Myth: Calvinists Take a Dim View of Revival and Awakening

We do not often speak of the Reformation era as a period of aggressive evangelistic preaching; but it indeed was this. Away from the university faculties of theology and the city cathedrals where much of the story of the Reformation played out, there were the itinerant evangelistic preachers who went town to town decrying the virtual idolatry of medieval religion and preaching up the need for living faith in Jesus Christ. Lesser-known figures of the Reformation such as John Frith and Robert Barnes (in England), Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart (Scotland), Pierre Viret and Guillaume Farel (in France and Switzerland) did this kind of itinerant evangelistic preaching—often to very large crowds. There followed what were at first “underground cells” of evangelical believers which met in barns, orchards, and hedges. It is no stretch to call these 16th century events evangelistic awakening or revival. By the early 17th century, we have clear documentation of such events in Northern Ireland and in the west of Scotland with some well-known Reformed preachers such as David Dickson instrumental in evangelistic harvests that endured over years. Read it all HERE