Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Quiet Revival

More people have come to Christ in Boston in the last three decades than during the Great Awakening.

http://timothytennent.com/2011/10/17/the-quiet-revival/

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing this. Praise-worthy!

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  2. Thanks, Matt! Encouraging. :-)

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  3. Is that just Boston? I imagine the population of Boston now is greater than all the colonies combined. Is there a % breakout?

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  4. p90me,

    As of the 2011 census, Boston has 618,000 people. If you want to isolate the revival comparison to the relevent populations, Boston is a majority-minority city, with 54% (333,720) of its population classified as minority.

    Colonial demography is trickier, but some helpful statistics can be found in Herbert S. Klein, A Population History of the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). For example, on page 67 there is a bar graph with population estimates, per colony, for 1775. All of Massachusetts had roughly 250,000 people, with the total colonial population (from my rough tally of the bars) around 2,760,000. Earlier estimates for, say, 1740 put the total colonial population around 900,000 (US Census, Series Z-19).

    I wish I could do a more thorough job, but now I have to turn my attention to less interesting subjects.

    If you want more relevant statistics, you should go ahead and ask Tennent on his blog. As a scholar in the field (of missiology), he has access to all the relevant materials and sources.

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