Archives
The Evangelical Boom: America in the 1940s to 1950s
For decades they had prayed for revival but saw no results. Fellow believers told them not to expect another awakening because this world would only grow worse and worse until Jesus Christ returned. Once the mainstream Protestant denominations were growing, filled with men and women who believed the Bible and trusted in God’s promises. Now, in the 1940s, their teachers found flaws in Scripture and doubted whether God really meant what he said. The situation outside the church offered no comfort either. The economy was in shambles. Demagogues around the world declared imminent vengeance upon all they perceived had wronged them.
Revival is coming
A few could make out a faint outline of hope. Doesn’t despair precede revival? Don’t Christians begin to understand their absolute need for God when all seems lost? As contemporary events discouraged them, American evangelicals in the 1930s looked to history for inspiration. They hoped that by reading stories of past revivals, they might gain inspiration to pray and work for awakening in their own day. Maybe the end would come soon, but God would never abandon his people. If they would turn from their sins and seek his face, perhaps God would once again send revival.
United for action
When Harold John Ockenga became pastor of Boston’s Park Street Church in 1936, he inherited one of the most famous pulpits in America. Outside his Park Street ministry, Ockenga would go on to help found several enduring evangelical institutions, including Fuller Theological Seminary, Christianity Today magazine, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and the National Association of Evangelicals. From his vantage point with the NAE, organized in April 1942, Ockenga could see the hopeful outline of revival become more clearly defined.
They hoped that by reading stories of past revivals, they might gain inspiration to pray and work for awakening in their own day.
“In every place those present have been bowed down before the Spirit of God in prayer, confession and intercession. Why could not this be the vanguard in the movement of revival?” Ockenga wrote in September 1942 about the NAE and its inaugural rallies. “With purity in Apostolic Christian doctrine, with unity of endeavor among evangelicals, and with a new anointing of Divine love, we believe that it will be such a leadership. Let us pray to that end.”
Shaking the foundation of America
Signs of revival began to appear in the late 1940s. A young evangelist named Billy Graham led meetings over several weeks that resulted in many conversions and media stardom for the dynamic son of a North Carolina dairy farmer. Several of Ockenga’s friends suggested he should invite Graham to New England. Ockenga wasn’t immediately keen on the idea; the young preacher with Hollywood good looks might impress Los Angeles, but in Boston they expected sophistication.
Ockenga went ahead and invited Graham, who agreed to come. They had little time to prepare for a New Year’s Eve youth rally in Mechanics Hall, which could seat 6,000. The venue turned out to be far too small for the crowds that turned out. During the next two weeks in Boston, Graham preached for 115,000. About 3,000 of them said they made decisions for Christ.
God revealed
Ockenga related the thrilling events with vivid detail to the growing evangelical network around the country. He admitted it was hard to believe that such an awakening could hit Boston, a religious mixture of Roman Catholics, Christian Scientists, Unitarians, and modernists. The only explanation was that God had revealed himself in a special way.
“We call the entire Christian public of the nation to prayer,” Ockenga pleaded, “for if Boston and New England can receive such a shaking of God under this stripling who like David of old went forth to meet the giant of the enemy, then we believe that God is ready to shake America to its foundations in revival.”
Collin Hansen is the co-author with John Woodbridge of A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir.
