Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T09:28:35.323Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The 1904–05 Welsh Revival: Modernization, Technologies, and Techniques of the Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Edward J. Gitre
Edward J. Gitre
Affiliation:
doctoral candidate in History at Rutgers University.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Surveying the short history of pentecostalism in 1925, Frank Bartelman—a consummate “insider historian”—reckoned that although the Azusa Street revival had become “full grown” in Los Angeles, California, it was “rocked in the cradle of little Wales.” In pentecostal historiography much ink has been spilled connecting the causal dots of precedence. From whence did the movement come? Los Angeles? India? Topeka, Kansas? Historians of pentecostalism are cognizant of the 1904–05 Welsh revival; they readily acknowledged that it in some way influenced the Apostolic Faith Mission in Los Angeles. My goal here is not necessarily to argue one way or another but rather to resurrect from the dustbin of history a significant event that deserves its own due. This is a story, argues historian Rhodri Hayward, that “has been largely forgotten.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , December 2004 , pp. 792 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Bartleman, Frank, Azusa Street (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge, 1980), 19; originally published in 1925 under the title How Pentecost Came to Los Angeles.Google Scholar

2. Augustus, Cerillo Jr., “The Beginnings of American Pentecostalism: A Historiographical Overview,” in Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism, eds. Blumhofer, Edith L., Spittler, Russell P., and Wacker, Grant A. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999).Google Scholar

3. Hayward, Rhodri, “From the Millennial Future to the Unconscious Past: The Transformation of Prophecy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” in Prophecy: The Language in History 1300–2000, eds. Bertrand, Taithe and Tim, Thornton (Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton, 1997), 161.Google Scholar

4. See Hayward, Rhodri, “Popular Mysticism and the Origins of the New Psychology, 1880–1910” (Ph.D. diss., University of Lancaster, U.K., 1995), esp. chap. 4.Google Scholar

5. See, esp., James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (New York: Longmans, Green, 1902)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a more extreme example, see Mapes Anderson, Robert, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)Google Scholar. Of course there are exceptions to this, most notably McLoughlin, William G., Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978)Google Scholar; or Smith, Timothy L., Revivalism and Social Reform (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965)Google Scholar. Yet even McLoughlin opts for a functionalist paradigm, arguing, “In short, great awakenings are periods when the cultural system has had to be revitalized in order to overcome jarring disjunctions between norms and experience, old beliefs and new realities, dying patterns and emerging patterns of behavior” (10).

6. Hayward, Rhodri, “Popular Mysticism,” 336.Google Scholar

7. Holmes, , Religious Revivals, xviiGoogle Scholar. This discursive predilection is not restricted to revival-specific histories. “To explain [what happened in 1904–06],” Russell Davies argues in a local Welsh study, “we need to examine some of the personal and psychological aspects of the revival, and to examine how the people themselves perceived the causes” (Davies, Russell, Secret Sins: Sex, Violence & Society in Carmarthenshire, 1870–1920 [Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996], 206).Google Scholar

8. Although Taves, Ann (Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999]Google Scholar) does not examine the Welsh revival specifically, she does so by implication, employing an interpretive framework that takes in those normative practices of the Welsh revival. In so doing, she, too, privileges psychology, especially the works of William James. See, for instance, by way of contrast, her discussion of James versus Durkheim (276–78). I have relied upon biographical material, which to a certain degree marks the subject; however, I have explored the life of Roberts not to ferret out his biographical peculiarities or, as a so-called postmodern, to deconstruct “the subject.” This essay will attempt to respect both the integrity of the subject and historical contingency, equally, and will argue that though Evan Roberts was a central figure in the revival, he was not its cause. Surveying the historiography of modern revivalism, Kenneth Jeffrey has well argued that, “It is generally accepted that revivals have not occurred in response to any one single aspect, but rather they have arisen as the result of the interplay of a variety of external and local factors” (Jeffrey, Kenneth S., When the Lord Walked the Land: The 1858–62 Revival in the North-East of Scotland [Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 2002], 37)Google Scholar. For a valuable effort to ferret out some of these various factors, see the much-anticipated recently translated Jones, R. Tudur, Faith and the Crisis of a Nation: Wales 1899–1914 (Cardiff, U.K.: University of Wales Press, 2004).Google Scholar

9. On Roberts's life, see Jones, Brynmor P., An Instrument of Revival: Complete Life of Evan Roberts, 1878–1951 (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge, 1995).Google Scholar

10. I make this claim, that it was the first completely modern revival, advisedly. In many ways the earlier mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic revival was also modern, harnessing technologies like the telegraph, railroad, and daily press. (Cf. Jeffrey, , When the Lord Walked the LandGoogle Scholar.) Yet, I shall argue that modernization and “the modern” were not merely technological or material but also perceptual and ideological. The most dramatic social and cultural reimagining of time and space, which is central to this essay's argument, took place well after railway travel had been introduced. See, for instance, Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Galison, Peter, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003)Google Scholar. The cultural meanings assigned to technologies, or rather read from technologies, changed over time. So, as well, did attending sociocultural practices.

11. Williams, Raymond, The Long Revolution (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961), esp. intro. and pt. 2, chap. 3.Google Scholar

12. See Latour, Bruno, Aramis—the Love of Technology, trans. Porter, Catherine (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), esp. introduction.Google Scholar

13. See Nikolas Rose, Toward a Critical Sociology of Freedom, Inaugural Lecture delivered May 5, 1992 at Goldsmiths College, University of London: Goldsmiths College Occasional Paper; Foucault, Michel, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Sheridan, Alan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977)Google Scholar; Foucault, , “Governmentality,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, Burchell, Graham and others (London: Harvester Wheatshef, 1991)Google Scholar; Andrew, Barry and Thomas, Osborne, eds., Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism, and Rationality (London: University College London Press, 1996)Google Scholar; and Joyce, Patrick, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London: Verso, 2003).Google Scholar

14. Terdiman, Richard, Discourse/Counter-Discourse: The Theory and Practice of Symbolic Resistance in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Jones, Aled, Powers of the Press: Newspapers, Power and the Public in Nineteenth-Century England (Aldershot, U.K.: Scolar, 1996)Google Scholar; Brake, Laurel, “Writing, Cultural Production, and the Periodical Press in the Nineteenth Century,” in Writing and Victorianism, ed. Bullen, J. B. (London: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997), 54–72Google Scholar; and Schwartz, Vanessa, Spectacular Realities: Early Mass Culture in Fin-de-Siècle Paris (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998).Google Scholar

15. See, for instance, Benjamin, Walter, The Arcades Project, trans. Eiland, Howard and McLaughlin, Kevin (Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar; Lefebvre, Henri, The Critique of Everyday Life, vol. 1, trans. Moore, John (London: Verso, 1994)Google Scholar; Debord, Guy, Society of the Spectacle, trans. Nicholson-Smith, Donald (New York: Zonebooks, 1995)Google Scholar; and Elisabeth, Sussman, ed., On the passage of a few people through a rather brief moment of time: The Situationist International, 1957–1972 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989).Google Scholar

16. Wallis, G. Hall, “A Denominational Revival,” Free Methodist, 12 01 1905, 18–19Google Scholar; Taylor, W. L., “The Welsh Revival: Its Origin, Character, and Results,” Aldersgate Primitive Methodist Magazine 86 (1905): 134–38Google Scholar. Cf. Blumhofer, Edith L., Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 58.Google Scholar

17. See “Englishmen and the Revival. Dr. Campbell Morgan Cries ‘Hands Off!’ Remarkable Address in London,” Western Mail (hereinafter WM), 26 December 1904, 6; “International Revival,” WM, 9 January 1905, 5.Google Scholar

18. New Testament scripture references taken from the King James Version unless otherwise indicated.

19. Several prominent evangelicals tried to bring leadership from the outside, such as “General” Booth and F. B. Meyer; however, they failed. See, for instance, on Meyer, , “Origin of the Revival: Mr. Meyer's Claim,” WM, 13 12 1904, 5Google Scholar; “An Account of the Conversion of Evan Roberts,” WM, 7 January 1905, 7Google Scholar; and “Rev. F. B. Meyer at Penarth,” WM, 23 February 1905, 6.Google Scholar

20. Roberts, Evan, “A Message to the World,” in The Story of the Welsh Revival: As Told by Eyewitnesses Together with a Sketch of Evan Roberts and His Message to the World, Arthur Goodrich and others (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1905), 5.Google Scholar

21. Keen, J. O., “£17,000 to Work up a Revival!” Free Methodist, 26 01 1905, 54.Google Scholar

22. Philips, D. M., Evan Roberts, The Great Welsh Revivalist and His Work, 5th ed. (London: Marshall Brothers, 1906), 117.Google Scholar

23. Ibid., 120.

24. Stead, W. I., “Mr. Evan Roberts,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 55.Google Scholar

25. Reprinted in Philips, , Evan Roberts, 519.Google Scholar

26. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 74Google Scholar. Cf. Jones, Brynmor P., Voices from the Welsh Revival 1904–1905 (Bryntirion, Bridgend, U.K.: Evangelical Press of Wales, 1995), 18–20Google Scholar. Cf. Lewis, H. Elvert, With Christ Among the Miners (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906), 62.Google Scholar

27. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 142Google Scholar. Cf. Jenkins, S. G., “Evan Roberts and the Welsh Revival,” Bible Christian Magazine 84 (04 1905): 145–52.Google Scholar

28. Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 21.Google Scholar

29. Reprinted in Philips, , Evan Roberts, 448.Google Scholar

30. Stead, W. T., “Mr. Evan Roberts,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 55.Google Scholar

31. On early Christology, see González, Justo L., A History of Christian Thought: from the Beginnings to the Council of Chalcedon, vol. 1, rev. ed. (Nashville: Abingdon, 1987), esp. chaps. 16–18.Google Scholar

32. New American Standard Version (hereinafter NAS), the Lockman Foundation, 1995.

33. Schnitker, Thaddeus A., “Dove,” in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, eds. Erwin, Fahlbusch and others (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1999), 1:884.Google Scholar

34. Gorringe, Timothy, “Pneumatology,” in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, ed. Alister, McGrath (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1993), 448.Google Scholar

35. John 3:8 (NAS).

36. “The Revival in Wales,” WM, 19 November 1904, 5–6.Google Scholar

37. See Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 8Google Scholar, for the “one-hour” comment.

38. “The Revival Movement,” WM, 21 November 1904, 4.Google Scholar

39. Kern, , Culture of Time and Space, chap. 5.Google Scholar

40. Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 16.Google Scholar

41. Dan Roberts, Letter to Evan Roberts, 14 November 1904, repr. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 215.Google Scholar

42. Evan Roberts, Letter to D. M. Philips, 8 November 1905, repr. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 450.Google Scholar

43. Repr. and trans. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 420. Note the inferential link to the passage from the Gospel of John quoted earlier.Google Scholar

44. “Mr. Evan Roberts Breaks Down,” WM, 14 December 1904, 5Google Scholar. Supportive journalists noted this fact quite openly, without accusing leaders of manipulating the crowds: “Owing to the great secrecy to which his movements were subjected, Mr. Evan Roberts's intention to attend Tabernacle Welsh Congregational Chapel was known only to very few persons, with the result that the building was far from being full at two o'clock, the hour at which the meeting had been announced to begin” (“Mr. Roberts Visits Hirwain,” WM, 19 January 1905, 6).Google Scholar

45. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 484.Google Scholar

46. By the end of November, the strain was already showing; Roberts became ill. Here was the doctor's order: stop running from one hot meeting out into the cold then back into another (hot, as in temperature) (“The Revivalist Recovering,” WM, 28 November 1904, 5).Google Scholar

47. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 268Google Scholar. Cf. WM, 19 November 1904, 4–6Google Scholar; WM, 21 November 1904, 4–5.Google Scholar

48. “The Revival Movement,” WM, 21 November 1904, 5.Google Scholar

49. See, for instance, “Wales Day by Day,” WM, 6 March 1905, 4Google Scholar; and “The Welsh Revival in a Court Sermon,” WM, 30 January 1905, 6.Google Scholar

50. Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 8.Google Scholar

51. “Chapels and the Revival,” WM, 21 November 1904, 6.Google Scholar

52. When asked about this mystique, Roberts resolutely denied the rumors: “I want to keep myself in the background. I saw in one paper that the success of these meetings was attributed to my personal magnetism. Nonsense!” (“The Revival Waves in Wales,” WM, 19 November 1904, 5).Google Scholar

53. Barrie, D. S. M., A Regional History of The Railways of Great Britain: South Wales (London: Newton Abbot, 1980), 12:221.Google Scholar

54. Taylor, , “Welsh Revival,” Aldersgate: 135Google Scholar. Cf. “The Welsh Revival,” Free Methodist, 9 March 1905, 160.Google Scholar

55. Richard, Pike, ed., Railway Adventures and Anecdotes: Extended Over More Than Fifty Years, 2nd ed. (London: Hamilton, Adams, 1887), 17.Google Scholar

56. Carter, Ian, Railways and Culture in Britain: The Epitome of Modernity (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2001), esp. 1–47Google Scholar. He argues that it in fact became a metaphor for human experience itself.

57. Freeman, Michael, Railways and the Victorian Imagination (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999), 20.Google Scholar

58. Figures taken from Wade, George A., “The Growth of Railway Passenger Traffic: A Review of It During the Queen's Reign,” Railway Magazine 6 (05 1900): 455–60.Google Scholar

59. Ibid., 457.

60. For an exceptional discussion of how the railway network altered the physical and mental landscape, see Schivelbusch, Railway Journey.

61. Gourvish, T. R., “Railways 1830–1870: the Formative Years,” in Transport in Victorian Britain, eds. Freeman, Michael J. and Aldcroft, Derek H.. (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1988), 57–58.Google Scholar

62. Cain, P. J., “Railways 1870–1914: the Maturity of the Private System,” in Freeman and Aldcroft, Transport in Victorian Britain, 92.Google Scholar

63. Ibid. (emphasis added). Cf. Kern, , Culture of Time and Space, 213.Google Scholar

64. Freeman, , Railways and the Victorian Imagination, esp. 38–55.Google Scholar

65. Cf. Howard, Ebenezer, Garden Cities of To-Morrow, ed. Osborn, F. J. (London: Faber and Faber, 1946 [1898/1902])Google Scholar; and Ward, Stephen V., ed., The Garden City: Past, present and future (London: Chapman and Hall, 1992).Google Scholar

66. Barrie, , Regional History of The Railways, 13.Google Scholar

67. Morgan, , Rebirth of a Nation, 124Google Scholar. Cf. Williams, J. and others, Digest of Welsh Historical Statistics: Coal, 1780–1975 [computer file] (Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], 31 July 2001, SN: 4097).Google Scholar

68. Cf. Foucault, Michel, “Space, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault's Thought, ed. Paul, Rabinow (London: Penguin Books, 1984).Google Scholar

69. Robbins, Michael, Railway Age (Manchester, U.K.: Mandolin, 1998), 9.Google Scholar

70. Railway Magazine 9 (August 1901): 192.Google Scholar

71. Kern, , Culture of Time and Space, 12–13Google Scholar. Several years prior, in 1880, the Definition of Time Act required that the time recorded at the Greenwich Observatory east of London set the legal time for all of Great Britain. As elsewhere, British railway companies standardized time-keeping long before this legislated date. In November 1840, the Great Western Railway ordered London time for all stations, a move that other companies would follow. In 1847, the Railway Clearing House, which coordinated aspects of the national railway system, issued a similar recommendation. Cities and towns would quickly follow suit. See Howse, Derek, Greenwich Time and the Longitude (London: Philip Wilson, 1997), chap. 4.Google Scholar

72. Landes, David S., Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), esp. 325.Google Scholar

73. For a discussion of the latter, in relation to governmentality, see Joyce, Patrick, The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City, esp. 166.Google Scholar

74. Estimates of output production are taken from Church, R. A., “Nineteenth-Century Clock Technology in Britain, the United States, and Switzerland,” Economic History Review 28 (11 1975): 625CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Britten, F. J., “Watches and Clocks,” in British Manufacturing Industries, 2nd. ed., ed. Bevan, G. Phillips (London: Edward Stanford, 1878), 73.Google Scholar

75. Kern, , Culture of Time and Space, 110.Google Scholar

76. Ibid., 111.

77. Ibid.

78. Schivelbusch, , Railway Journey, 130.Google Scholar

79. For a corrective to Schivelbusch, see Kern, , Culture of Time and Space.Google Scholar

80. Though at first castigated for his “vulgar” naturalism, Zola had, by 1900, a fairly broad audience in England. See Decker, Clarence R., “Zola's Literary Reputation in England,” PMLA 49 (12 1934): 1140–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Seltzer, Mark, Bodies and Machines (New York: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar

81. Proust, Marcel, Sodom and Gomorrah, In Search of Lost Time, trans. Scott Moncrieff, C. K. and Kilmartin, Terence, rev. Enright, D. J. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1992), 457–78Google Scholar. He likens travel by car to taking a theatergoer backstage and revealing all, which strips the experience of its mystery. The motorcar pinpoints the passenger's location in space and time and maximizes the perception of distance traveled; the express train does just the opposite, feeding this sense of spatial-temporal magic.

82. See Galison, Peter, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps.Google Scholar

83. Morgan, , Rebirth of a Nation, 67.Google Scholar

84. Barrie, , Regional History of The Railways, 15.Google Scholar

85. Schivelbusch, , Railway Journey, 130.Google Scholar

86. One might argue that a mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic series of revivals was the first to be markedly modern. Although they utilized the press, telegraph, and railway, the relationship of technologies to revivalism was yet to be cemented in the way that it was in 1904. Even commentators at the time of the 1904–05 revival who had participated in early revivals noted the differences, especially the rapidity with which the latter spread. Also of note was the way in which it spread–seemingly with little to no human “interference.” The appearance of technology does not, I argue, make the revival modern; rather, it is a confluence of forces, the cumulative effect of intersecting technologies, and the interpretation of those interpenetrations by the populace.

87. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 168.Google Scholar

88. Morgan, G. Campbell, “Lessons of the Revival,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 43.Google Scholar

89. See, for instance, “The Revival in Wales and Elsewhere: Some Moving Stories,” Methodist Times, 2 February 1905, 68.Google Scholar

90. “The Welsh Revival: Drunkenness and Blasphemy Disappear,” Methodist Times, 5 January 1905, 5Google Scholar. The Times reported a similar though not exact decrease: from 446 in 1903 to 217 in 1904 (“The Religious Revival in Wales,” Times, 13 February 1905, 9)Google Scholar. Cf. “The Religious Revival in Wales,” Times, 24 January 1905, 8Google Scholar; “Police-Court Effects. ‘Business’ in the Bridgend District,” WM, 26 December 1904, 6Google Scholar; “Crime in Glamorganshire,” Lancet, 5 August 1905, 409Google Scholar. Argued one correspondent: “The revival has caused the mightiest upheaval in the social life of the people that living generations have ever seen. Magistrates, policemen, journalists, and employers of labour give the same testimony” (Whittle, John, “After Keswick,” Primitive Methodist, 24 08 1905, 198).Google Scholar

91. Roberts, , “Message to the World,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 6.Google Scholar

92. See “Awstin,”“International Revival,” WM, 9 January 1905, 5.Google Scholar

93. Guttery, Arthur T., “The Hour is Come!!” Primitive Methodist, 21 09 1905, 249–50.Google Scholar

94. For a discussion of the political effects, see Hayward, , “Transformation of Prophecy,” in Taithe, Prophecy, 169Google Scholar; and Croll, Andy, Civilizing the Urban: Popular Culture and Public Space in Merthyr, c. 1870–1914 (Cardiff, U.K.: University of Wales Press, 2000).Google Scholar

95. Jones, Alfred, “The Great Revival,” Free Methodist, 2 03 1905, 136.Google Scholar

96. Guttery, “The Hour is Come!!”

97. Taylor, , “Welsh Revival: Its Origin,” 136.Google Scholar

98. “‘Danger Signals,’” WM, 23 December 1904, 4Google Scholar. According to one historian, one in twenty in the Welsh population made “commitments” to Christianity; of those, he estimates only 10 percent were made with any direct connection to Roberts or his associates (Jones, , Voices from the Welsh Revival, 66).Google Scholar

99. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 218Google Scholar. Large crowds had attended revival services before the Western Mail started its coverage; yet their reporting was significant for the revival's proliferation, as will soon be discussed.

100. Ibid., 275.

101. “The Revival,” Methodist Times, 9 March 1905, 156.Google Scholar

102. “Striking Scenes At Tonypandy,” WM, 22 December 1904, 5.Google Scholar

103. “Awstin,” “An Underground Prayer Pentecost,” WM, 23 December 1904, 5.Google Scholar

104. Jenkins, S. G., “The Welsh Revival, No. 1,” Bible Christian Magazine 84 (1905): 73.Google Scholar

105. Rogers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 47 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

106. Hulme, T. Ferrier, “Wales Revisited: Converted Atheists in the Pulpit,” Methodist Times, 16 03 1905, 174.Google Scholar

107. Hulme, , “Wales Revisited,” 174.Google Scholar

108. Moore, E. W., “What I Saw and Heard in Wales,”Google Scholar in Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 79.Google Scholar

109. Morgan, “Lesson of the Revival,” in Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 42.Google Scholar

110. Ibid., 4.

111. Jones, Margam, “The Power of the Spirit,” WM, 17 December 1904, 4.Google Scholar

112. Stead, “Story of the Awakening,” in Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 62.Google Scholar

113. “Mr. Evan Roberts's Conversion,” WM, 17 December 1904, 5.Google Scholar

114. “Mr. Stead on the Revival,” WM, 10 March 1905, 6Google Scholar. See Orr, J. Edwin, The Flaming Tongue: Evangelical Awakenings, 1900–, rev. ed. (Chicago: Moody, 1975)Google Scholar. Cf. “Italy and the Anglo-Saxon,” Lancet, 24 December 1904, 1800Google Scholar. For an example of foreign coverage, see “Evan Roberts: Le Jeune Prophete,” La Presse, 19 January 1905, 2.Google Scholar

115. “The Spread of the Revival and Its After Mission: Interview with Mr. W. T. Stead,” Methodist Times, 9 March 1905, 153.Google Scholar

116. Morgan, “Lesson of the Revival,” in Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 43.Google Scholar

117. See, for instance, “An ‘Express’ Conversion,” WM, 17 January 1905, 5.Google Scholar

118. Terdiman, , Discourse/Counter-Discourse, 119Google Scholar. Although focused on France, Terdiman's theoretical assessment can, appropriately, be applied to British practices. Content varied by region, editorial predilections, style, and tone; however, especially after the 1860s and 1870s, enterprises wanting to “commodify” news for popular consumption made themselves aware of, and incorporated, international practices and technological innovations. Cf. Innis, Harold A., “The Newspaper in Economic Development,” Journal of Economic History 2 (12 1942): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

119. For an excellent introduction, see Jones, Powers of the Press. See, also, Williams, Long Revolution; and Brake, “Writing, Cultural Production, and the Periodical Press.”

120. Williams, , Long Revolution, 178.Google Scholar

121. Jones, Aled, Powers of the Press, 49.Google Scholar

122. Schwartz, , Spectacular Realities, 26.Google Scholar

123. “Indeed,” Terdiman argues, “the daily paper was arguably the first consumer commodity: made to be perishable, purchased to be thrown away” (Terdiman, , Discourse/Counter-Discourse, 120).Google Scholar

124. Although much of the revival was conducted in Welsh, a fair amount was not. In fact, participants often prided themselves on the revival's bilingualism. So as not to make an already long article even longer, I have elected not to elaborate on the relationship of the Welsh language to British modernization, for the use of Welsh can be, and was, read in contradictory ways. On the one hand, it symbolically and literally connected Welsh participants to their ancestral past. And in this sense, Welsh might be interpreted as backward-looking and antimodem. On the other hand, the use of Welsh, in a bilingual setting, may illumine a profound nationalism, a nationalism able to adapt to the forces of transnational modernization. Indeed, as historian Keith Robbins has argued,

In the last half of the nineteenth century … the place of the two languages in the life of Wales was fraught with ambiguity. If we take ‘Anglicization’ simply to mean a steady advance in familiarity with English language, then it was certainly happening. It is difficult, however, to capture the manifold subtleties in this evolving situation. Statements about an ability to speak two languages are not very helpful as a guide to actual use (Robbins, Keith, Nineteenth-Century Britain: Integration and Diversity [Oxford: Clarendon, 1988], 32).Google Scholar

Robbins sees “no conflict between integration and diversity.” Perhaps Benedict Anderson is correct in his Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1991), that “English elbowed Gaelic out of most of Ireland” (72). But not Wales, not at the turn of the century. Anderson's oft-cited discussion of vernacular language and secularized nationalism in Imagined Communities provides little guidance here, where a revival in Welsh instead renewed sacred imagined communities.

125. “A Band of Pontypridd Revivalists,” WM, 26 December 1904, 6.Google Scholar

126. Hughes, H. Maldwyn, “The Revival and the Normal,” Methodist Times, 12 01 1905, London, 18.Google Scholar

127. Schwartz, , Spectacular Realities, 27–28.Google Scholar

128. “Mr. Sidney Evans at Ogmore Vale,” WM, 28 November 1904, 5.Google Scholar

129. See, again, Debord, Society of the Spectacle.

130. Jones, , Voices from the Welsh Revival, 123.Google Scholar

131. Dyer, Helen S., Pandita Ramabai: Her Vision, Her Mission and Triumph of Faith (London: Pickering and Inglis, n.d.), 100–101Google Scholar. See, also, McGee, Gary B., “‘Latter Rain’ Falling in the East: Early-Twentieth-Century Pentecostalism in India and the Debate over Speaking in Tongues,” Church History 86 (09 1999): 648–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

132. See Anderson, , Vision of the Disinherited, 44–45, 64–65.Google Scholar

133. “Concerning This Movement,” Apostolic Herald (Seattle, Wash.), October 1901, 3.Google Scholar

134. Stephen Kern's own version of the banal secularization thesis in this regard is typical. He argues, “Modern technology … collapsed the vault of heaven. Never before the age of the wireless and airplane did the heavens seem to be so close or so accessible—a place of passage for human communication and for human bodies in man-made machines. The omnipresence and penetrating capacity of wireless waves rivaled miraculous action and reversed the direction of divine intervention. Planes invaded the kingdom of heaven, and their exhaust fumes profaned the realm of the spirit. Upwards still the direction of growth and life, but in this period it lost much of its sacred aspect” (Kern, , Culture of Time and Space, 317).Google Scholar