The Lewis Revival and the Yearning for a Better World
There has been a great deal of fascination with the Lewis Revival over the years. Even my last blog on the subject drew 14,000 visitors over 48 hours. That number alone tells me something: the revival is not merely an event confined to the Hebrides of the mid-twentieth century, but a living symbol, a flame that still flickers in the imagination of believers and seekers alike.
Why such interest? Perhaps it is because the Lewis Revival suggests something beyond the ordinary—that thin place where the metaphysical touches the real, where God and Christ are palpably at work in the lives of men and women. In those moments, eternity seems to break through the veil of time.
But perhaps the hunger is also simpler, more human. Many of us who are Christians feel an ache to belong to a spiritual community that is uncluttered and sincere, where neighbours walk in step with one another, not only in daily labour but in their reverence for God. A rural community where morality is not enforced by policy but breathed in like the sea air; where love for God is not a performance but the pulse of the village.
This yearning is not unlike what C.S. Lewis described as Joy—not mere happiness, but those fleeting, piercing moments when we are suddenly aware of our exile on this earth. Lewis believed that such Joy is a signpost pointing us towards another country, another kingdom, a home that is not yet but is deeply desired. When we long for revival, for purity of worship, for unvarnished faith, we are really longing for Christ’s kingdom breaking into this world.
The Lewis Revival reminds us that we are not made for endless distraction or the hollow promises of modernity. We are made for awe. The people of Lewis did not conjure revival through program or persuasion; rather, it descended, as sudden and unbidden as a storm at sea, rearranging lives in its wake. That is why it still grips our imagination. It whispers that God still moves, that heaven is not silent, that Europe—indeed, the whole world—is not beyond the touch of renewal.
More than ever, I believe we need such a revival in Europe today. A continent that once carried the torch of Christendom now seems dimmed by cynicism and forgetfulness. But what if, as in Lewis, revival was to break through again? What if amidst the ruins of our fractured societies, the Spirit were to stir hearts anew? It would not be a return to the past, but a foretaste of the Kingdom to come.
The Lewis Revival was not a quaint chapter in Scottish religious history. It was a reminder that God is not finished with us. Its echoes call us to lift our eyes from the dust of this world and remember that our truest belonging is elsewhere—in the Kingdom where love, justice, and joy will run as deeply as the peat fires of Lewis once burned in the hearths of its people.
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