Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast. Today it's reaction time with Glenn Scrivner, engaging with news and culture from a Christian perspective. You can watch this reaction and more on our YouTube channel, youtube.com forward slash speaklife media.
SPEAKER_01Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life. We look at all things with Jesus at the center. Twelve days after it began, worship continues at Asbury University, a Christian college in Kentucky. Asbury is in the Methodist tradition, but other college chapels are experiencing noteworthy times of worship and awakening, like Sanford University, a Baptist college in Alabama, or Lee University, a Pentecostal college in Tennessee, or Cedarville University, a Baptist college in Ohio. Across states, across denominations, there is something happening. Last week I interviewed Robert Cunningham, who lives close to Asbury and has visited. He gave us his take. Do watch that for some heartwarming testimony and thoughtful wisdom. He called it an awakening. And he said that those in leadership at Asbury are using that word more than revival. Others are calling it revival, and then the arguments begin. Frankly, I find debates about what to call it exasperating. Discernment is good. Arguing about names is silly because there are many definitions and connotations to the word revival. There are as many connotations as there are people who are arguing. And one of the few biblical passages that actually mention the word revival is Habakkuk three verse two. Lord, I have heard of your fame, I stand in awe of your deeds. Lord, repeat them in our day, in our time, make them known in wrath, remember mercy. In the King James Version it says, O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years. In the midst of the years make known in wrath, remember mercy. And the expectation is that this reviving happens in the midst of years of wrath, years of groaning under the displeasure and anger of God, when his gracious deeds are a faint memory. And then in the midst of these long years the Lord acts. He acts like we heard of him acting in the past. This is what revival looks like if you asked Habakkuk. Now is that what we're seeing right now in Asbury? I think it's something like that, at least the beginning of it in one small corner of the Christian world. But many are skeptical, some are sceptical because they are being rightly discerning, some are sceptical because their trust has been shredded by spiritual hucksters in the evangelical industrial complex, and some are skeptical because frankly it doesn't fit their view of history. We have a vision for how Christianity is faring in the West in an age of accelerating secularization and tanking institutional trust, and on that model there's no real room for revival. At least not in the West. We'll rejoice in what's happening in Iran, say, but we fail to believe that it could happen here. Now, if I'm honest, that's how I'm tempted to see the world. I stand like you stand in the midst of the years, and I have this gradualistic, fatalistic sense of historical inevitability. You know, the tide is out on church attendance in the West, and I project that trend into the future. Decline without end, world everlasting, amen. But but Habakkuk knew better. In the midst of these long years of wrath and disappointment and decline, Habakkuk saw we have the ideal conditions for revival. That's precisely when the Lord will revive his gracious deeds. Think of it scripturally. The Lord calls Abram and begins the Hebrew nation. When? When Babel is destroyed, and the people are scattered, and it's obvious that there is no earthly way to ascend to heaven. Perfect condition perfect conditions to revive God's work in the midst of the years. Or think, when is God going to perform his definitive work of redemption in the Old Testament? After four hundred years of Hebrew slavery in Egypt, and then he will revive his work in the midst of the years and bring them up out of Egypt. Or think of the book of Judges. The whole pattern is long years of decline and depravity, and then he revives his work in the midst of the years. Or think of Hezekiah or Josiah, revivals in the midst of long years of decline and depravity, or Ezra and Nehemiah, revivals in the midst of a generation that suffered immense decline through exile. Or think of the definitive revival, the coming of Christ in the flesh, another four centuries of delay, in the midst of long years, where they were waiting for the Messiah and nothing seemed to happen, and then God revived the work for Israel and for the world in the midst of decline, in the midst of death. Then there was resurrection. And that's the pattern. But you can't have a resurrection without a death, and you can't have revival without years of decline and depravity. Do you look at our situation in the West and think, no, we can't have revival because look at all these long years of decline and depravity, but that's ridiculous, isn't it? Do you see the decline and the depravity? Well, conditions are perfect for revival. Because revival is never our thing, it's never the unfolding of historical inevitabilities. The years grind along, but the Lord comes and revives his work in the midst. And that's what this video video is about. I want to recalibrate your thinking about how history works. It's not a long slide towards inevitable decline. It's the story of resurrection amidst death, spirit amidst the flesh, revival amidst wrath. And here's the myth I want to bust. We are all tempted to believe that Christendom was this unbroken age of faith, and now we have declined, perhaps irreversibly, into post Christian secularity and doubt. It's a story of the world that says in three hundred twelve AD, Constantine converted and everything was basically Christianish until nineteen sixty three, and it's been downhill ever since then. No, rubbish. Medieval Christendom was not the age of uniform faith you think it was, and the good old days so full of revivals were times of horrendous faithful faithlessness and worldliness. And the Lord would revive his work in the midst of the years, again and again. In this video I'm going to encourage you by describing just how faithless so many were in medieval Christendom. My source for this is an enjoyable romp through Christian history by Rodney Stark. It's called The Triumph of Christianity, and I'm going to read to you some excerpts from chapter fifteen of that book entitled The People's Religion. Let's have a look. Stark writes The masses of medieval Europe not only were remarkably skeptical, but very lacking in all aspects of Christian commitment, often militantly so. There are very few statistics on religious life in medieval times, but there are a surprising number of trustworthy reports from many times and places, and they are in amazing agreement that the great majority of ordinary people seldom, if ever, went to church. As Michael Waltzer put it, medieval society was largely composed of non participants in worship. Stark cites source after source from medieval Christendom, saying things like the people of Italy rarely go to church. For instance, most of the people of Tuscany, quote, do not confess once a year, and far fewer are those who take communion. A fifteenth century source in Siena said even the few parishioners who came to Mass usually were late and hastened out at the elevation of the host, quote, as though they had not seen Christ but the devil. In England it was said that, quote, the people these days are loath to hear God's service, and when they are forced to attend, they come late and leave early. If you're a Protestant at this moment and you're starting to feel a little bit superior, Stark then discusses Lutheran Germany in the sixteenth century, and he says, You'll find more Saxons out fishing than at service. Those who come walk out as soon as the pastor begins his service. Uh his sermon, rather. Stark cites instances of pastors quitting church on Sunday because, quote, not a soul has turned up to hear him. He just they just give up halfway through the service. In Barham, 1572, quote, it is the greatest and most widespread complaint of all pastors' hereabouts that people do not go to church on Sundays. Nothing helps. They will not come, so that pastors face near empty churches, close quote. In Weilburg, 1604, quote, absenteeism from church on Sundays was so widespread that the synod debated whether the city gates should be barred on Sunday mornings to lock everyone inside. Nevertheless, it is not clear that having a large turnout at Sunday services would have been desirable. Sources spoke of services as travesties. Members of the congregation jostled for pews, nudged their neighbours, hawked and spat, knitted, made coarse remarks, told jokes, fell asleep, and even let off guns. In England, a Cambridgeshire man was charged with indecent behaviour in church in 1598 after his most loathsome farting, striking, and scoffing led to, quote, the great offense of the good and the great rejoicing of the bad. Back in Germany, a source in 1594 writes, those who come to service are usually drunk and sleep through the whole sermon, except sometimes they fall off the benches making a great clatter, or women drop their babies on the floor. In Weisbaden in sixteen nineteen, during church, there is such snoring that I could not believe my ears when I heard it, the moment these people sit down, they put their heads on their arms and straight away they go to sleep. In addition, many bring their dogs inside the church, barking and snarling so loudly that no one can hear the preacher. Have you been to church like this? Like, no matter how much of a zoo you think your all age service is a church, like it's not like this, is it? In Leipzig, 1579 to 1580, quote, they play cards while the pastor preaches and often mock or mimic him cruelly to his face. Cursing and blaspheming, hooliganism and fighting are common. They enter church when the service is half over, go at once to sleep, and run out again before the blessing is given. Nobody joins in singing the hymn. Is this what you think of when you think of the great age of faith, medieval Christendom, right? That that high point from which we have all fallen. Well.
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SPEAKER_01So William Tyndale reported in 1530 that hardly any of the priests and curates in England knew the Lord's prayer. Amon Duffy, a historian of Christianity, reported of the clergy, concubinage was widespread. Concubines are kind of like mistresses, they're sort of halfway between a wife and a mistress, a woman on the side, as it were. Concubinage was widespread. Impercunious clergy with a house full of children presiding over a half coherent liturgy on Sundays were common all over Europe. Nor was dissolute living concentrated in the lower clergy. There were many notorious popes, including Alexander VI, who served 1492 to 1503, a member of the Borgia family, who flaunted his many mistresses, fathered nine illegitimate children by three women, and is widely believed to have poisoned a number of cardinals in order to seize their property. As for Rome itself, in 1490, more than fifteen percent of its residents uh more than fifteen percent of its resident adult females were registered prostitutes, and the Venetian ambassador described it as the sewer of the world. Duffy reported an abbot in southern Italy who had a concubine and five children, who told his bishop he could not end the affair because he was fond of his children, and his physician had prescribed sexual intercourse for his gallstones. This is the clergy. Humbert of Romans reported that many clergy, quote, spent so much of their time in gaming, pleasure, and worse things that they scarcely come to church. That's the clergy that don't go to church. So, in the absence of such spiritual leadership, what do the masses think? What do the masses believe about God and Jesus and faith? Stark quotes Gerald Strauss, who said they, quote, practiced their own brand of religion, which was a rich compound of ancient rituals, time-bound customs, and a sort of unreconstructable folk Catholicism, and a large portion of magic, to help them in their daily struggle for survival. That's what the Hoi Poloi believe. That's what's what the masses believe in medieval times. So Stark concludes this hilarious chapter. I found it so encouraging and refreshing to read how terrible church was in the medieval period. Now, this this is not the entirety of what's going on in the medieval period, but what it does is it flips on its head our caricatures of the medieval period. We tend to think of it as not an age of reason, but an age of faith. And what Stark shows us is that it was an age of superstition and credulity and faithlessness and utter ignorance about the basics of Christian faith, while at the same time it was an age of reason. It's it's it was an age of incredible scholars like Thomas Aquinas and people, it was the age of the Chauces, it was the age of of Dante, it was it was the age of incredible intellect and incredible um philosophy, legal developments, human rights came about. It was the the invention of the university, for goodness sakes, and parliaments. So so this idea that it was not an age of reason, but it was an age of faith, has it entirely backwards. And and uh Rodney Stark's chapter here on how faithless the people were, there's just the masses were, um, is really interesting. I mean, there were tremendous theologians at times, all through that period. And yet, Sunday by Sunday, what did church look like? It looked like a zoo. And so Stark concludes his chapter Medieval times were not the age of faith. For the vast majority of medieval Europeans, their religious beliefs were a hodgepodge of pagan, Christian, and superstitious fragments. They seldom went to church, and they fa they placed greater faith in the magic of the wise ones than in the services of the clergy. The frequent claims that empty churches and low levels of religious activity in Europe today reflect a steep decline in piety are wrong. It was always thus. Get it? I get it, I'm gonna read that sentence again. The frequent claims that empty churches and low levels of religious activity in Europe today reflect the steep decline in piety are wrong. It was always thus. Well, it wasn't always thus, as we'll see. There there have been flows as well as ebbs, but the idea that the medieval period was a time of just uniform church going, utter nonsense. And it's not just a Catholic thing, right? As Martin Luther summed up in 1529, after recognizing the failure of his campaign to educate and arouse the general public, quote, dear God help us, the common man, especially in the villages, knows absolutely nothing about Christian doctrine, and indeed many pastors are in effect unfit and incompetent to teach. Yet they're all called Christians and are baptized and enjoy the holy sacraments, even though they cannot recite either the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, or the Commandments. They live just like animals, and that's the end of his chapter on the life of faith. Is that what you think of when you when you think of Christian history? So often people think Christian history i in terms of the cultural ascendancy of Christianity, they think 312 Constantine was converted, and there was this sort of unbroken, you know, millennium and a half of Christian domination and power, and then in 1963, it all went to hell in a handbasket, and in this irreversible post-Christian decline. Utter nonsense. Utter nonsense. Medieval period, it was an age of reason in so in so many ways, and it was an age of faith. But but Sunday by Sunday, if you went to your average church in medieval Christendom, what would you find? You'd find a zoo. I find that really heartening, actually. I find that really heartening because there were incredible spiritual movements within all this. Okay? You can think you can think of Wycliffe and you can think of the Lollards, and you can think of Luther, and you can think of the Reformation that that burst forth. But it was not this uniform thing. And history is not this uniform inevitability grinding along. It's ebb and flow. It's revive us in the midst of the years, Lord. So now think of the Great Awakening under the preaching of Whitfield and Wesley and others beginning in the fourth decade of the eighteenth century. Here's a revival in the midst of the years. Um but those years were incredible like times of decline and depravity. Perhaps the best known bishop of that era was the philosopher George Barclay. In 1738, he declared that religion and morality in Britain had collapsed to a degree that was never before known in any Christian country. In the previous decades, the Church had ejected thousands of its most biblical and prophetic clergy, first under Charles II and then under William of Orange. Instead, the Enlightenment was stealing a march on the Church, deism and Susinianism just seemed unstoppable heresies, and Christians were facing unprecedented intellectual challenge and ridicule. The Industrial Revolution was barbarically remaking the lives of ordinary Britons, the transatlantic slave trade was in full swing, one of the great moral stains on the entirety of Western civilization. Inequality was obscene, crime was rampant, the government tried to crack down by dishing out the de the death penalty for crimes like stealing a sheep, snaring a rabbit, breaking a young tree, or picking a pocket for more than one shilling. Public hangings were entertainment, as were incredibly bawdy plays. It was said that no sooner is a playhouse opened in any part of the kingdom than it at once becomes surrounded by a halo of brothels. Other entertainment included coastal folk luring ships to dash themselves on the rocks by giving them misleading signals and then ignoring the drowning sailors and plundering their goods. Which is a hobby, I suppose. As was bear baiting, bull baiting, dog baiting, in other words, torturing animals for sport. Gambling was rife, but perhaps the greatest addiction of the age was a drink known as Mother's Ruin, aka gin. The gin craze of the eighteenth century was notorious. By 1740, London was producing forty-five million litres of gin each year, which amounts to four double gins per day per person, man, woman, and child. Four double gins per day per person. Almost half of the entire British wheat harvest was being used to make spirits. For this and many other reasons, the death rate in these years outstripped the birth rate in Britain for the first time. Here is a culture in decline. In every way it looked like the end of the road, and then in the midst of the years, the Lord revived his work. Whitfield and Wesley got busy, as did so many other preachers, and they preached their tens of thousands of sermons each with tens of thousands of people listening at a time in the open air. John Wesley travelled a quarter of a million miles on horseback. Whitfield crossed the Atlantic eleven times, and both Britain and America were never the same. But then, roll on 1800, and in St. Paul's Cathedral on Easter Sunday, only six people took communion. Around the same time in America, Thomas Jefferson predicted that there would not be a single Christian in his day who wouldn't die a Quaker or a Unitarian, and it looked like that might have been the case. And then, in the midst of the years, there was a second Great Awakening, and by 1850, for instance, in England, nearly half the population was in church on a Sunday. And since then, it's there's been ups and downs, and largely downs, the sea of faith goes out at times. Sometimes, as far as the great mass of people, it goes out for centuries. But tides do not go out forever. Which means why not? Why wouldn't the sea of faith come in again? Why wouldn't it surge and roar and roll across the land again? Why not, especially if the tide has been out a while? History is not a grinding inevitability. In the midst of the years, the Lord does his thing. It is, after all, his story. History is his story, it's personal. And he injects the plot twists that he desires. So I have no idea what to call Asbury, where it's going, what it will mean in ten years' time. But can we all agree that it could, or something like this, could change the course of history and upend all our assumptions about the post-Christian West. It is not an inevitable slide since 1963. Tides go out, but they also come roaring back in. Thank you for watching. This is Speak Life. We are an evangelistic ministry based in the UK but broadcasting to the world. Subscribe to our channel to get more content that sees all of life with Jesus at the center. See you again soon.