The Great Awakening: Seven Ways to Change the World

INTRODUCTION

SOMETHING IS HAPPENING

Admittedly, religion can be a confusing subject. My then-seven-year-old son Luke came to my wife and me one day looking very concerned, Mom, Dad, I’m worried about Max and Jonah [two of his second-grade pals on the Little League baseball team that I coach]. I don’t think they believe in God or Jesus. They’re vegetarians! So Joy and I decided to take Luke to one of my book tour events in Oregon, where he would meet some godly vegetarians.

But the confusion is more serious than the misunderstandings of a little boy. After I appeared one night on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, I received thousands of e-mails that said things like, I lost my faith because of television preachers, bad religious fund-raising, pedophile priests, cover-up bishops, and White House theology. Or, amazing to me, they would say, I didn’t know that Christians could care about poverty, the environment, or the war in Iraq. But when they hear that people of faith do care, and have fought for social justice, this new generation gets very excited. I meet those young people on the road all over the country, and many say to me, I came to faith because of your book; what’s next? What’s next is what this book is about.

Something is happening. Faith is being applied to social justice in ways that we might have never imagined just a few short years ago. Spiritual power is being harnessed to address the greatest social challenges that we face today.

There have been other periods in history when faith tangibly changed things. Often called Great Awakenings, they are times when the revival of faith alters societies. In fact, the historians say that spiritual activity isn’t called revival until it changes something, not just in people’s inner lives but in society. Revivals often occur when politics is broken, when it fails to address the most significant moral issues of the day. Social movements then rise up to change politics, and the best movements usually have spiritual foundations.

What historians call the First Great Awakening took place in the 1730s and 1740s. Its leaders were preachers such as Jonathan Edwards and Gilbert Tennent, and a traveling British preacher named George Whitefield, who had worked with John Wesley. Many credit that uprising of faith with helping to spark American independence and a new nation. That is, participating in a religious awakening helped to create a political awakening.

The Second Great Awakening occurred between 1800 and the 1830s. Led by revivalists such as Charles Finney and Jonathan Blanchard, it embraced the clear call for the abolition of slavery that preceded the Civil War. Finney, in particular, insisted that spiritual conversion must lead to social reform. This awakening also led to the origins of Christian feminism, in leaders such as Lucy Stone and Angelina and Sarah Grimke.

The Third Great Awakening, in the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth, helped usher in the progressive era, the social gospel movement, and the New Deal. This era, with its special focus on poverty, led to social reforms such as child labor law improvements, the settlement house movement, the career of social work, and youth organizations such as the YMCA. Another major focus was the temperance movement. One result was the populist presidential campaigns of William Jennings Bryan.

I regard the black church’s leadership of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s as another great awakening of faith that changed politics. Without the participants’ deep grounding in the black church, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the movement would not have succeeded.

This book is not a historical treatment of any of those previous great awakenings, although it consciously draws on all of them. Rather, it is both an observation and a call regarding what may be the next one—a new great awakening—in our time. As I travel the country, I can see and feel new things happening—I find a revival of faith that is directly leading to new calls and commitments for social justice. That rebirth and renewal of faith is being directly applied to the moral and biblical scandal of poverty around the globe and here at home, to the crises of environmental degradation and climate change that pose such a threat to God’s creation, and to the multiple assaults on human life and dignity that shame our world.

Ironically, despite how the Religious Right has discredited the role of faith in politics in recent decades, faith is now coming back to life as a force for progressive social change. Though religion had come to be seen by many as the problem, faith may indeed be making a comeback as the catalyst that could provide the tipping point in finding solutions to the biggest and most significant moral and social crises of our world today.

Many of the great social issues we face feel like huge, unmovable mountains: disease pandemics that kill millions, massive inequality that imprisons half the world’s people in miserable poverty, human sexual and economic trafficking, dangerous climatic changes in the earth’s temperature, genocide that no one seems able to stop, so many threats to the sanctity of human life, endless violations of human dignity, and the alarming unraveling of both family and community systems.

At the same time, though, many people, especially a new generation, are discovering a key insight from the Bible: if we have faith as small as the grain of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. That’s a good thing, because we have some real mountains to move in our world to-day—problems and challenges so big that they become a job for faith, a job for spiritual power applied to social change. Indeed, that’s why we call it faith, especially needed when our problems seem overwhelming and the odds are against us. It may be that only a revival of faith can spark the necessary changes in public opinion and political will on the really big issues, and that a spiritual transformation is necessary for social change. It’s about changing hearts and minds on many of the biggest moral issues of public life that fundamentally challenge who we are and what we believe. Revival is always about what God can do through us, and is now doing afresh, especially when people are adrift and society is in danger.

In addition to the great awakenings in American history, there have been many times when faith has caught fire and changed social and political circumstances in other countries around the world. This book is about the new awakening or revival that may be upon us, both in the United States and across the globe. The book doesn’t claim to be starting anything but merely pointing to what is already happening and calling us to take the next steps. It is about what faith has done, can do, and might be about to do again—if we make the necessary commitments.

Such revivals of faith applied to our most significant social and public challenges also show the capacity to bring people together—even across traditional political boundaries and divisions—to find real answers and solutions. That’s because faith and spirituality can take us deeper than politics can, with a moral commitment that allows us to transcend our usual ideological debates. That moral appeal can truly help us find common ground by moving to higher ground. And this is a moment filled with the opportunity for transformation—both personal and political. Indeed, they now depend on each other.

Three years ago I wrote a book called God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It. The subtitle said it all. The narrow agenda of the Religious Right was in control of the public conversation about religion and politics in America, and the secular left seemed uncomfortable even discussing moral values. Since then, many people have asked me what has changed. I answer: Everything.

God’s Politics challenged America to take back the faith from the Religious Right. And we did—you did—as millions of Americans stood up and spoke up for a different kind of faith. As I say to overflow crowds around the country, The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has now begun. And everybody cheers. In the churches, a combination of deeper compassion and better theology has moved many far beyond the partisan politics of the Religious Right. In politics, we are beginning to see a leveling of the playing field between the parties on religion and moral values (Time magazine called it a leveling of the praying field); and the media are finally beginning to cover the many and diverse voices of faith. These are all big changes in American life, and the rest of the world is taking notice.

The hard-core Religious Right continues to get it wrong, still attempting to restrict the language of moral values to just two issues—abortion and gay marriage. But evangelicals are deserting the Religious Right in droves, especially among a new generation of pastors and young people. The evangelical social agenda is now much broader and deeper, engaging issues such as poverty and economic justice, global warming, HIV/AIDS, sex trafficking, genocide in Darfur, and the ethics of the war in Iraq. Catholics are recovering their social teaching; mainline Protestants are asserting their faith more aggressively; a new generation of young black, Latino, and Asian-American pastors are coming of age for justice; Jewish renewal and a more moderate Islam are on the rise; and a whole new denomination has emerged—the spiritual but not religious.

Even more amazing, the left—including the Democrats—is starting to get it. Progressive politics is remembering its own religious history and recovering the language of faith. Democrats are learning to connect issues with values, engaging with the faith community, and running more candidates who have been emboldened to come out of the closet as believers. Many Republicans have also had it with the Religious Right. Both sides are asking how to connect a deeper understanding of faith and values with politics. People know now that God is neither a Republican nor a Democrat, and we are all learning that religion is not supposed to be in the pocket of any political party, but rather calls them all to moral accountability.

So what’s next? What comes after God’s Politics?

Politics is still broken, and most Americans feel it. Politics has failed to solve the big issues of our time. Whenever that happens, social movements begin to emerge, usually around key moral issues, to challenge, move, and change politics. And, as many have noted, the best social movements usually have spiritual underpinnings. I believe that politics can be changed to deal with the many crises we face—but it probably won’t be changed without the energy, commitment, and hope that powerful faith and spirituality can bring.

We have now entered the post-Religious Right era. That doesn’t mean the Religious Right is dead or won’t still be an influence in Republican party politics. But its era, the peak of its influence, and its monopoly over faith and politics are now gone. Although religion has been given a negative image in the last few decades, the years ahead may be surprisingly shaped by a dynamic and more progressive faith that helps make needed social change possible. I have always been a progressive evangelical. Progressive evangelical has seemed to be a misnomer in recent years, but now it is becoming a movement. And I can point to a whole new generation as proof of that.

It’s time to remember the spiritual revivals that led to the abolition of slave trafficking in Britain and slavery in the United States, the centrality of the black church’s leadership in the U.S. civil rights movement, the deeply Catholic roots of the Solidarity movement in Poland that led to the overthrow of communism. It’s time to recall how liberation theology in Latin America helped pave the way for new democracies, how Desmond Tutu and the South African churches served to inspire victory over apartheid, how the Dalai Lama is keeping hope alive for millions of Tibetans, and, today, how the growing evangelical and Pentecostal churches of the global South (the developing or underdeveloped countries, primarily in the Southern hemisphere) are mobilizing to challenge the injustices of the global economy.

I believe that we are seeing the beginnings of a similar movement again, right here in America. I believe we are poised on the edge of what might become another spiritual revival or awakening that will change things—big things in the world. We may be seeing the beginning of a revival for justice.

And that’s what this new book is about. We’ve gone from a narrow religious agenda, which was used as a wedge to divide people, to a wider and deeper vision of faith and values, which could be the bridge that brings diverse people and groups together on some of the most significant issues of our time. For too long, ideological religion was a big part of our problems, but now an engaged spirituality could be a big part of our solutions.

That is the hope I’m talking about here. First, I’ll describe how spiritual revival has led to dramatic social change before, and how it could do so again. Second, I’ll explain the big changes in the air today regarding both religion and politics, and how we may be ripe again for genuine revival. Third, I’ll lay out the important theological foundations for why and how faith is supposed to change the world, and I’ll describe the fundamental rules of engagement for people of faith. Fourth, I’ll outline what could be a new public agenda of the moral center—different from soulless centrism—and explore the idea of the common good with its many sources, both religious and secular. Together, they may provide both a vision and a spirituality for the public engagement of faith.

After listening to real people and their problems, how do we break the political stalemates? The answer to bad religion isn’t secularism or withdrawal, but better religion—both personal and public. True faith wants public engagement, but not political co-optation. Can faith be involved in politics without being usurped by it? How does prophetic politics differ from partisan politics? Why might revival be necessary to reform, and how could spiritual renewal help create a new politics for the common good? And how do we move beyond both the right and the left? Are there new options, perhaps the conservative radical, rooted in strong tradition but radical in seeking social justice?

Then each of seven chapters will focus on one of the big commitments that relate directly to the moral issues around which the revival of faith could provide what Malcolm Gladwell called the tipping point for change—commitments that have the capacity to bring us together even across former dividing lines. Rather than just reciting big problems again in another laundry list of doom and dread, we will focus on seven commitments that could make the ultimate difference in resolving the great challenges we face. The key is not simply to address the issues, but rather to identify the values that are necessary for social change. Our values lead to commitments. With each commitment, the application of the energy and constituencies of faith communities could provide what is needed for real change.

Each chapter will attempt to demonstrate the theological foundations and the moral principles that undergird the political goals we seek. I will ground each of the commitments in biblical narratives, themes, and stories, emphasizing that we should arrive at our convictions and prescriptions by faith if we are people of the book—or by our best moral values if we are not—rather than simply out of prior political and ideological commitments that then just lead to biblical or moral proof-texting.

In each chapter, too, I will address concrete policy directions that could bridge and even transcend our bitter partisan divides and move us forward. All the way through, I’ll offer stories of real people I’ve met on the road, with examples of how people of faith and conscience are already making a difference.

I’ll describe how the big issues affect the real lives of people outside of Washington, D.C. I’ll look at the reasons for the problems people face, and how politics-as-usual has failed to solve those problems but instead remains polarized and paralyzed. Then I’ll suggest how new personal commitments and spiritual renewal could change our thinking, generate new social commitments, spark social movements, and lead to real solutions.

I will point to solutions on three levels: the personal/individual response, the congregational/communal response, and the national/international political response. So the outline for the book follows this pattern: stories of people, problems, and stalemate, and then biblical stories, commitments, renewal, movement, and solutions. Finally, change comes about when real action comes out of each of our stories.

The final chapter will be especially focused on the younger (underthirty) generation and what I think its role could be. Everywhere I go now, the crowds are not only large and diverse, but also young—half are under thirty, and half of them are under twenty-five. I’ll tell some of the best stories about my relationship to this next generation and these emerging leaders. I hope to convince them and all my readers that hope and change are really possible, that we can make a difference, that people of faith have done big things before and will do them again. I want to dare people to dream big dreams, to tell Americans it is okay to have ideals and work toward cultural and political transformation. Finally, in the Epilogue, we will describe the rise of the Red Letter Christians and how Justice Revivals may be coming to a city near you.

Remember, the era of the Religious Right is now past, and it’s up to all of us to create a new day.

1

REVIVAL TIME

When Faith Changes Politics

Arriving in Atlanta recently for a speaking appearance, I was happy. For any preacher, Atlanta is a wonderful place to be, a place where preaching is an art form. On this occasion, I returned to a favorite place—Ebenezer Baptist Church, the home congregation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The pastor, Rev. Joe Roberts, was about to retire, and he welcomed me back warmly, You’ve been to the old Israel, but now you’re in the new Israel (referring to the old historic church on Auburn Avenue and the brand-new sanctuary across the street where two thousand people had gathered that evening).

I remembered. It was indeed the old place I’d been to before, on the occasion of the first annual national holiday for the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For their Peace and Justice service, Ebenezer had invited a young white preacher. I was excited, but very nervous. When I stepped into that historic pulpit, I froze. Dr. King had preached here, so had his father, Daddy King, and so had countless leaders of the civil rights movement and the leading black pastors of our time. What was a young white kid from Detroit doing in this pulpit? I was, you might say, a little tentative as I began. Well, Martin Luther King Jr. was for justice and…p-p-peace, I stammered, …and probably we should be too. It was something short of powerful.

But then, from the lower left side of the church, a voice boomed back at me. Oh, help him, Lord, help him! C’mon young man, you’re supposed to preach. So I started to—a little. Aw, you’re not there yet! he bellowed. He, of course, was enacting the call and response tradition of the black church, which I have grown to love. The old man was the amen corner of Ebenezer Baptist Church, and he proceeded with a litany of well, yes sir, mercy, mercy, preach it now, and lots of amens until I was proclaiming, prancing, and sweating—preaching my heart out until I was thoroughly exhausted when I finally finished. Afterward, I rushed down to my amen corner, whose name was Deacon Johnson. You just pulled that sermon out of me, I exclaimed, breathless. Standing tall, he put his hands on my shoulders and smiled at me. Son, he said, I’ve raised up many a preacher in my time.

Deacon Johnson has passed now, Rev. Roberts told me, but I will always remember him. Just as Deacon Johnson had pulled the best out of me, I reflected that night in Atlanta, that pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church (and the civil rights movement rooted there) had called out the very best from the American people. The truth is that we’ve got some bad stuff in us as Americans, but we’ve got some good stuff, too. Bad religion calls forth our worst stuff, but good religion calls out our best. I smiled as I remembered how Deacon Johnson had raised me up that night, and I climbed into the Ebenezer pulpit once again. It’s time for some good religion tonight, I said to myself.

Two of the great hungers in our world today are the hunger for spirituality and the hunger for social justice. The connection between the two is the one the world is waiting for, especially the new generation. And the first hunger will empower the second.

Those on the Religious Right did it wrong, allowing their religion to become too partisan, too narrow, and too ideological. They were used by politics and did plenty of using themselves—using both people and issues to further their own agenda. But I believe their day is over, and we have now entered the post-Religious Right era. That’s not just optimism, but a claim based on serious observation, as this book will point out.

Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that’s wrong, too. The answer to bad religion is better religion—prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and based on values as opposed to ideology. In America (and in most of the developing world), religion is here to stay. The question is not whether faith and spiritual values will be applied to politics, but how? Can faith enter public life in ways that are respectful of democracy, pluralism, and diversity? Could spiritual renewal supply the energy that makes social justice more achievable? Is revival necessary for reform? I believe the answer to all those questions is an emphatic yes, and this book will explain why.

One learns a lot crisscrossing the country for three decades, speaking (and listening) in every part of America and to a multitude of audiences and constituencies. Because much of my speaking is also preaching, I have been with almost every religious denomination and faith community in America, and have watched the relationship between faith and politics significantly affect the issues of society—for good and ill. I’ve also traveled extensively overseas and been an eyewitness to many of the greatest crises the world faces today, as well as the kinds of initiatives and movements capable of changing those realities.

I have been listening, and I’d like to report that many Americans, and in particular many people of faith in this country, believe we can do better with both our religion and our politics—and around the world, people are hoping that we do. Listening to people across America and throughout the world convinces me that it is time for a new kind of politics, and that a better public engagement by faith communities could help get us there. The good news is that many people are ready for both—better religion and better politics. In fact, we may be approaching a new revival of faith, one that opens the door for real solutions that transcend partisan politics and leads the way to concrete victories for social justice. I am suggesting that we need nothing less than a powerful movement of faith to renew American politics—one that effectively combines personal conversion and social justice. Personal transformation is necessary for social movements, and social movements are necessary to transform politics.

For all the travels, my base has been inner-city Washington, D.C., the other Washington—not far from the capital city’s corridors of power but very distant from the experience of the power brokers who inhabit this place. Coming back and forth has been a spiritual discipline for me. Flying away to speak or organize someplace or journeying the few blocks to meet with the nation’s political leaders—from a place where poor people struggle every day—anchors me in the realities that most of the world’s people know only too well. Place yields perspective (or, as they used to say in the civil rights movement, Your perspective is shaped by what you see when you get out of bed in the morning), and the perspectives that shape my faith and my politics come from all the places I’ve been—from midwestern Middle America where I grew up, to the urban war zones I’ve called home for more than three decades, to the foreign capitals and shantytowns I’ve visited where the world is viewed entirely differently than it is by most Americans.

My favorite part of any speaking event is the question-and-answer time—which often turns into town meetings in cities across the nation. From those amazing public forums and the countless individual conversations around the edges of them, I feel the hunger of Americans for a new vision of our life together, and the desire to engage their faith in dealing with the urgent problems we face. I don’t speak as a representative of any party; I am not an elected official or political partisan, but rather view the world as a person of faith who believes that real solutions must transcend partisan politics.

I am also happy to report that, despite the big problems we face, there is a lot of good news around the country and across the world. Part of the good news is that many evangelical and Pentecostal Christians are leaving the Religious Right while retaining their commitment to live out their faith in the world. That significant political shift has yet to be fully recognized by the nation’s media and political elites, but it could eventually provide a tipping point on many of the major issues of our time.

I also find many Catholics (especially at some of the nation’s leading Catholic universities) who are rediscovering the depth and breadth of Catholic teaching on social justice and the transforming idea of the common good. But they are not just discovering their own church’s best teachings; they are also experiencing a rebirth of faith themselves, and making it personal. This personal renewal of faith and spirituality is also occurring in some of the declining mainline Protestant churches as they discover their mission in the world. Wherever renewal is happening in the old denominations, it usually occurs around the deepening or reawakening of spirituality and even evangelism. In fact, many are learning that the social mission of the church in the world will never be accomplished without the fire and passion that comes from personal faith. The social gospel cannot be sustained without a personal experience of Jesus, who brings the good news. The leader of one of those churches, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson of the Reformed Church in America, points out that the real difference today is not between evangelical churches and liberal churches, but between churches that are settled and those that are missional.

I am especially encouraged by a new generation of black pastors who want to move beyond merely eulogizing the civil rights movement and make their own history for justice. Similarly, young Latino pastors, many of them Pentecostal, are making the critical connection between evangelism and social justice. New generations of Asian-American Christians are moving beyond the protective conservatism of their parents to a more outward-looking faith directed into their communities. Emerging immigrant churches are rapidly changing the demographics and the perspective of U.S. Christianity. These Christians are people of color whose dynamic faith is a clear alternative to the white churches—more theologically conservative than liberal Protestantism and more socially progressive than their white-middle-class evangelical counterparts. That makes these diverse American Christians more like the rapidly growing global church. Their mixture of a strong and vibrant personal faith with a passionate commitment to social justice (including for their own congregants, who themselves are often poor) is exactly the combination that can spark revival.

Jewish renewal is under way in many synagogues, where I have found worship as lively as in any church, and where people are rediscovering their own traditions of shalom (peace, wholeness, and justice) and tikkun (to repair and heal the world). And very thankfully, a growing number of young Muslims (including many impressive women I meet while teaching my classes at Harvard) are working toward a new kind of Islam that challenges extremists.

Then, too, there is the rapidly expanding new denomination of those who say they are spiritual but not religious and believe that political solutions will require a moral commitment. Whether or not they are drawn to religion (some are and some aren’t), this new generation of young people is eager to make a difference and hungry to find that critical connection between spirituality and social justice. It’s not just college students I’m talking with, but high school, middle school, and even elementary school youth who are all eagerly joining the conversation about how we can change the world. In a postmodern and, for many, a post-Christian world, young activists are searching for something to be the engine that drives their passion for justice and a solid foundation for their lives. And when they see a lived-out faith that really is committed to justice, it often becomes evangelistic for them. Almost every week young people say to me, I’ve been an activist for years, but now I’m seeking the faith to sustain my life.

These are the people I regularly meet on the road. Taken together, their constituencies comprise a large and influential number of Americans, and they are mirrored in their counterparts I’ve met around the world. Acting together, they could create the kind of social movements that have historically made a big difference on the great moral issues of history.

Revival and Reform

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the eldest child of Robert Kennedy and was formerly the lieutenant governor of Maryland. In her book Failing America’s Faithful she reflects on America’s revivalist history. Throughout history, faith has gone underground only to emerge again in Great Awakenings, readying people for spiritual exploration. There are moments in history where people are ready and able to see the connection between the rituals of prayer and worship and the larger effort of improving God’s world—and I believe we are now approaching just such a time.¹

In 2007 we commemorated the two hundredth anniversary of the ending of the slave trade by Great Britain. A popular film told the story of William Wilberforce, the British parliamentarian who led the antislavery campaign. As Amazing Grace: The Story of William Wilberforce powerfully portrayed, Wilberforce was a convert in the Wesleyan revivals of eighteenth-century Britain, and his Christian faith was the central driving force behind his relentless battle against slavery. He and a group of fellow Christian parliamentarians and other laypeople known as the Saints were behind many social reforms that swept England in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Some years ago, on a trip to England, I walked through the historic Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common in South London. This Anglican parish was Wilberforce’s home church when he wrote Britain’s anti-slave-trade legislation. The rector at Holy Trinity, Rev. David Isherwood, was very proud to show me around. On the wall were pictures of typically English-looking gentlemen who had helped turn their country upside down. Finally, the rector pointed to an old, well-worn table. This is the table upon which William Wilberforce wrote the antislavery act, he said proudly. We now use this table every Sunday for communion. I was struck that here, in a dramatic liturgical symbol, the secular and the sacred are brought together with powerful historical force. How did we ever separate them? On this table, the slave trade was outlawed and the body and blood of Christ was celebrated each week. What became of religion that believed its duty was to change its society on behalf of justice?

William Wilberforce and his group of friends profoundly changed the political and social climate of their time. Wilberforce was a convert in a revival that shook his society. His life and his vocation as a member of Parliament were dramatically and forever altered by his newfound faith, and Wilberforce became a force for moral politics. His mentor, John Newton, who worked in the slave trade before he became a minister, became well known for writing the beloved hymn Amazing Grace. Later, Newton also used his influence as a religious leader in the battle against slavery. We can read his immortal words Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me not only as a testimony of private guilt, individual salvation, and personal piety, but also as a clear and public turning away from the social sin of trafficking in human flesh. Newton wasn’t just suffering from existential angst; he really was a wretch—a slave trader—and had his life transformed by Jesus Christ! Newton’s conversion eventually produced a social and political transformation as well as a personal one. And that is the key to real revival.

The same became true of Wilberforce, who first heard Newton speak when he was young but regarded his real conversion as confirmed following a series of conversations with Newton in 1785-86. At the conclusion of their conversations, Newton said, The Lord has raised you up for the good of the church and the good of the nation. Two years later Wilberforce introduced his first anti-slave-trade motion in Parliament. It was defeated, and it would be defeated nine more times before it passed in 1807. It was a historic and moral victory, but Wilberforce wouldn’t be satisfied until slavery was abolished altogether. A new Wilberforce biography notes that probably the last letter John Wesley ever wrote encouraged Wilberforce: Oh, be not weary in well-doing. Go on, in the name of God and in the power of His might.² Wilberforce continued working tirelessly toward that goal, year after year. Finally, in 1833, the House of Commons passed a bill abolishing slavery altogether; Wilberforce died three days later, his work finally done.

Similarly in the nineteenth century, American religious revivalism was linked directly with the abolition of slavery and other movements for social reform. As historian Michael Kazin says, From the Second Great Awakening in the 1820s to the 1920s, there was a period where social movements were infused with the evangelical spirit.³ Chris tians helped lead the abolitionist struggle, efforts to end child labor, projects to aid working people and establish unions, and even the battle to obtain voting rights for women. Here were evangelical Christians fighting for social justice, precisely because of what God had done for them—an activity with which evangelicals have not been associated in more recent times.

Nineteenth-century American evangelist Charles Finney didn’t shy away from identifying the gospel with the antislavery cause. He was a revivalist and also an abolitionist. For him, the two were