The Post-World War II Awakening. After World War II, in 1947 and 1948, Pentecostals experienced two strands of an awakening, one the Latter Rain Revival and the other the Healing Revival. Large numbers of evangelicals also experienced revival resulting in many conversions. It was at this time that a great generation of Christian leaders emerged. Bill Bright began Campus Crusade for Christ. In 1949, Billy Graham’s distinguished career, which popularized evangelical Christianity for a new generation, exploded on the scene during his Los Angeles crusade sponsored by the Christian Businessmen’s Committee.30,31 An estimated 180,000,000 people attended his nearly 400 crusades, and millions more viewed on television.32 College Revivals started as early as 1946, but when the prayer-based Wheaton College Revival of 1950 achieved national publicity, it sparked other college revivals throughout America.33
The Charismatic Renewal and Jesus Movement. During the late 1960s and early 1970s more revivals of national scope developed. The first strand was the Charismatic Renewal, which spread far beyond Pentecostal and Holiness churches to college campuses, the Catholic Church and mainline denominations.34 The second strand, the widely publicized Jesus Movement, emphasized turning from drugs, sex and radical politics to taking the Bible at face value and finding Jesus Christ as personal Savior.35 Not surprisingly, this revival spread to college campuses, most notably the 1970 Asbury College Revival in Wilmore, Ky. Within a week the revival had spread throughout the entire country.36 In 1976 America elected a born-again president, and evangelicalism has continued to prosper from then to now.
The Mid-1990s Revivals. Despite the widespread secularization of society since the Cultural Revolution that began in the late 1960s, in the mid-1990s God once again brought a series of revivals, mostly to Charismatic and Pentecostal groups. In 1994 it was The Toronto Blessing, and 1995 ushered in the Melbourne Revival on Florida’s Space Coast, the Modesto Revival, and the Brownsville Revival in Pensacola, Fla., which recorded 100,000 conversions in two years.37 College Revivals swept across America, starting at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, Texas, under the preaching of Henry Blackaby, a Southern Baptist.38
