Table Of ContentA History of
Evangelical Awakenings
in Collegiate Communities
/Edited by Richard Owen Roberts
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G.M. ELLIOTT LIBRARY
Cincinnati Christian University
Campus Aflame
A History
of
Evangelical Awakenings in
Collegiate Communities
by
J. Edwin Orr
Edited by
Richard Owen Roberts
r
NTERNATIONAL
AWAKENING
PhEos
Wheaton, Illinois
1994
Published By
International Awakening Press
P. O. Box 232
Wheaton, Illinois 60189 U. S. A.
A Division Of
International Awakening Ministries, Inc.
First Edition, 1971
Published by Regal Books Division, G/L Publications
New and Revised Edition Copyright 1994
By
International Awakening Ministries
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 0-926474-07-3
Library of Congress
Catalog Card No. 93-78598
Microfilmed 1971 as
Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities
Table of Contents
Preface
Editor’s Introduction
The Evangelical Heritage
The Evangelical Revival
Despair and Recovery
Collegiate Awakenings After 1800
The Impact on Education
Educational Pioneering Overseas
The Mid-Century Decline
The 1858-59 Awakening
Eeereieeees eek Post-1860 Overseas Impact
The Multiplying Fellowships
The Student Volunteers 101
Sporadic Revivals Overseas 107
The Awakenings of the 1900s io
The 1905 Aftermath 125
Collegiate Awakenings Overseas 133
Volunteer Objectives Overseas 139
Decline of a Great Movement 149
A Slow Evangelical Recovery 159
Mid-Century Resurgence 169
The Evangelism of the Fifties 185
The Unbelievable Years 197
Epilogue: 1970 205
Pattern of College Revivals 213
Theology of College Revivals 227
Notes 233
Bibliography 265
Index 275
Preface
In standard church histories and in standard histories of higher
education, reference is often made to the phenomenon of revivals of
religion or evangelical awakenings in collegiate communities, particularly
during the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Frederick
Rudolph, in a standard text on American colleges and universities, has
devoted ten pages to a study of the phenomenon up until the year 1858.
Other historians with an obviously profound knowledge of the history
of colleges and universities seem to have found the phenomenon of
evangelical awakenings in the colleges intriguing, to say the least. More
often, however, the educator of the twentieth century is apt to regard such
revivals of religion on campus as a form of hysteria happily past.
It seems strange that no qualified scholar thus far, to the best of my
knowledge, has produced an authentic account of evangelical awakenings
in collegiate communities. Nor has anyone traced the impact that these
awakenings in both college and community have had upon social progress
including the initiation of educational systems, primary and secondary and
advanced, as part of a worldwide accomplishment. It is even more amaz-
ing to discover that the usually well-informed educational or ecclesiastical
historian seems blissfully unaware that evangelical awakenings in col-
legiate communities—far from fading out a hundred years ago—are still
occurring in the same form in the same kind of Christian colleges and in
different form through voluntary societies in the secularized universities
of our time with a greater impact than ever upon missionary enterprise.
All this serves to show that the writing of an account of the course of
evangelical awakenings in collegiate communities has been long overdue
and makes a contribution to history of practical value in education rather
than pedantic interest. With the facts available, judgments may be made.
In certain cases, judgments need to be reversed. It is inevitable that
people of the latter third of the twentieth century are inclined to interpret
happenings of the past in the light of their own reading or prejudices. For
example, I have found that the achievements of the New England mission-
aries in the Hawaiian kingdom a century and a half ago are belittled and
disparaged or outrightly denied because of the writings of a popular
novelist or the equally fictional screenplay of a film producer; and all the
protests of capable Hawaiian historians have gone almost unheard. Chris-
tianity filled the void of a broken society in Hawaii, rather than invading
a Hawaiian paradise where everyone was having fun as in the fictional
account. The missionaries made Hawaiian Island populations literate in
less than twenty-five years, rather than capturing power by teaching only
chiefs and their children. As history, the novel and film are frauds.
Hh
CAMPUS AFLAME
However, there is so much material here presented in published form
for the first time that it would be presumptuous to pronounce judgment
in every case. This is somewhat of a pioneer study—if not regarding the
early nineteenth century, certainly concerning later periods——and a fuller
analysis of untreated aspects of the college revivals must properly await
the study of interested historians now able to view the facts in perspective
for the first time. Studies could be made of the question of academic free-
dom in evangelical colleges where faculty members subscribe to a state-
ment of faith; of the bases of support of these colleges which, in large
measure, depend upon the gifts and bequests of ordinary Christian people
and the benefactions of ordinary congregations as well as the support of
loyal graduates, rather than massive grants from wealthy foundations and
corporations or underwriting by denominational funds; and of the political
alignment of evangelical colleges, a few of which have been buttressed by
support from the political right, but the great majority of which are free
of political alliances of any kind, minding their own business in the
educating of the young with a concern for the gospel of redemption,
individual and social. The writer has refrained from writing at length on
the future of the evangelical college in competition with state education.
There is no such thing as Presbyterian physics or Baptist chemis-
try—though some insist that Baptists are more interested in H2O than
_other denominations. There is an evangelical attitude to philosophy, of
course, and a desire to combat atheism in all its related fields. In 1965,
as in 1905, evangelical educators recommended the moving of Christian
Colleges to state university campuses and concentration on the subjects
of Christian concern. For the past quarter of a century, I have been
engaged in a teaching ministry on the campuses of secular colleges and
universities and of Christian colleges—while this dissertation was being
written, for example, delivering twenty-eight lectures in four days as the
guest of the State University of Arizona and conducting series of meetings
in colleges from New York State to Washington State. Residing near the
campus of the University of California at Los Angeles, I enrolled in an
occasional course at Moore Hall, the School of Education—curriculum
for computers, economics, and the like. It was suggested that a study of
college awakenings had become necessary. In order best to engage in such
research, the scholar needed experience in writing history, understanding
of educational developments, acquaintance with psychology and anthropo-
logy, objective observation of the phenomenon of current evangelical
awakenings on campus, and theological training.
I owe an academic debt to Professor Ernest E. Smith (long ago) and
