More Thoughts on Renewals

"Despite the ecumenical vision of the Catholic Apostolic church, which may be judged exceptional by virtually any standard, in practice and in fellowship they moved toward exclusivism as the years went by....From time to time the ecumenical vision would reassert itself....But in practice, the ecumenical motif found only sporadic and largely theoretical expression. The surviving remnant of the Catholic Apostolic church remained in the clutch of a stultifying exclusivism." -Larry Christenson

This is a quote from an essay on the Catholic Apostolic Church by Larry Christenson in Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins, edited by Vinson Synan in 1975. The CAC, also known as the Irvingites, was the result of a renewal that began in Scotland in the 1830's. It included manifestations such as tongues, prophecy, and healing. The CAC also used a fixed liturgy, and its leadership consisted of both charismatic offices (apostles and prophets) and more traditional offices (bishops). It faded away roughly around 1900, and is the mostly forgotten forerunner of the Pentecostal movement.

My concern in this entry is the reoccurring movement in renewals from the inclusive to the exclusive. In its beginning, the CAC attracted Christians from across all denominational lines. But as it grew, the institutional authorities became alarmed, and eventually excommunicated its leader, Edward Irving. Over a period of time, the CAC began to see itself as a persecuted remnant, and assumed a "defensive posture against 'Babylon'."

The American Pentecostal movement of 1901 followed the same pattern. The Azuza Street revival was interracial and included all classes. One of its goals was to "bring unity and union to Christians everywhere." But as the movement grew and hardened, "the pentecostals rejected society because they believed it to be corrupt... while society rejected the pentecostals because it believed them to be insanely fanatical, self-righteous, doctrinally in error, and emotionally unstable." (Kilian McDonnell, The Baptism of the Holy Spirit as an Ecumenical Problem. Quoted by Christenson)

The Charismatic movement, which began @1957, brought the pentecostal experience into respectability, and was a phenomenon in both the middle and upper classes, attracting professionals and educated Christians. Its early leaders were from the high churches, mostly Episcopalians. The old Logos Journal, the first slick-back magazine of the movement, was full of articles written by the Sherrills, the Bennetts, the Scovalls, all Anglicans. Larry Christenson, whose article I am quoting, was a Lutheran clergyman. The first charismatic leader who prayed for me was Fr. Norm Scovall, an Episcopal Benedictine monk, who wandered onto our college campus wearing a clergy collar and a brown cassock, cincture and all. All those folks embraced their liturgy and found new power in it through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. I even remember a time when the Roman congregation in my town would sing in the Spirit when the priest raised the host! For a few brief years there was a convergence of ancient and renewed Christianity without any sense of contradiction.

But whether the new wine could not stay in old wineskins, or rejection and persecution brought a reaction, the Charismatic movement, with a few exceptions, has forgotten its own roots. When it left the walls of denominational churches, it became solidly anti-liturgical and anti-ritual. "Religion" has become the enemy, meaning that which was practiced by the movement's founders. The same pattern of renewals is clear here: from the inclusive to the exclusive. Let me now offer some summary thoughts:

1) This pattern is "normal" in church history. "The pattern of ecumenism leading to exclusivism is not inherent in pentecostal Christianity as such; it is simply the way things have gone with charismatic movements, dating back to one of the very first charismatic renewals, namely the Montanists." Christenson goes on to say the reaction to Montanism was so severe that the church has never recovered a balance or a willingness to bring charismatic expression into the full life of the church, equating spiritual gifts with doctrinal error. The result for the renewalists has been a "remnant" mentality--exclusivism.

2) No doubt the renewals of Hezekiah and Josiah produced a backlash from the established priestly leadership. Jesus certainly threatened the entrenched religious leaders of his day. It is the nature of renewals to force the powers that be out of neutrality. Renewals cost something--in reputation or even in livelihood. God seems to get something out of shaking the established church (in recent history, about every fifty years). He apparently enjoys the discomfiture of the pompous. Renewals give the church an opportunity to laugh at herself. They are, well, fun.

3) When a renewal loses its ecumenical vision, it stunts its own growth by cutting itself off from its own historic life springs. There is more to church life than the Baptism and gifts of the Spirit. There is thought (theology), there is worship (ritual), and there is a surrounding society (social justice). That is why I am hopeful about the emergent movement--it is a renewal that contains within itself much more than the exclusive renewalist emphasis on the Holy Spirit and experience alone. It is broader.

4) Sometimes renewals (and even churches) need to die. When they outlive their usefulness they stagnate. I love the old CAC because they chose to do exactly that. Prophecies began to come forth in their midst to die out--to appoint no more leaders after a certain time. There were prophecies that God would do a greater work--their dying would become a seed:

"In 1901, the last of the original leaders of the CAC died, portending a dying out of the movement itself. Yet in that very expectation of death there was a new hope.... That same year, halfway around the world, in a little Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, a faint offstage melody was heard. A group of students prayed for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit; one of them began to speak in tongues. The melody spread to Houston, Texas, then to Los Angeles. It had a familiar lilt...." (Christenson)

(Picture: Edward Irving, founder of the CAC)

Precipice

Anne is away, and I am reading the prophet Jeremiah. Maybe not a good thing to do alone. Anyway, one theme is clear in the prophet: because Israel rejected God as their father and lawgiver, God turned them over to other gods, including the gods that they worshipped in their syncretistic religion. I hate being so simplistic, but that's how things work.

If the demographics hold, Europe will have a Moslem majority within twenty-five years. She has rejected the God of the two testaments and opted for secular humanism. The England of Richard, Magna Carta, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Milton, Elizabeth, Shakespeare, Charles II (the merry one), and the Glorious Revolution, is awash with minarets. According to the cardinal rule of secular democracies (“we are the world”) she has welcomed the wolves in with the sheep, and cannot make the philosophical shift to stop the flow. Secular democracies are suicidal. But, according to Jeremiah, that is how things work.

What about the United States? The shift from the God of the two testaments to secular humanism is obvious, but the demographics aren’t quite as bleak. It’s possible that a new series of 9/11’s could force us to compromise (remember “peace with honor?”). In our new openness to welcome all gods, we may find ourselves ruled by one of them.

Of course the exegetical question of parallel arises. Is the United States the new Israel, or do Jeremiah’s warnings apply only to the church? I am still working on that one. The culture founded by the early Puritans was certainly self-consciously Christian. How much their covenant with God is still binding is a debate that may never end. My guess is that God does not as easily change His mind about agreements as we do.

There remains the question of the church as a parallel to Jeremiah’s Israel. This is dangerous ground, because I am a fallen man, given to being far too critical, and it would be easy to single out Catholics, liberals, dispensationalists, or somebody else I choose to dislike to blame for the fall of good old fashioned Calvinistic Americanism. That is too simplistic.

On the other hand, there are sins in the church. The church failed twice to stand for racial equality in our culture. Rosenstock stated somewhere that the humanists in America have out-humanized the Christians. This is true. The church in our culture has been a keeper of the status quo rather than a forerunner into new territory. There are also the prevailing sins of legalism and division that I wrote about in the series on Decadence and the Word (Dec 2009).

But I don’t want to go on a witch hunt for some specific wickedness. What troubles me is that the church--at least the “conservative” church--does not seem to be in a repentant mood. She is angry at losing hegemony culturally and politically. She is pointing the finger at the secular powers and blaming them for the dawning precipice. She doesn’t seem to be able to face the future without fear. Introspection has been drowned by eschatological escapism. I have a couple of responses to this:

1) Things change. In the Old Testament, when empires changed, when invasions occurred, the “sun was darkened, the moon turned to blood, and the stars fell from heaven.” Every few hundred years fault lines appear in history and things crack and heave, and an era ends to give way to a new one. God and history don’t mingle too well with comfort.

2)The church is in the center of God’s heart and all of history revolves around her. Events take place for her sake. Hard times and the collapse of eras strengthen her. When the lights come back on in a culture, the church always shines the brightest. And each time she is more humble and wiser. I love the story of T’ruth, the genetic turtle girl in Cordwainer Smith’s science fiction work The Rediscovery of Man. She guards and nurses the wisest man in the world in a time of storms and chaos, until he is needed again. She wears two crossed pieces of wood around her neck, and is a follower of the forbidden religion of the God Hung High. An allegory: truth guards wisdom until it is again needed by the world. That’s the mission of the church in history, and that, my friends, is exciting.

Bene soi La'Tenel

The word that God is punishing Haiti because they have a voodoo pact with the devil is already out. I don't know whether to cry or scream. God's business is His business, as he directs the nations through history. My business is to do what is under my nose, conditioned by three truths: 1) There are many many sweet Christian people buried under the rubble of Port-au-Prince. 2) Because a man is God's enemy does not mean I am to treat him as mine. 3) The best way to convince an "enemy of God" of the love of Jesus is to clothe him and feed him. Give me a break.

Go, and Sin No More

I heard Chuck Porta teach a few weeks ago on the story of the Woman Taken in Adultery in John 8. His approach to verse 10, "Go, and sin no more," was unusual. He reviewed the classic interpretation-- "Look at all I've done for you. I will give my life for you, and on that basis I forgive you. Now, don't you dare go and do this again, or else. You have been fairly warned." Porta rejected that interpretation as being out of sync with the atmosphere of the rest of the story. Jesus did not humble the Pharisees only to revive their attitude.

Instead, Porta suggested we take the phrase as a breathing into the woman of the power to obey--spoken not harshly, but with great compassion, equivalent to "Be healed!" or "Be free!" or "Be loosed!" It was a benediction, not a curse. It contained within it the "Let there be..." of the creative Logos. The phrase was not an external principle to be obeyed, but a transforming internal authority to be a new person.

Porta's exegesis moved me deeply, not only because it deepened my knowledge of Jesus, but because it was a perfect example of the power of the Word versus the Decadent use of the Word. Attitude is everything. The Decadent use of the word demands that Jesus ultimately side with the Pharisees; legitimate use of the Word breathes life and a new beginning through every phrase. God, grant us the grace to use the Word as light and freedom!

(Picture: Guercino, 1621)

Wishing

Oh how we need one another! It has struck me lately that the shifts and stresses in contemporary church life are creating reactions and retrenchments, cries to return to the old ways without discerning that our approach to the old ways are precisely the problem. Liturgists want a more pure liturgy, and in the process exclude a greater number of worshippers. Social action Christians want more equality and justice, and in the process continue to open old sores and stir the same resentments. Evangelicals cry for more of the Word, not realizing that unless our use of the Word changes, legalism and division will continue to increase. And my own people, the charismatics, are yearning for another great renewal, unaware that renewals will not correct bad theology, nor will they change the fact that men live in a ritualistic world. It is as if each emphasis is stuck in its own history and trying to shout the old words more loudly to drown out the fear of the unknown world to come.

How sure we are of how God will move in history! And yet how can we not wish? I wish for a day when each emphasis shouts the word of its fellows more loudly than its own. I wish for a time when men look back to our day and call it the era of the Great Humility.

(Picture: Roman Church, San Juan, PR)