King Benjamin's Speech: Revivals

Nineteenth-century readers would have recognized themselves in King Benjamin's listeners.

Towards the end of his life, the good King Benjamin gathers his people together and gives a speech. Near the end of the speech, his listeners cry out, "O have mercy and apply the atoning blood of Christ" (Mosiah 4:2). As a consequence, they are touched by the Holy Spirit.

Revivals in which speakers evoked an emotional crisis, a desire to repent and (re)commit to Jesus Christ, were not only common in the nineteenth century, they were familiar to the previous generation. 

The Great Awakening began in the 1700s before the Revolutionary War. One of the sad (but true) aspects of the Salem Witch Trials is that less than fifty years later, the girls' behavior would likely have been perceived not as possession by the devil but as possession by the Holy Spirit. George Whitefield from England was likely the greatest revivalist of the era, charming even the mostly agnostic Benjamin Franklin. Jonathan Edwards was the New England clergyman who made revivals acceptable. 

Jonathan Edwards

In many ways, revivals were a reaction against a perceived indifference or rote attitude regarding religion. My personal diagnosis is that revivals were a reaction to an upheaval in culture. The Salem Witch Trials were not the ultimate hurrah of Puritanism; they were the last hurrah, the end of a culture in which government and traditions and beliefs converged. The colonies were becoming more and more pluralistic. Revivals were a way to locate common ground and reassurance amid uncertainty.

Jonathan Edwards, one of Calvinism's New Lights, greeted revivals as a solution to apathy though he did not preach in the Whitefield manner. He read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" without histrionics (he wasn't a histrionics type of guy) but he did it to create an acknowledgment of guilt or emotional catharsis in his listeners. 

"Old Lights" Puritans, on the other hand, objected to the emotional excesses of the Awakening (one revivalist held a bonfire in which sacrilegious stuff was burnt, including--he offered--his pants; at the same time, a number of students accused their professors of not being committed enough to various beliefs: sound familiar?). In response to the Old Lights, Edwards argued that one couldn't divide up the impressions of the Holy Spirit, being okay in one instance but not okay in another. 

Edwards still struggled with the ramifications of the Awakening, namely the "revolution in authority." As George Marsden writes in his excellent book A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards, "For the moment, few evangelicals (and certainly not Edwards) saw such spiritual equality as having implications for social status generally. But in the long run, the implications were there."

Herein lies the inherent contradiction of Protestantism: By stressing the individual's relationship with God, all Protestants, from Luther to Edwards, left the matter open to challengers. "I'll just go start my own religion then," says the challenger. "No, no, no," proclaim the leaders. "We didn't mean THAT." 

Too late. 

The Old Lights weren't just offended by the break with past authority. They were also offended by the instant-salvation aspect of the revivals. Marsden states, "[Charles Chauncy] was not against truly transformative works of the Holy Spirit, but he believed they were usually manifested as a gradual process of recognizing and living according to God's grace. 'Enthusiasm'...was a sort of overheated and contagious mental state that led people to mistake their own overwrought passions for the work of God." 

Moreover, ordinary citizens were getting a tad tired of all the unrest. The revivals weren't as horrific as the Salem Witch Trials but the mob-like drop in rational thought wasn't too different. (As Marsden later remarks, "[C]harity...on both sides...was becoming a rare commodity.")

The Second Great Awakening in the nineteenth century was a continuation of the first with a stronger emphasis on Millennialism and Methodist theology. The Burned-over District in New York was so named because so many revivals occurred there.   

As for the attendees/believers, they would have come from varying backgrounds and taken up varying positions: Franklin, non-religious yet friends with the similarly outspoken and bombastic Whitefield; careful, logical Edwards, wholly passionate in his quiet way about revivals; Chauncy, rational and appalled about the fall-out.

And everybody in-between.

King Benjamin's speech supplies several distinctive and familiar revival-type characteristics:

1. It is an organized event.

In the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, some controversy existed over planned, authorized revivals--organized by clergy--versus pop-up revivals carried out by itinerant preachers. People like Edwards naturally favored the former. Civil authorities had reason to be wary of the latter.

2. The necessity of the written word is stressed.

Speakers in the past didn't have microphones. Whitefield had the ability to be heard at a tremendous distance--one possible reason he was so popular. But generally speaking, a speech had to be taken down in some manner and passed on. 

3. King Benjamin warns his audience of internal splits and contentions. 

4. The listeners are threatened with judgment.

However, as typical of The Book of Mormon, the judgment is not the wrath of God holding sinners over a flame ("oops, nope, gotcha--just joking") but rather the result of the individual withdrawing from God. "Mercy hath no claim" on the damned because the damned "shrink from the presence of God" (Mosiah 2:38-39). 

5. Salvation is promised to all, including those who "ignorantly sin" (Mosiah 3:11), such as little children. 

6. As mentioned above, while listening to King Benjamin, the people cry out for mercy. 

7. When the people cry out, they are visited by the Holy Spirit. 

8. As a result of feeling the Holy Spirit, they are "filled with joy, having received a remission of their sins, and having peace of conscience, because of the exceeding faith which they had in Jesus Christ who should come" (Mosiah 4:3).

9. King Benjamin then continues his speech, exhorting the listeners, "[Y]e must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them" (Mosiah 4:10).

Some revivals descended into what can only be called mass hysteria--something resembling concert attendees swooning when the Beatles came to town. Jonathan Edwards, for instance, was unable to finish his famous speech due to mob-like behavior, of which he was honestly not impressed. That mass hysteria does not occur with King Benjamin. See #10.

10. The people enter into a covenant. 

Encountering King Benjamin's speech, nineteenth-century readers would surely have spotted similarities to revivals at the time. They would also have spotted differences. 

They may also have spotted a resolution to the ongoing tension between grace and works.

Both Chauncy and Edwards agreed that a sudden emotional outburst isn't enough. But why not? If there is an elect, why is a manifestation of grace not enough to be going on with? And who is experiencing that manifestation of grace/sanctification anyway? (Edwards warned revival attendees against trying to distinguish "true" sanctification from "false.") For that matter, why do such experiences seem to fade over time, so the experiencer begins to backslide? (Edwards was truly upset by the backsliders.)

The Book of Mormon resolves the issue here--and in other places--by proposing a solution that makes works not a way of illustrating that one has been marked by grace (though that Calvinist concept is definitely present) or a way of carrying out a change in heart (though that more Methodist attitude is also present). Rather, the individual is drawn to grace by the individual's path or preference or even personality: where the individual is headed, what life the individual is trying to form through choices, actions and rituals (works), dreams, plans, objects, people, places...

You reap not just what you sow but what you care about sowing.