ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the modernity that has been more religious in terms of both church growth and the diffusion of Christian values in the culture than traditional accounts allow. The evangelical revival was, in many cases, a process of primary Christianisation and, while its intensity did not last long into the twentieth century, we have to see it for what it was an exceptional interruption of a wider pattern of disengagement. Although it can say with confidence that authoritarian confessional regimes have adapted less favourably to modernity than decentralised, pluralistic ones, it remains essential to explore the texture and theology of specific contexts. If, for the sake of argument, it can be accepted Delumeaus summary of pre-modern religion as a guilt culture dominated by Manichaeism, magic and fear, can see that the Wesleyan revival addressed two of these demons head on: magic and fear.
