Ravished by the Spirit is a sympathetic yet critical account of the profound effect of Nova Scotia preacher Henry Alline and his New Light disciples on the nineteenth-century evangelical ethos of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and neighbouring New England. Alline's pietistic and mystical gospel was influential on the Free Will and Calvinist Baptist Churches and also gave shape and substance to the region's revivalistic tradition. In this provocative discussion of various religious revivals, the author argues that at the heart of these significant social movements lay a collective yearning for intimacy and a desparate search for meaningful relationships.

Rawlyk sees the Baptists of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick as reaching their zenith during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He makes some controversial comments on the differences between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Baptists of both the present and past century.

Ravished by the Spirit does not deal merely with a distnt historical past but raises some fundamental and disconcerting questions about the vulnerability of the Baptist denomination in contemporary Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.