“You have the revivals that happened in the 1920s with Billy Sunday. Didn’t change the culture. [As] a matter of fact, it got worse. That’s when Planned Parenthood was born,” Barton argued. Referring to the debate over evolution, Barton said, “That’s when the Scopes Trial happened. And even though we won, we lost the public media.”
During that same time, also the latter part of the Third Great Awakening, women won the right to vote and the temperance movement boomed.
“You get into the Jesus Movement, the 70s,” Barton went on to say. “It was a great movement in the 70s, and yet it didn’t do anything to change the sexual revolution of the 60s. That’s still going, still with us today. We’re still fighting that.”
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people came to faith during the Jesus movement, resulting in new church planting networks and evangelism efforts, as well as a creative boom among Christians in music, art, and film.
“ So we’ve had a number of notable revivals where it did not shift and change the culture,” Barton said. “So how come? What does it take?”
Barton went on to cite traveling evangelists George Whitefield and Francis Asbury, who impacted “ hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of local communities” until a national revival broke out and produced the First Great Awakening.
Barton argued that “it takes two things” for a revival to become an awakening.
“ First, a revival has to involve true biblical discipleship. The second thing is it has to become very relevant to the day we live in,” said Barton. He went on to list as examples advocating against no-fault divorce and for the traditional understanding of marriage, opposing minimum wage laws, advancing free market economics, and preserving due process of law.
“ This is the stuff that Jesus taught. It’s very relevant, very practical to every aspect of life. That’s the ‘all things’ that he’s commanded as to teach,” Barton argued, referring to the Great Commission.
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“Too many Christians today have become two-thirds Christians. We’ll do family. We’ll do church. But we don’t do government,” Barton said. “We gotta do government. That’s God’s institution. We gotta be involved. We have an opportunity now to turn this revival into an awakening. And that’s what I challenge you to do.”
