Is Cedarville U the Latest Campus to Experience Revival?

Last week, Cedarville University’s campus newspaper, Cedars, reported a “spiritual awakening” at the Ohio Baptist School. Likewise, The Christian Post reported an “outpouring of the Lord” at the revival of the Cedarville campus. And both CBN and Fox News announced that the “Asbury Revival” has spread to other schools, including Cedarville University.

Truly, something unique happened in Cedarville last week. Many students were touched. And if the reports are correct, some even made a profession of faith for the first time.

But unlike Asbury’s revival, events at Cedarville were not just “spontaneous,” as some have reported. Nor were the worship and prayer meetings exclusively led by students – a hallmark of Asbury’s revival and historical revivals.

Instead, Cedarville’s president appeared to be university president Thomas White. And oddly enough, the chapel that sparked recent events involved a student-led protest that White and his talk of revival largely quashed.

The morning chapel on Monday, February 13th got off to a rather tense start.

Last week, a stabbing in Cedarville involving two college students rocked the campus. Alleged female attacker Juniya Franks has been charged with assault. However, Franks told police she acted in self-defense. And the incident appears to have sparked latent frustration among some undergraduate and graduate students, who say the university’s Title IX office has mishandled cases of sexual abuse and harassment.

This is not the first time Cedarville students or staff have complained about the school’s Title IX process. In 2020, following a scandal surrounding White’s hiring of a known sex offender, a student claimed the school failed to protect her after she filed a Title IX complaint. Similarly, one employee reported being sexually harassed by the pharmacy school principal and pressured by Cedarville to accept an “informal resolution of the matter.”

The school has since hired a full-time Title IX coordinator and revamped its Title IX office, but complaints continued.

Protest organizers told The Roys Report (TRR) that they designed the February 13 strike to show solidarity with victims of sexual abuse and to draw attention to Title IV mismanagement. However, White apparently received word of the impending exit. At the beginning of the chapel, he addressed the situation head-on, warning the students not to “fill in the blanks with rumors” or succumb to their “typical sinful inclinations.” . . assume the worst.”

White also defended the school’s new Title IX office, saying the people in the office have devoted their careers to listening to victims and “seeking justice.” And it goes against “logic” that these professionals don’t care about the victims, he said.

White then changed gears and started talking about revival. White said he had just attended Asbury University and then exclaimed, “I had to confess before the Lord – ‘Lord, I had a little pity party here. I want revival on our campus. I want this to happen.’”

Then White announced that he would be changing the normal chapel format. Rather than preaching a single message, he led the student body in prayer for God to “appear in a unique way.” They would then sing, White would guide them through part of the script, and then they would repeat the process.

White also announced that he had reserved a building on campus for students that evening “to join me for a time of prayer — just for healing, for unity, for our country, for our nation, for our campus, for revival, for that.” God just pours out on us.”

Opening words by Thomas White:

White’s comments obviously inspired the student body. But they had a chilling effect on the planned exit.

Emma Burgess, a protester and 2020 alumna, narrated The Roys Report (TRR) that more than 50 students had planned to participate in the walk-out. But according to White’s comments, only 12 to 15 people participated. Burgess added that some students mocked and laughed at the protesters as they walked out.

The exit reportedly occurred about 11 minutes after the band began. It cannot be seen on the video of the chapel service posted online, which initially had an abrupt jump cut at the time of the exit. This has since been fixed.

Burgess called White’s comments “a classic example of armed guilt, smoke screens and misdirection”. Similarly, Jonathan Sweetman, a former founder of the Cedarville Interpreter blog, accused White of planning his embassy and chapel “to make it as difficult as possible, physically and emotionally, to go out.”

The rest of the service went on as if there had been no protest. White knelt and said fervent prayers. And the student body responded enthusiastically—sometimes with cheers, shouts, and hands-up worship.

At the end of the chapel, a weeping white man knelt and prayed, “Oh God! I don’t even know what happened! I do not know what to do! . . . I want you to move in a way that we can’t contain it, we can’t control it and we can’t manage it and we can’t contain it. So Lord, move. . .”

The service after chapel on Feb. 13 extended into the late afternoon for dozens of students, Cedars reported. That evening about 1,000 students returned to the chapel for prayer and worship. On Tuesday, the chapel went into class time. And on Wednesday, Cedarville President Thomas White urged students to evangelize neighboring campuses.

“Let’s tell them about Jesus,” White said. “And when the Lord does something great in our country, it’s going to cause an awakening and a revival on their campus, and it’s going to spread like wildfire.”

Two student groups reportedly responded to White’s appeal. A group of about 200 Cedarville students and members of a local church visited Ohio State University and shared their stories with the students there, The Christian Post (CP) reported. Another group of 14 students attended Michigan State University. Disciples told CP that “no salvation decisions were made” but “seeds were sown.”

Life on the Cedarville campus seemed more normal this week. Chapels ended on time. But some students gathered with President White Wednesday night “to bear testimony, pray, read the scriptures and worship God,” according to the university’s Facebook page.

I’m not a skeptic when it comes to resuscitation. I believe what happened and is happening in Asbury is a move of God. But I have concerns about what happened in Cedarville — or at least how those events unfolded.

The Asbury revival did not appear to be constructed or invented in any way. By all accounts, the chapel message that preceded Asbury’s revival was fairly mundane. No one came out at the end to pray or commit their lives to Christ. But as the students stayed and prayed, “an inexplicable, surreal peace settled over the room,” described The Atlantic.

It wasn’t until the impromptu service stretched into the evening that administrators and faculty formed an ad hoc revival committee — not to ignite events but to protect them, Christianity Today reported.

“We were just trying to keep up,” Sarah Thomas, Asbury’s dean of studies, told CT. ” . . . (People) appear and they desperately search for God. We’re just trying to stay alive and honor what’s happening.”

This is very different from the emotionally charged chapel service followed by a planned evening worship meeting that sparked the Cedarville “revival.”

Although White warned in chapel on February 13 that revival cannot be “made up” or “fake,” his actions were at least guiding and suggestive. Even more worryingly, White’s plea for a revival came as he tried to quell a student protest. This makes his actions appear particularly selfish.

Rather than calling the protesters’ concerns “rumor” and “sinful,” White should have listened to and prayed for survivors of sexual harassment and abuse. That would have shown the care and concern White had for him and his post-Title IX office. Instead, his actions conveyed that he and his government are dismissive, shameful, and unmusical.

White’s emotional performance at the chapel was reminiscent of his emotional apology three years ago when it was revealed he had hired a sexual predator. (This apology has since been removed from Cedarville’s website, but is included in a podcast I recorded on the subject.) Unfortunately, during his 2020 apology, White made claims that pastors close to the situation told me that they are obviously wrong. But people bought White’s apology because he delivered it so convincingly.

Throughout the 2020 debacle, White showed himself to be a master manipulator. And amazingly, his board voted to keep him even after an independent investigation found that White had withheld information from his board of trustees, though two trustees resigned in protest. If most people had been caught in the act of knowingly hiring a sex offender and lying about it, they would have been fired. But not white. he is so good

So I’m not surprised that the students responded to White’s requests last week. And I think God can still work in his mercy in the hearts of people – and he does it. But I hope those reporting and reading about recent events in Cedarville will look beyond the school’s social media posts and statements from the President to determine what is actually going on.

God does not use revival to serve our ministries or purposes. He uses revival to bring us and our ministries to serve him.

Meagan Saliashvili contributed to this article.

Julie Roys is a veteran investigative reporter and founder of The Roys Report. She also previously hosted a national talk show on the Moody Radio Network called Up for Debate and worked as a television reporter for a CBS affiliate. Her articles have appeared in numerous magazines.