Revival Fever

or is it a fever dream

Ever since Pentecost arrived with tongues of flame, people have described revival in terms of fire. The middle swath of my home state is known as the burned-over district because so many revivals rushed along the Erie Canal like wildfire.

Revival fire was supposed to purify. Growing up, we’d sing this Vineyard song around the piano in our living room. The song was perfect for my church—purity, zeal, and cringy slavery references.

Refiner's fire
My heart's one desire
Is to be holy
Set apart for You, Lord
I choose to be holy
Set apart for You, my Master
Ready to do Your will

- 1990 Mercy/Vineyard Publishing

In my experience, revival felt less like a fire and more like a fever. The Toronto Blessing erupted in 1994, less than one year after my family relocated to Gordon-Conwell on Boston’s North Shore. As an eight-year-old, my memories of this period are fragmentary, but I remember very clearly that I accompanied my father and his friends on a trip from Danvers, MA to Madrid, NY to “catch” the revival and bring it back to our Christian & Missionary Alliance church.

A revival was something that could be transmitted like a plague. Decades later, I watched in horror as people traveled to Asbury University to “catch” the revival fire and return to their communities with COVID-19, measles, and—presumably—the Holy Spirit. Deadly viruses aside, my childhood revival experience inoculated me against belief.

Men who claimed to channel God’s glory and power pressed their sweaty hands against my forehead. The duration of the intense sweaty-palmed pressure on my forehead wasn’t up to me; I was stuck in that position unless they had a shortage of prayer ministers or I performed an awkward overcome-by-the-spirit fall to the ground. Waiting prayer ministers would catch me, lay me on the red carpet, and drape a large white tablecloth over me to preserve my modesty. If I timed it correctly, I could rest for 5 or 10 minutes with my eyes closed and then return to my seat as the altar call ended.

I understand the desire for a transcendent spiritual experience, but these days I’m more skeptical of so-called revivals, particularly when they’re in service of political power. Scholars like

Matthew D. Taylor

have identified the Toronto Blessing as an inflection point in the trajectory from the Latter Rain Movement to the rise of the New Apostolic Reformation.

In his book The Violent Take It By Force, Taylor quotes Aimee Semple McPherson saying, “only a national revival led by born-again Christians baptized in the Holy Spirit could restore the United States to its privileged position as God’s modern-day holy land.”¹ McPherson’s declaration distills the illness into a single sentence: God will give select Christians the power to resurrect a hallucination of the past.

I’m not immune to nostalgia, even as an archivist. The passage of time brings inevitable loss and sometimes our society is poorer for that loss. But I have no patience for historical amnesia that harms people. Do not tell me that America was greatest when white men ruled with an iron hand. Do not tell me that kids will be fine if they contract polio and measles. Plagues do not purify unless you are a fan of eugenics. This isn’t just a misrepresentation of the past—it’s a willful rejection of concrete evidence.

Perhaps we could even call it a fever dream.

1. Matthew D. Taylor, The Violent Take It By Force, (Broadleaf Books, 2014), 27.