada, if Christians ought not to receive a, "Baptism of the Holy Ghost similar to that received by the believers at Pentecost." She then asserted that such a baptism is every Christian's privilege and then proposed as a query: "The question now before us is, 'May we ask in faith . . . that we may be endued with power from on high, baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire?'"

Experience became a key to Palmer's theology. Since the instance of the witness of the Spirit was expected to be conscious and sensate, it led those in the holiness ranks to look for physical evidence for this moment. They esteemed emotional, sensate and physically demonstrative expressions in worship and spiritual experience. "Getting blessed" expressed in the holy shout, dance, jump, or the trance "under the power of the Spirit" were a common part of the holiness worship. This experiential and sensate manifestation of the Holy Spirit grew out of the assumptions of Wesleyan "experimentalism." In contrast, what was for Wesley a unique or seasonal occurrence of an unusual experience of the Spirit, became for Holiness proponents a normative or regularly expected phenomena.

A great deal of insight can be found about the place of healing and Pentecost in holiness thinking by looking closely at this assessment of A.T. Pierson.

If, therefore, supernatural signs have disappeared in consequence of the loss of primitive faith and holiness, a revival of these may bring some new manifestations of the former ... If in these degenerate days a new Pentecost would restore primitive faith, worship, unity, and activity, new displays of divine power might surpass those of any previous period.

While this statement was made after the turn of the twentieth century, it reflects part of the inner rationale or unique "hermeneutic" particular to Holiness. The restorationism of Wesley had sprouted new branches. Taking revivalist form and focusing on "power" rather than inward holiness, the Keswick segment of Holiness reflected the themes of "power" and "Pentecost" common to John Fletcher. These themes were immediate harbingers of Pentecostal restorationism.

That the language of "power" and Pentecostal imagery came to center stage among holiness leaders is illustrated in John Inskip, leader of healing meetings, and president of the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness. He stated in 1873:

I, as President of this Association, want to be endowed with power from on high, so that I may direct the services aright. I want the deepest baptism of my life.

The plethora of examples of Pentecostal language and Lucan expressions from Acts make it easy to see that a shift to Pentecostal theology among Holiness people would result in an experience of Pentecost in practice.

The belief that the baptism for power was a "third blessing" brought a large controversy to the Holiness people. It lead to a near impasse between those who saw the "second blessing" as the power of the Spirit and those who believed in a distinct, subsequent experience that followed the pattern of infillings in the Book of Acts. This development of "third blessing" tenet was determinative for the resulting Pentecostal revival.

Nevertheless, the developing history of the holiness and Pentecostal movements increasingly indicates that the rise of this teaching within the more radical elements of the National Holiness Association movement, encouraged by a renewed awareness of John Fletcher's use of the 'Spirit baptism' terminology, and the effective dissemination of the Keswick holiness movement's 'baptism for service' teachings by R.A. Torrey, all worked together to create the potentiality for the immediate, worldwide response aroused by the Azuza Street meetings in 1906.

The belief in the need for restoration was a deeply held idea in the minds of Holiness people. The belief in the need for restoration joined with the beliefs and method of revivalism. The working out of the theological logic inherent in both revivalism and restorationism gave birth to a number of groups, one of which was Pentecostalism. It seemed inevitable that, the longing for "deeper" spiritual experience, experientialism in piety, the belief in the sensate "moment" of the "Baptism of the Spirit," the use of the Book of Acts and Pentecostal terminology, and a preoccupation with themes of "power" related to the work of the Holy Spirit in the believers life, would lead Holiness theology and praxis to spawn what has become the Pentecostal movement.

INFLUENCE OF HOLINESS RESTORATIONIST REVIVALISM ON PENTECOSTAL ORIGINS

As Piepkorn states, "The roots of the Pentecostal movement lie deep within the Holiness movement." He adds, "Between 1901 and 1906 the Pentecostal movement emerged from the Holiness movement that had been flourishing among Wesleyan Methodists for a half century." A study of two forerunners of Pentecostalism from the Holiness movement will help us understand the changes that were taking place theological y. It will help us understand the transmutation of Holiness thinking into Pentecostal practice.

Maria B. Woodworth-Etter was a very intriguing personality who bridged the Holiness revival to the Pentecostal phenomenon. She was a Holiness evangelist that preached in camp meetings and in healing/evangelistic crusades. Her language, in terms of the work of the Spirit in the believer's life, was distinctly Pentecostal. She spoke of "outpourings of the Holy Ghost," called for praying "for a baptism of the Holy Ghost and fire," and urged her hearers to seek the "power" of the Holy Ghost.

Many people who attended her meetings claimed, that, during the late 1880s and 1890s, they experienced speaking in tongues while praying for the "power" or the "baptism" of the Spirit. Simultaneously, a number of people experienced instant healing from a variety of illnesses. Woodworth-Etter saw all this in restoration and Finneyan revivalist terms:

If we were ready to meet God's conditions we would have the same results, and a mighty revival would break out that would shake the world, and thousands of souls would be saved. The displays of God's power on the day of Pentecost were only a sample of what God designed should follow through the ages. Instead of looking back to pentecost, let us always be expecting it to come, especially in these last days.

Of all the well-known preachers involved in the healing dimension of the Holiness revival, Maria was the only one to accept Pentecostal teachings and become a Pentecostal evangelist. She was one of the first Holiness leaders who took the step of identifying the moment of entire sanctification, or, as they called it, the "baptism of the Spirit," with the evidence of tongues speaking.

The second forerunner was Benjamin Hardin Irwin of the Iowa Holiness Association. He "became convinced that there was a third experience beyond sanctification called 'the baptism with the Holy Ghost and fire' or simply 'the fire'." His search for an Scriptural experience of the Holy Ghost typified the kind of restorationist discussion that was going on among certain Holiness leader. It was an attendant of his meetings, Holiness preacher Charles Fox Parham, who was impressed by the teaching of a "third blessing."

Parham was also significantly influenced by the healing ministry of John Alexander Dowie and his following called the Christian Catholic Church. They emphasized a restorationism healing with which many Holiness people were taken up. Parham visited the healing community known as Zion and afterward desired to pattern a healing ministry after it. {Goff 1988: 50}

Parham led a Bible school near Topeka, Kansas. He provoked his students to search the Book of Acts for one scriptural evidence of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. This very search was a manifestation of the restorationist methodology and point of view.

In December of [1900] we had had our examination upon the subject of repentance, conversion, consecration, sanctification, healing and the soon coming of the Lord. We had reached in our studies a problem. What about the 2nd Chapter of Acts? . . . having heard so many different religious bodies claiming different proofs as the evidence of their having the Pentecostal Baptism, I set the students at work studying our dilligently [sic] what was the Bible evidence of the Baptism of the Holy Ghost. {Goff 1988: 66}

Their conclusion was that "speaking in tongues" was the initial evidence. At a watch-night service on December 31, 1900, Agnes N. Ozman asked Parham to lay hands on her that she might be "baptized with the Spirit as "evidenced" by speaking in tongues." Sometime after midnight she spoke in other tongues (which they identified as the "Chinese" language ), claiming the baptism of the Spirit.

Even Parham’s understanding, though later unfounded, that the restoration of tongues was for preaching in foreign languages, was restorationist in its approach.

Parham’s identification of Glassey’s gift with ‘apostolic faith,’ name he had chosen for his own emphasis on primitive Christianity, was significant. As Parham interpreted the apostles’ experience in Acts 2, they too had had a dramatic encounter with xenoglossa. The languages spoken on the Day of Pentecost served a twofold function; they allowed foreign Jews tohear the gospel message in their own tongue and demonstrated the power of god to work miracles within the newly formed Christian community. {Goff 1988: 73}

After Parham and other students shared in this experience, he became a Pentecostal evangelist, traveling to hold meetings and starting another Bible school in Houston, Texas. There, William J. Seymour, a black Holiness preacher, accepted the evidence doctrine taught by Parham. Being invited to pastor a small Holiness church in Los Angeles, he preached that the baptism of the Spirit was "evidenced" by "speaking in tongues". Being rejected by the leader of the church, he was locked out of the church. Later, he was asked to hold prayer meetings with some Holiness church members (mostly Church of the Nazarene) at Bonnie Brae Street. Subsequently, a number of those attending claimed to experience speaking in tongues as a result of being baptized in the Spirit.

The growing numbers required finding another facility. At 312 Azuza Street, an old livery stable, which was said to have been a Holiness "faith mission," was cleaned up for services. A revival began, which, after three years and thousands of testimonies to renewed lives, became the most notable of this century.

The influence that this revival had on Holiness groups was great. Many Holiness preachers experienced the Pentecostal baptism at Azuza Street and led their entire group into this revival. The fact that many of these groups were readily accepting of this phenomenon proved the close affinity of their theology with that of Pentecostalism. This does not mean that all Holiness groups accepting Pentecostalism. In fact, many adamantly opposed it.

The event that eventually lead most Pentecostals to depart from a Wesleyan-Holiness view of sanctification arose soon after 1905. It was the doctrinal controversy over sanctification as a second work of grace. Holiness people held that the "second blessing" of sanctification cleansed from sin and prepared the heart for the Holy Spirit baptism. But, those who came into the Pentecostal revival from outside the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition did not agree.

A problem arose within the Pentecostal movement when those of non-Wesleyan, especially Baptist, backgrounds described the Christian experience as involving only two steps, conversion and baptism with the Holy Spirit.

In 1910, W.H. Durham, a Baptist, propounded his idea of the"finished work" by which sanctification as a second work was eliminated and located it in the moment of conversion. This was the position held by the Pentecostal groups which formed the Assemblies of God in 1914. It became the position of more than half the Pentecostals by 1920.

The collapsing of the "Baptism of the Holy Ghost," from a three-stage to a two-stage or "finished work" framework, was a result of Calvinist-Baptistic theology supplanting Wesleyan-Holiness Christian Perfection. While there was a point where many Pentecostals moved away from the theological underpinnings of Wesleyan sanctification, the restorationist revivalism of the Holiness movement was still very much at the heart of Pentecostalism.

There are many things the Pentecostal movement has in common with the Holiness movement. They both were strong biblicists. They each had deep revivalist approaches to conversion and evangelism. The Pentecostals directly adopted the camp meeting from the Holiness revivalists. The belief and experience of divine healing were prominent in each. Tractarianism was passed on from the Holiness writers to their counterparts in the Pentecostal ranks. There was a strong premillennialism that characterized their eschatologies. Nevertheless, contrary to Dayton's assessment, the fourfold pattern of "Savior, Healing, Baptizer, and Coming Kingdom," of Foursquare fame, does not reach to the heart of their shared theologies.

I believe the combined desire for inward spiritual assurance and the subsequent belief in soteriological restorationism, first found in Wesley's Christian perfection, linked the Pentecostal faith with that of the Holiness traditions. It was this motivation that led to a "Pentecostal" hermeneutic of seeking to recover the experience and praxis of the primitive church as seen in the Book of Acts. The baptism of the Holy Spirit, healing, operation of spiritual gifts, large group meeting experiences, immediate, sensate encounters with the Spirit in worship, all reflect the events of the Book of Acts as recreated among Holiness and Pentecostal people.

I also believe that a significant factor in the development of Pentecostalism is the power motive. The longing for spiritual "power" drove the search for Spirit outpourings.in the Pentecostal antecedents. The need or desire for "power" was driven, in my opinion, by Perfectionism, especially that found in the revivalism of Charles Finney. The impulse which motivated the search for entire sanctification and the impelling force created in Finneyism (that one could and should fully obey the Law of God), drove the converts of the Holiness-Revivalist movements to discover the "power" which would enable them to be entirely sanctified or perfectly obedient.

Those under the influence of the Holiness-Revivalist movement found they were not entirely sanctified or perfectly obedience. Therefore, the only answer could be that an additional spiritual reality was missing and was yet to be "restored". Thus, inevitably, the connection was made between the power of the Spirit and the baptism of the Spirit in the Book of Acts. This was the needed element for continuing sanctification and to be kept in perfect obedience to the commands of Scripture. The focus of the Holiness-Revivalists at the end of the nineteenth century increasingly centered on Spirit baptism. This was because of the connection they saw in Acts with the "Spirit power" associated with Spirit baptism. At that point, all that was needed was for some to make the connection between speaking with tongues in Acts and the Spirit baptism for power to identify the "proof" or evidence that one has received the power or Spirit baptism. Thus a rudimentary Pentecostal theology emerged.

The primary legacy of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition for Pentecostalism is the belief in a post-conversion work of the Holy Spirit that is punctiliar, conscious, and experiential. These, combined with the evidence doctrine of speaking with tongues became the unique distinctive of Pentecostalism. Nevertheless, the motivation to seek such a sign was the Wesleyan-Holiness belief in a conscious, experiential, "moment" of spiritual encounter. And with that, their primitivism, borne of a restorationist passion, and claiming the Book of Acts (particularly chapter two) as the pattern for restoration, led to the rediscovery of the "sign" of speaking with tongues -- the touchstone of Pentecostal theology.

PENTECOSTALISM AS A RESTORATIONIST/ REVIVALISM MOVEMENT

The Pentecostal movement was informed and shaped by revivalism, especially the restorationism threaded throughout its history in a variety of significant ways. As the focus of revivalism moved to pattern its revival experience after that which is found in the Book of Acts, the idea of restoring what would become integral to Pentecostalism, progressed with it.

For those preceding the First Awakening, there was a moving toward New Testament models of revival, such as Pentecost.

Pentecost became the model for revival prayer, and a new strategy of leavening the surrounding culture with the free witness of the gospel was adopted. Puritans and Pietists alike recognized that something beyond the pure experiential orthodoxies they had built was needed to revive the church: an effusion of the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Cane Ridge revival in Kentucky (August, 1801), as a result of the physical phenomena exhibited there, was called by witnesses, "the greatest outpouring of the Spirit of God since Pentecost." The terminology of a biblical Pentecost recurred frequently in revivalism’s writings and expressions:

Campton, New Hampshire, had enjoyed throughout the previous year a powerful awakening, concerning which a witness wrote, ‘We could no longer hesitate to say, "The Pentecost has fully come."’

"Yea, we should labor and pray for the effusion of the Holy Spirit, that every congregation may be visited by a pentecostal season of revival ..."

The most obvious element of the experience of Acts was the baptism or filling with the Holy Spirit. As Dieter stated earlier, the idea of deeper or higher life among Calvinist and entire sanctification or second blessing among Methodists gave prominence to the baptism or fullness of the Holy Spirit. Revivalists of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition looked at the baptism of the Spirit as an experience of entire sanctification. Those of the Oberlin-Finney tradition moved away from entire sanctification to a view of the baptism of the Holy Ghost as "the enduement of power from on high." Revivalist D. L. Moody thought of the "Pentecostal baptism of the Holy Ghost" more as "enduement of power" and less as "entire cleansing" or sanctification.

In 1877 Moody’s "Doctrinal Discourses" speaks of the "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" as the "gift of the Holy Spirit for service." R.A. Torrey followed Moody as both a successor in ministry and perpetuator of revivalist theology. He also held to the baptism of the Holy Ghost for power or the fullness of the Spirit. His four points concerning the baptism of the Holy Spirit clearly articulate a stream of revivalism that would directly influence Pentecostalism in the soon coming future.

Pentecostalism followed the Finney view of revival as the reviving of the church which was more the conviction of many in the Holiness movement.

Charles Finney had stressed revivalism as a force to keep the local church healthy; he wanted to see the faith of believers strengthened, believing that the conversion of sinners would follow. Moody, on the other hand, stressed evangelism -- the conversion of the sinner.

The interesting aspect of this is that the reviving of the church by the Pentecostal outpouring was to empower the church to proclaim the Gospel with boldness to all the world. The early Pentecostals were highly missionary and evangelism focused. They saw the "blessing from on high’’ as a supernatural power for fulfilling the command of Christ to be witnesses in all the world.

The term revival had come to mean different things to different people. For some, it referred to an occasion when God in His good pleasure chose to awaken in believers a desire to be better disciples of Jesus Christ. Others concentrated on meeting God’s conditions for the revival of the saints and the conversion of sinners, certain that God would honor these efforts. For Pentecostals, the term was associated with an outpouring if the Holy Spirit.

While revival to a Pentecostal meant the outpouring of the Holy Ghost, it was the revival meeting or evangelistic meeting where this outpouring was most often experienced. I believe the "upper room" on the Day of Pentecost motif is consciously or unconsciously perpetuated in this. The group experience of the Spirit was in keeping with the experience of the disciples in the first church.

Edith Blumhofer in her book Restoring the Faith quotes this definition of restorationism: "The impulse to restore the primitive or original order of things as revealed in Scripture, free from the accretions of church history and tradition."{Blumhofer 1993: 12} {restorationism} She believes that restorationism is one of the defining characteristics of Pentecostalism.

Attempts to recapture the presumed vitality, message, and form of the apostolic church have spawned countless movements in the course of Christian history. Owning to a nostalgic sense of the pristine purity of early Christian experience, restorationists often remember selectively and yearn for the return of "the good old days." In the closing decades of the nineteenth century, some restorationists sought to restore the apostolic faith; others anticipated a divine restoration. Since the people whose restorationist hopes most directly shaped American Pentecostalism were premillinnialists ardently committed to the belief that theirs were the last days, they generally expected God’s imminent intervention in history; they also sought ways to cooperate with God’s presumed intentions. {Blumhofer 1993: 13}

Blumhofer sees four basic functions of the restorationist impulse in Pentecostalism. First, it sounded a call to social and political reform in perfectionist tones. It meant a return to the norms of an earlier time leaping over certain historical currents. Second, it "advocated purifying religious forms and testing practices and beliefs against the New Testament." {Blumhofer 1993: 13} The first Pentecostalism historian aptly articulated this writing in 1916, "This movement has no history. It leaps the intervening years, crying ‘back to Pentecost.’" {Blumhofer 1993: 13}

Third, restorationists wrestled with eschatological issues. Restorationist saw their role as the either fulfilling the ushering in of the millennial or integral to end-times Christianity espousing those apocalyptic assumptions. "They tapped emotions that ran deep in the American experience where America itself was assigned eschatological significance." {Blumhofer 1993: 13} Fourth, restorationists inspired anti-denominationalism. They tended to reject church authority and abandoned organized religion with its creeds and traditions. This is seen in the call to "come-outism" in the early days of Pentecostal history.

It is the fact that Pentecostalism was so entwined with other restorationist groups that it took time for Pentecostalism to clarify its identity.

Because many of Parham’s contemporaries across the United States shared his experience-oriented interest in the person and work of the Holy Spirit with a wide array of theological nuances, Pentecostalism disentangled itself only slowly from other popular religious movements that also worked toward realizing the dream that motivated Parham of restoring the power and message of the New Testament church in the twentieth century. {Blumhofer 1993: 2}

CONCLUSION

The revivalist of the First Awakening used Pentecostal themes and models for the expressions of revival. Charles Finney also spoke of revival in terms of Pentecost and the outpouring of the Spirit. Moody and Torrey wrote about revival as the Baptism with the Holy Spirit. The Holiness Movement fluidly used Pentecost as a buzz word or paradigm for the baptism of the Spirit for entire cleansing they were seeking (or claimed to experience).

It is only logical that these traditions would flow together, bounce off of each other and ultimately have a hand in the shaping of a movement that would complete their desire to restore the biblical Pentecostal reality to the modern Church. Their writings, preaching and prayers for the fullness of the Spirit -- the return to the Day of Pentecost experience -- fomented a number who sought the wind, fire and tongues just as the first 120 disciples witnessed on Pentecost Day. While the wind and fire did not recur among Pentecostals the speaking with tongues did and became their insignia of revivalism’s dream come true.

The Pentecostals were true restorationistic revivalists, both in their faith and their practice.

Revivalism Bibliography

Anderson, Robert Mapes. Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Blumhofer, Edith L. Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Dayton, Donald W. Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987.

Dieter, M. E. "Revivalism." In Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, edited by Walter A. Elwell, 948-51. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984.

 Eerdman's Handbook to the History of Christianity. First. Edited by Dr. Tim Dowley, John H. Y. Briggs, Dr. Robert D. Linder and David F. Wright. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1977.

Goff, James R. Jr. Fields White Unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Origins of Pentecostalism. Fayetteville, AR: The University of Arkansas Press, 1988.

Handy, Robert T. A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1971.

________, Lefferts A. Loetscher, and H. Shelton Smith. "American Christianity." In American Christianity, An Historical Interpretation with Representative Documents, 1st. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1963.

Herberg, Will. Protestant, Catholic, Jew. Garden City, NJ: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960.

Littell, Franklin Hamlin. From State Church To Pluralism: A Protestant Interpretation of Religion in American History. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1962.

Lovelace, Richard F. Dynamics of Spiritual Life: An Evangelical Theology of Renewal. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1979.

Marty, Martin E. A Nation of Behavers. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1976.

McLoughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978.

 The New Schaff-Herzog Encycolpedia of Religious Knowledge. Vol. X Reusch-Son of God. Edited by Samuel Macauley Jackson, Lefferts A. Loetscher and George William Gilmore. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1977.

"Revivalism." In The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America, First, edited by Edwin Scott Gaustad. New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1974.

Smith, Timothy L. Revivalism & Social Reform. New York: Harper Torchbooks, The Academy Library, 1965.

Synan, Vinson. Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins. Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1975.

Warner, Wayne E. The Woman Evangelist: The Life and Times of Charismatic Evangelist Maria B. Woodworth-Etter. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1986.

Weisberger, Bernard A. They Gathered at the River. New York: Octagon Books, 1979.

Wells, David F., and John D. Woodbridge. The Evangelicals, What They Believe, Who They Are, Where They Are Changing. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1975.

Williston Walker. A History of the Christian Church. Fourth. Edited by Richard A. Norris, David W. Lotz and Robert T. Handy. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1985.