On Revivals and the American Psyche

Deep within the American psyche is a longing for convertive piety. We are a nation and culture of extremes and polarities: The Saturday night drunk who weeps in repentance on Sunday morning; The Sunday night holy man who leaves his ethical convictions at the door of the church when he steps into the office on Monday morning; The self-proclaimed irreligious person who prays in moments of crisis. Lips that sing the hallelujah chorus part to display the forked tongue and nasty sting of gossip, paranoia and anxiety. “Jesus Christ” is a name exclaimed more commonly and comfortably by the skeptic or hater than the true believer.

As a society we are literally haunted by God– the preacher, the church lady, the tortured backslider, the agnostic and the atheist. Religion, and our strange attractions and repulsions to it, reveal more about us than the nature and character of any divine being. What is revealed in our convoluted spiritual pursuits is the beauty and ambiguity of our common humanity. We are people who can imagine what love is, but can never quite make it to be “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Nothing illustrates the tensions we feel about religion and our humanity more than the cultural relic of the revival meeting and the revivalist phenomenon. In America, everyone is converting to something — to Jesus Christ or the teachings of the Buddha, from P.C. to Mac, from City to Suburb or from country to city. We are going green or going cold turkey, coming out gay or republican, becoming locavores or vegetarians, quitting our smoking or not buying anything. We put our faith in the latest technology, the newest idea or the best looking person that serves it all up to us just the way we like it.

Perhaps no American archetype better embodies the glories and struggles of our search for collective meaning and divine purpose than the tortured soul of the self-proclaimed and duly anointed gospel preacher or revivalist–That rare mix of eloquence, showmanship, falsetto emotion, alligator tears and stark piety–selling us God, salvation or a revelation from the best or worst of intentions. Few images are more enduring or annoying than the two-bit, second-rate evangelist in a starched white shirt, sweating up a storm as he labors to convince us to repent, to change our ways and to make a fresh start. He is running from what he knows about himself, fleeing from the leaks and shadows of his own brokenness briefly suspended by the silhouette portrait of heaven and hell, God and Satan, good and evil that he whoops up into an ecstatic fury over 50 or 60 minutes.

But secretly we know that the perspiring troubadour is just like us and we wonder and we hope that the healing change being proclaimed is really possible-- because if there was ever a time when our world needs love and healing and reinvention and redemption, that time is now.