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6. Hayward, Rhodri, “Popular Mysticism,” 336.Google Scholar

7. Holmes, , Religious Revivals, xviiGoogle Scholar. This discursive predilection is not restricted to revival-specific histories. “To explain [what happened in 1904–06],” Russell Davies argues in a local Welsh study, “we need to examine some of the personal and psychological aspects of the revival, and to examine how the people themselves perceived the causes” (Davies, Russell, Secret Sins: Sex, Violence & Society in Carmarthenshire, 1870–1920 [Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996], 206).Google Scholar

8. Although Taves, Ann (Fits, Trances and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James [Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999]Google Scholar) does not examine the Welsh revival specifically, she does so by implication, employing an interpretive framework that takes in those normative practices of the Welsh revival. In so doing, she, too, privileges psychology, especially the works of William James. See, for instance, by way of contrast, her discussion of James versus Durkheim (276–78). I have relied upon biographical material, which to a certain degree marks the subject; however, I have explored the life of Roberts not to ferret out his biographical peculiarities or, as a so-called postmodern, to deconstruct “the subject.” This essay will attempt to respect both the integrity of the subject and historical contingency, equally, and will argue that though Evan Roberts was a central figure in the revival, he was not its cause. Surveying the historiography of modern revivalism, Kenneth Jeffrey has well argued that, “It is generally accepted that revivals have not occurred in response to any one single aspect, but rather they have arisen as the result of the interplay of a variety of external and local factors” (Jeffrey, Kenneth S., When the Lord Walked the Land: The 1858–62 Revival in the North-East of Scotland [Carlisle, U.K.: Paternoster, 2002], 37)Google Scholar. For a valuable effort to ferret out some of these various factors, see the much-anticipated recently translated Jones, R. Tudur, Faith and the Crisis of a Nation: Wales 1899–1914 (Cardiff, U.K.: University of Wales Press, 2004).Google Scholar

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10. I make this claim, that it was the first completely modern revival, advisedly. In many ways the earlier mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic revival was also modern, harnessing technologies like the telegraph, railroad, and daily press. (Cf. Jeffrey, , When the Lord Walked the LandGoogle Scholar.) Yet, I shall argue that modernization and “the modern” were not merely technological or material but also perceptual and ideological. The most dramatic social and cultural reimagining of time and space, which is central to this essay's argument, took place well after railway travel had been introduced. See, for instance, Kern, Stephen, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880–1918 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and Galison, Peter, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps: Empires of Time (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003)Google Scholar. The cultural meanings assigned to technologies, or rather read from technologies, changed over time. So, as well, did attending sociocultural practices.

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18. New Testament scripture references taken from the King James Version unless otherwise indicated.

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32. New American Standard Version (hereinafter NAS), the Lockman Foundation, 1995.

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80. Though at first castigated for his “vulgar” naturalism, Zola had, by 1900, a fairly broad audience in England. See Decker, Clarence R., “Zola's Literary Reputation in England,” PMLA 49 (12 1934): 1140–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. Seltzer, Mark, Bodies and Machines (New York: Routledge, 1992).Google Scholar

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82. See Galison, Peter, Einstein's Clocks, Poincaré's Maps.Google Scholar

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86. One might argue that a mid-nineteenth-century transatlantic series of revivals was the first to be markedly modern. Although they utilized the press, telegraph, and railway, the relationship of technologies to revivalism was yet to be cemented in the way that it was in 1904. Even commentators at the time of the 1904–05 revival who had participated in early revivals noted the differences, especially the rapidity with which the latter spread. Also of note was the way in which it spread–seemingly with little to no human “interference.” The appearance of technology does not, I argue, make the revival modern; rather, it is a confluence of forces, the cumulative effect of intersecting technologies, and the interpretation of those interpenetrations by the populace.

87. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 168.Google Scholar

88. Morgan, G. Campbell, “Lessons of the Revival,” in Goodrich, Story of the Welsh Revival, 43.Google Scholar

89. See, for instance, “The Revival in Wales and Elsewhere: Some Moving Stories,” Methodist Times, 2 February 1905, 68.Google Scholar

90. “The Welsh Revival: Drunkenness and Blasphemy Disappear,” Methodist Times, 5 January 1905, 5Google Scholar. The Times reported a similar though not exact decrease: from 446 in 1903 to 217 in 1904 (“The Religious Revival in Wales,” Times, 13 February 1905, 9)Google Scholar. Cf. “The Religious Revival in Wales,” Times, 24 January 1905, 8Google Scholar; “Police-Court Effects. ‘Business’ in the Bridgend District,” WM, 26 December 1904, 6Google Scholar; “Crime in Glamorganshire,” Lancet, 5 August 1905, 409Google Scholar. Argued one correspondent: “The revival has caused the mightiest upheaval in the social life of the people that living generations have ever seen. Magistrates, policemen, journalists, and employers of labour give the same testimony” (Whittle, John, “After Keswick,” Primitive Methodist, 24 08 1905, 198).Google Scholar

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97. Taylor, , “Welsh Revival: Its Origin,” 136.Google Scholar

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99. Philips, , Evan Roberts, 218Google Scholar. Large crowds had attended revival services before the Western Mail started its coverage; yet their reporting was significant for the revival's proliferation, as will soon be discussed.

100. Ibid., 275.

101. “The Revival,” Methodist Times, 9 March 1905, 156.Google Scholar

102. “Striking Scenes At Tonypandy,” WM, 22 December 1904, 5.Google Scholar

103. “Awstin,” “An Underground Prayer Pentecost,” WM, 23 December 1904, 5.Google Scholar

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105. Rogers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 47 (emphasis added).Google Scholar

106. Hulme, T. Ferrier, “Wales Revisited: Converted Atheists in the Pulpit,” Methodist Times, 16 03 1905, 174.Google Scholar

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110. Ibid., 4.

111. Jones, Margam, “The Power of the Spirit,” WM, 17 December 1904, 4.Google Scholar

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115. “The Spread of the Revival and Its After Mission: Interview with Mr. W. T. Stead,” Methodist Times, 9 March 1905, 153.Google Scholar

116. Morgan, “Lesson of the Revival,” in Goodrich, , Story of the Welsh Revival, 43.Google Scholar

117. See, for instance, “An ‘Express’ Conversion,” WM, 17 January 1905, 5.Google Scholar

118. Terdiman, , Discourse/Counter-Discourse, 119Google Scholar. Although focused on France, Terdiman's theoretical assessment can, appropriately, be applied to British practices. Content varied by region, editorial predilections, style, and tone; however, especially after the 1860s and 1870s, enterprises wanting to “commodify” news for popular consumption made themselves aware of, and incorporated, international practices and technological innovations. Cf. Innis, Harold A., “The Newspaper in Economic Development,” Journal of Economic History 2 (12 1942): 1–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

119. For an excellent introduction, see Jones, Powers of the Press. See, also, Williams, Long Revolution; and Brake, “Writing, Cultural Production, and the Periodical Press.”

120. Williams, , Long Revolution, 178.Google Scholar

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123. “Indeed,” Terdiman argues, “the daily paper was arguably the first consumer commodity: made to be perishable, purchased to be thrown away” (Terdiman, , Discourse/Counter-Discourse, 120).Google Scholar

124. Although much of the revival was conducted in Welsh, a fair amount was not. In fact, participants often prided themselves on the revival's bilingualism. So as not to make an already long article even longer, I have elected not to elaborate on the relationship of the Welsh language to British modernization, for the use of Welsh can be, and was, read in contradictory ways. On the one hand, it symbolically and literally connected Welsh participants to their ancestral past. And in this sense, Welsh might be interpreted as backward-looking and antimodem. On the other hand, the use of Welsh, in a bilingual setting, may illumine a profound nationalism, a nationalism able to adapt to the forces of transnational modernization. Indeed, as historian Keith Robbins has argued,

In the last half of the nineteenth century … the place of the two languages in the life of Wales was fraught with ambiguity. If we take ‘Anglicization’ simply to mean a steady advance in familiarity with English language, then it was certainly happening. It is difficult, however, to capture the manifold subtleties in this evolving situation. Statements about an ability to speak two languages are not very helpful as a guide to actual use (Robbins, Keith, Nineteenth-Century Britain: Integration and Diversity [Oxford: Clarendon, 1988], 32).Google Scholar

Robbins sees “no conflict between integration and diversity.” Perhaps Benedict Anderson is correct in his Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (New York: Verso, 1991), that “English elbowed Gaelic out of most of Ireland” (72). But not Wales, not at the turn of the century. Anderson's oft-cited discussion of vernacular language and secularized nationalism in Imagined Communities provides little guidance here, where a revival in Welsh instead renewed sacred imagined communities.

125. “A Band of Pontypridd Revivalists,” WM, 26 December 1904, 6.Google Scholar

126. Hughes, H. Maldwyn, “The Revival and the Normal,” Methodist Times, 12 01 1905, London, 18.Google Scholar

127. Schwartz, , Spectacular Realities, 27–28.Google Scholar

128. “Mr. Sidney Evans at Ogmore Vale,” WM, 28 November 1904, 5.Google Scholar

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133. “Concerning This Movement,” Apostolic Herald (Seattle, Wash.), October 1901, 3.Google Scholar

134. Stephen Kern's own version of the banal secularization thesis in this regard is typical. He argues, “Modern technology … collapsed the vault of heaven. Never before the age of the wireless and airplane did the heavens seem to be so close or so accessible—a place of passage for human communication and for human bodies in man-made machines. The omnipresence and penetrating capacity of wireless waves rivaled miraculous action and reversed the direction of divine intervention. Planes invaded the kingdom of heaven, and their exhaust fumes profaned the realm of the spirit. Upwards still the direction of growth and life, but in this period it lost much of its sacred aspect” (Kern, , Culture of Time and Space, 317).Google Scholar