Ulster revival

Protestant revival that began in 1859 in Northern Ireland, inspired by the ‘Second Great Awakening’ in the USA. It transformed the nature of Ulster Protestantism in general and Ulster Presbyterianism in particular. The revival itself was short-lived, but it consolidated a strong Evangelical wing within Ulster Protestantism that has remained influential to this day.

The impact of the Ulster revival was not so marked in the Church of Ireland, where the Evangelical party faced opposition from the High Church revival that Alexander Knox and Richard Mant had inspired.

Despite its effect on the Presbyterian Church, the response to the revival was not unanimous within that church. W Gibson, later Presbyterian moderator, eulogized it in The Year of Grace (1860), which provoked the liberal Presbyterian response in Isaac Nelson's The Year of Delusion (1861). Nelson was deeply critical of the ‘unseemly’ displays of revivalist phenomena that Gibson had praised.