John Gillies and the evangelical revivals

The evangelical movement was birthed in the revivals of the 1730s. The early evangelicals thought much about their place in the unfolding of the divine plan of redemption and quickly turned to history to understand themselves. This chapter examines the work of John Gillies, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, who emerged as an early exponent of an evangelical view of the past through his Historical Collections (1754), locating the contemporary revivals in a long succession of renewal movements since the apostolic age. As George Whitefield’s official biographer and literary executor, Gilles was also able to construct a portrait of the quintessential evangelical – doctrinally minimalist, non-denominational and characterised by unrelenting activity.