Date: 08-Feb-1995 01:40pm EST
Subject: Response to Tom H. Sathre
Thanks, Scott, and Tom, for your respective observations.
Tom, when you originally posted your comments on my paper to the Christia list, I assumed, perhaps inappropriately, that you were simply making some observations, and that there was no need for any interaction. I also saw your briefer comments on the Science and Christianity List.
When writing my paper, I did not expect that anyone would assume that Scripture was not an important part of the revival. As it happens, Scripture is an important part of the revival, and is used often. One of the things that Rodney Howard-Browne does frequently is to read entire chapters of the Bible at his meetings, sometimes without any comment on what he has read. For example, he did this on the Tuesday evening session of his winter Campmeeting in Lakeland, Florida, last month.
The reason that I included many direct quotations from leaders in the revival is that primary sources are far more valuable to the historian than secondary accounts. The reason that I have very little commentary on these accounts is because I had hoped that the reader would be able to form his or her own conclusions, negative or positive, based upon the primary source documentation that I have provided.
Although it is true that I happen to be sympathetic to the revival, I should point out that some people have used my paper to try to demonstrate that the revival is not a good thing. I think that this demonstrates that there is at least an element of objectivity in what I have written, although I doubt that any historian has ever succeeded in writing anything without bias becoming evident in some way, if only in the selection of the material to be treated.
The fact that there is a lack of critical perspectives in what I have written is simply an indication that the paper, as it stands at present, is merely an account of the self-understanding of the movement as it has unfolded until the present time. This is a valid historical methodology; it is the same methodology that I have used in my other works on Pentecostalism--a methodology which was praised by Walter J. Hollenweger when he acted as "second reader" for my M.A. thesis on the Latter Rain Movement of 1948, done at Regent College (Vancouver, BC) in 1979.
Elsewhere, I have interacted with Hank Hanegraaff's criticisms of the revival, but for the purposes of outlining its history, to do so seemed to me to be outside of the scope of the immediate objective of outlining the history of the movement.
If you have any further questions, feel free to ask.
May God BLESS you!
With warm personal greetings in the Lamb,
Richard M. Riss
RRISS@DREW.EDU