The Welsh revival and the Keswick holiness movement
In 1900, for many Christians in Wales, revival was part of their shared history. Some older folk could look back to the revival of 1859-60, when large numbers of people came to faith in Christ. Others remembered the missions led by the American evangelist Dwight Moody to various UK cities in the 1870s, where again many were converted. But as the new century opened there was a growing sense that ‘God can do it again’, and by 1903 many in Wales were praying for ‘showers of blessing’, for revival. Much of this praying was focussed on personal spiritual renewal; others stressed the need for an awakening – literally, a wake-up call – amongst Welsh churches. Some prayer groups included Welsh ministers, and a letter from one of these men gives some insight into their concerns and longings.
‘We began to discuss problems of our work as ministers and learned from each other that brothers known to us were equally disturbed. We feel that some special kind of outworking of the Holy Spirit accounts for the fact that so many of us have come to speak more spiritually about the work [of ministry], and to thirst for a life of closer communion with God. We are suggesting some kind of Keswick. Oh! do we not need to be filled with the Holy Spirit. There is a tide now in the all-wise providence of God. If we can take it at the flood, we shall be carried by it to a great triumph in our work.’¹
‘Some kind of Keswick.’ What would that mean, and why such a strong, urgent wish to bring it to Wales? To understand this, we need to go back to the 1870s, to see how the Keswick Convention was started and why it became such an influential event – and more than an event, a movement.
Thomas Harford-Battersby was the vicar of St John’s Church in Keswick. He was known as ‘a diligent and faithful pastor and teacher’ and a leader among evangelical ministers in Cumbria. But he felt that something was missing from his ministry and his personal spiritual life. 'How very far I am from enjoying that peace and joy and love habitually which Christ promises', he wrote. 'I felt that I wanted [lacked] myself the very blessing I had advocated.' Many others felt similar needs at that time, because conferences or conventions at Oxford and Brighton in 1874 and 1875 attracted large numbers of Christians to hear several speakers, some from America, preaching about ‘holiness’ and the possibility of a ‘higher life’ brought about by the work of the Holy Spirit and centred on Jesus ‘in his all-sufficiency’. This was part of a revival of holiness teaching which had first appeared among John Wesley’s Methodists in the previous century. At the Oxford convention Thomas found the blessing he was seeking. ‘I got a revelation of Christ to my soul’, he said; ‘I found he was all I wanted . . . How it humbled me and what peace it brought: I shall never forget it’.²
After a similar gathering at Brighton in 1875, Thomas and some local friends organised a similar convention at Keswick: three days of ‘Meetings for the Promotion of Practical Holiness’ for all who felt they needed ‘a fuller and richer life in the Spirit’. Thomas’s large vicarage had enough space in the garden for a big tent; about 400 came, and so the first Keswick Convention was held.
Since then, the Keswick Convention has met annually, though now for three weeks rather than three days. From its early years until around the mid-twentieth century it was associated with a particular strand of ‘holiness teaching’. Convention organisers never formally defined a Keswick doctrine of holiness; its various leaders emphasised differing aspects and themes, such as ‘holiness by faith’, a ‘higher life’ of nearness to Jesus, confession and victory over sin, and a ‘rest of faith’, or ‘let go and let God’. Many speakers taught and testified to ‘entire sanctification’ brought about through a crisis experience and personal ‘consecration’ or ‘surrender’ to Christ.
Not all evangelicals agreed with this kind of teaching; others understood sanctification as a progressive, lifelong process rather than a crisis experience which was sometimes called the ‘second blessing’. But while ‘higher life’ and ‘entire sanctification’ thinking declined during the twentieth century, all Keswick speakers wanted to understand, experience and communicate the fullness of Christian life lived in devotion to Jesus. All would have sung Frances Ridley Havergal’s classic hymn which became a Keswick favourite:
‘Take my life, and let it be
Consecrated, Lord, to thee.’
And all surely would have agreed with John Stott when he said much later, at Keswick in 1965, that ‘the means of holiness is the power of the Holy Spirit’ at work in Christian believers.³
It's important to remember two other strong and enduring features of Keswick: its emphases on unity – expressed in the motto ‘All One in Christ Jesus’ – and on mission and evangelism. All these aspects of Convention life were well established by 1902, and in that year they all came together for Rhys Davies, a Welsh Baptist minister. He was gripped by the message of spiritual awakening and longed to bring it to his homeland where he was working as an evangelist and, like many others, praying fervently for revival. He exclaimed to a friend:
‘This Convention has got to go to Llandrindod next year, and in August, for all Wales is represented at Llandrindod in August. Ministers, teachers and deacons will be there . . . we must take the Convention to them.’⁴
Rhys, and others who shared his passion for revival, went for advice and support to some established Keswick leaders. F B (Frederick) Meyer, well known in English Baptist churches, was particularly helpful. With his backing a ‘Keswick-in-Wales’ was organised at Llandrindod, a mid-Wales spa and holiday centre, in August 1903. Meyer and other Keswick speakers preached. Jessie Penn-Lewis, one of the Convention organisers, gives us an eye-witness account of this landmark event.
‘The audience was a critical one, made up largely of ministers and church leaders. All prejudice and doubt fled away as the truth was unfolded . . . The power of the Risen Christ in the believer's life by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, though known and accepted in theory, had not been enjoyed in experience. To speak of assurance of salvation had been regarded as great presumption. Welsh religious life had therefore been lacking in brightness and Christian joy . . .
As those present began to apprehend the teaching on the power of the Holy Spirit to convict of sin, unbelief and failure, and the possibility of laying hold on God's provision in Christ to cleanse and deliver, to transform and to keep, there was revealed an earnest, definite desire to receive the fullness of the Spirit, both for sanctification and for service . . . When the opportunity was given for expressing heart-surrender and a dedication of lives in full dependence upon the Holy Spirit (John 7 v. 37-39), it seemed as if all present were united together in one great desire to give all to the Lord and to receive at his hands, then and there, this fullness of blessing.’⁵
Jessie Penn-Lewis
(Keswick in Wales)
Those who received this ‘fullness of blessing’ went back to their churches spiritually renewed and reinvigorated to preach, pray, and wait for a new movement of the Holy Spirit; for the ‘purifying fire of God to descend’, as many would say. A second Llandrindod Convention in 1904 was similarly influential, as ministers and church leaders heard addresses on ‘holy living’, ‘total submission’, and ‘the real meaning of Christ-centredness’. During that summer and autumn, across Wales, and especially in the west and south and the mining communities of the Valleys, there was much intense prayer for revival, and many mini-conventions and preaching festivals took place.
Evan Roberts
(Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)
Some leaders, including Evan Roberts, the most prominent, received visions calling and preparing them for mission. Local revivals broke out and grew into a national movement. The 1904 Revival had arrived; churches had been awakened; now the revival became a wave of evangelism across Wales.
Welsh Revival meetings were often highly emotional, and their effects were extraordinary. Huge numbers of people professed that they had come to faith in Christ (estimated numbers vary between 90,000 and 100,000), and as lives were fundamentally and dramatically turned around, changed lives led to radically changed communities. But as the Revival began to fade in 1905, who would nurture and teach new converts? Keswick-in-Wales at Llandrindod in 1903 and 1904 had played an important part in preparing the ground for the Welsh Revival; now it began to support and strengthen young Christians in their discipleship.
Convention tent, Llandrindod
(Keswick in Wales)
While the 1903 and 1904 Conventions had been mainly for ministers and church leaders, in 1905 huge numbers of people converted or re-awakened by the Revival turned up at Llandrindod. Meetings – and guest-houses – were packed as Christians old and new came to worship, share their testimonies and learn about holiness and discipleship. But when they went home, some found that their local chapels and churches were unable to provide all the teaching and support they longed for. So, in 1906 and later, many saved up for months to go up to Llandrindod in August and hear leading Bible teachers. The impact of these gatherings, and smaller local conventions, was lasting and powerful as ‘children of the Revival’ grew as followers of Jesus.
Keswick had helped to prepare Welsh churches and leaders for the Welsh Revival; would that Revival now influence the main Keswick Convention? In 1905 300 Welsh Christians went to Keswick and took some of the Revival’s atmosphere with them. There was much emphasis on singing and testimonies at their evening meetings, with long periods of prayer and confession lasting into the early hours of the following days. Some Keswick regulars called this an ‘exhilarating visitation’ and welcomed it, but the heightened levels of emotion were too much for others. ‘The torrent from the Welsh hills was meeting the sluggish stream of English propriety’, said one commentator.⁶ Debates about ‘emotion versus emotionalism’ were not new, even then, but they continued and have never quite gone away. So while the original Keswick in Cumbria remained much as it was, Keswick in Wales kept its more distinctively Welsh character. And it still meets every summer at Llandrindod, under the Keswick banner ‘All One in Christ Jesus’, for ‘passionate praise and life-changing ministry from God’s Word’ (see https://keswickinwales.org/aims-of-the-convention/).
How might this story help us as we pray ‘Revive us again’, like those Welsh Christians in the early 1900s? What they learned and experienced at Llandrindod in 1903 and 1904 was part of God’s preparation for the great Revival. Some key themes from Jessie Penn-Lewis’s 1903 report still resonate now: ‘conviction of sin and failure’ . . . ‘God's provision in Christ to cleanse and deliver, to transform and to keep’ . . . a ‘desire to receive the fullness of the Spirit, both for sanctification and for service’ . . . ‘dedication of lives in full dependence upon the Holy Spirit’ . . . all ‘united together’. Any messages or challenges here for us today?
Alan Hunt
¹ B P Jones, The King’s Champions. Revival and Reaction 1905-1935 (Pontypool, B P Jones, 1968), 47-48
² C Price and I Randall, Transforming Keswick. The Keswick Convention Past, Present and Future (Carlisle, OM Publishing, 2000), 19, 24-25
³ J Stott, Men Made New (London, Inter-Varsity Fellowship, 1969), 82
⁴ B P Jones, The Spiritual History of Keswick in Wales, 1903-83 (Cwmbran, Christian Literature Press, 1989), 9
⁵ Jones 1989, 10-11
⁶ Price and Randall 1989, 170
