From the editor

how is your revival GoinG? Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

while back I spent some time in Madagascar, teaching “Well, actually, we don’t have a revival.” Aa course with my husband at the Lutheran seminary in “None? Not at all?” the student pressed. Fianarantsoa. There were three questions that the students “No. None.” asked us repeatedly. “How can you have a church without a revival?” the The fi rst was, “Is it true that Martin Luther drank beer?” student wondered aloud in astonishment. This scandalous rumor seemed to be a point of dispute And after just a few days experiencing the vibrancy of between the Malagasy evangelized by pietistic, teetotaling the Malagasy church, its rapid growth, its powerful spi- Norwegians in the center of the country and the Mala- ritual and healing ministries, I began to think: you can’t. gasy evangelized by not-quite-as-pietistic, beer-tolerant Norwegian-Americans in the southern part of the country. evival” is not a word to warm the cockles of a north- We told them yes, it was true, though beer in Luther’s day “R ern Lutheran’s heart. Revivals aren’t totally foreign was a lot weaker than ours and with its live yeasts was safer to the Lutheran experience, but nowadays they have a bad to drink than water. They did not ask about our beer drink- rap. It’s rare to hear a good word said about revivalist Hans ing habits and we did not volunteer Nielsen Hauge (one of those pietis- the information. “How can you have a church tic Norwegians) despite his almost The second question was, “Is singlehanded transformation of it true that Americans celebrate without a revival?” Norway’s society.1 Finland has seen Halloween?” In a culture where two major revivals, led respectively witchcraft and traffi c with the dead the student wondered aloud by Paavo Ruotsalainen and Lars are still normal and widespread, Levi Laestadius,2 but their heirs Christians have to make a clean in astonishment. today are seen to be reactionary break with such aff airs. It is there- and sectarian, hanging on to mem- fore shocking to the Malagasy that Christians elsewhere bership in the folk church by a thread. might set aside a day to dress up children as ghosts and American Lutherans have our own particular burden ghouls and shower them with candy. We said that there about the word. Revivals are what Protestants do, warming are some American Christians who object to Halloween, up the anxious bench to extract emotional but short-lived but for most of us demons and witches are so far from our conversions via carefully engineered tactics. Revivals are experience of reality that they’re not a cause for concern. carnivals of hypocritical religion where “more souls are This was obviously harder for them to believe than that conceived than saved,” as a pundit once put it. Revivals Luther drank beer. They did not ask us about our Hal- are the domain of manipulative superapostles preaching loween habits and once again we did not volunteer the in- hellfi re, damnation, and bigger contributions to the coff ers formation. rather than the grace of God. Inherently anti-institutional, The third question was, “How is your revival going?” anti-intellectual, and anti-liturgical, they perfectly embody Caught off -guard by the question the fi rst time it was everything that Lutherans oppose. asked, I stumbled and stuttered and fi nally managed to say, Sometimes you even get that judgment from revivalists

LuTHerAN FOrum 3 themselves. The book On Revival: A advanced capitalism… Charismatic Church of Sweden. Different orienta- Critical Examination collects conference revivalism provides emotional release tions and assumptions about the prob- papers by pastors and theologians in for those who have made it up the lems facing Christianity usually mean Great Britain reflecting on the fates greasy pole of techno-capitalist soci- a breach, or worse a divorce. When of revivals and attempted revivals, ety at the expense of their psychic dis- that happens—and as a rule it does— mainly in Pentecostal and Charis- location.”7 the revival gets crazy, the church gets matic churches. The various authors authoritarian, and the society gets agree in condemning “revivalism,” a uch criticism may convince Ameri- secularized. human-induced or -engineered social Scan Lutherans that revival is more But sometimes it doesn’t. Some- phenomenon. They observe that trouble than it’s worth. Better a slow times the church accepts the need revivalism not only depends on the and dignified death than a noisy and for revival and the revival accepts liberal Enlightenment Christianity it compromised anarchy. Yet one factor the need for discipline. The fact that decries but actually tends to reinforce makes a tremendous difference to the Finland is the least secularized of the it: both Wales and Norway saw pow- outcome of both church and revival: Nordic countries is often attributed to erful, extensive, and wildly successful and that’s whether the revival stays in the fact that its two big revivals have revivals in the nineteenth and twen- the church. stayed in the church, even now when tieth centuries, yet they count among The fact is, the church as an insti- tensions are running as high as they the most secularized parts of Europe tution with its tremendous weight ever have. today.3 The authors are positively Even more impressive is the case scurrilous toward the habit of making One factor makes a of Madagascar. There have been spiritual phenomena ends in them- four major revivals—starting in 1894, selves and looking for victory instead tremendous difference 1900, 1941, and 1946 respectively, of the cross: “It is only a specifically three in the Lutheran church and one bourgeois church that perceives the to the outcome in the Reformed church—and all four Spirit’s action as being achieved out- are still going!8 The Malagasy word for side the common matrix of struggle, of both church the movements as whole, Fifohazana, pain and self-denial.”4 means “to be awake, to be alive, and Yet for all this insider frustration, and revival: to be active,” alluding to Ephesians there is a common agreement that 5:14.9 Hardly a passing fad, revival is revival, as opposed to revivalism, is and that’s whether considered essential to the health of a God-given reality. “[T]rue revival the church. has God as its subject.”5 And what the revival stays in Not that it was altogether easy for God does in true revival is generate the revivals to be integrated into the “internal transformation that bears the church. life of the church. In each case, there the hallmark of Jesus Christ” as well was a period of testing. The origi- as “consideration for those most pre- of history and bureaucracy gener- nal movement, founded by Rainiso- disposed to the Kingdom of God, ally does not like the suggestion that alambo, was only accepted when the namely, those for whom divine grace revival is needed. Even genuine reviv- church’s leaders realized that “the cen- works—the disempowered, disenfran- als have a hard time finding a home tral focus of the movement’s mission- chised, marginalised and overlooked. in the church. And revivals, caught evangelizing was not on the signs but Such are the characteristics, the vir- up in the excitement, aren’t usually was Christological.”10 It took more tues, of those who enter into the Spir- willing to slow down and quiet down than a dozen years for the even more it’s domain of resonance.”6 long enough to listen to the histori- famous and more effective evangelist- Still, the initial excitement even of ans, much less the bureaucrats. As prophetess Nenilava’s revival—cen- truly God-given revival won’t guar- far as I can tell, this mutual deafness tered on preaching, exorcism, and antee long-term results. The authors is exactly what happened with the the laying-on of hands—to be re- collectively argue for a more serious Charismatic renewal in the American cognized by the church.11 The fourth approach to catechesis and character Lutheran denominations in the 1970s, revival, sparked by Rakotozandry formation for endurance, growth, and to the detriment of both. Likewise the Daniel, focused more on repentance maturity. If not, revival will degener- revivals in nineteenth-century Swe- and amendment of life, and even this ate into revivalism, and instead of den, which produced splinter Free took some time to accept.12 All of the seeking Jesus, people will seek “expe- Church and Covenant offshoots and revival movements led to the creation riences of the Spirit [as] add-ons to then, some decades later, the most of camps or even villages of commit- their affluent lifestyle. Contemporary thoroughly secularized Lutheran- ted believers; today there are fifty-six revivalism is a cultural expression of ism on the planet in the form of the such tobys in all.13 And the Fifohazana

4 Summer 2016 is the number-one provider of care for ow is your revival going? ing up in church every Sunday rather the mentally ill in the entire island.14 H The words haunt me, and than being committed to the gos- In 1985 the Fifohazana became not because I have any personal pre- pel of Jesus Christ. Even the infant- an official branch of the Malagasy dilection for emotional excitement in baptized raised in the faith need to Lutheran Church, and it remains a worship or anxiety about numbers. I grow up, deepen, mature, feel, experi- rare case of an indigenous African feel much more at home amidst ambi- ence, serve, and grow passionate about Christian movement remaining within guity, nuance, and endless qualifica- the gospel. a historic mission-started church. To tions than the enthusiasms of ecstatic I’m not seeing much passion be sure, as one observer puts it, there prayer. But the irony is that the study toward the gospel among us. The pas- are two different ecclesiologies at work of church history and ecclesiology has sions that run high in our midst are in the revival and in the church. But convinced me that revival is needed. the angry ones, directed toward all the the difference appears to be a whole- We Lutherans may excel in theology failures, real and perceived, of church some case of mutual correction, a and all the complexities of the theo- as institution. All the decades of my dialectic of the sort that Lutherans logy of the cross, but we continually— life have been marked by continual otherwise adore. “Is the Fifohazana and I believe mistakenly—address this power struggles for the direction and movement a church? Clearly not, wisdom to those not yet ready to hear shape of our denominations, with lit- if we believe their printed manual, it. We expect people to be Christians tle outcome but massive loss of mem- which names unity with the church before they are Christian, Lutherans bership and pyrrhic victories. We have and not moving out of it as a guiding intense anxiety about our institutions principle. Then how are we to under- A revival will spoil and something approaching apathy stand the movement? Perhaps we toward the gospel. It’s as if we have need to develop new ecclesiological without good theology been engaged in an anti-revival. categories, new ways of understand- I’m increasingly persuaded that ing the nature of the church.”15 Or, as to catechize this has been the wrong battle to fight. one Malagasy pastor put it to me, the That conviction doesn’t arise from the seminary in Fianarantsoa is the heart the revived, but we evident failure of any of our denomi- of the church, but the revival is its nations to be much more than mirror lungs. The church would not live very have little notion of images, with a thin Christian veneer, of long without either. whatever segment of American soci- The Malagasy example shows that how to create ety they happen to occupy. It comes it’s a mistake to equate revival with instead from surveying the congrega- panicked efforts at reanimating dead in people a longing tional detritus. I have heard so many liberal Protestantism in the West or stories by now of pastors destroyed upping membership numbers. Revival for catechesis. by congregations. I have heard so in Madagascar was and always has many stories by now of congregations been essentially biblical, missionary, before they are Lutheran. True, a destroyed by pastors. I wouldn’t dare and diaconal in spirit. The same can revival will spoil without good theo- to guess which party has caused more be said of the revivals in Ethiopia logy to catechize the revived. But we destruction, but there is abundant and Tanzania’s Lutheran churches.16 have little notion of how to create guilt on both sides. And as long as there has been church, in people a longing for catechesis, a I sometimes get the feeling that our there has been need for revival—as desire to know the Lord they’ve actu- operating assumption is to treat the lukewarm Laodicea of Revelation 3, ally encountered in a meaningful way. “Jesus is Lord” business as read, so at the tail end of the canon, already What is the real presence of Christ in now we can get on with what we really demonstrates. Missiologist Andrew F. the Supper to someone who’s never care about—preserving the building Walls even finds revival at the head- noticed his absence? What’s the joy (because my great-grandmother did waters of that most respectably staid in forgiveness to someone who’s never the needlepoint on the altar cush- of institutions, monasticism: “How seen the need to repent? ions), worshiping in a distinct style shall we sum up Antony’s witness to It’s not just our failings toward those (because it’s superior to all the other Christ? Antony represents perhaps the who have not yet heard and believed flawed styles out there), stewardship first revival movement that we know in the gospel that troubles me. Mad- (because we all are committed to a of in the early church. His conversion agascar’s revivals certainly draw in certain church lifestyle that is non- is not from paganism, but from ordi- new believers, but they are primarily negotiable), serving the poor (never nary Christianity.”17 for the long-term Christians. Even noticing the unsaid assumption that people who show up in church every the poor are apparently not here with Sunday may be committed to show- us or might not necessarily want to

Lutheran Forum 5 receive our magnanimous benefac- True revival creates a love of holy 3. In all fairness, Catholic and Orthodox tions), making a public witness (sub- Scripture, which ceases to be a weapon Europe are extraordinarily secularized as well, so the issue is not only Protestantism or revi- tly though inevitably in contrast to to wield or an impediment to over- valism. another church that makes a bad wit- come. Instead it is the source of abun- 4. Graham McFarlane, “The Role of the ness), steering American society in dant life and a wellspring of living Holy Spirit in Revival,” in On Revival: A Critical the right direction (as evidently God water. Examination, eds. Andrew Walker and Kristin can’t do it without our help). And even True revival creates a love of prayer, Aune (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2003), 49. these examples assume that the con- which ceases to be a rote action or a 5. Mark Stibbe, “‘Seized by the Power of a Great Affection’: A Narrative Theology of gregation’s energy is directed toward a public demonstration of religiosity. Revival,” in On Revival, 25. matter of substance rather than being Instead it is ongoing conversation with 6. McFarlane, 54. the outplay of personality politics of the Lord of life. 7. Steve Latham, “‘God Came from the most toxic kind—though I suspect True revival creates a love of holi- Teman’: Revival and Contemporary Revival- now that this probably takes up an ness, which is no longer an attempt to ism,” in On Revival, 180. 8. Randrianasolo Dimbiniaina Havan- undue proportion of any given par- secure one’s salvation by good works janahary, “The Contribution of Fifohazana ish’s energy. There isn’t much room or a smug show of superiority. Instead to Mission-Evangelizing in the Malagasy for primary, sustained, passionate it is freely conforming one’s words and Lutheran Church,” Missio Apostolica 21/2 attention to the gospel of Jesus Christ actions to the law of love embodied in (2013): 249. when these things are the real center Jesus Christ. 9. Havanjanahary, 247. of our life together. True revival creates a love of serv- 10. Havanjanahary, 250–1. 11. Lotera Fabien, “Healing Ministry of There is so little church going on in ing others, which is no longer a scheme Ankaramalaza,” Africa Theological Journal 35/1 our churches. Could our denomina- for solving the problem of the human (2015): 35. tions have become so unchurchlike race or a covert tactic for proselytism. 12. Havanjanahary, 251. if it hadn’t been for the fact that the Instead it is a genuine encounter with 13. Fabien, 38. congregations composing them had irreducibly unique persons created in 14. Cynthia Holder Rich, “Mental Illness in Madagascar: A Model of Community- become so unchurchlike, too? I don’t God’s image. Based Care,” The Journal of Pastoral Theology hope for revival as means to an end, True revival is marked by the cross, 20/2 (2010). in order to fix our denominations. If which neither proclaims false promises 15. Cynthia Holder Rich, “Spirit and Cul- that should happen, I’d certainly be of victory in this lifetime nor makes ture: Navigating Ecclesiological Minefields in delighted. But I don’t think it’s where a fetish of its own failures. Instead it Madagascar,” Journal of Theology for Southern the locus of our passions should lie accepts suffering as the price of faith’s Africa 131 (2008): 71. 16. The same is the case with the accep- anymore. What we desperately need integrity without losing hope in the tance of Charismatic practice by the Evan- is renewal at the congregational level, resurrection. gelical Church Mekane Yesus in Ethiopia. See which entails renewal at the individ- True revival is not an add-on to their excellent 1976 statement, “The Work ual level. Which by any other name is an already established life. Revival of the Holy Spirit,” in Presence, Power, Praise: called revival. makes the faith of Jesus Christ to Documents on the Charismatic Renewal, ed. Kilian McDonnell (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, be life. Everything else is blessed by 1980), 1:153–182. See also Moritz Fischer, f course, the one thing I can’t extension. “‘The Spirit Helps Us in Our Weakness’: Odo is offer a strategy to achieve Pray for it. Wait for it. And may Charismatization of Worldwide Christianity revival. That could only lead to the God grant it. LF and the Quest for an Appropriate Pneumato- devilish facsimile called revivalism. logy with Focus on the Evangelical Lutheran The sole recommendation I can make Notes Church in Tanzania,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 20 (2011): 95–121. is prayer. Pray for the heavenly Father 1. But he did drink beer. For a positive evaluation of his legacy, see Thomas Jacobsen, 17. Andrew F. Walls, “The Cost of Disci- to send the Spirit of His Son upon the “St. Hans Nielsen Hauge,” lf 48/3 (2014): pleship: The Witness of the African Church,” church (Luke 11:13). And then wait. 33–36. Word & World 25/4 (2005): 438. Here’s how we’ll know we are expe- 2. See Hannu Juntunen, “Lars Levi riencing God-given revival. Laestadius and the Nordic Revival,” lf 49/4 (2015): 34–38.

6 Summer 2016