Pentecostalism

in this lecture we're looking at the rise of Pentecostalism as it came into its full flowering in the early 1900s and its impact on the 20th century church and the interesting thing about Pentecostalism is that it is both unique and very familiar to us it's unique in the fact that it really comes out of nowhere at least in terms of the popular understanding of the rise of the Pentecostals as well as within Pentecostalism and the charismatic renewal movements their own self-identity is often very much wrapped up in the idea that they have recovered something new and that the movement itself is really there in the 20th century so Pentecostalism is unique is worth pointing out there were no Pentecostals on the Mayflower there were no Pentecostals that sign the Declaration of Independence and there were no Pentecostals in the Civil War kind of Castle ISM then and the charismatic movement that comes out of it really does reside in the 20th century and so we can affirm that it is a unique thing however for all of us newness for all of its uniqueness the 20th century experience Pentecostalism still feels very familiar to anyone who is at least aware or who participates in the Christian Church today and they are familiar of course because there's a numerous today Pentecostals and charismatics number about five hundred million Christians around the world and that is to say nothing of those who are sympathetic to the charismatic perspective on the Christian life though they themselves might not identify as charismatic of the five hundred million two hundred and seventy-nine are Pentecostal and we'll get into the distinction between Pentecostal and charismatic here in a minute but with those numbers the Pentecostal and charismatic movement and those who identify as adherence to this brand of Christianity to this brand of evangelicalism this means a staggeringly large number of those who are Christian in the world identify in some way as being charismatic or Pentecostal and so what we're going to do in this lecture is talk about how Pentecostalism came about what were the impulses and the threads that led to the Pentecostal movement then what transitioned into the charismatic movement what were the changes there and then we're going to say a few things with a nomenclature and how we describe all these various events now we need to be very clear here describing Pentecostal isms history is a great deal easier than trying to describe Pentecostalism or the charismatic movement today as we just mentioned trying to sum up 500 million different people around the world with different languages and different instincts is simply impossible there is nothing that unifies them necessarily other than their commitment to some of the essentials of gifts emotionalism speaking in tongues at times praying for and seeking after miracles and divine healings and a number of different things but here's the thing you can find all types of folks that break every mould that you're going to place on top of Pentecostalism or the charismatic faith frankly just as you think you have a single definition well there comes along another group or another person who simply doesn't live by those standards so what we're doing here is discussing more of the historical backdrop how these things come about and what were the principal players and the main themes in the history of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements now we should begin with some definitions what we're going to do is we're going to talk about the three waves or as I'm going to say potentially the fourth wave of the charismatic or Pentecostal movements and then what we're going to do is going to go through them specifically and put some feet under them and talk about the individuals and the groups that are involved with each of these waves but we should say at the outset that we have to realize that because historians and Pentecostals themselves describe these three different waves describe these different brackets of the movement itself that should tell you that there is a great deal of diversity within the heritage in the history of Pentecostalism and charismatic faith trying to say that while all charismatic SAR this not you agree with it or not or that Pentecostals or this again very very difficult in the context of the historical record because what we have here are a number of different impulses a number of different instincts and things go in different directions so just a word of caution but be careful here what we're doing is providing some nomenclature and some structure to a very amorphous movement but that should not be read as ironclad straightjacket systems as if any of these folks too simply will not agree three waves does not mean three denominations rather it means three unique periods of time where we see an out flowing of Pentecostal faith and then later the charismatic faith now you probably realize at this point that I keep distinguishing between Pentecostal and charismatic well that is actually part of the story you see because in the first wave what we have is the wave that we call classic Pentecostalism classic Pentecostalism is right there in the early 1900's it's a movement that again gets going in fits and starts it began predominantly with preaching on the book of Acts the focus on Pentecost hence the name Pentecostalism and a desire born in part by the realities of the modern world and the Darwinian revolution certain Christians began to feel that something had been lost that they needed to recover the miraculous and the powerful message that we see in the book of Acts now this raises an interpretive issue of course in the history of the church the church had by large seeing the book of Acts not as prescriptive but as descriptive that is to say the church looked at the book of Acts as the story of how the church itself unfolded through the Ministry of the Apostles the eyewitnesses so obviously they don't separate the church from the book of Acts but you don't see a movement throughout most of church history for people to apply the book of Acts in their life in their day as something that is mandatory it is a description of what was happening in the first century not a prescription as to what should happen in every century thereafter so the first wave is again very focused in the book of Acts it's typically focused on revivalism which will say more about in just a second it's also very much of angelical the unique feature of Pentecostalism in this first wave though in the early 1900s is that these are the years of segregation Plessy versus Ferguson and the Jim Crow laws and we're going to look at those features within the story of the American church in our next lecture on the black church and the civil rights movement but you have to realize that Pentecostalism comes within a world that is very much racially divided and this is important to note because Pentecostalism is radically desegregated in fact many of the initial attacks on Pentecostalism particularly with Azusa Street we're voiced not so much by principled theologians or pastors but by the news outlets in the media who beat them up because there was a black pastor leading a mixed congregation and this of course was seen as unseemly and in some cases against the law so we're going to tell that story more in-depth ly here in a second but we have to realize that in the first wave it's very difficult at times to parse out the attack on Pentecostalism by some as whether it was biblically motivated or motivated by racism and the important feature of this movement again is that it mostly reaches out to poor illiterate or under educated folks from a wide variety of backgrounds and ethnicities and languages and that this first Pentecostal movement was you might say an extension and this is important an extension of the ongoing unfolding of the world after the Great Awakenings movement this is something that's frankly not always understood or appreciated the fact the matter is is that this speaking of tongues or ecstatic worship really emotional revivalism is not something that starts in the 20th century it did not start with Azusa Street as we've seen over the years over the decades in fact going back to the mid 1700s there are already very emotional pretty ecstatic utterances and expressions of a revivalist Experion the new world this is only intensified in the Second Great Awakening with a Ministry of the Wesleyan --zz and the Methodists and the Baptist's frankly if you go back and look at the accounts of the Second Great Awakening it's very difficult times to tell the difference between those revivals and some of the things that you see in the first wave of Pentecostalism so we have to stop saying that Pentecostalism merely began in the 20th century rather what Pentecostalism is in this first wave is an intensification of some of those revival istic elements that had been part and parcel of the american church experience almost from the very beginning certainly ever since the dissenting groups came over and began to take root here in America so one of the things we'll talk about in a second is that as OU's the street actually looks very much like a Quaker service it did not happen in a vacuum so that's the first wave now the first wave is very much maligned very much attacked it is not embraced by the mainline more established denominations in fact it is very much shunned now by and large this first wave of Pentecostalism occurs in areas where those old mainline denominations really don't have a great deal of presence so the animosity was more in print you might say and he can only imagine that in particular those back on the East Coast hearing stories of these revivals in LA and in Texas and other places really let their mind wander is what was going on the second wave of this movement happens a number of decades after and it is in this second wave that we have what we call the charismatic renewal movement the charismatic renewal movement is called that by historians because what we're dealing with here is not a more structured organizational movement as we see in the first wave and again we're going to uncover a bit of that about the first wave in a minute and look at some of those denominations but what happens in the second wave is you begin to see predominantly white denominations and mainline denominations begin to experience some of the same things that we saw in the Pentecostal awakenings several decades before you begin to see it in university settings and Theological traditions of all kinds what happens here is really a bridge then the difference between a Pentecostal and charismatic is really a matter of where their membership you might say is one is a Pentecostal when you are a part of a Pentecostal denomination where the entire ethos and structure of your Christian life and your worship and the church that you attend is purposely Pentecostal now it may not have that name but it is certainly part of a denominational structure those who are charismatic though very often are people who will attend any number of different churches even in a number of cases Roman Catholic churches and yet they will embody and take into their own identity some of these elements that we see in the Pentecostal movement so we see Lutheran's and Presbyterians and Methodists and Baptists all experiencing some level of this charismatic outpouring so when we say charismatic can we talk about the second wave what we're talking about again are the main lines the major denominations and we're looking at charismatic faith here more as an additive not to be pejorative but an additive to what people already were most of these people will remain theologically in ecclesia logically that is to say their position on the Bible on their faith on theology and on what church they attend may remain entirely the same but what has changed is they're beginning to embody and embrace some of these Pentecostal ideals and some of these more emotional responses that do or do not come with spiritual gifts now one of the main differences that you can use to remember the difference is that because Pentecostalism the first wave comes out of the renewal and revival movements the holiness movements of the 1800s very often when you see a Pentecostal Church particularly in the first half of the 20th century they look very much like a Holiness Church you have for example prohibitions against makeup very much looks at times like a fundamentalist Holiness type experience and in a sense it's not entirely different from what we saw again throughout the 1800s it's an intensification of those movements for sure but the Pentecostal movement did not drop out of thin air rather it is part of the unfolding of the holiness movement when you get to the charismatic renewal movement though you may or may not have people who look like they participate in a holiness tradition they could again look very much like a mainline person they could be genteel they could be well-educated all these hoity-toity things but they have embraced the charismatic renewal movement or at least some of these elements into their own identity but because they are tied to other denominations and churches and traditions they don't look in the charismatic movement or the renewal movement very much like the holiness movements of the first wave thirdly there is what we call the neo charismatic movement which arose in the 1980s and carries on down until today this is the third wave it's also called the wave of signs and wonders now it's important to note most of us if we are not charismatic or if we were not raised Pentecostal our only exposure to this movement comes from this third wave it comes from neo charismatic expressions that again have been around since the 1980s well from a purely historical lens that is a bit like trying to describe Luther and Lutheranism in the 16th century by attending a German Lutheran Church and Lake woebegone it's just simply is not going to be the case you have a great deal of change that has happened now throughout the 20th century that is a pretty rapid change that happens you go from holiness movements very much no makeup very much about sanctification repentance and the outpouring of the gifts too frankly some of the more excessive things that we do see in the third wave things like televangelists people that seem to have gone the opposite direction from the holiness movement in terms of their makeup use and those who begin to tout not just the desire to live out the book of Acts but a rather excessive at times appeal to the miraculous to the ecstatic and in particular to the frequent predictions about the coming of Christ but here too even in the third wave it still is very much an unfolding or even you might say a further intensifying of the revival spirit that we saw all the way back in the 1800s it is very modern it's very showy it has new things that were never there before the ability to reach around the world with your message these types of things but the signs and wonders movement the third wave changes some of the elements at the core of what it meant to be Pentecostal and we'll describe that here in just a minute so those are the three main waves now one of the things I want to talk about this briefly is the fact that some historians have noticed what they call a fourth wave now unfortunately we're still in this wave so it's a bit difficult to determine all of its limits and boundaries and definitions but there has arisen within those who are Pentecostal and charismatic an increased desire for intellectual credibility thoughtfulness the writing of books that are more than just practical memoirs a real substantive change that we're seeing in Pentecostal and charismatic influenced universities in academic settings you're seeing a maturing in some ways of bringing together a head and heart within those who are charismatic and Pentecostal that had not really been part of the movements from the very beginning now that's not to say that they were dumb that's not what we're saying what we're saying is that there's an increased thoughtfulness an increased deepening of what their tradition is and historians have begun to talk about the fourth wave but again not everyone agrees with this and not everyone knows what this even means but there are changes afoot okay so let's go through these three waves and tell the story of the Pentecostal and charismatic movements first and foremost it's too often said and it's said in just about every text book possible that the Pentecostal faith gets going in Azusa Street Azusa Street happens and lo and behold we have Pentecostals springing up everywhere oh the fact the matter is that's not the case it's not the case for two reasons one we've already said these movements these revivals the ecstatic experiences have been there at least for a century so in general we can't talk about Azusa Street as the kind of chasm that separates this new Pentecostalism from everything else that had gone before the other thing is is that as Sousa Street and those involved there had learned their faith had learned this theology from other people now there are Inklings here and there even as far back as the 1700s of folks who get very much wrapped up in ecstatic emotional worship there are occurrences in Wales over in the UK there is a man by the name of Edward Irving for example who lived from 1792 to 1834 it was a bit rowdy and he talked a great deal about Holy Spirit healings and these types of things but we don't want to create too long with genealogy here we have to be careful there are folks that are in different pockets of both the UK and in America but that doesn't mean that they're all connected but in terms of the rise of Pentecostalism in the context of the states there's a man by name of Charles Fox poem Charles lived from 1873 to 1929 and Charles really is the godfather of the Pentecostal faith in his early years in his formative years he had actually married a Quaker and for a number of years this was his context now the Quakers of course were very much a part of the revival movements and really their worship had a certain number of contours to it for example anti-authoritarianism there is no single pastor that runs a Quaker Church that took away some of the boundaries that you might have found in another church to something like Pentecostalism well Charles eventually began to ministry of his own and he looks very much in his early mystery like any other revival preacher that had gone before him he preaches revival he preaches emotionalism but he does two things that are very unique first and foremost Charles begins to minister to the poor and the undereducated in particular he ministers to poor African Americans now freed after the civil war now we have to be careful here he does do this with a certain amount of Christian grace however Charles was also a firm believer and some rather let's just say interesting ideas about the creation of whites over against every other race he actually believed that on the sixth day God created all the races except for the whites and that on the eighth day I guess he felt like they needed to be another day tacked on but on the eighth day Charles believe that God created white people oh yeah well Charles has a certain bent towards ministering to those who were poor and african-americans in particular but he's doing so obviously from a somewhat unique reading of Genesis and eventually this will by the way lead to the fallout between the Azusa Street people and Charles but Charles begins to minister in a pluralistic multi-ethnic context he's an equal opportunist he also administers for a while in Texas where he ministers to Mexican Americans and immigrants as well as to the white poor so the first context that Charles brings is a multi-ethnic mixed congregation experience in the context of his revivals now again that's not entirely unique rather what you see again is an intensification of that ideal that had been there from the Second Great Awakening with the Methodists and others doing a modest amount of mixing of different races in their congregations or in the big tent revivals the other thing that Charles does is he connects the idea of speaking in tongues from the book of Acts from Acts to with the baptism of the holy spirit now let's be clear here historically in the church those two things have been kept separate the church had almost always embraced the idea that the baptism of the Spirit related to our salvation that it related to the applying of the work of Christ and Paul does this he talks about in our conversion when we can to Christ the spirit came in to us and cried Abba Father and numerous places in Paul and elsewhere in the New Testament the coming of the Spirit is part and parcel to salvation and to conversion and so to say that you are baptized in the spirit was for nearly the entirety of the church's history synonymous with being born again or being converted what Charles does is he takes the idea of the baptism of the Spirit he takes that jargon and he ties it up with a speaking of tongues so you might say that he separated the work of Christ from the work of the Spirit Christ has saved us he has justified as he certainly believes in that but all the activity of the Spirit Charles will say is more in the context of worship sanctification and in particular things like speaking in tongues etc now I labor at this point because if there's any Achilles heel over the years it's this one for both Pentecostal and charismatic renewal movements it is an ambiguity as to where the work of Christ for salvation ends and what the role the Spirit is separating the work of the Spirit from the application of Christ's work for us for salvation too often makes the Holy Spirit kind of isolated off to the side and it makes him simply part of worship itself or only the speaking in tongues and therefore when passages that talk about how all Christians have the spirit when those are read in this interpretive model too often winds up happening as people say well if you don't speak in tongues then you're not really Christian then you haven't really taken that further step again that's an Achilles heel it's a pitfall I always say all traditions have pitfalls and excesses that they can fall into and this tends to be one that we see in Pentecostalism or the charismatic movement it's an ambiguity about the relationship of the work of Christ to the work of the Spirit well Charles Fox poem is again a very influential man on his own but he's most influential because he ends up being a teacher and then a disciple ER for William J Seymour Williams J Seymour was a son of a former slave he had contracted smallpox and lost the use of an eye in fact one of the slanderous things that the LA Times writes about his later ministry is that he is that one-eyed Negro who is leading a mixed congregation very much a racist rant against them but Seymour had heard of the teaching of Charles and he went to study under him for a while it that ends up in Texas where he is preaching revival and many of the same things that were very much used to from the whole in his tradition now it's important to note here Seymour has fully bought into the ideas that Charles has espoused about speaking in tongues as the sign of actual faith as a sign of being baptized in the spirit for all of us talk about it at this point and he preached on it pretty much every week Seymour at this point has not yet experienced these manifestations of the spirits work still though he gets a bit of a famous name for this in Texas and there is a woman who has come to Texas to visit family Julia Hutchins and she attends his sermon and she goes back to her home city of La out in California and she tells the story of Seymour as this wonderful preacher who ought to be invited out to do a series of sermons and a revival they are in LA Seymour then is eventually invited and actually Charles Fox parem pays some of the money to send him on and so in 1906 William Seymour heads out to LA and he begins to preach and the response is overwhelming but it is also met with racist resistance now the Azusa Street revival zazz they'll eventually be known is a bit of a misnomer it actually begins in a church but eventually the elders of that church Pat locked the door and they say that his preaching is a bit extreme the movement then moves to a house it becomes a Bible study but there are numerous tales of hundreds of people trying to get into this house to be part of the preaching and the revivals that are associated with seymour at some point along the way Seymour does himself experienced the speaking of tongues and the baptism of the Spirit that he sought and that he had preached so fervently in the end they do move to a ramshackled space that have been used for a number of manufacturing ventures there in the poor part of LA and it's that third step that is at Azusa Street so the Azusa Street revival z' lasts from 1906 to 1915 and they become really a national sensation they make all kinds of headlines and there are a number of different elements to it that people found crazy but here's the thing most of the people who came to chronicle these events in particular the journalists a man from the LA Times for example often themselves were not part of a hole in his tradition so what they were witnessing was actually again pretty common in terms of the revivalism of their own day but of course this was also intensified to a certain extent but to those who were coming from the outside looking in this was crazy but also as we said there is a racist element here because see more in particular very very conscientiously embraces white leadership white congregants as well as others and the mixture of those who are attending include Asians Latinos African Americans whites poor rich and everything in between it is a real melting pot you might say and so what happens just as frequently is the Azusa Street revival --zz have a double whammy you might say because for example the LA Times journalist who comes to Chronicle this both does not know what he's looking at in terms of church revivals but he's also scandalized by what he called the Negro leadership of this movement that has all these different races mingling he was appalled racially well the Azusa Street revival really is one of the epicenters one of the touchstones of that first wave coming out of this and other impulses towards revivalism and the speaking in tongues you have formed all types of different denominations we have the holiness Pentecostal church formed in 1911 the Assemblies of God formed in 1914 the Foursquare gospel movement which is often very much synonymous that name the Foursquare gospel with Pentecostalism well that movement was started in 1923 the Church of God of Prophecy again a very influential very large Pentecostal denomination today got going as well in the early 1900s so the first Pentecostal movement is very much tied up with racism the Jim Crow laws as well as an intensification of the revival movement in the holiness movement what happens though in the second wave as we've already said is you see whites and the elite and the wealthy around different parts of the country begin to manifest some of the same realities that we saw in places like Azusa Street so in 1960 for example in demand eyes in California there is an Episcopal Church that experiences many of the same phenomenon and this too is covered by the times and by Newsweek and other magazines you also see major universities and the Ivy League's and the campus ministries on these campuses began to experience many of the same things so InterVarsity at Yale University is a great example they began to experience the speaking in tongues as well as other manifestations of what was traditionally called Pentecostalism but there are others in the late 1960s there are charismatic renewals spontaneously erupting in Notre Dame a very Catholic bastion within America and in fact in 1968 there is held a Catholic Pentecostal conference which of course is again the blending of the formerly Pentecostal world with the Catholic faith today we would call this the charismatic renewal within the Catholic faith but again you're seeing others take this on by the early 70s that same conference the Catholic Pentecostal conference numbers tens of thousands who attend each year also in 1977 there was begun the Kansas City charismatic conference a very very huge and inclusive coming together of all types of different folks from Pentecostal denominations and from other denominations who had experienced charismatic renewal so much so that by the mid point of the 1970s the AAP The Associated Press reports that there is an estimated 10 million Pentecostal or charismatic Christians in America well what happens well in the 1980s again the third wave gets going and we have to be careful here because again most of us are going to think that what we see on television the more excessive tella evangelist experiments within the charismatic or Pentecostal world or even some of the scandals that were associated with the 80s and 90s that this is somehow part and parcel with all of the third wave of the signs and wonders movement and I just want to urge some caution here you can never define a movement by its failures or its excesses whatever tradition you come from you wouldn't want anyone doing that for you so it's best not to do it for our charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters but the signs and wonders movement in the 80s and 90s is a very influential pivot because what begins to happen increasingly is something that was seen in the Pentecostal and charismatic renewal movements as a positive as the speaking in tongues and signs and wonders as a manifestation of revival increasingly becomes the mark of what a true Christian is a true church is one that has miraculous signs at all times or at least very frequently and there becomes a more circling of the wagons for some within the third wave not by Albany means and a real again intensification of certain elements that were there in the Pentecostal and charismatic movements but now become more or less the defining hallmark of what it means to truly be Christian you also see a rise perhaps as a result for the end of the Cold War a great number of end times prophecies predictions and these types of things and of course this continues on to the modern world but you have to be careful here again millenarianism this idea of the imminent coming of Christ goes back to where it goes back to William Miller in the early 1800s it did not spring out of nowhere so in the end the Pentecostal in the charismatic movement is not monolithic there's a great deal of variety in it and more importantly those who self-consciously identify as charismatic or Pentecostal number some 500 million perhaps the most important story and perhaps the most intriguing element of this movement of the 20th century is the way that it has become almost omnipresent in the Christian world there is virtually no denomination that has not felt some of this come in and leaven either the pastors or the lady within their churches and that rapid change from being marginalized and scathingly talked about because they were racially mingled to then move from that to becoming a powerful influence on a number of different denominational fronts is a story that is truly staggering

Channel: Ryan Reeves

Views: 880,282

Keywords: Pentecostalism (Religion), William J. Seymour, Azusa Street Revivals, Charismatic Movement (Religion), Protestantism (Religion), Assemblies Of God (Religion), Charles Fox Parham, Evangelicalism (Religion)

Id: LzT3pRu2FkY

Length: 33min 24sec (2004 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 10 2015