1800 - 1830: Early Revival Culture Around Athens: Camp Meetings and the Second Great Awakening
Athens was founded in 1801 in the middle of the Second Great Awakening, a period in which outdoor revivals and camp meetings were transforming religious life across Georgia. The New Georgia Encyclopedia describes the camp meeting as a defining feature of the movement in the South. These gatherings could last for days and drew people from scattered rural communities into sustained preaching, prayer, singing, and conversion-focused services.
A particularly important local source is Henry Hull's nineteenth-century sketch of early Athens. Hull recalled that before Athens had developed its mature church institutions, a major camp meeting was held near Lexington at a place later known as Jourdans. He described intense responses among frontier hearers and connected this camp-meeting culture to the religious life of the Athens region. Because this was outside the later city limits, it is best understood as the revival environment from which early Athens emerged rather than an Athens citywide revival.
The University and the town developed inside that broader revival culture. Historical accounts of early UGA show that students regularly sought permission to attend camp meetings, sometimes extending their absences beyond what faculty allowed. By the 1820s and 1830s, camp meetings, Bible societies, Sunday schools, revivals, and denominational expansion were already part of the religious landscape of Athens and northeast Georgia.
1840: The 1840 University of Georgia Revival
Long before the better-known 1858 awakening, the University of Georgia experienced a documented revival in 1840. E. Merton Coulter's history of student life at the old university reports that the Phi Kappa literary society adjourned “on account of the religious excitement,” and that the revival brought many students into church membership.
Among those affected was Joseph LeConte, who later became a nationally important scientist and educator. A later National Academy of Sciences memoir says that LeConte, his brothers, and many other students joined the Presbyterian Church during a religious revival while they were students in Athens. This gives the 1840 event unusually strong biographical corroboration beyond a single institutional history.
The 1840 revival matters because it establishes a recurring Athens pattern well before 1858: spiritual awakenings in the town repeatedly intersected with the University. Historical accounts also note that in subsequent years student societies sometimes suspended activity because both students and Athens citizens were experiencing what contemporaries called “religious excitement.”
1858: The Prayer Revival Reaches Athens and the University
The most important nineteenth-century Athens awakening we have located occurred during the national Prayer Revival of 1857–58. A University of Georgia dissertation on religious life at UGA describes a town that had been relatively irreverent before “a wave of piety” arrived. On April 1, 1858, an Athens newspaper began reporting the New York revival alongside a local revival at a Methodist church. A prayer meeting was established in the law office of T. W. Walker and soon outgrew the space.
Athens citizens then sought use of Demosthenian Hall at the University for the expanding prayer meetings. UGA professors and the university president assisted in preaching, making the University a central part of the movement rather than merely an observer. Contemporary reporting cited in the dissertation described a deepening spiritual interest in the community and large noon prayer meetings. Another period religious newspaper reported that 165 people had been added to Athens churches.
The 1858 event is especially important for the modern Athens revival story because its structure resembles later prayer awakenings: prayer begins in relatively ordinary settings, attendance expands, denominational and town-gown boundaries become more porous, and the University becomes directly involved. It is the clearest nineteenth-century precedent for an Athens awakening involving both the city and its college population.
1915: R. A. Torrey's Great Union Tent Revival
In May 1915, internationally known evangelist R. A. Torrey led a large union revival in Athens. Contemporary newspapers describe fourteen churches cooperating in the effort, with scores of cottage prayer meetings held in homes before the campaign. The revival tent stood near Broad and South Lumpkin streets in the center of Athens and was reported to seat about 3,000 people.
The Athens Daily Herald described increasing crowds and explicitly called the meetings a “religious awakening.” A later report records an extraordinary day of decentralized prayer: prayer meetings were held in homes and businesses across Athens, while hundreds of Christians from Presbyterian, Baptist, Christian, and Methodist churches fasted and prayed for the meetings, conversions, and the strengthening of the churches. The newspaper reported immediate conversions during the campaign.
The Torrey meetings are one of the strongest examples of a genuinely interdenominational, city-oriented revival campaign in Athens. They combined mass evangelism with distributed prayer across homes, businesses, churches, and clergy networks. The participation of multiple denominations and the scale of the tent make 1915 an essential bridge between the nineteenth-century prayer awakenings and twentieth-century mass evangelism.
1939: The Jesse M. Hendley Athens Revival
In 1939, Athens churches and the Athens Business Men's Evangelistic Club organized another major citywide campaign, this time led by young Atlanta evangelist Jesse M. Hendley. Prayer services began before Hendley's arrival, with ministers from several Athens churches taking turns leading prayer at the YMCA. The University of Georgia cooperated by providing approximately 1,800 seats from Woodruff Hall and parking near Sanford Field.
The campaign opened August 6 in a large tent near South Lumpkin and Baxter streets. Contemporary Athens Banner-Herald coverage reported capacity crowds in a tent seating roughly 2,000 and noted that nightly services were broadcast on WGAU because of demand from people in Athens and surrounding towns. Hendley also broadcast morning programs locally and through an Atlanta station, expanding the campaign's reach beyond those physically present.
A 1956 Athens Banner-Herald retrospective is especially valuable because it says the 1939 crusade “made religious history” and was reported in religious periodicals around the country. That later assessment indicates the campaign was remembered locally and beyond Athens as more than a routine revival meeting. The combination of advance prayer, citywide church cooperation, university assistance, mass attendance, and radio distribution makes it one of Athens' major twentieth-century revival episodes.
1985: Move of God Revival Center: An Archived African American Revival Tradition
The University of Georgia's Walter J. Brown Media Archives preserves unusually rich video documentation of revival worship in Athens in 1985. The Georgia Folklore Collection includes a nearly two-hour recording of Mother Doris Lewis leading a healing and deliverance service at the Move of God Revival Center. The archive itself catalogs the material under subjects including “Revivals—Georgia—Athens,” “Evangelical Revival,” preaching, gospel music, regeneration, and healing.
The recording documents prayer, congregational singing, preaching, and physical ministry to people seeking healing. Because this is archival audiovisual evidence rather than a later written recollection, it preserves a stream of Athens revival history that can easily be missed if research focuses only on large white evangelical churches or UGA-centered ministries.
Additional recordings from May 26 and May 30, 1985 show that the archived service was not an isolated moment. These materials make the Move of God Revival Center an important part of any inclusive Athens revival history and provide future website visitors with direct access to the sounds, worship practices, preaching, and community life of a local African American Pentecostal/holiness setting.
Early to mid-1990s: UGA Wesley: Outpouring, Growth and Prayer
UGA Wesley's own institutional history describes the early and mid-1990s as a formative spiritual season. Under director Tom Tanner, who served from 1991 to 1998, the ministry emphasized Scripture and then experienced what it calls an “outpouring of the Holy Spirit” in worship during the mid-1990s. Attendance grew to several hundred students per week, while staff and students increasingly pursued personal and corporate prayer.
A 2016 Wesley history says that God encountered so many students during the 1990s that it seemed as though a “Great Awakening” might be just around the corner. That language is important because it shows revival expectation among UGA students and ministry leaders well before Asbury 2023, UGA Unite 2024, or the later published Athens prophecy material.
This Wesley season overlaps chronologically with the prayer movement that was forming at New Covenant Worship Center around 1995. The sources do not prove the two movements were coordinated, but they show that sustained prayer and expectation of awakening were developing in more than one Athens Christian community during the same decade.
1995 – May 1999: New Covenant's Prayer Foundation
The original Athens Banner-Herald clippings preserved for this archive show that the 1999 New Covenant revival was preceded by years of organized prayer. In the June 13, 1999 article, pastor Howard Conine said a group of church members had met every Monday night for the previous four years to pray for spiritual renewal in the state, nation, and world. Conine explicitly connected the revival's emergence with the persistence of that prayer group.
The May 12, 2001 retrospective adds more detail. It traces the prayer movement to a men's prayer group formed after Bubba Llewallyn returned from a Promise Keepers rally. The group eventually expanded to include any member of the congregation who wanted to participate, and the newspaper says the group prayed continually for revival.
This four-year prayer foundation is one of the most important themes in the New Covenant story. Rather than beginning with an evangelist arriving unexpectedly in 1999, the documented history begins around 1995 with sustained intercession. That pattern parallels both the 1858 prayer revival and the prayer preparation surrounding the Torrey and Hendley campaigns.
May 9, 1999 – June 13, 1999: New Covenant Worship Center Revival Begins on Mother's Day
Beth Stephens of Griffin came to New Covenant Worship Center for what was intended to be a one-week revival. The later May 2001 Athens Banner-Herald retrospective explicitly states that she arrived on Mother's Day two years earlier, fixing the start date as May 9, 1999. Instead of ending after one week, the meetings continued. Exactly five weeks later, on June 13, the Banner-Herald devoted major coverage to the event under the headline “The power and the glory.”
The June article reported that the revival was drawing an estimated 400 to 500 people per night and that even on days without services, 20 to 50 people were coming to the church to pray, clean, or spend time on the grounds. Conine described people unfamiliar to the congregation arriving, including people struggling with addiction. He reported conversions and an alleged healing in which a man said his hearing had been restored. The newspaper's reporters also directly described a crowded Thursday-night worship service.
The opening question of the article is historically striking: “Could Athens be the next city” to host a months-long Christian revival? The writers explicitly compared Athens with Pensacola, Smithton, and Calhoun. At only five weeks, the church was already clearing its calendar and committing to continue as long as people kept coming. The article therefore captures the transition from a scheduled revival campaign into an unplanned extended movement.
November 21, 1999: Revive Us Again…
By November 21, the revival had entered its 28th week. The Athens Banner-Herald returned with a large feature titled “Revive us again…” and reported that the meetings were still routinely drawing hundreds of people. Some visitors were traveling from outside Georgia, and the paper noted that reports from attendees were circulating through Internet chat rooms—an important clue that the revival had begun to develop a network beyond Athens.
The article reported more than 500 people accepting Christ up to that point, along with restored marriages and several claimed miracles or transformations. Services were often three to four hours long from a 7 p.m. start, and Stephens sometimes remained an additional hour or more praying with people at the altar. She had rented an apartment in Athens rather than continually traveling back to Griffin.
The November article also placed the Athens meetings in the context of the longer revival movement associated with Brownsville/Pensacola, Smithton, and Calhoun. Stephens interpreted the movement in explicitly eschatological and revival terms. For historical purposes, the key point is that after more than six months, the meetings still had enough attendance and outside interest to warrant substantial newspaper coverage.
January 1, 2000: One of Athens' Major Religion Stories of 1999
At the turn of the year, the Athens Banner-Herald included New Covenant among the major local religion stories of 1999. The retrospective described the event as beginning as a barely noticed one-week revival and then approaching its 40th week. It reported that the revival was still routinely drawing hundreds of people each night.
The schedule was shifting from four nights per week to three days per week, including Thursday, Friday, and Sunday services. Howard Conine told the paper that in forty years of ministry he had never been associated with anything comparable. This gives independent confirmation that the revival did not simply persist on paper; it was still active enough to maintain a demanding weekly schedule many months after its beginning.
A later Christian testimony we located also says the writer received Christ and was filled with the Holy Spirit during a New Covenant revival service in January 2000. That testimony is retrospective rather than newspaper reporting, but it provides an additional participant-level data point consistent with the Banner-Herald's chronology.
May 12–13, 2001: Second Anniversary: “Eruption of Faith”
The third original clipping establishes that the New Covenant revival continued for at least two full years. On May 12, 2001, the Athens Banner-Herald previewed the second anniversary under the headline “eruption of faith.” The article explicitly says Stephens had arrived on Mother's Day two years earlier for a one-week revival. The printed weekly schedule still listed revival services on Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday nights.
The article reported substantial measurable changes in the congregation: Sunday attendance had grown from about 200 before the revival to roughly three times that number, 325 new members had been added, and Howard Conine said about 80 percent of the people he preached to had been at the church for two years or less. The annual church budget was reported to have increased roughly threefold to around $1 million, and the congregation had become more racially and denominationally diverse.
By this point the focus was shifting from initial evangelism toward discipleship and pastoral care. Stephens had become an associate pastor and said, “I just believe He's got something in store for Athens, Georgia,” in a passage that also noted UGA's role in bringing people from around the world to Athens. Conine summarized his view of the revival's continuation with a memorable line: “I didn't start it, and I can't stop it.”
2017: The International “Athens, Georgia / College Students” Prophecy Account
A significant later source is the InterVarsity-hosted material from Katie Bulmer's book Sorority Girls Can Change the World. In the account, an unnamed woman tells Bulmer and others that prayer warriors and prophets on multiple continents had received visions of a revival “started by college students and birthed out of Athens, Georgia.” The woman further says that people had questioned whether “Athens” meant Greece, but that the location being identified was the Georgia college town.
This is important because it is a dated, published source preserving the claim before the major UGA Unite event of 2024. However, the account is still one person's report about what multiple unnamed international prayer leaders supposedly said. We have not yet identified the woman in the story or recovered the underlying Australian, African, European, Korean, or other original prophetic statements. The strongest responsible wording is therefore: a published pre-2024 account of an international prophecy tradition concerning Athens and college students.
A specific oral claim has circulated that a prayer team connected with David Yonggi Cho's Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea also received an Athens prophecy. Extensive searches have not yet located a primary Korean or Yoido source naming Athens, Georgia. Cho did publish a well-known account of a 1991 prophetic vision concerning revival beginning in Pensacola, Florida, which later became associated with the Brownsville Revival. That documented Pensacola prophecy should not be conflated with the still-unverified Athens/Cho claim.
2018: “Revival Was Expected for This City”
A UGA Wesley article published in 2022 preserves a revealing memory from fall 2018. The writer says that after being in Athens for about three months, she already “knew revival was expected for this city.” She attributes that expectation not to one isolated speaker but to “many pastors and prayer ministers.”
The expectations she heard included large numbers of people putting their trust in Jesus, open prayer and worship in university settings, healings and miracles, and Jesus receiving the glory. Whether those expectations were connected to the international Athens prophecy, the New Covenant revival legacy, Wesley's own prayer tradition, or a mixture of sources is not established by the article.
Historically, the article demonstrates that by 2018 an expectation of future revival in Athens had become sufficiently widespread within at least part of the city's prayer and ministry community that a newcomer encountered it within months of arriving. This helps bridge the gap between the published 2017 prophecy account and the later public campus events.
2019 - 2023: Revival City / Phoenix Athens: A Reported Call to Plant in Athens
Revival City Church's first-party history says that in 2019 Steven and Kristin Link separately sought God about where they should plant a ministry. According to the church, after two weeks each independently returned with the same answer: Athens, Georgia. This is testimony from the ministry itself, not independent verification, but it is relevant to the accumulation of revival-oriented ministries intentionally locating in Athens.
The ministry initially operated as Phoenix Athens. Its history emphasizes an expectation of revival and a desire to serve the city through worship, prayer, evangelism, and church life. Because this account comes from the church's own website, the safest historical treatment is to present it as the founders' reported experience and calling.
The importance of the 2019 story is chronological. It appears after the 2017 published Athens prophecy account and the 2018 Wesley testimony that revival was already expected for the city, but before the 2023 and 2024 public outpouring/campus events. It therefore belongs in the documentary timeline even though it does not independently prove a connection among those events.
February 2022: “Years and Years of Prayer” for Revival at UGA
In February 2022, UGA Wesley published a reflection titled “He Responds.” The author wrote that revival was prayed for every day for UGA students and the people of Athens. She described students as joining “years and years of prayer” for God to bring revival to the campus.
The piece is valuable because it documents a living prayer culture immediately before the wave of campus revival attention that followed Asbury in 2023. It does not claim that revival had already arrived; instead it describes sustained intercession and expectation as normal parts of Wesley's spiritual life.
Taken together with Wesley's history of the 1990s, this creates a multi-decade institutional thread: outpouring and prayer in the mid-1990s, expectation of a Great Awakening, setbacks and lessons in 2001, and continued prayer for revival into the 2020s.
February 2023: Twelve Days of Nonstop Worship at Revival City
Revival City Church reports that in February 2023 it experienced an “outpouring” involving twelve consecutive days of nonstop worship. The church says people were healed, saved, and baptized during that period. Because the surviving online description is the church's own account, the numerical and supernatural claims should be presented as first-party testimony unless corroborating contemporary reporting is located.
The timing is noteworthy. February 2023 was also the month of the widely reported Asbury outpouring in Kentucky, which generated renewed national attention to revival among young adults and college students. The Revival City account should not automatically be treated as caused by Asbury, but it belongs in the same historical moment of heightened revival activity and language.
For the Athens timeline, the 2023 event shows that extended worship and conversion/baptism testimony were again occurring locally before the large UGA Unite gathering the following year. It also demonstrates that the city's revival narrative was not confined to one congregation or one campus ministry.
April 3, 2024: UGA Unite | Thousands Gather and Students Are Baptized
On April 3, 2024, approximately 7,000 college students gathered in the University of Georgia's Stegeman Coliseum for Unite Georgia, an evening of prayer, worship, teaching, and evangelistic response. Speakers included Jennie Allen and Jonathan Pokluda, with worship led by Circuit Rider Music.
After the arena gathering, approximately 150 students were reported baptized, including baptisms conducted in pickup-truck beds near a fraternity house. Christian media described professions of faith and a strong student response. The scale and highly visible baptisms made the event one of the most significant public campus-Christian gatherings in recent UGA history.
The event has obvious thematic similarities to the earlier published prophecy account—Athens, college students, revival language, and visible public response—but the evidence does not establish that UGA Unite was the fulfillment of that prophecy. A responsible archive can place the two side by side chronologically while leaving theological interpretation to readers.
Fall 2026: 501 Exchange Freedom Nights - Athens, GA
From Paul Smith - For the past three years, our ministry, The 501 Exchange, had been gathering at 1051 Baxter Street in Athens, Georgia. As attendance grew, we began reaching capacity, with all 275 chairs filled and additional people gathering in the aisles and surrounding areas.
During a season of prayer, my best friend Adam, who leads worship alongside me at Freedom
Night, unexpectedly suggested, "What if we met in the UGA Chapel for a season? " His suggestion caught me off guard, as we had not previously discussed that possibility.
The following day, while Adam's wife was attending a baby shower at our home, Adam and I took our boys to UGA's North Campus. The boys suggested we take a prayer walk, and we agreed.
During our walk, we encountered Deborah, an intercessor whom we had met on several
previous occasions. Deborah explained that she normally prayed in another area but felt God had specifically directed her to that location that day.
As we talked, Deborah asked whether we knew about "the Great Revival" that had been
prophesied for Athens.
She explained that a prophecy had foretold a great revival spilling out of the UGA Chapel, down its front steps, across the university campus, into downtown Athens, and ultimately to the ends of the earth.
Deborah shared that she had moved from New York City to Athens, Georgia, years earlier
because of this prophetic promise. She had purchased a home in Athens and faithfully prayed every day for God to send revival to the city.
Deeply moved by her obedience and commitment, we prayed with Deborah before continuing our prayer walk. We eventually arrived at the UGA Chapel, where Adam, our boys, and I stopped to pray together on the chapel's front steps.
An Unexpected Prophetic Confirmation
Later that same evening, Josh Stewart, an important co-founder and prophetic leader of The 501 Exchange, sent a message to our ministry group.
Josh had no knowledge of our earlier conversations, the prayer walk, our encounter with
Deborah, or the prophecy she had shared.
He explained that he had spent the afternoon with Jesus and had received a powerful vision.
In the vision, Josh saw us gathered inside the UGA Chapel, worshiping Jesus. The atmosphere was marked by a pure hunger for God, with people desperately seeking an encounter with Jesus and the Holy Spirit moving freely.
Josh described seeing people spilling out of the chapel's front doors, down the steps, along the pathways of North Campus, and into downtown Athens.
People were lined up for miles—not to hear a ministry, sermon, or song, but because they desperately desired a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
The striking similarities between Josh's vision and Deborah's earlier prophetic account were overwhelming, particularly because Josh knew nothing about what had happened that day.
Our ministry team immediately gathered on a FaceTime call, sharing tears, laughter, and
amazement at what we believed was a remarkable confirmation from God.
The Decision to Gather at the Chapel
During that conversation, we agreed that although we did not fully understand God's timing or purposes, we would take a step of obedience and begin gathering at the UGA Chapel in the fall of 2026.
We committed ourselves to worship, prayer, and seeking God's presence while continuing to pray for revival throughout Athens, Georgia, and beyond.
While we carry great expectation for what God may do in our city, our deepest motivation is
simply a hunger for Jesus Himself.
More than seeking a movement or an extraordinary event, our desire is to encounter the living God.
That is the heart behind our decision to gather at the UGA Chapel: obedience, hunger for God's presence, and a shared desire to see revival come to Athens.
October 20, 2026: Ignite UGA Unite | Vision of Revival in Athens, Georgia
Louie Giglio and Passion Worship Team returned to Legion Field
Another night of repentance, commitment and igniting, under the unity of at least 12 campus ministries. Louie describes the following vision he had just experienced from the Lord.
“I know that somewhere, it's actually going to happen. Somewhere besides Asbury,
where it's happened two times."
If I were here, I would say, "God, they've had two times. Could we just have one time?
Could we have a time where everything stops and all the attention is on Jesus?"
A Vision of Downtown Athens
In this vision, it was crazy.
I saw someone walking down Clayton and Broad on a Thursday night, and all the
people who were packed on the sidewalks were sober. All of them.
They were in little huddles of three and five, talking on the sidewalks about the miracles they had seen that day.
Not yesterday. Not a month ago. But that very day, they had seen God do miracles.
They had seen their friends saved. They had seen people set free from depression.
They had seen demons flee. They had seen God move in power that day.
And they were all talking about the things they had seen God do.
Baptisms at Herty Fountain
Students were being baptized in Herty Fountain every single day.
When you walked by the fountain, you saw people being baptized. Every single day.
Spontaneous Worship Across Campus
There were gatherings like this, spontaneously, on this field, on any given night of the
week.
There were hundreds, if not thousands, of students spontaneously worshiping and
praying together on this field.
Churches were slammed.
You couldn't get into a church on a Sunday or whatever night of the week they were
opening their doors because so many people wanted to be in church.
And speaking of church, in this vision, Church's downtown actually became a church again.
Because God's Spirit fell on Athens, and eyes were opened.
Transformation of Greek Life on Milledge Avenue
When you went down Milledge Avenue, in front of every fraternity house and every
sorority house, I could see it in this vision.
There was a huge sign hanging from the little terrace level that said, for example, on
one: "Chi O Loves Jesus."
"This house loves Jesus. What we want you to know about this house is that we love
Jesus in this house."
God has come. The Spirit has come. Eyes have been opened.
And Jesus has the attention of the whole city of Athens.
Worship Breaks Out at a Georgia Football Game
Sounds crazy, but I saw in this vision, during a game, that when one of the commercial breaks came, and we're all sitting at home watching two minutes worth of TV, and there's all kinds of stuff flashing on the video board...
Spontaneously, a worship song broke out in the stadium and trickled around the entire stadium during that break.
The whole stadium was singing a song of praise to God.
A City Unashamed of Jesus
Someone took soap and put a cross on their dorm window.
And they said, "I want everybody that sees this window to know that a Jesus follower
lives in this room."
And another believer did it on their window, and another one on their window, and their window, and their window.
And on houses, condos, apartments, and even on car windows.
Everywhere you looked, you were like:
"Oh, a Jesus follower is driving there."
"A Jesus follower is beside me at the red light."
"A Jesus follower is six floors worth of windows up above me in this dorm."
The police here had never seen anything like it.
The Attention of Athens Was on Jesus
Athens' attention was on Jesus.
And history wrote about it, that it happened here.
And I just wonder tonight if that's too big a dream.
Is that a pipe dream?
To think that that could happen here?
Does anybody even want that to happen here?”
