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The Welsh revival of 1904–5: a critique

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Basil Hall
Basil Hall*
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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Extract

In the Lancet for 26 November 1904, there was a brief and caustic account of ‘curious psychological phenomena...in connexion with the religious upheaval in progress’ in Wales, in which ‘the chief instigator of this tumult’ [that is, Evan Roberts] is quoted as saying to a journalist who interviewed him for the Western Mail: ‘When I go out to the garden I see the devil grinning at me but I am not afraid of him. I go into the house, and when I go out again to the back I see Jesus Christ smiling at me.’ The Lancet also cited a description of the young revivalist by the same journalist: ‘His restlessness is marvellous, he is walking about all day with the springiness of a man treading on wires, his arms swaying unceasingly’; and referred to accounts of the revivalist lying on the floor at meetings for long intervals ‘weeping and writhing in agony’. The Lancet commented that if among the friends of the preacher there were any medical practitioners it would be a kindness on their part to point out to him ‘ the peril which menaces his intellectual equilibrium’. This judgement was shrewd for towards the end of 1906 Evan Roberts had broken down, and he never sufficiently recovered from the intense and prolonged nervous excitement of the revival period, but lived in retirement as a near recluse in England from 1906 to 1925, and thereafter in South Wales until his death in 1951. It is a sad story of a young former miner and blacksmith from the background of deep piety in the Welsh calvinist methodist chapel at the village of Loughor in Glamorgan, who was preparing himself for the ministry at a denominational preparatory school prior to theological college training - a man sincere, sensitive and deeply religious, earnestly praying for a revival of religion in Wales - who was caught up by the wave of intense religious emotion which the revival released and who found himself shining before the world in excited newspaper reports throughout Britain and Europe in a blaze of glory, fanned by journalists and religious publicists, as brief as it was excessive.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 8: Popular Belief and Practice , 1972 , pp. 291 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1972

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References

page no 291 note 1 The Lancet, i (London 1904) p 1514.

page no 291 note 2 The most recent account of Evan Roberts and the Revival is [Eifion] Evans, [The Welsh Revival of 1904] (Port Talbot 1969). This does not raise the issues which are the purpose of this paper, since its aim is more edification than historical analysis, but it contains many useful references in the notes, and provides in chapter 11, pp 178-82, a useful summary of the secluded Ufe of Roberts after the end of the Revival.

page no 292 note 1 The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, possesses a few items of secondary importance relating to Evan Roberts including a few letters, and has files of the Western Mail and the Calvinist Methodist weekly paper, Y Goleuad, relating to the Revival period. The Library also possesses pamphlets made up of extracts from the Western Mail’s reports of Revival meetings. There is a bibliography in the memorial volume for the Revival, Cyfrol Coffa Diwygiad 1904-1905, ed Sidney, Evans and Roberts, Gomer M. (Caernarfon 1954)Google Scholar: this bibliography, together with the references in The Welsh Revival by Eifion Evans, forms the most complete bibliography yet available.

page no 292 note 2 Calvin, Colton, The History and Character of American Revivals (2 ed London 1832)Google Scholar; Sweet, W. Warren, Revivalism in America: its Origin, Growth and Decline (New York 1944)Google Scholar; Smith, T. L., Revivalism and Social Reform in mid-nineteenth century America (New York 1957)Google Scholar; Lectures on Revivals of Religion by Charles Grandison Finney, ed McLoughlin, W. G. (Harvard University Press 1960)Google Scholar; McLoughlin, [W. G.], Modern Revivalism (New York 1959)Google Scholar; McLoughlin, W. G., Billy Sunday (New York 1961)Google Scholar.

page no 292 note 3 [J. Vyrnwy], Morgan, [The Welsh Religious Revival, 1904-5, A Retrospect and a Criticism] (London 1909)Google Scholar.

page no 292 note 4 [Henri], Bois, [Le Réveil en Pays de Galles] (Toulouse 1907)Google Scholar; de Fursac, [J.] Rogues, [Un Mouvement mystique contemporain, le réveil religieux du Pays de Gaues] (Paris 1907)Google Scholar.

page no 294 note 1 Morgan, pp 211, 221.

page no 294 note 2 Bois, pp 554-6. ‘Le Réveil a eu une indiscutable influence sur la campagne électorale: l’agitation politique et l’émotion religieuse s’y fondues et soudées d’une admirable et originale façon.’ Lloyd George’s majority jumped from 296 to 1244.

page no 295 note 1 It is interesting that in his book, which gives an edifying account of the Revival in South Wales, Lewis, H. Elvet, a London Welsh minister, cites the example of St Francis: With Christ among the Miners (London 1906) p 151 Google Scholar.

page no 295 note 2 For an analysis of these various methods see the full and admirable account in McLoughlin, Modern Revivalism.

page no 296 note 1 Cf[William], James, [The Varieties of Religious Experience] (London 1902) p 251 Google Scholar: ‘On the whole, unconsciousness, convulsions, visions, involuntary vocal utterances, and suffocation, must be simply ascribed to the subject’s having a large subliminal region, involving nervous instability.’

page no 297 note 1 The basis of his exhortations he himself summed up in four articles: a confession to God of all sins of the past hitherto unconfessed; the giving up of everything doubtful; open confession of Christ’, ready and immediate obedience to every impulse of the Spirit.

page no 297 note 2 Matthews, W. R., Memories and Meanings (London 1969) p 59 Google Scholar.

page no 297 note 3 Bois, pp 315ff.

page no 297 note 4 Rogues de Fursac, pp 70ff.

page no 297 note 5 Ibid, p 36.

page no 298 note 1 Morgan, pp 143 ff.

page no 298 note 2 Rogues de Fursac, p 87. Bois also comments on this incident (pp 435-6) with the under-statement: ‘ce récit met mal à l’aise’.

page no 298 note 3 Bois gives full extracts from this curious notebook (its whereabouts are apparently now not known) in his French version made from the materials published from it in the Western Mail (Bois, pp 437-62).

page no 299 note 1 Bois, pp 470ff.

page no 299 note 2 Rogues de Fursac, pp 162, 101.

page no 299 note 3 Evans, pp 28, 31.

page no 299 note 4 Bois, pp 346-94; Rogues de Fursac, pp 145ff. Again William James provided in advance a description of this psychological phenomenon: ‘There is one form of sensory automation which possibly deserves special notice on account of its frequency. I refer to hallucinatory or pseudo-hallucinatory luminous phenomena, photisms, to use the term of the psychologists’ (James, p 251).

page no 299 note 5 Bois, p 32, n 1.

page no 299 note 6 Ibid, p 466.

page no 300 note 1 Evans, p 146.

page no 300 note 2 Ibid, pp 192-7: the founder of the Elim Pentecostal Movement, George Jeffreys, was converted during the revival at Nantyffyllon.

page no 300 note 3 Rogues de Fursac, p 122; Bois, p 582.

page no 300 note 4 Williams, [C. A.], [‘The Welsh Religious Revival, 1904-5’, The British Journal of Sociology, 111 (London 1952) pp 242ffGoogle Scholar. Among other matters, for example, he confuses ‘the new theology’ of the theological colleges with that of R.J. Campbell, whereas it was derived from the impact of Higher Criticism and the writings of von Harnack, Herrman, Troeltsch and others acting as a solvent on the evangelical tradition. Theological college teachers would have found Campbell’s writings too unscholarly to be particularly disturbing.

page no 300 note 5 Williams, p 259.

page no 301 note 1 Williams, p 257.

page no 301 note 2 Rogues de Fursac, p 122; Bois, pp 576-81: he adds references to French studies of religious mania.

page no 301 note 3 Evans, , p 138, citing War on the Saints (London 1912)Google Scholar by Mrs J. Perm Lewis and Evan Roberts.