Few preachers sustained, from the same pulpit, for more than fifty years, crowds numbering in the thousands. Daniel Rowland was one of those rare cases: a young clergyman from rural Wales who became one of the central voices of the revival that changed the spiritual face of Wales.
Born around 1711 in Pantybeudy, in the parish of Nantcwnlle, Cardiganshire, he was the son of an Anglican clergyman. Ordained deacon in 1734 and priest in 1735, he began his ministry without deep spiritual conviction, known more for his natural liveliness than for pastoral zeal.
Around 1735, hearing Griffith Jones preach at Llandewi Brefi, Rowland was overcome by a deep conviction of sin. His preaching then took on a new urgency, dwelling so insistently on the holiness and judgment of God that a neighboring pastor warned him that he thundered the curses of the law so terribly that no one could bear to stand before him. Only with time did Rowland mature into a more balanced proclamation of grace in Christ.
In 1737 he met the lay evangelist Howell Harris, and the two joined forces to drive forward the Methodist revival in Wales. Together with the hymn writer William Williams, they helped organize local societies and, in January 1743, an association of regular meetings, moderated by George Whitefield, the embryo of Welsh Calvinistic Methodism.
The partnership with Harris, however, was not without friction: personal rivalries and Harris’s involvement with Sidney Griffith, a married woman to whom he began attributing prophetic gifts, led to a rupture between 1750 and 1752 that divided the movement for more than a decade. The two would reconcile in 1762, on the occasion of the new revival at Llangeitho, resuming their cooperation until Harris’s death in 1773.
As curate in Llangeitho for nearly his whole life, Rowland saw his church draw crowds from across the country on communion Sundays. The 1762 revival brought such intense physical manifestations, the so called “jumpers”, that English critics mocked the Welsh; Rowland retorted that if the Welsh were “jumpers”, the English were “sleepers”. Even so, he proved more restrained toward the excesses of the revival than either Harris or Whitefield.
In 1763, the bishop revoked his parish license, citing irregularities linked to preaching outside parish bounds. The faithful responded by building him a new chapel in Llangeitho, completed in 1764, to which nearly the entire congregation moved, consolidating the center of Welsh Methodism there.
Rowland remained in the same place for 55 years, training dozens of future pastors and influencing conversions such as that of Thomas Charles of Bala, a seed of what would become a missionary and biblical impulse of worldwide reach. He died in Llangeitho on 16 October 1790.
