Other long-established missions recovered missionary fervour through association with religious revivals at home and abroad. Methodists at work along the West African coast in 1876-8 and again in 1885 were excited by waves of religious revivalism sweeping through their congregations and attracting new members. Whatever differences of understanding may have existed between cultures, missionaries found in such revivals periodic reconfirmation of the universality of both their message and their audience. Bryan Roe returned from the Lagos revival in 1885 not praising Empire but with renewed ‘faith in [Africa’s] ultimate, social, moral and spiritual regeneration’. Fresh waves of American revivalism swept Britain in the mid-187os, generating new currents of enthusiasm associated above all with the annual Keswick conferences after 1875 (non-denominational, but predominantly Anglican, gatherings more akin to American camp meetings than conventional conferences) and ongoing revival in the universities after 1880. Central to the Keswick experience was the prospect of a ‘higher life’, a state of practical holiness and sanctification. Attainable in this world through an act of faith, and signified by a second conversion, it freed Christians from all consciousness or traces of sin, effectively setting them apart from most of their fellows and opening the way to closer Christian community. Here were fresh criteria against which the reality of converts’ and churchgoers’ religion might be assessed.
Revivalism came as a mixed blessing to the long-standing societies. Unless they adapted their image and appeal, they appeared likely to lose many of the new volunteers to faith missions like the CIM, heterodox organizations such as the Salvation Army, or even operators on the fringes of the missionary world like the Methodist Thomas Champness’s Joyful News Evangelists. The CMS found itself inundated with enquiries from volunteers, often too young or otherwise as yet unsuitable but whom it judged wise to encourage; complicated arrangements were discussed to maintain volunteers’ links between CMS and other sources of recruits such as the Mildmay Institution. The new spirit of Keswick and revival had to be captured, perhaps tamed, but certainly incorporated into the everyday workings of the mainstream missionary movement. Simultaneously, Keswick itself had to be brought to take more notice of those societies. The CMS’s cautious acceptance of this analysis had disastrous consequences for the Niger Mission, centrepiece of the older Venn strategy. Brooke and the members of his party were deeply immersed in the revivalist stream; they brought Keswick standards to bear on Bishop Crowther and his helpers, and found them seriously wanting. Most of the African clergy and agents were alienated, many were dismissed, and the Bishop was forced into retirement. Confrontation on the Niger was generated not by a new imperialism or youthful racism, but above all by theological differences. The Niger Crisis was settled in the revivalist marketplace for missionary recruits, and the experiment with an African bishop was suspended.
Although imbibing the potentially explosive cocktail of Keswick theology, pre-millennialism, and institutional innovation, did not generally have such dramatic and destructive impact, the CMS was not alone in its difficulties. In West Africa schism rent one mission after another: Presbyterians at Calabar in 1882, Methodists and Baptists at Lagos between 1884 and 1888. Keswick enthusiasms spawned independent missions to Lagos and Freetown in 1886, 1888, and 1889. Many Lagos Christians became the target of criticisms similar to those levied at the Niger, and were no less resentful; but others displayed evidence of conversion meetings, the personal experience of salvation, and a missionary commitment of their own, which the Keswick missioners admired. Elsewhere, in Japan, East Africa, and north India, similar disputes between missionary generations and local Christians were managed with varying degrees of success.