When a Coal Miner's Chapel Shook with Song

In November 1904, twenty-six-year-old Evan Roberts stood before seventeen people in a small chapel in Loughor, Wales. He had no sermon prepared, no grand program. He simply asked them to do what Psalm 95 commands — to bow before the Lord their Maker with honest, unguarded hearts. What happened next stunned the nation. Those seventeen became hundreds, then thousands. Coal miners emerged from the pits and went straight to chapel, their faces still black with dust, singing hymns in four-part harmony that rattled the rafters.…