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We're used to hearing complaints that secular commentators have a difficult time understanding religion, but no less obvious is the chasm that separates different styles of Christian belief and worship. Many Christians, who would be quick to rally against the atheistic attacks of a Richard Dawkins, are themselves perplexed by charismatic or Pentecostal traditions: witness the controversies over Sarah Palin's faith in the 2008 presidential election. When they encounter the idea that prophecy and charismatic gifts are widely accessible in the modern world, it's not only outspoken liberal Christians who readily resort to familiar "Holy Roller" stereotypes of gullibility, chicanery, and mental derangement. Evangelicals also have their doubts.

Doubts about continuing prophecy are nothing new in the church, and at least since the time of the Montanists in the early second century, they have repeatedly spawned schisms. In modern history, though, a defining moment occurred at the start of the 18th century with the affair of the so-called French Prophets. It was three hundred years ago, in fact, that Western Christians drew sharp battle lines that in broad terms survive today. In 1709, the English religious world was defined by three-sided debates between moderate Christians, charismatics, and secularist liberals, and their exchanges look uncannily modern. Those struggles—and the profound ill feeling they engendered—reverberated through the great revivals of the 18th and 19th centuries in both the British Isles and North America. The affair of the French Prophets has an excellent claim to mark the beginning of modern religious discourse in the English-speaking world.

The story of the Prophets is an aftermath of the great religious wars of the 16th century. By 1598, the Catholic party secured its hold on France but granted generous toleration to the Protestants—the Huguenots—through the royal Edict of Nantes. In 1685, however, the French king Louis XIV was determined to prove his Catholic credentials by formally revoking the edict and unleashing a savage persecution. In 1702, some radical Protestants, ensconced in the mountains of southern France, organized the desperate and bloody rebellion of the Camisards. Hundreds of thousands of Protestant refugees were soon dispersed over the lands of Protestant Europe.

As a thriving commercial center, London was a particular magnet for French refugees, who built a thriving culture there, complete with their own churches. But besides the sober Calvinists, there were also millenarian preachers who believed that King Louis's persecutions were a sign of the end times. In the present apocalyptic age, they believed, signs and wonders were becoming common: toddlers reputedly preached; the dead were raised; the sick were healed. Believers spoke in strange tongues; hearers swooned and went into ecstasies. The London stories of 1707 and 1708 harked back to the Book of Acts, but also foreshadowed the American revivals of 1740 or 1798. Soon, English converts like John Lacy carried on the work of the French pioneers and spread the movement to provincial cities. The apocalyptic revival created a public sensation and drew massive attention from the print media, which were expanding rapidly. Believers' "agitations, ecstasies, and inspirations" were discussed in newspapers and magazines and have left a rich legacy in pamphlet literature, broadsides, and cartoons. The Prophets were early stars of a burgeoning celebrity culture.

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