IQALUIT, NU-Joe Pal has witnessed first-hand what most Christians seem to know little or nothing about-the charismatic revival that is underway in Canada’s far north.

After learning about what was going on there through his involvement with Prayer Canada, Pal knew he had to go and see it for himself. "I wanted to be around where the glory of God is coming down-and so I went there, and that’s what I saw," he says.

At a packed-out multi-denominational Bible conference in Iqaluit in April, he watched as several hundred young people accepted the preacher’s invitation to come and pray the sinner’s prayer.

"Then he invited the parents to come and hug their children and tell them they love them. And the parents did that," says Pal, a Vancouver-area realtor and longtime Baptist. "Many of the parents and the children were weeping their eyes out. There were parents hugging each other.

"It’s like there was a renewed bond with something they thought they had lost."

With mostly Inuit attending from across the Arctic, northern Quebec and even Greenland, the gathering may have been the largest the town of 6,000 has seen since Nunavut-of which Iqaluit is the capital-became a separate territory in 1999.

Roger Armbruster of the Maranatha Good News Centre in Niverville, Manitoba believes this phenomenon is God’s answer to the desperate prayers of a people ravaged by alcoholism, domestic violence, sexual abuse and rampant youth suicide. (In the early 1990s, one community of 1,000 endured one suicide a month for two years straight.)

"Many opened their hearts to the Holy Spirit to come and fill that spiritual vacuum that was in their lives," says Armbruster, who preaches in the north several times a year.

"They’ve seen Him bring restoration to so many families…who a few years ago were without hope."

Inuit are also drawn to Christianity because it affirms many of their cultural traditions, he says, including the importance of family and marriage as being between a man and a woman. "To be a Christian doesn’t mean that you give that up. You still retain your Inuit distinctiveness."

The result is an impact that is being felt well beyond the churches. "It has affected the whole society," Qikiqtarjuaq pastor Billy Arnaqaq told Canadian Press.

Every Nunavut community has been touched by revival, with some claiming that half their population have become Christians. Many elected officeholders are professing Christians, including several of the 19 members of the Nunavut legislature.

As the revival has spread, so too have calls to tear down the walls between churches and denominations, and create some sort of umbrella organization.

"I think what they’re hoping to see eventually is a unified Inuit voice among believers," says Armbruster. "It’s not something you can impose. It’s probably going to be an ongoing, fairly slow process."

Pal sees the Nunavut revival as a harbinger of what God has in mind for the rest of Canada.

"I believe that God’s going to honour the vision He gave our founding fathers to be a dominion under God from sea to sea. I don’t think that’s over," he says.

But Murray Moerman, the director of national church planting strategy for Outreach Canada in Delta, B.C., doubts the rest of Canada has reached the depth of despair that the people of Nunavut have experienced-at least not yet.

"Usually, desperation is a prerequisite for serious prayer and serious prayer is a prerequisite for revival," he says. "The south tends to place its confidence in education and social programs, rather than be desperate for God’s answers."

But Moerman also warns Christians not to ignore what God is doing in the North.

"I urge believers," he says, "to not be apathetic or critical of revival that touches down for a moment here and there in Canada, but to drink deeply of it and to be grateful to the Lord for it."