While the revival meetings based at evangelical Asbury College in Kentucky ended by late February, their appeal to a large swath of evangelical young people carried an emphasis on psychological healing that says a lot about Generation Z religion in the near future. Writing in First Things magazine (March 3), Biola University professor Kent Dunnington observes that the “Asbury revival is remarkable on many counts: its ‘lo-fi’ register in an age of megachurch pyrotechnics, its resistance to partisan capture, its Gen Z genesis.” The revival started in early February as informal prayer gatherings among students who were lingering after the weekly chapel service. Students started texting one another saying that something special was happening in the chapel, which drew more students to the service, resulting in an outpouring of confessions, intense prayer and singing. Dunnington adds that some spoke in tongues and prophesied, though the meetings were known for their orderliness. There were reports of healings from depression and anxiety. Dunnington writes that he was “struck by how many Asbury students narrated their experience of the revival in terms of supernatural liberation from depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, self-harm, and other mental maladies. Struck because this is, indeed, the defining ‘sickness’ of Gen Z…”
(First Things, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/03/gratitude-and-the-asbury-revival)
Source: Church of God Ministries.
