How long would you expect revival fervour to last? Historically revivals in Wales have been short-lived events, but how quickly should we expect the passion stirred up by the Spirit to last? The story of how the Welsh Revival so rapidly ran out of steam within the Welsh chapels has not been fully told, but today here’s a flavour from one part of the country.

‘The meeting was rather lifeless compared to last year,’ said E Cefni Jones, a character introduced in a previous post on the 1904-05 Revival. He was writing in his diary about a prayer meeting held in one of his churches in Blaenau Ffestiniog, north Wales. Such meetings were yearly events in the Welsh chapel calendar but had been transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit revival that had swept through Wales. But in this entry Cefni has to confess that revival fire had dimmed in his church as he compared that year’s meeting with the previous one.

There is nothing odd, I suppose, in noting the decline of revival fervour with time – such is the history of revivals in Wales across the ages. But the date of that prayer meeting is worth noting – Monday 8^th January 1906. To find a lifeless meeting so soon in a church directly hit by the revival is a bit surprising.

And Cefni quickly picked up on what was taking the interest of his flock and pushing aside those revival passions – the upcoming general election which was to sweep the Liberal Party into power. In his January 15^th entry he says that ‘the Liberal tide is surprising everybody’ and the next day he was to write, ‘The Election is taking everybody’s interest’.

By this time Welsh nonconformity and Liberalism were almost one body such were the close ties between the two and the great hero of chapel going people in Wales was David Lloyd George who received his first government position following the party’s win in this election. The close links between these two bodies had brought much good to the country in the previous century – not least in ensuring a wider number of people being able to vote – but politics now appeared to push the revival to one side. And in Blaenau Ffestiniog, at least, election fever overtook the great revival.

While it is true that many people made their first time commitment to Jesus during the revival period in 1904 and 1905 and maintained a lifelong dedication and while many new churches were born out of the revival, it is also true that the passion created in that time quickly died down. Nonconformity settled back into its previous state very soon afterwards – a situation that poses some important questions.