Another Great Awakening?

“A revival is the intensification and acceleration of the normal Christian life.”
—Jonathan Edwards.

The revival fires of the Second Great Awakening broke out in Kentucky in the early 1800s and another movement of the Holy Spirit began on February 8 at Asbury College in Wilmore, Ky. The revival wound down over President’s Day Weekend, but those involved hope the blaze keeps burning.

“The Salvation Army is fully engaged in what is happening,” Major Paul Cain, who co-leads The Salvation Army Student Fellowship (SASF) at Asbury, said at the height of the revival. “It’s definitely Holy Spirit-led. The presence of the Holy Spirit and the feeling of the presence of God is palpable.”

How did it start?

Students at Asbury, a Methodist college with an almost century-long partnership with The Salvation Army, are required to attend chapel at 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

The chapel service on February 8 was itself uneventful and featured no special revival speaker, music, or emphasis. However, after the 11 a.m. dismissal, the praise band kept playing and about 20 students stayed behind to pray.

Cain said the remaining students soon began texting others to return to Hughes Auditorium for more praise, worship, testimonies, prayer, and speakers. By early afternoon, a couple hundred students had returned and a few hours later about 1,000 people had crowded into the auditorium.

The revival continued nonstop—day and night with new musicians and speakers—before the college announced that the outpouring would close to the public on February 24. At its zenith, there were long lines to get into Hughes, which can hold 1,500. The movement also spread to multiple satellite locations on campus and even several area colleges.

“It’s been amazing,” Cain said. “As word began to get out, more and more people started to come to campus, especially in this day of social media.”

God does the moving

The revival also took over the internet (a recent livestream of the regular chapel service drew 6.5 million people) with evangelicals of all stripes posting video clips and debating on social media if the revival was real. Cain has seen those debates and said he’s a believer.

“When you walk into Hughes Auditorium and you begin to consider what is happening around you, and you see people moving freely to the altar and generously praising God, you also see college students not on their phones,” he said. “Instead, you see them raising their hands and praising the Lord in the peaceful presence of God. You’re transformed in the moment. All one needs to do is be in the presence of God and you’re in a revival.

“It’s amazing because you walk in and there’s no flashy entertainment, no program, order of worship. It’s just as the Holy Spirit leads.”

Cain said Brigadier Clifton Sipley, a Salvationist luminary, taught him many years ago that when it comes to revival, God decides when and where and how they manifest.

“That has certainly been evident here,” Cain said. “There’s nothing special about Asbury or this administration or this group of students, but what is special is the presence of God. That God has chosen this place and this time is totally God’s will and design. We’re just here to bask in the glory of it.”

Many students in the SASF, which has a building on campus, attended the revival services and played prominent roles.

Reed Brunell, a senior from Ocean County, N.J, said she remembers attending a chapel service about the 1970 Asbury revival on the event’s 50-year anniversary in 2020. She believes the current awakening is a real movement of God.

“Because it’s been going on for so long now, a lot of people feel that if God weren’t here, it would have gone away already,” she said. “If God weren’t moving, it wouldn’t still be going. But it is still going, and God is still moving, and people are still coming. That’s a really powerful thing.”

Emotional testimonies

Brunell, the vice president of the SASF at Asbury, came to the revival after an emotional day of working for a refugee agency dealing with people from the Ukraine, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Syria, and Turkey who are trying to adjust to a new country. The speakers at the podium were praying for Syria and Turkey when she arrived.

“They were praying and it just hit,” she said. “I just felt like this rush of release come out of me because there are people who care that this is going on. I cried so much.”

Senior Jena Pelletier, a sociology major, is excused from chapel this semester so she can do an internship at a refugee agency. She got an email on February 8 telling her about the revival. She