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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2016
The evangelical revival of 1859 remains a pivotal event in the religious culture of Ulster Protestants owing to its legacy of widespread conversion, church renewal, and its role in shaping the pan-Protestantism of Ulster society that later opposed Irish home rule. Being part of a wider transatlantic movement of religious awakening, the 1859 revival was seen as the culmination of thirty years of evangelical renewal within Irish Presbyterianism. What has often been overlooked, however, is the fact that many aspects of the revival were deeply troubling to orthodox Presbyterians. Although most Ulster Presbyterians were largely supportive of the movement, an intellectually significant minority dissented from what they saw as its spectacular, doctrinal, liturgical, ecclesiological, and moral aberrations. Given 1859’s mythological status among Ulster evangelicals, it is normally assumed that all who opposed the revival were either religious formalists or those of heterodox doctrinal opinions. It will be argued that such an assumption is deeply misguided, and that the Presbyterian opponents of 1859 were motivated by zeal for confessional Reformed theology and Presbyterian church-order. By focusing on theologically conservative opposition to an ostensible evangelical and Calvinistic awakening, this article represents a significant contribution to the existing historiography of not only the Ulster revival but of religious revivalism more generally. It also helps us to understand the long-term evolution of Ulster Presbyterian belief and practice in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The author is a Government of Ireland Irish Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School of History, University College Dublin.
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136 Nelson, Year of delusion, pp 60–2, 126.
137 Northern Whig, 26 Oct. 1859.
138 Nelson, Year of delusion, pp 166–7, 173–4; Anon., Ballygowan revival demonstration, pp 14–15.
139 Anon., , Religious epidemics. A history of the years of grace or, the years of delusion (Belfast, 1860), p. 14Google Scholar.
140 Similar complaints were made at the Synod of Belfast in 1863 by the Revd H. H. Carson of Sinclair Seamen’s congregation, Belfast (Northern Whig, 14 May 1863).
141 Holmes, Shaping, p. 285.
142 Hamilton, Scriptural character, pp 132–5.
143 Gibson, Year of grace, pp 217, 288, 402; Minutes of Carrickfergus Presbytery, May 1860 (Strong Room, Church House, Belfast); Minutes of the Down Presbytery, 7 Feb. 1860 (Strong Room, Church House, Belfast).
144 Belfast Daily Mercury, 19 July 1859.
145 Toye, ‘Great George’s Street’, p. 115.
146 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 286; ‘Report on the State of Religion’ in Missionary Herald (1863), p. 162.
147 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 287.
148 Nelson, Year of delusion, p. 174; Gibson, Year of grace, p. 193.
149 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 287.
150 Carwardine, Transatlantic revivalism, p. 20; Northern Whig, 12 Apr. 1858, 13 June 1859; Jeffrey, When the Lord walked the land, pp 58–66.
151 Ballymena Observer, 28 May 1859; cf. Banner of Ulster, 31 May 1859; Northern Whig, 28 May 1859.
152 Railton, N. M., Revival on the Causeway coast (Fearn, 2009), pp 77–78Google Scholar; cf. Arthur, Revival in Ballymena and Coleraine, p. 7; Moore, Revival in Ballymena, p. 8; Massie, J. W., Revivals in Ireland (London, 1859)Google Scholar in Barnes (ed.), History of the 1859 Ulster revival, ii, 21, 39.
153 Hamilton, Scriptural character, pp 9, 144–5; see S. J. Moore’s comments on lay-persons setting aside ordinary callings in order to further the revival: Caledonian Mercury, 12 July 1859.
154 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 145.
155 Belfast Daily Mercury, 1 Oct. 1859; Belfast News-Letter, 1 Oct. 1859.
156 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 171.
157 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism, p. 120.
158 Witness, 4 Sep. 1874.
159 Dickson, Beyond religious discourse, p. 189.
160 Seaver, Ulster revival, p. 8.
161 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 288.
162 Armagh Guardian, 8 July 1859; Massie, Scenes of revival, p. 33; cf. Holmes, ‘Ulster revival’, p. 493; Richey, William, Connor and Coleraine (Belfast, 1870), viGoogle Scholar; Bailie, John, The revival, or, what I saw in Ireland (London, 1860), p. 31Google Scholar.
163 Gibson, Year of grace, p. 395; Donat, J. G., ‘Medicine and religion: on the physical and medical disorders that accompanied the Ulster Revival of 1859’ in W. F. Bynum, Roy Porter, and Michael Shepherd (eds), The anatomy of madness: essays in the history of psychiatry, (3 vols, London, 1988), iii, 143Google Scholar; cf. Northern Whig, 29 July 1859.
164 Irish Times, 7 July 1859.
165 ‘Signs of the times’ in Presbyterian Magazine, i (1859), pp 191–2; Moore, Revival in Ballymena, pp 10–11; Belfast Morning News, 5 Aug. 1859; Belfast Daily Mercury, 11 Aug. 1859; Downpatrick Recorder, 6 Aug. 1859; Portadown Weekly News, 27 Aug. 1859.
166 Nelson, Year of delusion, pp 125–6, 174–5.
167 Henry, J. M., ‘An assessment of the social, religious and political aspects of Congregationalism in the nineteenth century’ (Ph.D. thesis, Queen’s University Belfast, 1965), pp 257–258Google Scholar.
168 Nelson, Year of delusion, pp 174–5, 181–2.
169 Simpson, R. T., Recollections and reflections on the revival of 1859 (Dungannon, 1909), pp 7–8Google Scholar.
170 Carson, J. T., God’s river in spate: the story of the religious awakening of Ulster in 1859 (Belfast, 1958), p. 107Google Scholar.
171 Orr, J. E., The second evangelical awakening in Britain (London, 1949), pp 181–182Google Scholar.
172 Freeman’s Journal, 4 Feb. 1861; Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, iii (1861), p. 19; Northern Whig, 19 Oct. 1863; Ritchie, ‘Evangelicalism’, pp 172–3.
173 See Belfast Daily Mercury, 28 Sep. 1859; Northern Whig, 27 Sep., 15 Oct., 12 Nov. 1859.
174 Nelson, Person and work, p. 16; idem, Year of delusion, pp 30–1, 106. See the attacks on Nelson in Crawford, David, The baptism of the Holy Spirit, and a vindication of the revival of 1859 (Londonderry, 1861), pp 21–22Google Scholar; Banner of Ulster, 6 Dec. 1859, 11, 15 Sep. 1860; Londonderry Standard, 15 Dec. 1859; Ballymena Observer, 4 June 1864.
175 Nelson, Year of delusion, p. 290; Northern Whig, 19 July 1862; Knox, Robert, ‘The revival in Ireland’ in Testimony to the Lord’s reviving work in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Syria (London, 1865), p. 13Google Scholar; Hanna, Revivals vindicated, pp 3, 6; Anon., Revivalism and Mormonism, p. 8; Gibson, Year of grace, pp 120–1.
176 McCann, Strikings down, pp 9, 52, 61–2.
177 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 288; cf. Porter, F. J., The prophet deceived (Londonderry, 1860), pp 3–18Google Scholar.
178 Dobbin, Nature and grounds, p. 8.
179 Ibid., p. 7; Moore, William Dobbin, p. 33.
180 Minutes of the Synod of Armagh and Monaghan, May 1860 (Strong Room, Church House, Belfast).
181 Nelson, Person and work, pp 23–4; cf. Anon., Revivalism and Mormonism, pp 7–8; Anon., Ballygowan revival demonstration, p. 7.
182 Nelson, Year of delusion, p. 29.
183 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 267.
184 Ibid., pp 268–9; cf. Gibson, Year of grace, p. 75.
185 Gibson, Year of grace, p. 194; Northern Whig, 15 Oct. 1859.
186 Hamilton, Scriptural character, p. 280.
187 Ibid., pp 278–9; Nelson, Year of delusion, p. 175.
188 Hamilton, Scriptural character, pp 278–9.
189 Ibid., p. 281.
190 Holmes, Religious revivals, p. 6; Hill, ‘Ulster awakened’, pp 456–8; Holmes, ‘Experience and understanding’, pp 373–4.
191 Hempton and Hill, Evangelical Protestantism, p. 159; Hill, ‘Ulster awakened’, pp 460–1; Holmes, Religious revivals, p. 6; Railton, Causeway coast, p. 178.
192 Orr, Second evangelical awakening, p. 179.
193 Railton, Causeway coast, pp 175–9.
194 Holmes, ‘Revivalism and fundamentalism’, p. 256; Connolly, Sean, Religion and society in nineteenth-century Ireland ([Dundalk], 1985), p. 46Google Scholar.
195 Bratt, J. D., ‘Religious anti-revivalism in Antebellum America’ in Journal of the Early Republic, xxiv (2004), p. 72Google Scholar.
196 See Ritchie, ‘William McIlwaine’, pp 803–26; idem, ‘Reformed Presbyterian criticism of the 1859 Ulster revival’s impact on worship and church order’ in Confessional Presbyterian, vii (2011), pp 47–64.
197 Nelson, Year of delusion, p. 263.
198 Holmes, ‘Covenanter politics’, p. 365.
199 The Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church was a minority Presbyterian denomination whose break with the main body concerned the question of subscription to the Creeds.
200 Latimer, History of the Irish Presbyterians, pp 493–4.
201 Davey, Story of a hundred years, p. 45.
202 Schmidt, L. E., Holy fairs: Scotland and the making of American revivalism (2nd edn, Grand Rapids, 2001)Google Scholar; Westerkamp, M. J., Triumph of the laity: Scots-Irish piety and the Great Awakening, 1625–1760 (New York, 1988), pp 23–29Google Scholar; Jeffrey, When the Lord walked the land, pp 4–9, 254; Bebbington, Victorian religious revivals, pp 4–6.
203 Holmes, ‘Revivalism and fundamentalism’, p. 261; Jackson, Alvin, Ireland 1798–1998: politics and war (Oxford, 1999), p. 67Google Scholar.
204 Bebbington, D. W., Evangelicalism in modern Britain: a history from the 1730s to the 1980s (London, 1989), p. 171Google Scholar; cf. idem, Victorian religious revivals, pp 223–4; Holmes, ‘Ulster revival’, pp 513–14; idem, ‘Experience and understanding’, p. 377. The Keswick movement derives it name from the town in the English Lake District where annual conventions were held from 1875 onwards. David Bebbington argues that the Keswick or higher life movement’s notion of sanctification by faith made the idea of an ‘entire sanctification palatable to those in the Calvinist tradition’, though without equating entire sanctification with total sinless perfection: Bebbington, Dominance of evangelicalism, pp 194–7
205 Holmes, A. R., ‘Biblical authority and the impact of higher criticism in Irish Presbyterianism, ca. 1850–1930’ in Church History, lxxv (2006), pp 366, 370–371Google Scholar.
