When Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend in 1822 that he anticipated the rapid decline of traditional Christian belief in the U.S., he was unaware that a young preacher named Charles Grandison Finney had already set in motion what would later be known as the Second Great Awakening. So observes Ross Douthat in commenting on a recent gathering that may turn out to be significant in the history of American religion:
[A] Christian college in rural Kentucky, Asbury University, has just experienced an old-school revival—a multiweek outpouring that has kept students praying and singing in the school chapel from morning to night, drawn tens of thousands of pilgrims from around the country, captured the imagination of the Internet, and even drawn the attention of the New York Times. . . . [W]hatever the Asbury Revival’s long-term impact, the history of Finney and Jefferson is a reminder that religious history is shaped as much by sudden irruptions as long trajectories, as much by the mystical and personal as by the institutional and sociological.
Secular experts writing about religion tend to emphasize the deep structural forces shaping practice and belief—the effects of industrialization or the scientific revolution, suburbanization or the birth-control pill. Religious intellectuals tend to emphasize theological debates and evangelization strategies. (Should Christians be winsome or combative? Should churches adapt to liberal modernity or resist its blandishments?)
These analytical tools are always important; the sociological doesn’t disappear just because the mystical has suddenly arrived. . . . But the experiences themselves remain irreducibly unpredictable. Why Asbury? Why Saul of Tarsus? Why Charles Grandison Finney?
When it comes to the religious future, you should follow the social trends, but also always expect the unexpected—recognizing that every organized faith could disappear tomorrow and some spiritual encounter would resurrect religion soon enough.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/opinion/religious-revival-christianity-asbury-kentucky.html