In 2020, when Jonathan Thomas and I set out to create our documentary, Welsh Awakenings: The Story of God’s Work in Wales, it was important to me that we should tell the whole story: the good and the bad. There’s a tendency to focus only on the positives of history. This is partly from a desire to tell the stories that most glorify God, within a limited time or word count, but I firmly believe in shining a spotlight on the negatives as well. Not only does it present a more authentic story, but we can learn as much from when history lets us down as we can from when it lifts us up. Winston Churchill famously said (paraphrasing George Santayana), ‘Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.’
One of my motivations in making Welsh Awakenings was to show how we got where we are today; how Wales went from being (in very general terms) a spiritually dead nation at the start of the eighteenth century, to a ‘Christian’ nation by the start of the twentieth century, and then to a secular nation by the start of the twenty-first century. A subtitle could have been The Rise and Decline of Christian Wales.
Wider-read and wiser men than I could write more comprehensively on this subject, but here are three negative lessons we can learn from Welsh Christian history.
Methodist separation
The travelling evangelist, Howell Harris (1714-1773), is both a hero and a slight embarrassment for Welsh evangelicals. Harris, Daniel Rowland (an Anglican curate in Llangeitho) and William Williams (the great Welsh hymnwriter) were the three leaders of the Methodist Revival in eighteenth-century Wales. It began in 1735, and God used these men to transform the nation into a land bubbling with spiritual power and fervour. In 1811, the Methodists separated from the Anglican Church (the established church of Wales at the time). They were originally known as the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, but in 1928, they changed their name to the Presbyterian Church of Wales.
After fifteen years of fruitful evangelism throughout the land, however, Howell Harris took some unconventional turns in his theology, believing, for example, that it was God the Father who was crucified. Another issue was his close friendship with Madam Sidney Griffith, who travelled with him and claimed to offer him direct revelation from God. As a result, he fell out with Rowland and Williams, and retreated to his home in Trefeca where he established a Christian ‘community’.
Because of the split between Harris and the others, the spiritual fervour in Wales began to die down in the 1750s. However, there was a reconciliation between them and, in 1762, God graciously poured out his Spirit on the land again.
Howell Harris’ legacy in Wales is very positive, and the three leaders were able to complement one another with their differing temperaments and gifts. Thankfully, Harris was never guilty of any grievous sin which disqualified him from ministry, but he is a reminder for us to always depend on the Lord, not on any one man, however gifted a leader they may be.
The next example teaches us the same lesson.
Jones and Roberts
The Victorian era was the ‘golden age’ of Christian Wales. After the 1859 Revival, there were more Christians than at any other time before or since. Praise God! The 1904 Revival, though short-lived, had lasting fruit, not just in widespread global reach but in maintaining some form of evangelical witness throughout the twentieth century in Wales. Be sure to read Eifion Evans’ books on both revivals; they were key in inspiring me to make Welsh Awakenings.
However, two leaders from these revivals stand as warnings from history: Humphrey Jones (1832-1895) and Evan Roberts (1878-1951). Both men saw great blessings in their ministries, seeing many genuinely converted to Christ. Yet they were also prone to error, as they felt the mental and emotional pressure of continuing to ‘produce’ revival.
In response to a spiritually hardened populace in Aberystwyth in 1859, Humphrey Jones began claiming direct revelation from God, offering prophecies, and eventually predicting that the Holy Spirit would descend in a physical form at a specific date and time. The moment came at a packed meeting in Jones’ chapel, but inevitably, nothing happened. Evan Roberts’ revival meetings in 1904-05 were often quite chaotic, with an emotional fervour that produced many false converts. A lot of ‘froth’, as Gwyn Davies phrases it.
Both men suffered mental breakdowns – Jones after his embarrassment, and Roberts after a relentless itinerant ministry. Breakdowns, of course, happen to faithful men as well, but with Jones and Roberts, there’s a sense of a work of God being cut short due to carnality polluting a ministry.
Establishment rot
Many were added to the church in the 1859 Revival, but even this had its negative side: there weren’t enough elders and leaders in the chapel to disciple the new converts. This isn’t a problem exclusive to times of blessing; there is a tendency today for new converts to be forgotten about as soon as they profess faith, or they are immediately encouraged into church work, and discipleship is neglected.
Following this sudden growth in the mid-nineteenth century, there was an increasing tendency among the new higher education institutions to question the infallibility and supernatural claims of the Bible, and the results began to seep into the church. The new converts weren’t rooted and grounded in the faith to withstand this attack.
There was also an increasing tendency to merge Christianity with politics and culture, as Welsh nonconformist pastors were seen increasingly as national leaders against the Tories in the Anglican Church and Westminster.
As society became more and more Christianised, the national establishment status quo was more Christian than it had ever been. A good thing in many ways, but societal norms without spiritual life are nothing but the empty shells of hypocrites: don’t drink, don’t swear, don’t smoke.
From this, we learn the dangers that can come to a land saturated with the gospel. We rightly lament that we live in a day of small things. Jesus said that narrow is the way and few find it. There is no such thing as a Christian nation. Even when Christianity was at its height, Wales was still ripe for judgement. Had Jesus returned in the mid-nineteenth century, the nation would still have been rolled up and burnt to make way for the new heavens and the new earth.
We should not look back at the past with rose-tinted glasses, but we can be enlightened and equipped by it to face the future. God is the same today as he was in Genesis or Acts or 1735 or 1904, and so is his Word, and so is his gospel: the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes.
