Pentecostal Origins
The Charismatic movement had its origins in the Pentecostal
revival of the late nineteenth century, which itself grew out of the earlier
Holiness
Movement. The origins of Pentecostalism can be traced to Bethel College
in Topeka Kansas in 1901 where the founder, Charles F. Parham, taught his
students about Baptism in the Holy Spirit, evidenced by speaking
in tongues, as an experience distinct from Christian conversion.
In 1906, William J. Seymour, one of the converts from Bethel College, founded the Apostolic Faith Gospel Mission on Azusa Street, Los Angeles, where ‘revival’ soon broke out. From here, ‘Pentecostalism’ spread worldwide.
However, Seymour himself was not entirely happy with what was happening, since the Azusa Street revival also attracted many non-Christian spiritualists and mediums (source Vinson Synon, The Holiness Pentecostal Movement in the United States [Grand Rapids: W B Eerdmans, 1971] p 110, quoted in Nader Mikhaiel The Toronto Blessing and Slaying in the Spirit [Earlwood: Nader Mikhaiel, 1996] p 218). Seymour wrote to Charles Parham, asking him to come and help discern between the real and the false. Parham later wrote,
‘I hurried to Los Angeles, and to my utter surprise and astonishment I found conditions even worse than I had anticipated. Brother Seymour came to me helpless; he said he could not stem the tide that had arisen. I sat on the platform in Azusa Street mission, and saw people practising hypnotism at the altar over candidates seeking the baptism; though many were receiving the real baptism of the Holy Ghost.’ (Sarah E Parham, The Life of Charles F Parham [New York: Garland Publishing, 1985] p 163, quoted in Nader Mikhaiel The Toronto Blessing and Slaying in the Spirit [Earlwood: Nader Mikhaiel, 1996] p 221)
Eventually, after preaching two or three times, Parham himself was ejected
by the elders at Azusa Street and had to set up an alternative mission!
Here he attempted to ‘deliver’ those who had experienced the ’revival’
of which his own teaching was the origin.
From Pentecostal to Charismatic
In spite of its worldwide spread, the Pentecostal movement remained
separate from the mainstream denominations and many splits developed in
the movement itself. Indeed, Robert Clouse comments that ‘Fragmentation
is typical of the Pentecostal movement as a whole’ (‘Pentecostalism’ in
The
New International Dictionary of the Christian Church [Exeter: The Paternoster
Press, 1974] pp 763- 764).
However, in the 1960s, at first in the USA and later in the UK, people in the mainstream denominations began to accept Pentecostal teaching about Baptism in the Spirit and to experience speaking in tongues. This movement was originally known as ‘Neo-pentecostalism’ but later became known as the ‘Charismatic Movement’ from the Greek word charismata, meaning the ‘gifts of God’s grace’. As in Pentecostalism, the Charismatics saw the ‘gift of tongues’, practised in the early church (1 Corinthians 12:10, 30; 14:2-28), as the distinctive sign of ‘Baptism in the Spirit’ on the basis of Acts 2:1-11.
Organizations such as the ‘Fountain Trust’, and speakers such as Michael
Harper and David Watson, did much to popularize Charismatic teaching in
the United Kingdom so that it spread throughout the mainstream denominations.
At the same time, many who were dissatisfied with the reception they received
in these denominations left to set up ‘house churches’, which have themselves
grown to become denominations in their own right.
Charismatics Today
Today, almost anyone is happy to be labelled a ‘Charismatic’. At the
same time, the emphases of the Charismatic Movement have themselves changed.
In the early days, when the Movement was Neo- pentecostal, it was normal
to talk about Christians needing to be ‘Baptized in the Spirit’. Today
some Charismatics will still talk in these terms, but it is more common
to hear people talking about the need to be ‘filled with the Spirit’. So
in the Alpha Course material, which is definitely Charismatic, Nicky
Gumbel states that ‘every Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit ... [y]et
not every Christian is filled with the Spirit’ (Questions of Life
[Eastbourne: Kingsway Publications, 1993] pp 131-132).
Even so, it is clear that for Gumbel (as for others), this ‘filling with the Spirit’ is supposed to make as big a difference to the individual Christian as Neo-pentecostalism used to claim for the ‘Baptism in the Spirit’. So he writes that, ‘Some [Christians] have only got the pilot light of the Holy Spirit in their lives, whereas when people are filled with the Holy Spirit, they begin to fire on all cylinders ... When you look at them you can almost see and feel the difference.’ (Ibid. p 133, my emphasis)
Gumbel then goes on to tell his readers how they, too, can be ‘filled with the Spirit’. He writes that ‘In an ideal world, every Christian would be filled with the Holy Spirit from the moment of conversion’ (Ibid. pp 133-134), but apparently even the Alpha Course can’t do that. So Gumbel explains about the physical manifestations which may accompany being ‘filled with the Spirit’, which includes six pages on ‘speaking in tongues’. Then people are given the following steps:
Defining a ‘Charismatic’
Our reason for quoting Gumbel extensively is that, taking his work
as typical, we can now define what makes a ‘Charismatic’. A Charismatic
is someone who believes that there is an experience of receiving the Holy
Spirit subsequent to Christian conversion, which is usually accompanied
by physical manifestations (of which the ‘gift of tongues’ is most common),
and who further believes that this experience and the exercise of ‘spiritual
gifts’ are the key to spiritual effectiveness.
However, it is my contention that this understanding is quite wrong, and in the next section I aim to show that this is so.
John Richardson
March 1997
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Last updated 22 November 1997