CHRISTIAN VIEWPOINT: It is easy for religion to become a system of thought and morality rather than a relationship with Mystery
When Fay Macleod of Barvas saw the change in her friend Chirsty Ann’s life, she said: “You’ve got it!” And Chirsty replied: “It’s not an ‘it’ at all; it’s Him.”
Chirsty was describing what she had experienced during the series of religious revivals which took place in Lewis and Harris between December 1949 (exactly 75 years ago) and 1953. I’ve been reading Tom Lennie’s recent book about this phenomenon: Lewis Revival, ‘Island Aflame’.
Like Chirsty, hundreds of people were affected through gatherings led by Faith Mission evangelist Duncan Campbell. They had a renewed sense of the reality of God, a renewed commitment to God. The change was significant and lasting. Says William Macleod: “My life was completely transformed.”
What had formerly been dry and logical - the knowledge of Christian beliefs held by almost everyone on Lewis and Harris at the time - became vivid and powerful. “Sometimes the presence of God was so real that no-one dared to speak.” Many spoke of God ‘breaking through’ in church services after much prayer and longing.
I fully acknowledge the reality of what happened in these people’s lives during this, and previous ‘revivals’ on the island. But it lies beyond my own experience. Yet, I too know how easy it is for religion to become a system of thought and morality rather than a relationship with Mystery. And I too know in my own quiet way both the longing for God’s loveliness, and the thaw, the awakening which the longing brings with it.
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Here's a 2020s description of revival: “I’m falling into a devastation of love that I simply didn’t know before.” Many Christians today praying for revival in church and nation have in mind something similar to what happened in the Hebrides - and such things do occur.
But what if revival comes in different forms? The quotation is from Martin Shaw, a professional storyteller and expert on the world’s myths who left behind the Christian faith of his childhood and sought meaning in the wild places. Years later, deep in a forest, he was transformed by a sense of the reality of God and Christ.
When God breaks through, God does so in ways appropriate to each of us. In each case though, what once was simply a powerful story becomes living reality; we instinctively use not just the analytical and logical part of the brain, but the creative as God draws near in imagination and in metaphor.
Revival, I believe, is always Re-enchantment. We’re awakened to a Great Enchanter, a Spirit beyond words who breathes the universe and in Whom lies meaning.
As Chirsty, and later Fay, discovered, this reviving, awakening Spirit is not an impersonal force: “It’s not an ‘it’ at all; it’s Him. It’s Jesus.”
