Religious Events
The Welsh Revival
Religious Events
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
The Welsh Revival was a wave of mass religious enthusiasm that swept Wales from late 1904 into 1905, associated above all with the young lay preacher Evan Roberts, whose meetings drew overflow crowds marked by spontaneous prayer, singing and public confession rather than formal preaching. Contemporary observers counted well over 100,000 conversions across Welsh chapels of several denominations within about a year, alongside widely reported drops in public drunkenness and crime in mining towns the revival passed through. Historians treat it as one of the most intense revivals of its era in Britain and, through missionaries and reports that reached Pentecostal circles soon after, as an influence on the Azusa Street Revival and the wider Pentecostal movement that followed within two years.
Facts
The Event
When It HappenedBeginning around November 1904 and continuing through most of 1905. 1 Where It HappenedWales, beginning in Loughor and spreading nationwide, chiefly through Calvinistic Methodist, Baptist and Congregationalist chapels. 1 Principal PartiesEvan Roberts as its central figure, with participation across Calvinistic Methodist (now Presbyterian Church of Wales), Baptist and Congregationalist chapels; well over 100,000 reported conversions. 1 Convened or Ordered ByNot formally convened; associated chiefly with the lay preacher Evan Roberts, whose meetings drew crowds without central organization. 1 History
Historical NoteLocal newspapers and mine owners reported declines in public drunkenness and workplace swearing during the revival's peak, cited at the time as evidence of its social effect though not independently verified by later historians. 1 Consequences
Lasting ConsequenceReports of the revival, carried by missionaries and religious press, are widely cited by historians of Pentecostalism as an influence on the Azusa Street Revival that began in Los Angeles in 1906. 2 Learn More
A Nation That Emptied Its Pubs for a Year
This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Evan Roberts was twenty six, a former coal miner training for ministry, and he had no organization behind him when the Welsh Revival began in late 1904. What he had were meetings that ran for hours without a formal sermon, filled instead with spontaneous prayer, singing and people standing to confess their own failings in front of the whole chapel. Within months, reports of well over 100,000 conversions were circulating across a country whose entire population at the time was under two million.
The social claims that traveled alongside the religious ones are what made the revival famous even outside church circles. Mine owners and local newspapers reported drops in drunkenness and profanity in the mining valleys the revival moved through, stories that spread internationally and made Wales, briefly, a byword for what a revival could visibly change in a community. Later historians treat those specific claims cautiously, since nobody kept the kind of records that would let the numbers be checked, but the reports themselves are part of why the revival's reputation outran its borders so quickly.
That reputation reached further than Wales. Missionaries and religious newspapers carried word of what had happened there to audiences well beyond Britain, and historians of Pentecostalism widely count the Welsh Revival among the influences reaching the meetings that began at Azusa Street in Los Angeles less than two years later, a movement that would go on to shape global Christianity far past anything the original Welsh chapels could have anticipated.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.