Victorian Religious Revivals Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts

A study of religious revival in its broad historical and historiographical context. David Bebbington provides detailed case-studies of religious awakenings that took place between 1841 and 1880 in Britain, North America and Australia, looking at pre-conditions, causes, and trends for the phenomenon.

Revivals are outbursts of religious enthusiasm in which there are numerous conversions. In this book the phenomenon of revival is set in its broad historical and historiographical context. David Bebbington provides detailed case-studies of awakenings that took place between 1841 and 1880 in Britain, North America and Australia, showing that the distinctive features of particular revivals were the result less of national differences than of denominational variations. These revivals occurred in many places across the globe, but revealed the shared characteristics of evangelical Protestantism. Bebbington explores the preconditions of revival, giving attention to the cultural setting of each episode as well as the form of piety displayed by the participants. No single cause can be assigned to the awakenings, but one of the chief factors behind them was occupational structure and striking instances of death were often a precipitant. Ideas were far more involved in these events than historians have normally supposed, so that the case-studies demonstrate some of the main patterns in religious thought at a popular level during the Victorian period. Laymen and women played a disproportionate part in their promotion and converts were usually drawn in large numbers from the young. There was a trend over time away from traditional spontaneity towards more organised methods sometimes entailing interdenominational co-operation.

1 - The Trajectory of Revival: The Pattern of Awakenings from the Seventeenth to the Twenty-First Centuries
2 - The Interpretation of Revival: Religious Awakenings and Modern Historiography: Religious Awakenings and Modern Historiography
3 - The Struggle for the Soul of Texas: Baptist Revival at Washington-on-the-Brazos, 1841
4 - The Spontaneous and the Planned: Wesleyan Methodist Revival in Cornwall, 1849
5 - Fanaticism and Sound Learning: Primitive Methodist Revival in Weardale, County Durham, 1851
6 - Experience and Good Order: Presbyterian Revival in North Carolina, 1857
7 - A Clash of Cultures: Revival in Forfarshire, Scotland, 1859
8 - Tradition and Innovation: Revival in South Australia, 1875
9 - The General and the Particular: Baptist Revival in Nova Scotia, 1880
10 - Conclusion: Culture and Piety in Local and Global Contexts

An undergraduate at Jesus College, Cambridge (1968-71), David Bebbington began his doctoral studies there (1971-73) before becoming a research fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge (1973-76). Since 1976 he has taught at the University of Stirling, where since 1999 he has been Professor of History. He has also taught at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, at Regent College, Vancouver, at Notre Dame University, Indiana, at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and at Baylor University, Texas.