Revival and Unity

30 eventsShow on the timeline

Movements of spiritual renewal, from Pietism and Methodism to Pentecostalism, and the modern search to heal the divisions among the churches.

Since the seventeenth century, waves of renewal have crossed confessional lines and created new churches. In the twentieth century a second movement ran alongside them: the effort to recover visible unity, through councils of churches, formal dialogues and agreed statements on questions that had divided Christians for centuries.

The thread from start to finish

c. AD 157–172, estimated date
The New Prophecy of Montanus
In Phrygia a convert named Montanus and two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, begin to prophesy in ecstasy and announce a new outpouring of the Spirit. The bishops of Asia reject the movement, which spreads none the less as far as Rome and Africa.
1652, firm date
George Fox and the Quakers
In 1652 George Fox preaches across the north of England that Christ has come to teach his people himself, without priest, tithe or consecrated building. Margaret Fell’s house at Swarthmoor becomes the meeting place of the people their opponents call Quakers.
1675, firm date
Spener’s Pia Desideria and the Rise of Pietism
In 1675 the Frankfurt pastor Philipp Jakob Spener publishes six proposals for mending the Lutheran church, from Bible reading in small meetings to the training of pastors. From 1695 August Hermann Francke founds a school and an orphan house at Halle.
13 August 1727, firm date
The Moravians at Herrnhut
Emigrants from Moravia settle on Count Zinzendorf’s estate at Herrnhut. In 1727 they pledge themselves to common statutes, and their church dates its renewal from a communion service on 13 August of that year. In 1732 Herrnhut sends two men to the slaves of St Thomas.
1734 to 1743, firm date
The Great Awakening
A revival in Jonathan Edwards’s congregation at Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1734 and 1735 becomes known through his printed account. In 1740 George Whitefield preaches to great crowds in New England, and Charles Chauncy of Boston answers that much of the stir is disorder.
24 May 1738, firm date
John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism
On 24 May 1738, at a meeting in Aldersgate Street in London, the clergyman John Wesley feels his heart “strangely warmed”. The next year he begins to preach in the open air at Bristol, and the societies he and his brother Charles organise come to be called Methodist.
1782, firm date
The Philokalia Is Published
A Greek anthology of writers on watchfulness and the prayer of the heart, gathered from the libraries of Mount Athos, is printed at Venice in 1782. Its preface offers the prayer to laypeople as well as monks. A Slavonic version follows at Moscow in 1793.
1787 to 1816, estimated date
Richard Allen and the African Methodist Episcopal Church
Black Methodists pulled from their knees at prayer in St George’s Church, Philadelphia, walk out with Richard Allen and Absalom Jones. Allen opens Bethel church in 1794, and in 1816 Black congregations unite as the African Methodist Episcopal Church with Allen as bishop.
August 1801, firm date
The Second Great Awakening
In August 1801 a great crowd camps for a week of preaching at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, the church of the Presbyterian minister Barton Stone, and carries the revival home. In the 1830s Charles Finney teaches that a revival is the result of the right use of means.
6 April 1830, firm date
Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints
On 6 April 1830, the year the Book of Mormon is printed, Joseph Smith and five others organize a church in western New York. Its leaders declare it to be Christ’s church restored. The Catholic Church and some other churches do not accept its baptism.
14 July 1833, firm date
The Oxford Movement
John Keble’s sermon on national apostasy and the Tracts for the Times call the Church of England back to its claim to be a catholic church with bishops in succession from the apostles. After Tract 90 is censured, Newman becomes a Roman Catholic.
22 October 1844, firm date
The Millerites and the Great Disappointment
William Miller reckons from the book of Daniel that Christ will return about 1843, and by his own estimate some fifty thousand people come to expect it. On 22 October 1844 the last date set passes. Seventh-day Adventists, who give the date another meaning, organize in 1863.
July 1865, firm date
William and Catherine Booth Found the Salvation Army
William Booth, a former Methodist minister, begins preaching in a tent in the East End of London in 1865. The mission he and his wife Catherine build takes the name Salvation Army in 1878 and adds to its preaching a scheme of work, food and shelter for the destitute.
July 1888, firm date
The Lambeth Quadrilateral
The Anglican bishops meeting at Lambeth in 1888 name four things as a basis for reunion with other churches (the Scriptures, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the two sacraments and the historic episcopate), taking them from a declaration of the American bishops in 1886.
9 April 1906, firm date
The Azusa Street Revival
In April 1906 a prayer meeting in Los Angeles led by the Black preacher William Seymour begins to speak in tongues. The mission it opens at 312 Azusa Street meets daily, draws people of many races and sends the Pentecostal message abroad.
14 January 1907, firm date
The Pyongyang Revival
At a winter Bible class in Pyongyang in January 1907, hundreds of Korean Presbyterian men pray aloud together and confess their sins in public through two nights. Those who were there carry the revival to churches across Korea.
14–23 June 1910, firm date
The World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh
About 1,200 delegates of missionary societies, most of them from Britain, North America and continental Europe, meet at Edinburgh in June 1910 to consider the evangelisation of the non-Christian world, and appoint a Continuation Committee to carry the work on.
1921, firm date
Simon Kimbangu and the Kimbanguist Church
In 1921 Simon Kimbangu, a Baptist of the Lower Congo, begins to preach and to pray over the sick at Nkamba, and crowds come to him. A Belgian military court sentences him to death; reprieved, he dies in prison thirty years later, and a church grows from his followers.
27 September 1947, firm date
The Church of South India Unites Four Traditions
Anglican dioceses, the Methodist Church and the South India United Church, itself a union of Presbyterians and Congregationalists, become one church with bishops in a service at Madras. Anglican bishops elsewhere are divided about its ministry.
23 August 1948, firm date
The World Council of Churches Is Founded
Delegates of 147 churches from 44 countries, meeting in Amsterdam, constitute the World Council of Churches as a fellowship of churches that accept Jesus Christ as God and Saviour. The Roman Catholic Church takes no part.
25 September 1949, firm date
Billy Graham and Postwar Evangelicalism
An eight-week tent campaign in Los Angeles in the autumn of 1949 makes the evangelist Billy Graham known across the United States. In 1956 he and the theologian Carl Henry launch the magazine Christianity Today as a voice for evangelical Christianity.
1960 to 1967, firm date
The Charismatic Renewal
Speaking in tongues and other gifts associated with Pentecostalism appear in the older churches. An Episcopal rector in California tells his parish of his experience in 1960, and Catholics date their charismatic renewal from a retreat of students near Pittsburgh in 1967.
1962 to 1965, firm date
The Second Vatican Council
From 1962 to 1965 the Catholic bishops of the world meet in St Peter’s. Called by John XXIII and concluded by Paul VI, the council issues texts on the liturgy, the church, revelation, religious freedom, other Christians and the Jewish people.
7 December 1965, firm date
Rome and Constantinople Lift the Anathemas of 1054
On 7 December 1965 Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras I declare together that they regret the excommunications exchanged in 1054 and remove them from the memory of the church. The act does not restore communion between the two churches.
1973 to 1994, firm date
Ancient Christological Divisions Are Addressed
Between 1973 and 1994 Rome signs common statements of faith in Christ with the Coptic pope and with the patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox delegates agree two statements of their own. None of them restores communion.
16–25 July 1974, firm date
The Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization
In July 1974 some 2,700 evangelical Christians from more than 150 nations meet at Lausanne. Their covenant, drafted under John Stott, commits them to world evangelization and affirms that evangelism and social responsibility are both Christian duties.
31 October 1999, firm date
Lutherans and Catholics Agree on Justification
At Augsburg the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church confirm a joint declaration: they share a consensus in basic truths of the doctrine of justification, and the condemnations of the sixteenth century do not apply to the teaching it sets out. Differences remain.
15 February 2015, firm date
The Twenty-One Martyrs of Libya
In February 2015 twenty-one Christian workers, twenty Egyptian Copts and one man from Ghana, are beheaded on the coast of Libya. The Coptic Orthodox Church enters them in its Synaxarium within a week, and in 2023 Pope Francis announces their inclusion in the Roman Martyrology.
31 October 2016, firm date
Catholics and Lutherans Mark 500 Years of the Reformation Together
Pope Francis and the leaders of the Lutheran World Federation open the five-hundredth anniversary year of the Reformation with a common prayer in Lund Cathedral, and sign a statement of thanks, repentance and commitment to common witness.
28 November 2025, firm date
The Churches Mark 1,700 Years since Nicaea
Pope Leo XIV, the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and leaders of other churches pray together at İznik, the ancient Nicaea, and profess the creed. The next day pope and patriarch sign a declaration naming the faith of Nicaea as what binds Christians together.