The subject matter of both Mal
Pope’s current musical ‘Cappuccino Girls’ and his documentary film ‘Jack to a
King’ are totally different from that of his 2005 musical ‘Amazing Grace’,
which concerned Evan Roberts and the 1904-05 Welsh Revival.
Before the twentieth century
brought vast changes through two World Wars, the availability of motor
transport and mass communication, Welsh society was very different from
today. In 1904 churches and chapels were
still the social hub of communities, with good attendance at Sunday services
and midweek meetings. However, the
influence of the social gospel and scepticism about the Bible were eroding the
nation’s religious life, producing mere chapel-going with little spiritual
reality.
In Loughor 12-year-old Evan
Roberts left school to work in the mines – at first as a door boy, opening and
closing underground doors for the trams to pass. Converted a year later, he taught in Moriah
Chapel’s Sunday School, and felt led to enter the Christian ministry. Before going to college, he embarked on
preparatory study at Newcastle Emlyn, and at a mission led by Seth Joshua in
September 1904 he prayed ‘Bend me, O Lord’ - and experienced the reality of
God’s Spirit.
After a month of praying and
seeking God’s guidance, Evan Roberts returned to Loughor, where his minister
allowed him to hold evening prayer meetings at Moriah Chapel.
In the schoolroom (adjacent to
the new chapel of 1898) on 31 October 1904 Evan Roberts spoke of four
conditions for receiving God’s Spirit - confess sin, remove anything doubtful
from one’s life, surrender to the Spirit, and publicly admit to being a
follower of Christ. Those present were
caught up in the worship of God, and from a human standpoint the outbreak of
the 1904 Welsh Revival dates from that time.
In other areas of Wales God’s
Spirit was moving quite independently of what was happening around Loughor, and
there were other ‘revivalists’ besides Evan Roberts – indeed some were
ministers. The 1859 Welsh Revival had
been ‘led’ by outstanding preachers, but Evan Roberts never regarded himself as
a great preacher.
At the meetings there would often
be spontaneous unaccompanied congregational singing, and women played a
prominent part, singing and sharing testimonies of what Christ meant to
them. Annie Davies, one of the young
ladies who accompanied Evan Roberts to meetings, would often sing ‘Dyma gariad
fel y moroedd’ (Here is love, vast as the ocean), which became known as ‘the
love song of the revival’. Gatherings
did not all just happen – venues were booked in advance when meetings were
arranged in Liverpool in the spring of 1905.
Large numbers of people started
attending meetings at places of worship, and the revival made an impact in
various ways - pit ponies became unresponsive because they were used to
language punctuated with oaths and blasphemies, pub trade lessened, sport
fixtures declined, unpaid debts were settled, and the crime rate
decreased. Although the Revival mainly
affected Welsh-speaking nonconformists, in Mumbles meetings were held in the
back room of Tabernacle Congregational Church from December 1904, and 62 people
joined the church. In general few English-speaking
chapels and Anglican churches were involved, and the Revival was criticised by
some ministers.
The demands of Revival meetings,
along with the publicity from the Western
Mail and newspaperman W.T. Stead (who later drowned in the Titanic), caused a strain on Evan Roberts, who suffered a breakdown in
1905. He withdrew from public life and
moved from Wales , though he
later lived quietly in Cardiff
The impact of the 1904-05 Revival stretches far beyond
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