Much of modern evangelical theology, piety, and practice, is not driven by Scripture as much as it is driven by history. Many evangelicals assume, as I once did, that the altar call is a biblical practice. They do not know, as I did not, that the altar call is a nineteenth-century practice not found in the Bible nor was it found in the Reformation. Indeed, the very practice of holding revivals was neither biblical nor Reformation practice. The idea of “holding a revival” is the product of a powerful nineteenth-century movement that continues to influence us today in ways that we might not fully appreciate. Bob Godfrey is fellow who first helped me to understand what happened in the nineteenth century and how it continues to influence us today. He is President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Church History at Westminster Seminary California and he is Chairman of the Board of Ligonier Ministries. He joined us for this episode to talk about the continuing significance of the anxious bench and the Second Great Awakening. See the resources below for some of the titles we discuss in this episode.
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RESOURCES
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- Heidelmedia Resources
- The Ecumenical Creeds
- The Reformed Confessions
- Recovering the Reformed Confession (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2008).
- Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity.
- John Williamson Nevin, The Anxious Bench.
- “‘Magic and Noise:’ Reformed Christianity in Sister’s America,” in eds. R. Scott Clark and Joel E. Kim Always Reformed: Essays in Honor of W. Robert Godfrey (Escondido: Westminster Seminary California, 2010), 74–91. (Apple Books version)
- The Fluid Line Between Revivalism And The Cults In Nineteenth-Century American Religion
- One Great Difference Between A Covenantal Piety And The American Conversionist Alternative
- Charles Finney Does Not Live Here
- The QIRE Distilled To Its Essence
- In Case You Weren’t Sure What QIRE Means