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Diversity and Strivings for Unity in the Early Swiss Réveil
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
About thirty years ago, Dr John Walsh observed that ‘the comparative history of the many evangelical or pietistic revivals of the nineteenth century remains to be written” and on this particular front we can hardly claim today to have made very much progress. Any such study could well start with the French-speaking Swiss awakening or réveil, in the second decade of the century, which was soon to have a considerable impact on both French-speaking Protestants in general and, a little later, on British Evangelicals. Reacting against the conservative rationalism of the establishment many of the réveillés turned to a more romantic and experimental form of pietism which was liable to bring them into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities and sometimes caused them to hive off into secession. The young men whose aims and ideals led to these divisions had nevertheless some genuinely ecumenical aspirations and a real concern for some visible expression of the Church’s unity. The movement in French-speaking Switzerland is therefore a good field of enquiry in which the tensions between strivings for unity and separatist diversification can be explored.
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References
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