Tucker Carlson's Plans to Visit Ongoing Revival at Asbury Derailed by Unexpected Phone Call
It takes a lot for a church service to make the news — but that’s exactly what’s happened at small Asbury University in Kentucky, where a spontaneous revival on campus has been going on for almost two weeks now.
Given the amount of publicity that the overflow crowds of students and others who have joined in, the cynical among us might think this was just a grift — a clever way for a young spiritual leader to make a name for himself, say, or a ploy to get money.
It’s natural to have these kind of thoughts — but what representatives from the university told Fox News’ Tucker Carlson on the phone is an object lesson in how that isn’t the case.
On his show last week, Carlson interviewed the student body president and was so taken with the events that had transpired that he planned to travel to the Wilmore, Kentucky, campus.
Then came the call from the school: Thanks, really, but it would be better if you didn’t come.
Let Carlson explain: After the interview, he said those on the show “found ourselves still thinking about it. We didn’t fully understand what was happening at Asbury, and we don’t really understand it now.
“We’re not sure anyone does understand it,” he continued. “But whatever is going on seemed wonderful — seemed like the sort of thing we badly need more of.”
Thus came the decision to visit. “And then this morning, a remarkable thing happened: We got a call from Asbury University asking us not to come.
“It’s not personal, they said — they like our show. But the ongoing service at Asbury is purely spiritual — it’s got nothing to do with politics or business.
“No one there is making money from it or planning a run for office. It’s mostly just young people worshiping God — young people finding meaning and answers in a country that increasingly doesn’t offer much of either.”
Carlson wasn’t offended. In fact, he said “we deeply respected it.”
“When you work in television, you run into a lot of people who want publicity,” he said. “You almost never meet anyone who doesn’t want publicity. And when you do meet people who don’t want publicity, they’re either doing something wrong or — in the rarest of all cases — they’re doing right. Something so right and so beautiful and so true that media coverage can’t enhance it; it can only detract from it.”
In Carlson’s prior interview with Alison Perfater, the Asbury student body president, he said, “The good news [about the revival] is a lot of people are starting to think about what happens when you die, and they’re becoming much more interested in the spiritual life, which has been basically extinguished in the public square for a long time.”
Perfater told Carlson that the revival, which began at Feb. 8 student chapel service that simply didn’t end — and continues to draw overflow crowds — was based in part off of “a theme or a Bible Verse that we’ve all been sharing with each other” from Habbakuk 1.
In it, the Lord says, “Look at the nations and watch, for I am doing something in your day that you wouldn’t believe if you were told.”
Watch this and tell me that’s not true at Asbury:
Today is the eighth day of a spontaneous rival service at Asbury University in Wilmore, Ky. Thousands have come from all over the country to be part of this. The response has been so overwhelming, the university has had to open overflow rooms in other chapels on campus. #WKYT pic.twitter.com/9N7nM5Jd7t
— Chad Hedrick (@ChadHedrickWKYT) February 15, 2023
But yet, they don’t this to be a spectacle. From all appearances, this isn’t about a huckster or a charismatic leader with a flair for publicity. It’s about the Lord. And they’d like it to stay that way.
“God bless them for turning us down,” Carlson said in closing. We couldn’t agree more.
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