Azusa, Rome, and Zion

Pentecostal Faith, Catholic Reform, and Jewish Roots

Hocken

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498228350
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Azusa, Rome, and Zion offers historical, theological, and spiritual reflections on major movements of the Holy Spirit in modern times. The author shows where the lived experience of these movements challenges received theological concepts and categories, and indicates how engagement with these challenges can contribute to Christian reconciliation and Christian unity. Of particular interest are the surprising ways in which what appear at first sight to be new obstacles and points of division can in fact lead into deeper grasp of God's purposes for the body of Christ. Two chapters indicate the immense potential being opened up by the ministry of Pope Francis. The title captures not just the place of Pentecostals, Catholics, and Jews, but a historical dynamic that reverses the original going out from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.

part i

The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements and Christian Unity

chapter 1

A Catholic and Ecumenical Understanding of the Pentecostal Movement

Scholars from Pentecostal and charismatic backgrounds are aware of the ways that significant experiences have shaped their thinking and understanding. One such decisive moment in my life occurred soon after I was baptized in the Spirit. I was taken to a “revival night” in a Pentecostal church, a totally new experience. Providentially, this church was a remarkably lively and impressive assembly, unusually so as I learned later. I knew instantly that they were living the same reality that I was discovering in the charismatic movement. From that point, I knew that Pentecostals were sisters and brothers in the Spirit (I say sisters advisedly as this assembly was pastored by two extraordinary women), and that it would be wrong to do what many charismatics were doing—to distance themselves from the Pentecostals and to see Pentecostals primarily as those whose excesses the charismatic renewal had to avoid.1

This positive encounter with Pentecostals motivated me after my move to the USA in 1976 to become involved in the Society for Pentecostal Studies. As one who had been heavily involved in ecumenical activities in Britain and who remained deeply committed to the search for Christian unity, I had to reflect on the central characteristics of the Pentecostal movement, and how it differed from other spiritual and theological traditions in the Christian world. I was immediately aware of the differences between the Pentecostal movement and Evangelical Christianity. I readily sympathized with those Pentecostal scholars who were critical of the tendency to classify Pentecostalism as a sub-section of Evangelicalism.2 I knew in my guts that this tendency sells the Pentecostal movement short and fails to do justice to its originality as a work of the Holy Spirit. But as a Roman Catholic, I needed to integrate my appreciation of the Pentecostal movement into a Catholic and ecumenical theology of the church.

Four Ways in Which the Unity Issue Keeps Arising for Pentecostals

I see four main ways in which the unity issue keeps surfacing within the Pentecostal movement. Some raise very directly the question of Pentecostal attitudes to the ecumenical movement.

First, from Azusa Street onward there has been the sense that the Pentecostal revival was for all people and so for all Christians. Cecil M. Robeck Jr. has often reminded fellow Pentecostals that at Azusa Street William Seymour had expressed a vision for Christian unity: “We stand as assemblies and missions all in perfect harmony. Azusa stands for the unity of God’s people everywhere. God is uniting his people, baptizing them by one Spirit into one body.”3 This conviction about unity presupposes that the Pentecostal revival is for all Christians. It was constantly expressed in Alexander Boddy’s paper Confidence published from Sunderland, England. But it was with the spread of Pentecostal blessing outside the Pentecostal denominations in the charismatic movement that this question arises with a new insistence. Donald Gee was constantly referring to this challenge to Pentecostals in the editorials of Pentecost as he received reports from his friend David du Plessis about other Christians receiving the baptism in the Holy Spirit.4 I give two examples, one from 1953 and one from 1954:

Let us beware of making it our supreme aim to drag people into our own denomination. If they can maintain unsullied and intact their Pentecostal witness where they are, then let them do it. Our experience causes us to expect that they will have difficulty. . . . Our prayer will henceforth be that the floodgates of Pentecostal grace and power that should follow speaking with tongues may be manifested in any and all of the churches.5

Perhaps the most urgent of all questions facing the Pentecostal people themselves is whether those elements of durability within the Movement shall lead them into becoming just one more distinctive denomination among all the others, or whether they shall still try and hold tenaciously to the original concept of the Pentecostal Movement as a revival to powerfully affect Christians everywhere without crystallising itself in the process.6

Second, the historical roots of the Pentecostal movement in earlier Evangelical revivals and in the Holiness movement necessarily raised for Pentecostals the question of their relationship as a movement to Evangelicalism. The understanding of the Pentecostal movement as revival implicitly inserted it into Evangelical Protestant history. But Pentecostal self-understanding was always that their movement represented something more, an intensification, a new thrust toward the climax of history, as the common labels Apostolic Faith, Latter Rain, and Pentecost indicate in their different ways. Pentecostalism was never just another revival, but a “revival plus.” Similar to Evangelical revivals in bringing personal conversions of heart, with a deep repentance for sin, and a focus on the cross of the Lord, it had other features that marked it as different. Prominent among the differences was the restoration of the spiritual gifts as God’s equipment for the body of Christ, among which speaking in tongues attracted the most attention. It brought a new teaching about baptism in the Holy Spirit, even before the Assemblies of God taught that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of Spirit-baptism. Very importantly, through its African-American component, it brought a new degree of physical expression and bodily involvement. It was this plus factor, which made many of the existing Evangelical and Holiness denominations suspicious, sometimes leading to rejection and denunciation.

The revivalistic and missionary thrust of the Pentecostal movement meant that there was little incentive or time to reflect theologically on its distinctiveness. So Pentecostals typically took over Evangelical doctrinal positions and statements, adding clauses about speaking in tongues and divine healing. This embrace of Evangelical thinking would later favor the political alignment of Pentecostals with Evangelicals in the USA, and the entrance of Pentecostals into the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942. This relationship strengthened the view that Pentecostalism is a sub-section of Evangelicalism. It also helped to ensure that the unity issue for Pentecostals was largely limited to relationships with Evangelicals, and that they shared the increasing Evangelical negativity toward the ecumenical movement.

Third, the rise of the charismatic movement in the historic churches—especially in churches committed to the ecumenical movement—raised the ecumenical issue in a new way. A key issue for Pentecostals is whether the renewal of historic institutional bodies is possible, that is of churches and denominations. Donald Gee, the foremost Pentecostal teacher as the ecumenical movement was taking shape, had always seen the scope of the revival in merely personal terms. In effect, his “invisible church” ecclesiology precluded any vision for ecclesial renewal.7

But insofar as charismatic Christians in the historic churches understood this movement as for the renewal of their churches, they were uncomfortable with such an individualistic and non-ecclesial understanding. Yes, it was a form of spiritual revival ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Part One: The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements and Christian Unity
• Part Two: Reflections on the New Charismatic Churches and Networks
• Part Three: The Holy Spirit, Israel, and the Church
• Part Four: Pope Francis and Christian Unity
• Part Five: Concluding Reflection
• Sources
• Bibliography