Welsh Revival

Background

The Welsh Revival was a large-scale spiritual awakening that took place in Wales, in the United Kingdom, from 1904 to 1905. Its best-known figure was Evan Roberts (1878–1951). Born in Loughor, a small town in South Wales, he was raised in a Calvinistic Methodist family. He worked in the coal mines from childhood, and from 1902 he was apprenticed as a blacksmith to his uncle, though he longed to become a preacher.

Roberts did not bring about the revival single-handedly. In New Quay, a town on the west coast of Wales, a revival movement had already begun, centered on the church of the Rev. Joseph Jenkins. There, according to accounts, the testimony of a girl named Florrie Evans provided the spark. Seth Joshua, a Presbyterian minister and evangelist, had also long been praying for revival in the churches of Wales and leading evangelistic meetings.

Course of the Revival

• September 13, 1904: Roberts and his friend Sidney Evans entered a school in Newcastle Emlyn to prepare for ministerial training.
• September 29, 1904: Roberts attended a meeting led by Seth Joshua at Blaenannerch. When Joshua prayed, "Lord, bend us," Roberts cried out, "Bend me," and underwent a profound experience. He later understood this experience as the baptism in the Holy Spirit.
• October 31, 1904: In a side room of his home church, Moriah Chapel, he held a prayer meeting with fewer than twenty young people. This date is generally regarded as the beginning of the revival. The response was slight at first, but crowds soon gathered, and the meetings continued until dawn.
• From November 1904: Within two weeks, news of the revival had spread throughout Wales. The Welsh daily newspaper Western Mail reported each day on the meetings and the number of converts. Roberts, together with his brother Dan and Sidney Evans, toured the coalfields of South Wales holding meetings, and the revival spread to North Wales as well. Many other preachers and youth ministry teams also led meetings in various places.

Roberts emphasized four points: confess every known sin; remove anything doubtful from one's life; obey the Holy Spirit promptly; and confess Jesus Christ publicly. Often no musical instruments were used in the meetings. At times, with no set sermon, prayer, confession, testimony, and hymn singing broke out spontaneously, and women and teenagers also led in prayer and testimony.

Results and Influence

During the year or so in which the revival continued, some 100,000 conversions were reported in Wales. According to one estimate, the proportion of church members among the adult population of Wales rose from about 49 percent in 1904 to about 56 percent by the end of 1905. Accounts of the revival also relate anecdotes of declining patronage at public houses and fewer cases coming before the courts.

News of the revival spread widely beyond Britain, stimulating prayer movements in many places. Because of its emphasis on the experience of baptism in the Holy Spirit, it is sometimes cited as one of the factors behind the rise of the Pentecostal movement. In the Korean church it is frequently presented alongside the Great Pyongyang Revival of the same period.

Exhausted by the pressures and criticism that accumulated over the course of the revival, Roberts withdrew from public ministry and never again led mass meetings. He died on January 29, 1951, and was buried at Moriah Chapel.

Assessment

Admirers of the revival see it as a model of revival that began with prayer and repentance and was led by laypeople and young people. Churches that emphasize the experience of the Holy Spirit sometimes regard it as a forerunner of the Holy Spirit movements of the twentieth century.

Others take a more cautious view. As the revival progressed, Roberts is reported to have relied increasingly on visions and impressions that he took to be the leading of the Holy Spirit. Assessments also differ on the style of the meetings, which gave precedence to spontaneous experience over the preaching of the Word; on the fervor, which was intense but short-lived; and on the method of counting converts, which relied on newspaper reports.