‘Woodstock’ for Christians: Revival Draws Thousands to Kentucky Town
Over two weeks, more than 50,000 people descended on a small campus chapel to experience the nation’s first major spiritual revival in decades — one driven by Gen Z.
WILMORE, Ky. — Jennifer Palmer told her boss on Thursday morning that she had to leave work, and drove 11 hours straight from Jacksonville, Fla., to get here.
Jayden Peech, a high school student from a few hours away in Kentucky, came with his mother after listening to a speaker at their church. Valor Christian College in Ohio canceled classes, and almost the entire student body drove down in a bus, with no plans for where they would spend the night.
For two weeks, tens of thousands of people have made a pilgrimage to a tiny Christian college, about 30 minutes south of Lexington, for what some scholars and worshipers describe as the nation’s first major spiritual revival of the 21st century.
Drawn by posts on TikTok and Instagram, plus old-fashioned word of mouth, Christians from across the country poured through a chapel on the campus of Asbury University to pray and sing until the wee hours of the morning, lining up hours before the doors opened and leaving only when volunteers closed the chapel at 1 a.m. to clean it for the next day.
WILMORE, Ky. — Jennifer Palmer told her boss on Thursday morning that she had to leave work, and drove 11 hours straight from Jacksonville, Fla., to get here.
Jayden Peech, a high school student from a few hours away in Kentucky, came with his mother after listening to a speaker at their church. Valor Christian College in Ohio canceled classes, and almost the entire student body drove down in a bus, with no plans for where they would spend the night.
For two weeks, tens of thousands of people have made a pilgrimage to a tiny Christian college, about 30 minutes south of Lexington, for what some scholars and worshipers describe as the nation’s first major spiritual revival of the 21st century.
Drawn by posts on TikTok and Instagram, plus old-fashioned word of mouth, Christians from across the country poured through a chapel on the campus of Asbury University to pray and sing until the wee hours of the morning, lining up hours before the doors opened and leaving only when volunteers closed the chapel at 1 a.m. to clean it for the next day.
WILMORE, Ky. — Jennifer Palmer told her boss on Thursday morning that she had to leave work, and drove 11 hours straight from Jacksonville, Fla., to get here.
Jayden Peech, a high school student from a few hours away in Kentucky, came with his mother after listening to a speaker at their church. Valor Christian College in Ohio canceled classes, and almost the entire student body drove down in a bus, with no plans for where they would spend the night.
For two weeks, tens of thousands of people have made a pilgrimage to a tiny Christian college, about 30 minutes south of Lexington, for what some scholars and worshipers describe as the nation’s first major spiritual revival of the 21st century.
Drawn by posts on TikTok and Instagram, plus old-fashioned word of mouth, Christians from across the country poured through a chapel on the campus of Asbury University to pray and sing until the wee hours of the morning, lining up hours before the doors opened and leaving only when volunteers closed the chapel at 1 a.m. to clean it for the next day.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/us/kentucky-revival-asbury-university.html