In a joint episode with the New Evangelicals, Brad hosts a roundtable with Tim Whitaker (New Evangelicals), Dr. Leah Payne, and Dr. Matthew Taylor. The four of them discuss what the revival looked like in person when Tim visited last week, how it matches up to past revivals at Asbury and other institutions, and the confounding ways that figures such as Sean Feucht, Greg Locke, and Shane Claiborne have tried to claim the event as a true revival.
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Welcome to a special episode of Straight White American Jesus and the New Evangelicals.
Tim, you're here.
I know.
And this is a, this is a crazy endeavor that we're doing.
And we have, we have Straight White American Jesus and the New Evangelicals in the same room.
Who knew they could get along?
Uh, but, uh, here they are.
Okay.
We're with two other great folks who are Dr. Leah Payne.
Hello, Leah.
Hello.
Wonderful to be with you.
And facing a snowstorm in your part of the world.
And so thank you for braving various recording challenges to do that.
And Dr. Matt Taylor, who is in, I hope, hiding from the paparazzi because of your ongoing fame.
And it's unseasonably warm here in Baltimore.
So you're welcome to the rest of the country.
Yeah.
Same in New Jersey.
It's warm for this time of year.
Well, we want to talk about the Asbury Revival.
I know that there's been a lot of chatter online.
I think we've all kind of touched on it in our various social media posts and some of our episodes on our podcast, but it seemed like a good chance to get everyone together and really just do some reflection, especially with Matt and Leah, who We really are experts in various aspects of charismatic Christianity, and in some sense can maybe help us figure out what a revival is.
It's interesting.
I was talking about the Asbury Revival, and my wife, who grew up Catholic, said, I didn't know a revival could be just organic.
I thought you had to plant it and have a really slick preacher, and I didn't know you could just go to chapel and never leave.
You need to probably explain that to people because I didn't know what you were talking about.
So why don't we start here?
Tim, you actually, I think of the four of us, you're the only one who went.
So do you want to just tell us what you saw when you went there?
Yeah, sure.
So yeah, I did go last Monday.
I was thinking to myself, man, I wish I can go to this thing.
I thought, wait, this is my job.
I can just go.
So I did.
I bought a plane ticket and I went.
My goal, just so the audience knows, was really to talk to students and faculty.
I just want to kind of get like, how are they thinking about this?
Because of our work, I was connected to a few students who were queer, which was really important for me because we think about like, okay, speaking about like this particular school, maybe groups that are not accepted, you know, on like the higher level as far as like Asbury's actual non-affirming statement, but yet attend this school.
How are they being treated during a revival that is happening?
So I spoke to several queer students on both the Asbury University side and also across the street there's Asbury Seminary.
They are connected but not like officially, but they do talk to each other.
And then I also spoke to an alumni who was also queer who was also there.
And, you know, just so, Leah, I'm not sure if you and I have engaged a whole lot, so forgive me if we have and I don't know that, but I'm skeptical of things like this these days.
I kind of grew up, or I was part of more assemblies of God worship spaces as a professional drummer, so I'm a little leery because I've been on the stage, you know, making the Holy Spirit fall, so to speak.
But at the same time, you know, I still believe in some form of the divine.
I believe that God can work in ways that are beyond.
And I wanted to go there and let the students kind of shape how I spoke about this thing, because it's happening to them.
I didn't want to invade someone's sacred space and start giving my opinion, because I've done that before, and I call that fundamentalism.
Essentially, I was complex.
That's the word I use a lot.
It's complicated.
A lot of layers, but there are two big themes I'll draw out just for this conversation.
There's this idea of students, including queer ones, telling me, yeah, something happened here.
I don't even know what to make of this.
One student said, I haven't talked to God in like two years.
And then like last night I'm in the chapel and I had this moment where I'm like, I just feel connected again.
And this is, again, a queer student.
Who's who's very much out at the university.
I said, OK, that's interesting.
Yeah, it is interesting.
So there's that layer of like students and faculty saying, yes, something special happened in this moment.
And the faculty, to their credit, really wanted to protect that as this event became viral and the word revival got picked up, broadly speaking, on TikTok and Instagram.
There was a different kind of group that started descending on Asbury that made the students and faculty, one of the students used the word, uh, zoo animals.
They felt like they were just on display, uh, to be looked at and gawked at.
And then, of course, there was a concern of it being co-opted really more by like the more charismatic revivalist types.
There were some more reformed people there, but they were there more to kind of I don't want to critique it and say if it's God or not, but the more revivalist types in the charismatic spaces, they kind of descended like, oh, God's here, the Spirit's here, and kind of made it something that I don't think the faculty or students ever had in their minds to make it.
So there are those two competing dynamics that left me leaving the next day with the feeling of complicated.
This is a complicated situation we have on our hands.
Well, that's great.
I appreciate that kind of reporting and the refusal to reduce it to one thing or another.
Leah, I feel like you were one of the first people I saw on Twitter.
As always, you had images ready to share.
There have been revivals going back a century at Asbury.
at home because you seem to have images and videos to share anytime anything happens in American Christianity.
You showed us a picture from 1970, an Asbury revival.
There have been revivals going back a century at Asbury.
From what you've seen, do these, does this current revival with students staying in chapel for over a hundred hours, people coming in from other states, does this line up with other things that have happened at Asbury in the past or what caught your eye about this one in 2023?
Oh, that's such a great question.
And yes, you know, one of the reasons why I was so quick on that was because I'm writing about a book about contemporary Christian music and Asbury and Wilmore, Kentucky was the site of a very famous Christian music festival that was Really a big part of establishing contemporary Christian music.
So it's not that I was super fast.
I wouldn't, I don't know if I'd be normally that fast, but when I saw that it was Asprey, I got kind of excited, especially because music and singing was such a big part of this, this particular meeting.
A lot of people have noted that Unlike other forms of revivalism, there wasn't a big role for the preacher.
A lot of times, you know, if you think about revival, the American practice, at least, of revivalism, and I think of it as a practice.
I'm not interested in whether or not it's a real mystical event, but I kind of like to study it historically.
And I mean, I might be personally interested, but like as a historian, I like to think of it as a practice.
So it's like, what are the ingredients that you need for a revival meeting?
Typically, and this is just a really well, well-established form of American Protestantism, you would have song singing, you'd have preaching, and then you would have emotive, what some historians have called scandalous practices.
So lots of tears, lifting your hands, dancing.
And then, you know, if you get, like, if you were raised in the Assemblies of God, then you get tongue speaking, divine healing, prophetic words.
So, you know, there's like lots of different stages.
But one of the things that, the thing that really caught my eye, in addition to the, the, this, the idea that it was connected to music was that it, it looked so similar to the type of revival meetings that you would see at a Nasbury type place.
And by that, I mean that it, it bore a strong resemblance to holiness and Wesleyan styles of revival.
I and you know I'd be interested to hear Matt weigh in on this, but I was looking for very charismatic practices and I didn't see a lot and that was interesting to me.
And so that was initially when I said, I initially tweeted about it and in a random turn of events, I don't even know how, Fox News picked up on the tweet.
Um, and I, and so I was like, what are these comments in my feed?
I had no idea, but people got really into it from, from that news source maybe, but they were saying stuff about, I said, Methodists know how to revive because it looked like an older style of revivalism than what you usually see that, than what has been popular kind of in the, the like current American imagination.
But Matt, were you surprised by that too?
Yeah, I was very surprised by that.
In fact, because I was watching, my beat is the NAR, Independent Charismatic folks, and so I was watching how they were calibrating, kind of fixating on this revival.
I mean, for them, the word revival is just, it's cat, right?
It's magnetic.
And so they all start focusing.
The one who really caught my attention was actually Todd Bentley.
Who's decided to go, and maybe I can do a little storytelling about Todd Bentley if that's okay.
So the last, at least as far as the kind of national attention revival I'm aware of, I mean there have been all these little sparks that people have talked about, was about 15 years ago in April of 2008.
A pastor who's actually a member of the International Coalition of Apostles, Peter Wagner, who founded the NAR, was leading.
So Stephen Strainer is in Lakeland, Florida, invites this guy, Todd Bentley, to come to his church to lead a week-long revival.
And Todd Bentley, very interesting character.
I encourage people to Google him and look him up.
So Todd Bentley comes out of Canada, a very troubled youth, has kind of a biker gang vibe and was involved in the juvenile correction system.
But by this point in 2008, he's an evangelist.
And so he comes and he preaches at this church in Lakeland, Florida and Revive It breaks out.
Extensively.
As all these people are being healed, all these people are being converted.
God TV is this international Christian television channel.
They start carrying the revival live every night.
Um, and so this thing is just taking off and everyone's paying attention.
Hundreds of thousands of people are watching it nightly.
And at that point, this is around May, all these stories start coming out about Todd Bentley.
And even on stage, he is describing how he is healing people through kicking them in the face, through punching them in the stomach.
I'm not joking.
You can see the videos of him still.
All of this is kind of, again, being broadcast live.
And so this group of apostles and prophets from the NAR start paying close attention.
Eventually, they organize an apostolic anointing ceremony for Todd Bentley this late June of 2018.
Peter Wagner, Che On, Bill Johnson, Rick Joyner, all of these major figures are all there to do this Apostolic Anointing Ceremony over Todd Bentley.
He, of course, falls on the ground.
It's a big day, all on live TV.
And a couple weeks later, ABC's Frontline has this exposé on Todd Bentley.
He has, uh, cannot come up with any names of anyone who's actually been healed in this thing.
It eventually comes out that he's been drinking and has been drunk on stage a number of times as he's been leading these nightly meetings.
He winds up leaving his wife for an intern who's also his nanny, and the whole thing just descends into chaos from there.
So that was really the last of these big revivals.
So seeing Todd Bentley Just delivering himself as kind of the savior to the revival.
And then I heard, actually, from some people who were there, that he gets there, he wants to do his thing, and they sit him in a pew.
Yeah.
Right?
So there was, there was, there's definitely an intentionality behind these Asbury folks saying like, we know even more of this could go, and they didn't want to let it go there.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was confirmed through many stories I heard, and also I know the day I got there was the day after Greg Locke went, and same thing with Greg.
They pretty much said, you can be in the pew, but like, that's pretty much it.
And I also know that, I don't have a name, they didn't give me the name, but one of the students said that a very high profile worship artist.
Oh yeah, it was Kerry Jobe.
Kerry Jobe.
Jobe.
Yeah.
Who's that?
Yeah, Kiri Jobe, I thought, you know, one of the, I think there's a really interesting conversation there to be had about professional revivalists.
And that seems so, so like a foreign concept maybe to a lot of folks, but I like to think of revivalists revive, like other groups do other forms of spiritual formation or community building.
So like, you know, stations of the cross during Lent or something like that, you know, this is just what they do.
And so of course, you know, there are professional versions of that.
And I was really interested in, and a little bit surprised at how effectively they were kept from the center stage because they definitely gave it their all.
There's a, I posted a video of Kerry Jobe, someone filming Kerry Jobe driving by.
Yeah.
You know, driving around the neighborhood and I thought for sure, you know, I think she's pretty held with probably pretty high regard in these circles.
So it was kind of stunning that they made the choice to keep her off the stage.
Half the songs that they were singing were pretty much choruses from that CCM world that you're, I'm sure, covering in your book.
And I will say, I mean this sincerely, everyone I talked to, everyone, without fail, could not speak more highly of the faculty from doing their absolute best to protect the students, including a story of someone trying to pray the gay away, and they stopped it and said, absolutely not.
So, again, I mean, listen, no one's perfect.
No institution's perfect.
Asveri has its own set of problems.
I was really happy to see that the faculty really were proving that when they said, expect this, we're not here for this, you know, show, spectacle, they really put their money where their mouth was and protected the students.
There's actually an interesting piece in Christianity Today by Daniel Sillem, where he went on the ground and started interviewing some of the faculty and folks, realized that there was a storage closet offstage where they were gathering leaders from the university and saying, Hold on, what's going on here?
How do we handle this?
And so they're very strategic about what they were doing.
They're checking in constantly throughout this thing.
Suddenly people start showing up with shofars or these very kind of charismatic Pentecostal things.
And they're like, what do we do with people with shofars?
And so they come up with a policy about not allowing shofars to blow in the room.
So I think there was a lot of that intentionality, a lot of curating going on about this.
Can I just jump in here for the audience and ask Leah, or Matt, whoever wants to take the first crack at it.
If I don't know what a Wesleyan holiness tradition is, what is that?
And then what does a revival look like in that tradition?
Maybe somebody listened to Charismatic Revival Fury or someone's familiar with a Pentecostal setting.
And certainly shofars and flags and all kinds of other instruments and symbols are allowed in those places.
We have a situation where Asbury is like, nope, no shofar.
So that's like a revival policy, right?
Like, hey, we're going to let the Holy Spirit do its work, just not through this ram's horn.
Like Leah, how does that line up with a holiness?
What is a holiness, Wesleyan, and how does this all work?
You know, so if I were making a family tree like those old-timey family trees, I would put the Wesleyan Holiness movement as the earlier generation was very influential over the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement.
And the Wesleyan Holiness tradition comes out of, in part, out of Methodism, and it I teach it in class as an issue of time.
So if you're familiar with Methodism or Wesleyan teaching, you know that there's this idea that you will be made holy eventually along the course of your life.
And it happens through doing spiritual practices, through confession, through good works, through all these things.
And the idea is that the Holy Spirit is working in the life of the believer over time to make them perfect, like God is perfect, to use a scriptural passage.
And what the holiness movement does is shorten the time of perfection And make it happen during a moment known as an altar call, which is where people are called and most people who are familiar with American Christianity are familiar with this.
Billy Graham was putting this all over TV, where it usually a preacher will call people forward and when they are down there in front of everyone, they are made Holy, quickly.
Now, there's a long history and debate about when that happens and how long it takes and all that kind of stuff, but I would say that what makes the Wesleyan holiness tradition distinct is this idea that during, you know, this moment, this mystical moment, You are cleansed and made like God, made holy.
And in fact, if you see footage from, depending on the angle, the camera angle, because I loved how y'all talked about different people were filming it, you might have seen that the front of the sanctuary says, Holy as unto the Lord.
That's a classic holiness slogan.
And so they were very influential over the charismatic tradition, but they predated that in the charismatics and kind of vessels and then charismatics and I think like spiritual fireworks to it.
So, so, you know, it's not holy is how do you demonstrate that you?
You are demonstrating with these wonder-working things like speaking in tongues, divine healing, stuff like that, but when I saw it, I thought it was fascinating because charismatic worship practices have taken over general, like, garden-variety white evangelicalism, and I should say, at least from my perspective, I'd love to hear, you know, it seemed like a white-dominant space to me.
There were other folks there, but I was expecting You know, maybe like how charismatics have taken over a lot of worship spaces.
I was expecting to see a little bit more like jumping up and down, you know, stuff like that.
And it was, it was low key.
And I was kind of thinking, I was wondering, you know, is that because it's at an institution that has really deep roots?
Like were they, what was that, you know, like shaping the space?
But anyway, those are my initial thoughts.
I'd love to hear from Matt.
Yeah, and just to contrast what you saw at Asbury, I would say it's very much in that Wesleyan tradition, right?
Very much about kind of repentance, about personal transformation, about healing, especially about kind of psychological healing, right?
Erica Ramirez, who's a scholar who works on this, has noted how a lot of the healing that people have talked about coming out of This Asbury experience was a kind of emotional trauma, which very much kind of speaks to the moment that we're in, and a lot of these Gen Zers who are participating are in.
But to contrast that with what we're talking about, it's kind of the charismatic revival style where you have chauffeurs, where you have Enactments of spiritual warfare.
Even that video that was circulating around on Twitter about where the guy was swinging the wild sword while speaking in tongues, right?
That is very much the vibe of the charismatic revival style.
People with flags, right?
Kind of Pentecostal worship flags.
Those sorts of things.
People with prophecy.
and prophets being welcomed on stage.
And then with that comes the whole slew of kind of celebrity revivalists, celebrity prophets, celebrity apostles who then want to show up.
So, Tim, you mentioned with Greg Locke, who is one of these kind of charismatic pastors This is the guy who has said he's going to cast the witches out in front of his congregation.
But he shows up, he's got millions of followers, and again, they park him in a pew.
So I think there was this, I think the faculty was very conscious of that Wesleyan heritage.
I'm not certain, I don't know how much the students were.
As dialed into, but I think they really want the faculty really want to know if this is going to happen in our institution, we're going to kind of control the boundaries of.
I mean, one easy way to see this visually is to look at videos from Asbury, then watch videos at Lee College when they're having their so-called revival, and see how they are doing that.
Or even BSSM, Bethel Supernatural School of Ministry, they claim to have a revival breakout, and it will look very different than what you saw happening at Asbury, which I think is a great visual representation of these two different ways of I guess this term revival that we're all trying to navigate through.
I think that's a really good point.
One of the questions I think people are wondering and I think we should try to address here is, so Greg Locke, Todd Bentley, Christy Joop, they're all sort of proclaiming the wonder that's going on at the Asbury Revival, as well as Shane Claiborne.
And so, you know, if you're listening, you're probably familiar with some of those folks.
Greg Locke is a far to the right A preacher has burned Andrew Seidel's book, has just done things that are truly on the edges of Christian nationalist practices, we'll say.
But then Shane Claiborne is really sort of stylized as a kind of progressive evangelical.
And so there's a lot of folks who have emailed me and said, how can both, how can on one hand, Greg Locke and the other hand, Shane Claiborne both be claiming the same revival and that God is doing something incredible in the same space?
So I don't know who wants to give this a shot first, but I do think we should try to figure that out because I think it's confusing to people.
Brad, can I just applaud you on saying that about Greg Locke in the most kind way?
Because, man, you really did him a solid with that description of, on the fringes of Christian nationalism.
So I just want to applaud you for that.
Great job.
Just a plug.
We did a whole episode.
I had somebody who went undercover at Greg Locke's book burning.
So if you want to listen to that, it is out there.
The language is a little more blunt in that one.
Anyway, all right.
So, you know, somebody take the floor here.
How can we have progressive evangelicals and Greg Locke claiming this to be an outpouring of the Holy Spirit?
You know, one thing that I've been thinking about, and I'd love to hear what you all think, is just that revivalism is just such a core component of American Protestantism.
I mean, it goes back to the 18th century.
Before there was a United States, there were Protestants in the United States reviving.
I mean, what would become the United States reviving?
So I think, you know, one simple explanation is It's a practice that's really hard to kill.
Even if people don't agree about its utility, like how it's being employed, I think they want, you know, one simple reason is they want to revive.
You know, it's, it's such a thrilling part of, of Protestant practice.
And I mean, I read a really, um, kind of poignant essay, essay written by Nadia Boltzweiber about the Bible, uh, meeting and, In it, you know, she was saying that she was surprised at her own response to it.
And I think some of it is the age of the practitioners.
They're young.
And I don't know about you all, but I mean, you brought up Erica Ramirez's comments about this being Gen Z. And I think some of it is people thinking, I want those kids just to make it, you know?
I get that kind of tone from Bold, you know, like across the spectrum.
That's kind of how I interpret that.
What do others think?
I mean, I think there's, as you're saying, Leah, the roots of this revivalism, especially within the evangelical tradition, which I would bring kind of Pentecostals and Charismatics within that tradition.
I mean, you go back, as Leah was saying, First Great Awakening in the 1700s, Second Great Awakening in the 1800s, Azusa Street Revival and Apostolism.
The Jesus movement in the 1970s, you just have this legacy of all these revivals.
And many evangelicals would kind of date their traditions or date their identities back to one of those revivals.
Oh, I came out of the strand of evangelicalism.
And so even left-leaning evangelicals, and I don't say left-leaning evangelicals necessarily because, right, they're still conservative culturally, but left-leaning evangelicals, people who are relatively left-leaning, Within the evangelical spectrum, they still, I think, hope revival is going to validate their form of evangelicalism, right?
The Holy Spirit is going to invigorate a form of evangelicalism.
that they believe is the true evangelicalism.
And so, for people who think we need to get away from the culture wars, we need to get away from all this kind of loud Christian nationalism stuff and just get back to real piety, well, that's what they're hoping to see come out of this thing.
For people who are hardcore Christian nationalist evangelicals, well, maybe this will finally be that Third Great Awakening will unleash the eschaton, bring about the return of Jesus, A billion soul harvest, right?
Everyone's kind of reading this like a Rorschach test and seeing, you know, what they want.
But because everyone universally values revival, nobody is speaking against it other than these very cranky reformed people who just are angry about everything.
I mean, okay, so out of this group, I'm the only person without a PhD.
I have some college underneath my belt.
So my experience is much more on the ground and much more on like that, just kind of like lay level perspective.
But I have thought about this because you're right.
I mean, Greg Locke and Shane Claiborne have both like stamped.
Well, Greg Locke stopped talking about it after he left.
And I think it's because he wasn't platformed and able to make it about him, frankly.
But the point is, is that, you know, Sean Foy has talked about it.
Charlie Kirk tweeted about it.
We've talked about it.
Shane Claiborne's talked about it.
And so, yes, there's definitely this perspective of like, huh, why are we all kind of like, you know, looking at this?
I think one of the maybe just even more pop level, you know, perspectives is that people who identify as Christian use a lot of the same language and still have these moments of like, yeah, like, you know, music can help me encounter the divine.
And maybe I just miss being around a lot of people.
And if this thing is happening, Where it seems like people are being genuine and are like, listen, we're not trying to make this up.
I just think something special is happening here.
I think that both Greg Locke and Shane Claiborne can both say, oh look, God is moving.
But like you said, Matt, very different ideas of what that looks like fleshed out.
I mean, ultimately.
So I do think there's that layer and I wonder, this is just speculation, I do wonder if like, you know, the lockdowns and just being so socially distant for so long, especially in church world and having, well evangelical church world, having like this really Um, just divisive moment in evangelicalism of like, of like a reckoning.
I just wonder if that has played a role in this of like, I just miss these experiences.
I just miss being, miss having the feeling of being a part of something bigger than myself.
I miss the feeling of like, you know, different kinds of people attending something.
I just, just miss it.
And so, okay, this is online.
It went viral.
I want to experience it.
And I think for a lot of evangelicals, they map on, you know, more mystical or spiritual languages, which is totally fine.
But I do think there could be a layer of that as well.
Even though, again, a lot of the language is similar with very different outcomes, I think ultimately.
Well, and I'll say, I know a bunch of us here teach young people, but I'm around Gen Z people a lot, and it's really hard to overestimate what the pandemic did to the 19-year-old that you're talking to.
I mean, these are people who their last two years of high school and their first year of college, or their whole first part of their college experience was spent in a room on Zoom.
And they missed out on some incredibly important social times and markers.
And so, not to make this a sociological kind of analysis, but I do think it's fair to say that all of us really do crave this kind of sense of belonging and togetherness and collective effervescence and melting into a group.
And this happens when people go to raves, it happens when people go to festivals, it happens when people go to All kinds of places where it feels as if you're, you're like limit itself as being kind of melted down into this one big, uh, kind of collective soul.
So I, I think that's worth, I appreciate you bringing it up, Tim.
Um, well, we, we lost Matt.
So maybe Matt, he went to play beach volleyball and, uh, or something.
Cause it's so warm.
Um, I don't know.
Baltimore.
That's what we do in the Northeast.
I thought he was raptured.
Yeah.
Okay.
But.
Really quick before we go, one thing that I thought of, Tim, you were bringing up the critics that were there.
And I thought on how even the critics, I always look at if you're, you didn't really have a revival if you didn't have critics, I think, you know, like that is a part of the thing.
And I, I thought how festive the criticisms felt to me.
It was like everyone was kind of enjoying themselves.
Yeah.
Adjudicating it and coming up empty, but I wasn't there personally.
What did you, what did you think about that?
I mean, you know, yes, it was evident that, you know, I think almost like deep down it was like, ooh, something we all kind of agree on and want to talk about, like as an evangelical culture, because we're fighting all the time about Christian nationalism and we're always arguing on Twitter.
But I think Matt put it well, there are always going to be like these like, you know, reform, just cranky people who will find fault in everything.
I think even when I went down there, listen, people know our work.
We're very skeptical.
We are very much like, I don't trust this when it comes to these kinds of things.
But it was, I don't want to use the word healing, it was just, it was unique to be back in that space and just kind of have a different lens of like, oh, you know, I was that person being prayed over like 15 years ago.
I was that person praying over people 15 years ago.
So, you know what, back then, so I want to hold space for that, for these students, because this could be healing for them.
Also, it's kind of nice to be in a room with people who are singing songs that maybe I find problematic now personally, but I still appreciate the beauty of what they invoke.
So that's why I use the word complicated.
Even for me personally, it was just a very complicated experience.
But Leah, can I ask you one question before we sign off?
I know we have to jet.
Can I ask you one more question?
I'm kind of curious from your vantage point as a historian, What is the outcome of a revival?
Because I think my critique online was, I'm glad this is happening, but if this Jesus is not moving us to care about the marginalized among us afterwards, and we're just bothering each other at this, you know, 125 hour long worship service, is that the point?
The reason why I say that is because I think about, and tell me if I'm wrong, I really am not the expert here, but But Charles Finney, like that kind of revival, I think there was like an abolitionist vibe to some of that stuff.
It was kind of, there was like a social aspect of like, our faith compels us to do these revivals, but hopefully to help, you know, change the social good.
Is there a link there?
And how do you think about that now in 2023?
Wow, that's such a great question.
And I think this is going to be such an annoying answer as a historian.
But I gotta say, I think, you know, we'll just have to wait and see, you know, what the outcome is of something like this.
But you're right.
I mean, I think, you know, revival has frequently, because it's such a powerful moment, it's frequently been used to incite This worldly action.
I mean, in fact, we saw that we're seeing that right now with the Reawaken tour, you know, they're they're like garnering political action.
But there are a lot of other versions of that over time.
You brought up abolitionism.
I think teetotaling and then prohibition was another like big political push that was revivalism was was like an important tool for using that.
So I think, you know, time will tell.
And then It's never surprising to me to see it used in that way.
Because, I mean, if you look at our American political, like, theater, that is revivalism.
Just, you know, something else.
I think, you know, this is just my own bias, but I think probably the most skilled public forms of rhetoric are preaching.
You know, preachers are the best, you know.
So, like, politicians aim for that, I think.
Um, so yeah, I don't have a really good answer in terms of, you know, what will happen because, like, I guess we'll have to wait 20 or 30 years to see.
Was there something, you know?
How long?
Oh, I'll be in a nursing home by then.
Jeez.
Well, you're younger than me, so if you're going to be in a nursing home, good lord.
Okay, I guess this is my last episode of Straight White American Jesus, everyone, and it's been a good ride.
All right, gonna go and check out retirement homes.
So, we should run.
I'd like to note that Matt dropped off the call as soon as he made that comment about curriculum-reformed people.
We need, we need to, we need to go because I'm already getting dozens of emails from Michigan and people are unhappy.
So I'm going to have to go address that.
So thank you very much to both of you for saying that.
All right.
So Dr. Leah Payne, where can people find you?
They can find me at DrLeahPain on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, wherever, wherever social media finds you.
And if you want, if you want to think about religion and pop culture, I co-host a podcast called Weird Religion.
So if you want to hang out with us, find us there.
Thanks.
Highly recommend, and a book coming soon on contemporary Christian music, which is going to be a blockbuster.
And we're going to have to get you protection from the paparazzi, like we have Matt.
So Matt, where can people find you?
I'm at TaylorMatthewD on Twitter.
And you can also, I work at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.
We do a lot of free programs, religious dialogue and religious learning.
I'm going to be teaching a three-part course on Messianic Judaism and Christians.
It hasn't been May, so you can sign up for those things at icjs.org.
That's incredible stuff.
Well, Tim, I know that people know where to find you, but what do you want to tell us before we go?
No, thanks for having me, and thank you, Leah and Matt, for making time.
You can find us anywhere that says The New Evangelicals.
That's us.
Yeah, we're for, for me, we're at Straight White JC.
I'm at Bradley Onishi and we are here at Straight White American Jesus three times a week.
So check it out.
Otherwise we'll just say thanks to everyone for this really fun group call.
And that's, it's really, it is just really helpful to think about all these things.
So until next time, we'll catch you later and it's three o'clock.
So I'm gonna go get my dinner and watch Golden Girls.
