1919 revival in Toronto

During and after World War I, many English-speaking Evangelicals were hoping and praying that one positive result of the horrors of that war would be a great awakening of men and women to their sin and their need for the Saviour.

It was not to be; but there were local revivals, a century on, that we should remember.

The Stephens brothers

One such revival took place in Toronto in 1919, when two itinerant American evangelists, Harold L Stephens and his brother George, were invited to speak at Calvary Baptist Church in the east end of Toronto. They were Methodists with a theology shaped by the holiness movement of the previous century. They were particularly emphatic on the necessity of not only talking about the sins of non-Christians, but also about the sins of the saints.