Mark Shaw is an American author who presently serves as the director of World Christianity Program at the African International University in Nairobi, Kenya as well teaching there and writing. His book Global Awakening: How 20th-Century Revivals a Christian Revolution, provides evangelical Christians with an insight into revivals in the twentieth century. The purpose of this review is to show that Mark Shaw’s book supports the theory that although Christianity was still expected to die out due to secularism, evangelical revivals did help to explain and describe the explosion of during the 20th century, especially in the non-Western or more specifically the Global South world. Shaw also attempts to show that Christianity has made …show more content…
Shaw begins his argument with overviews of revivals in Korea and Africa which are displays of his knowledge and competence of the subject (p. 52, 64). Shaw then continues his overview describing a revival that took place in 1930 in India and then Uganda. These two revivals help support Shaw’s argument about growth in conservative churches by providing support that “conservative churches tend to grow over time because they offer more and can therefore demand more of their members” (p. 110). Moving on, Shaw then reviews the revivals in America that highlighted the crusades by Billy Graham. Shaw’s stories of Graham’s revivals showed how the evangelist’s crusades provided the foundation for the 20th century American Christianity. Shaw took this opportunity to issue a challenge to the American people to remain humble and to foster a healthy attitude about their own Christianity as well as the global church. Shaw also explored how the Lausanne Movement that Billy Graham initiated in 1974 influenced American evangelism. (www.lausanne.org). From there Shaw went on to explore the revivals in Brazil and especially how Protestantism and Catholicism clashed. In Brazil there had to be a time that concentrated on unity, because of the spiritual landscape founded by Catholicism which was predominate and still has a strong …show more content…
While Shaw does support his thesis in the book, if he would have provided a more few more chapters that were devoted to the many other 20th century revivals that took place, they would have provided even more strength to his thesis. The book while it is interesting and provides plenty for Christian’s to think on is not an easy book to read. It provides a wealth of information that is detailed and requires a great deal of thought in order to be properly digested. This book would be helpful to pastors and professors because it would be inspirational as well as provide useful
The thesis of this book is that George Whitefield (1714-1770) changed the nature of Christianity by promoting and conducting mass revivals that exploited the weaknesses of institutional Christianity.
Johnson, through the revival, shows a growing Protestant influence within Rochester, New York. Charles Finney came, Bible in hand, proclaiming that the Millennium was in reach, but only through the efforts of the willing: this was a revival for social ch...
The Great Awakening was a spiritual movement that began in the 1730’s in the middle colonies. It was mostly led by these people; Jonathan Edwards, a congregational pastor in Massachusetts, Theodore J. Frelinghuysen, a Dutch Byterian Pastor in New Jersey; Gilbert Tennent, a Presbyterian Pastor in New Jersey; and George Whitefield, a traveling Methodist Preacher from New England. The most widely known leader was George Whitefield. At the beginning of the very first Great Awakening appeared mostly among Presbyterians in Pennsylvania and in New Jersey. The Presbyterians initiated religious revivals during these times. During this time, they also started a seminary to train clergyman. The seminary’s original name was Log College, now it is known as Princeton University. In the 1740s the clergymen of these churches were conducting revivals throughout that area. The Great Awakening spread from the Presbyterians of the middle colonies to the Congregationalist (puritans) and Baptist of New England.
The Second Great Awakening swept through the United States during the end of the 18th Century. Charles Grandson Finney was one of the major reasons the Second Great Awakening was such a success. Finney and his contemporaries rejected the Calvinistic belief that one was predetermined by go God to go to heaven or hell, and rather preached to people that they need to seek salvation from God themselves, which will eventually improve society has a whole. Finney would preach at Revivals, which were emotional religious meetings constructed to awaken the religious faith of people. These meetings were very emotional and lasted upwards of five days. Revivalism had swept through most of the United States by the beginning of the 19th Century. One of the most profound revivals took place in New York. After the great revival in New York Charles Finney was known ...
The Second Great Awakening was significant because reform movements were connected with religion. Most of reform movements were in fact influenced by the religious ideas expressed during the Great Awakening. Religious congregations and sermons challenged the true faith of people, and as a result different religious groups emerged in order to purify the society. With the ongoing religious revivals, different group of people also began to question the governing norms, which contradicted with religious teachings. In David Walker’s, “African American Abolitionist David Walker Castigates the United States for Its Slave System, 1829,” Walker also raised the question of African slavery, and how it did not agree with Christianity. Walker said:
The Second Great Awakening was a religious revival. It influenced the entire country to do good things in society and do what was morally correct. The Second Great Awakening influenced the North more than it did the South and on a whole encouraged democratic ideas and a better standard for the common man and woman. The Second Great Awakening made people want to repent the sins they had made and find who they were. It influenced the end of slavery, abolitionism, and the ban of alcohol, temperance.
Thirdly, Platt should be applauded for questioning the reality of American church culture. In chapter one, Platt says that many American churches define their success by bigger crowds, bigger building, and bigger budgets. He then compared the difference between the amounts of money raised to build an elaborate church with the money raised to send overseas to Sudan. The massive difference led him to question the system of American church culture. This is important because most American church pastors are afraid to go against the so-called
In the 1830's, 1840's, and beyond, There is a Second Great Awakening. The Second Great Awakening had a decided impact on American society. In the following I will describe what the Great Awakening was and how it changed life in America.
Winter, Gibson. Address. "Religious Social Ethics in a Postmodern World." Temple University, Philadelphia, 22 March 1995.
Christian Science is an idealistic and most radical form of transcendental religiosity. The study of Christian Science teaches a feeling of understanding of God's goodness and the differences between good and evil, life and death. The purpose of this paper is to address how the study of Christian Science helps us better understand the impact of globalization in America, as well as the impact of American on globalization. This paper is important because globalization features a dominant worldview. All throughout the world people believe, study and teach different types of religious movements that impact others. People need to better understand how certain religions modify, conflict with, and impact the world. First, it will discuss the life and work of the founder, Mary Baker Eddy. Secondly, it will examine the primary rituals and religious services of the Christian Science movement. Then, it will outline the precursors and history of the religion. In the conclusion, a response will be offered to the question of how Christian Science helps us better understand the impact of globalization on America and of America on globalization.
Hillar, Marian, and H. Richard. Leuchtag. "Liberation Theology: Religious Response to Social Problems." Humanism and Social Issues: Anthology of Essays. Houston: Humanists Involved in Greater Houston, 1993. 35-52. Print.
The Story of Christianity is a very informative summation; a continuation of Volume 1 which covered the beginning of the church up to the Protestant Reformation, while Vol. 2 dealt with the Protestant Reformation up to more modern time period. This author delivers a more comprehensive and deeper look into the development of Christianity, which includes particular events which had transpired throughout the world; particularly how Christianity has expanded into Central and South America. Gonzalez opens up this book with the “Call for Reformation,” where he shares with his readers the need for reform; the papacy had started to decline and was corrupt, in addition to the Great Schism, which had further weakened the papacy (p.8). The author explains how the church was not the only issue but that the church’s teachings were off track as well, seeing that the people had deviated from...
To conclude, we can quote from Cazamian a few lines which show the essential characteristic of Shaw, both as a man and a writer: "His reason leads him to profess a socialism tempered with anarchy; to preach on ethics of assertive simplicity; to bring love, the family, and the future of the species under the disciplinary law of a common sense fortified with `eugenics' to turn the `Superman' into a biological and near reality."
Phelps, William Lyon. "George Bernard Shaw," T.C.L.C. Sharon K. Hall ed. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. vol. 3, 384-385
1989. 329-343. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO Host. Web. 26 February. 2010. Gutwirth, Jacques. “From the Word to the Televisual Image: The Televangelists and Pope John