What is happening at Asbury College currently?
Revival has reportedly broken out on Campus at Asbury University following a Wednesday Morning Chapel service on February 8, 2023, according to articles in the Christian Post and echoed in other media, following a message by Zach Meerkreebs. Zach is tied to Asbury as an Assistant Soccer Coach and is described as the Envision Leadership Coordinator, Christian and Missionary Alliance from Asbury University.
Asbury University is an independent Christian University in Wilmore Kentucky, with ties to what collectively could be described as "Holiness" type denominations. It declares itself to be tied to the Wesleyan-Arminian movement. More specifically it ties to different forms of conservative Methodism and the Wesleyan and Keswick Holiness Movements. This would include but is not limited to religious organizations such as Wesleyan Holiness, Free Methodist, Church of the Nazarene, The Christian and Missionary Alliance, and more conservative groups within the United Methodist Church at large.
According to reports from participants, a message was delivered in the Feb 8 Chapel service by Meerkreebs from Romans focusing on the love of God. You can see this chapel service on Youtube by clicking HERE. Reportedly, after the service, 30 or so students remained behind and began to share from deeply personal experiences how God had worked in their lives and from this "afterglow event" other students and faculty began to return to the auditorium where an informal and student-led gathering grew over time with more singing and sharing of testimonies. At the time of this article's writing, the event has been going on for 10 days and is the subject of articles in Christian Media as well as a sprinkling of right-wing and mainstream media as varied as Tucker Carleson and NBC news.
Have events of this Nature happened at Asbury before?
Yes. On several occasions. The last major such event occurred more than 50 years ago in 1970 when the institution was known as Asbury College. A documentary of this event can be viewed HERE. This revival which began similarly in fashion at a similar time of year spread from Asbury to other Christian Organizations around North America and had worldwide influence. Other revival events on a smaller scale have been reported at Asbury in the years 1905, 1950, 1958, 1970, 1990 and now in 2023. The history of these events is well-known on campus and often referred to longingly in hopes of similar events recurring.
In particular, the revival of 1970 is cited in assorted histories as connected or tied to the rise of Neo-Pentecostalism or the Charismatic movement of the 1970s which in turn connects to the rise of the Moral Majority in the late 1970s and early 1980s and what could be described as strongly contributory to the Fundamentalist/Evangelical movement that partnered with the Republican Party's renewal and rise under the banner of Christian Nationalism.
Author's Connections to these events in his Youth
The author of this article was born in 1962 in Canada and became connected to the events that include the Asbury Revival of 1970 through the Canadian Revival Fellowship, now known as PRAXIS Ministries. The general climate of society in the 60s and 70s was cause for great concern in conservative evangelical congregations that saw the rise of the drug culture, diminishing of authoritarianism and a general diminishing of the influence of churches on society as a threat and a call for revival and renewal to bring about changes in the grassroots of western culture. Shortly following the Asbury Revival similar types of events began to arise in Canada through the ministry of Bill McLeod and Ralph and Lou Sutera, who were also known as the Sutera Twins. The Twins were from Mansfield Ohio and had a background in Roman Catholicism.
The author's family became involved in Park Avenue Church in Burlington Ontario in 1975 when he was 12. The church was a part of the Associate Gospel Churches of Canada, a conservative Evangelical denomination. Park Avenue Church today is known as Compass Point. The church was large by general standards at that time (about 400 people). From 1975 to 1978 the church became involved in some internal conflict and the leadership believed that bringing in the Sutera Twins might help to address that conflict and bring about some general repentance and reconciliation and so 2 weeks of revival meetings were booked in April of 1978. The meetings took place every night and as my father was a part of the church's leadership we as a family attended every night. The meetings followed a fairly simple pattern with the introduction of music (Lou Sutera was the musician between the two brothers and he focused on introducing a combination of older hymns and newer choruses focused upon surrender to the Holy Spirit, being quiet before God and asking God to move. Ralph usually preached and he focused his messages on personal repentance and public confession. Many of his illustrations were stories from prior revivals which both taught and established an expectation as to what would happen if revival happened here. Youth were particularly included with another worker from Ohio known to the Sutera's being invited to come help. He was a former student at Asbury College who was brought in based on that experience and association. After several days without breaking with meetings starting at 7 pm every night into the second week the desired results began to take place. Meetings went on later, more people shared and there were confessions of sin in general down to specifics like drugs, infidelity, and conflicts and other churches in the area began to take notice and come to be involved. The leadership of the church publicly reconciled from a prior schism and the meetings were extended an additional 5 weeks. The venue was changed to another location with a larger capacity. The meetings continued with continued reinforcement along the way as to how things typically progressed in the past.
Personal Impact of these Meetings on me
At the time of these meetings, I was 15 and in what could be described as a typical teenage rebellious stage with some factors in my life going on that I understand better now than I did then. My family was strongly dysfunctional, and yes I know that all families have elements of dysfunction. I'm speaking about family cycles related to addiction, alcoholism and codependence. My father was a recovered alcoholic who also was an extreme narcissist and he gravitated, (and often moved) from church to church throughout his life based on how well that church would support his role as a father within the family system whose authority was to be unquestioned. In addition to the revival experience we went through as a family (and I'm not necessarily discounting everything that took place) he was strongly tied to Bill Gothard and his training courses which focused upon the unquestioned authority of the father in family systems. He was also strongly tied to churches that were involved in the Shepherding Movement which also promoted both a familial and spiritual chain of command that left the father or spiritual leader unquestioned.
At this time, I was in the 10th grade and extremely isolated (by design I understand now) by a father and family system that constantly moved homes, and changed schools and churches to keep that isolation a constant. I had few friends. I had few long-term connections outside my immediate family, and those were entirely dominated by my father and my mother who was a classic codependent partner who knew how to dance in that system with my father while maintaining her agenda through portrayal as a powerless victim. I was in my second high school in as many years, and as it turned out, on the brink of another major disruption as my family was on the brink of leaving the country and changing every major element of my life yet again (another story, but a created pattern from the dysfunction listed above.) I was highly susceptible to the appeal for spiritual peace and stability. I was failing academically, rebellious and resisting school and family and on the brink of failing the year.
I understood what was required from the constant reinforcement and prompting as to how things "worked" and after about a week, I entered into the experience praying to surrender to God, and accept the guidance of the church and family and there was what many would agree was a remarkable transformation. I became a very "spiritual person", and my academic performance transformed to where the last 2 years of high school, in yet a 3rd school brought me top performance and inclusion in the National Honour Society and I become a lead participant in the student spiritual leadership of the Christian School I now attended in South Florida after our move. I became a student leader in the local church we moved into again in South Florida which uncharacteristically we stayed a part of for 2 years.
In short, I understood what was asked for through these experiences and I complied and performed under those expectations. There was an overall positive change, from all outside appearances. Further, I took these spiritual experiences and believed I had a call to some form of ministry in missions or ministry and began to plan and prepare for this going into college.
Connections to Spiritual Abuse, Spiritual Trauma and submission to spiritual authority in other contexts.
Many of the root causes of the difficulties in my life continued to remain unaddressed, however. The dysfunction of my childhood and family didn't change. It "sanitized" in many ways in the hands of a manipulative narcissist father who knew how to work the system he connected to further establish his unquestioned authority and power in a family system that never healed. He continued his patterns of moving homes, and churches and severing relations or connections that threatened to expose his troubled past (we had hammered into us the don't talk, don't reveal rule common in such systems) and any challenge to him was immediately equated as a rebellion against God and met with force physically, emotionally, spiritually and any other means available.
Compliance offered a degree of safety and peace that otherwise was not present in the overall circumstances I found myself. I write this now as a man 60 years old. Add to it at the time that I lacked any real context to understand what was happening, as what was happening for me was "normal." Many of these insights that I have now are on the other side of life after a great deal of personal work and healing and insight that I didn't have at that time. Eventually, later in life, I came to a point where I had to face, grapple to understand and ultimately deconstruct from these patterns when I concluded that as an adult, free from the immediate threats of my childhood, were no longer necessary or effective.
Along with this systemic deconstruction was a thorough reevaluation of my spiritual beliefs, and trying to discern what was tied to my family system dysfunction and what was otherwise reliable. Without going into too much detail, the outcome was along with jettisoning so many beliefs and patterns that no longer worked with me, I came to recognize that at least for me, my experience with revival was a partnership that enabled much of the previous dysfunction. I accepted the not-so-subtle suggestions of what spirituality and revival looked like and left fundamentalism and evangelicalism and the group dynamics of spirituality that no longer worked as well. I did not leave Christianity or spirituality as a whole. Instead, I embraced a more historic form of Christianity in Anglicanism with roots much deeper and further back based on readings or early Patristic Fathers free from the modern baggage of added beliefs such as inerrancy, unquestioned authority within spiritual systems and revival as a spiritual-cultural norm, which quite frankly in my experience is very much the case in the history of revivalism in the context of Asbury and the holiness movements it is connected within.
Connections to right-wing Christian Nationalism, Moral Majority and other demographic trends.
It's very common when these types of events are taking place for those in the midst of them to deflect any criticism, as I did, with a general appeal to the spiritual roots of what is taking place and attributing them to a moving of God and the Holy Spirit while discounting things such as conditioning expectations, reinforcing patterns from the past, and general associations of the movement as a whole with other societal, political, general demographics and other associations. Looking at Asbury University it's not hard to discern some of these when you consider the following elements as drawn from UNIVSTATS (with some small rounding):
60% Female; 40% Male
81% White with small representations from Hispanic, Black and other ethnicities
Compared to other Universities, the diversity ratios at Asbury are very low.
Asbury tends to draw just under half of its student body from states outside of Kentucky and thus tends to have a higher regional representation than usual norms.
It's harder to find clear stats as to the political affiliations within Asbury University, but it's not difficult for those familiar with the campus (I've been there in person multiple times and applied earlier in life to attend the Seminary there) to know that like most conservative Christian Universities and Colleges the tendency is much stronger Republican affiliation and strong Christian-Nationalism leanings. Asbury in my experience certainly meets that general profile.
Of course, this will be discounted by those involved in these revival experiences, including the current one. If fact, there's general recognition in an article in Christianity Today by an Asbury Professor of this trend and he is quick to assure those looking in from the outside that this is not characteristic of what is happening here. The specific quote is, "Some are calling this a revival, and I know that in recent years that term has become associated with political activism and Christian nationalism. But let me be clear: no one at Asbury has that agenda." It's telling at least that this source, within Asbury, recognizes this implicit perception and seeks to discount it with that assurance that it's not taking place. Given the multiple events in the past however that have followed the same patterns it begs the question as to how the school remains firmly rooted as evidenced by its demographics and connections within these camps.
It will be interesting to see if this current manifestation of its historical recurrence will lead to any changes in Asbury's identity in this regard, as opposed to solidifying it. It's telling, at least to me, that several internal Asbury leaders are being very intentional about distancing themselves from the term "revival" and instead calling this a spiritual awakening.
Of course, it's not fair to judge an entire movement based on the experience and perspective of a single person, including mine. I cannot separate my experiences of course, from the context of my family systems, historical trauma etc. Others may well counter with their own experiences and outcomes to counter what might be perceived as an overall negative perspective on my part and that's fair. Nevertheless, mine is an informed opinion have been deeply involved and influenced at least by the last iteration of these long-expected and recurrent (some might even say recreated) events.
It's hardly necessary for me to pass final judgment at the onset of this latest manifestation at Asbury. It will be interesting to me to see what change it produces at Asbury University. Will it result in a return to its past marked by low diversity and overwhelming identification with Christian White Dominated Nationalism? Will there be a focus on the teachings of Christ related to Social Justice and identification with those oppressed? Will communities traditionally excluded and oppressed by Asbury University itself see acceptance, love and restitution in marked changes of values and behaviour departing from past patterns?
I remain skeptical perhaps in measure with my own past experiences and observations, but by all means, let's see what happens.
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