Beyond that, though, the whole thing makes me think back a little to earlier days of my journey as a follower of Jesus, in the first year or two as a Pentecostal in high school. Back then (1998 through early 2001, tapering off after that when I went to college) there was a lot of talk about the rapture in the circles where I ran. I read books and Study Bibles about it, knew dispensationalist theology fairly well, and in general lived under the assumption that the rapture could happen at any time.

I don’t remember ever speculating on when it would happen, or being concerned about when it would happen; I just assumed that it was there on the horizon because the people around me did, and I trusted their theology. Pentecostals saw it as a reason to pursue revival, hoping for the church to become a more Spirit-imbued body, ready to go with Jesus when he returned. I found that compelling because I wanted those kind of experiences. As an important sidenote, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that the current rapture-seekers have anything to do with Pentecostalism.

Now, this expectation has been a hallmark of Pentecostalism since it started in 1906, though it has had its ebbs and flows as it has in every other movement. I’m aware of this, though by the time I reached college it was (at least in scholarly circles) acceptable to leave those doctrines behind. I’m thankful for this, but at the moment I’m interested in thinking about why it was ever such a big deal in the movement.

As I’ve said before, I’m not really a Pentecostal these days. I still pray in tongues, still seek the presence of the Spirit, still believe in miracles, and so on – so it’s not that I’ve abandoned Pentecostalism, but I can no longer deal with the ecclesiology or the theological and political ideas that usually accompany the movement, and this makes me something of an ecclesial vagabond. All well and good.

Anyway. One of the things I’ve always found interesting about Pentecostalism is that during the fundamentalist/liberal battles of the early 20th century when the movement was still developing, it went with the fundamentalists. Fundamentalism was deeply antithetical to Pentecostalism in its own theology, but Pentecostals overwhelmingly adapted the non-directly-related tenets of fundamentalist theology in their interpretation of the Bible, and eventually in things like politics.

I don’t necessarily blame them for this, as I don’t think either choice was a good one back then, but it is saddening. I wish they had been able to create a third way that didn’t succumb to liberalism or fundamentalism, and there are several reasons that I think this could have been the case (but it’s really hard to create a third way).

One of the core tenets of Pentecostalism is that God is active in the world in supernatural ways. How this manifests itself in doctrine has varied through the years and in the different tribes, but this wonderful belief has always been true. It has also always been the way Pentecostalism has viewed the Bible, and this (among other things) has led the movement to believe the Bible has, and has always had, something direct that the Spirit wants to say to its readers.

Back to eschatology. I think one of the deepest failures of dispensationalism is that it rests on the oft-unspoken and unrealized assumption that all of the Bible’s prophetic or apocalyptic language is irrelevant to the foreseeable context of its original readers. Thus, this is one of the damaging things about Pentecostalism’s embrace of early 20th-century fundamentalist biblical theology: while we’ve assumed that the book of Acts was a Spirit-inspired narrative of how the early church functioned and is relevant to how we should function today (which is one of the huge differences from that fundamentalism), we have not assumed that first-century eschatology was relevant to that same early church, but rather that it was written for us only, two thousand years after those folks lived in the same Spirit we seek.

The realization that prophetic language was primarily relevant to its original hearers is one of the greatest insights of people like N. T. Wright, Andrew Perriman, and others who have written more wisely on eschatology. While they all have different perspectives on what ways such language is relevant to us, the fact that they agree upon its primary relevance to its original hearers is a powerful thing for that relevance. It utterly changes the way we have to think about political theology (as much of this language is anti-Empire), ethics (as much of it is metaphorical), and of course how we think about eschatology in our own age.

Coming from a Pentecostal (post-Pentecostal?) perspective, I want to say that this fits better with Pentecostalism than dispensationalism does, because this is how we’ve treated our engagement with Acts. I think it fits other traditions (Anabaptism, of course, but many others as well) much better too, which is why I think it’s worth writing about. I’ve taught for years that any time we try to make definitive statements about how eschatology manifests itself in our own age, we’re on dangerous ground and shouldn’t be trusted.

My plea is for all of us to stop worrying about when the rapture (or whatever other event you like) is coming, because there’s no reason to assume such language is literal, and even less reason to assume that it’s about us. It makes us look stupid, makes our priorities antithetical to those of Scripture’s authors, and does irreparable damage to people who structure their lives around those assumptions when they turn out to be wrong.

The episode also talks of his band, The Black Peppercorns, a group that played in pubs and bars and sang songs that blurred the lines between sacred and secular and saw folks in those bars have genuine encounters with the Spirit. Many of us who listened to the episode are interested in this blurring of the lines as it is a passion we have inherited from folks like him and others before him throughout the history of spiritual music. Sadly, though, there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to find this music as it wasn’t accepted by the Pentecostal and charismatic scenes from which he came.

Now, if you’ve spent time in Pentecostal circles this won’t come as a surprise to you. It doesn’t come as one to me, but it does sadden me, both because I have a deep passion for the work of God in the real world, and also because I think it’s one of the biggest weaknesses of the Pentecostal movement throughout the majority of its history. Especially in recent months, it has become clear to me that the Pentecostal and charismatic movements are like this because they have a weak missiology.

Mission, if you attend a typical Pentecostal church or university, consists of foreign missions. Missionaries study culture, study languages, and so on. But you, as an attendee or typical Western minister, don’t learn to think of your own culture as a place in which you are to do mission (including but not limited to the study of language and culture, real contextualization, and so on), and you don’t learn to think of mission as a participation in what God is already doing in the world, unconfined by the walls of the church, walls which are themselves not pleasing to God. Sadly this movement does not have a Lesslie Newbigin or David Bosch to say these things, at least not yet.

This is one of the main reasons that I haven’t been part of a Pentecostal church in several years, both in a direct sense as I could no longer support the ecclesiology and missiology that is present there, and in an indirect sense as I found what I was looking for within the underground and emerging church on its better days, and a desperate desire for it even on its bad days.

But having said that, as Mike mentions in this podcast episode, many of us who came from Pentecostal or charismatic circles and into the emerging church miss the days of intense encounters with the Spirit of God. Focus on this is somewhat uncommon within the emerging church. This is sometimes because folks come from backgrounds that don’t have an active theology of the supernatural, and sometimes because folks have had really bad experiences in Pentecostal or charismatic settings. I can’t blame them for this. There are awful, dangerous things that can be said and done there.

But in spite of that, Mike asked Kevin Prosch how he would advise folks like us who want genuine supernatural experience with God, but have found a home in the mission and ecclesiology of the emerging church. This was the weakest of Kevin’s answers, I thought, and I felt like an opportunity was missed. It may be that he doesn’t have answers for this, and I can respect that as I don’t feel like I have solid ones either.

I have no interest in excesses of the Pentecostal movement, and even when I was there I wasn’t a particularly demonstrative person. But there are things I miss. I was encouraged when Tony Jones presented a paper and a couple of other posts discussing what Pentecostals and Emergents can learn from each other a couple of months ago, and I’m also encouraged by this podcast episode and conversations that I’ve had with Mike along these lines. In writing about it, I’m hoping to continue these thoughts and see if there are genuine things we can begin to do with them.

The coinciding emergence of these two sides happened most recently in the beginnings of the Pentecostal movement, as I’ve said, though the pacifism and, indeed, political independence of any kind, of the early Pentecostals has all but faded into allegiance to conservatism as it now exists in America.

A story to illustrate this: when I was in college, dating Kiera, we were invited to attend a certain rally/meeting/event with a specific speaker who is still fairly well known in certain circles on Valentine’s Day of 2003. For whatever reason, we went. First mistake, I’m sure. As you may remember, this was the time when the United States was preparing to go to war with Iraq. The political figures of both parties were busy scaring everyone with tales of weapons of mass destruction, links to terrorism, and other such things that we now know were false.

At the time, I had just begun to be interested in politics, after having spent several years writing it off as irrelevant, for various reasons. I had already been unwilling to see the Religious Right as the Christian option, and didn’t know enough to look into other visions of political activity. But by this time, I was angry at the government’s response to 9/11 and its evil rhetoric leading up to the invasion of Iraq, and anger had made me care.

So on the religious side of things, there were events like the one we attended. The main thrust of the message (which came after a statement that we should “pay” for revival instead of “pray” for revival) included the worst scriptural interpretation I have ever encountered, where the speaker believed that Jeremiah prophesied that God would “Bush Babylon.” He proceeded to tell us, of course, that the American invasion of Iraq was God’s method of “bushing” Babylon. During the time when the speaker had the crowd march around the sanctuary, with its crystal dove-shaped chandelier, chanting “War, War, War,” Kiera and I and our two friends, who were equally against the war, walked out, shaken by the heresy we had witnessed.

As the year moved on toward the invasion, I was one of the voices on the Pentecostal college I attended that asked, when classes prayed for American soldiers, to pray for the Iraqi soldiers, and the other people there. As my theology and understanding of how God has worked in the church has developed over the years, I have moved into the belief that nonviolence is an integral part of following God in the way of Jesus.

As I have reflected on these things, I have grown a desire for people to see the division that has come into the Pentecostal movement in the last several decades, from the original Pentecostals who refused to fight in the World Wars to the present day, when examples like the one I have recounted are not as isolated as I wish they were. As I have become acquainted with the present-day peace churches – the various streams of Anabaptist faith that have preserved this understanding of the kingdom of God, and the ways they have moved into Emergent and the broader emerging church – including people like Shane Claiborne, the wonderful folks at Jesus Manifesto, and others – I have wondered why the link isn’t observed more often than it is.

Anabaptist theology, from what I know of it, has always been open to supernatural experiences and such things that characterize the Pentecostal movement these days. At their beginning, Anabaptists were the “heirs” of what we now call Pentecostal experience in the 16th century. The movement has also had at its core the vision that the kingdom of God looks like Jesus, and that Christianity must imitate him, and thus cannot resort to hatred and violence. As another example of my overall point, they are currently in danger of losing this core vision of the nonviolent kingdom of Jesus.

Greg Boyd has written several important posts specifically related to Mennonites, as the heirs of the Anabaptist tradition, about how they must not run away from this vision.

My current question, then, is this: can the two distinctives that have been, throughout church history, the easiest to de-emphasize, choose one and then lose the other, or pretend never existed, be brought together again? Can this happen within Emergent, and the broader movement of emergence Christianity?

1. For more on this, see Jesus For President, A People’s History of Christianity, The Politics of Jesus, and other works, including Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God for a specifically Pentecostal perspective
2. For more on this, see 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, especially, though there are other good works. But I’ll admit – this one is harder, since there are not as many good scholars of Pentecostalism as there should be

First of all, we have received an outpouring of love and support. I posted a photo of Kiera’s cast on Twitter and Facebook, and received lots of great messages on both. Please feel free to leave one yourself on one of the sites, if you like.

One of the things that struck both of us the most was a prayer emailed to us just prior to leaving the house this morning:

Kiera’s leg surgery is today – please wrap the “prayer shawl” around her and hold her tightly.

God ahead, God behind.
God be on the path I wind.
God above, God below
God be everywhere I go.

Celtic Prayer

In many ways, for us this was a preview of the day’s events. If you have read the previous post I wrote about this surgery, you know that this one was designed as a bone fusion, with a bone graf (involving three incisions). The surgeon’s X-rays and diagnosis indicated that, although there was no arthritis, the fusion was necessary or would be in the near future. It was designed to require six weeks before weight could be put on it, and would be an incredibly intensive and painful recovery process.

None of this was a surprise to us, and we were as prepared as we could be, though both of us were very nervous. But today, when the surgeon made his incision and was looking around inside the foot, he decided that the fusion was unnecessary and he was able to remove the piece of bone that shouldn’t be there, indicating that either the first surgery she had didn’t remove enough, or that it grew back and will not be able to grow back this time, since she is no longer a teenager.

So, this bone removal is incredibly less invasive, and thus provides her with a smaller recovery time, and much less pain than she would have had to endure. This is still an intense surgery for a foot, and still involves a great deal of pain, but the difference is an order of magnitude, apparently. We had no reason to expect this, and the surgeon was as pleased as we were.

Kiera and I have spent several years having our theology, our lives, and our relationship enriched by supernatural workings of God, many of which we do not at all understand. This whole process has been one of those things, from the straightening of her feet as a child to situations like this. We do not at all want to lessen the knowledge or experience of the surgeon, as he is at one of the top hospitals in the country and we have both experienced too many Christians that see everything as a supernatural working of God, but the surgeon himself has been pleasantly surprised and we find much to be thankful for.

In any case, to start out, Kiera is having surgery on Monday, July 20 at the new Emory University Orthopaedics & Spine Hospital. The surgery is a bone fusion in her foot, and also involves clearing out bone fragments and scar tissue from the past.

This story starts at Kiera’s birth, when she had clubfeet. Doctors informed her mom that she would never walk. She could have a surgery at age 18 that would be a cosmetic surgery, but would still not allow her to walk. As a baby, she was unable to wear shoes, and would scream if there was any attempt to put them on.

Her mom faithfully took Kiera to her church to have her feet prayed for in hope of healing. After one of these attempts, her feet straightened out. Her mom noticed this at home, and tried putting shoes on her feet. No pain seemed to occur, she developed as a walking child.

Now, the interesting thing is that the surgery she is having now has nothing to do with this former condition, and she never had the cosmetic surgery at 18. When she was 16, she tore a ligament and needed surgery for it. When doctors fixed this ligament, they noticed that she had a tarsal coalition, and did a surgery to try to fix it.

This surgery didn’t work, and the piece of bone grew back (causing various bone fragments and scar tissue, as well as a piece of bone). She has been experiencing severe pain from this for the last couple of years, and since I have known her has had to be very careful with it. Because of the first surgery, the doctors are not attempting to remove the piece, but instead are fusing the piece with a joint, taking away the foot’s horizontal movement.

This surgery will require a three month recovery. For the first six weeks, she will be on crutches and fairly immobile. After this, she’ll be wearing a camwalker, and will still be sketchy, as far as movement goes, for the next six weeks. But hopefully after this, the pain will be gone.

And this is basically the situation. Thank you to those who have expressed interest and care in her situation. In all honesty, we are both a bit stressed about this, in anticipation of the physical pain, as well as the various financial and other burdens the surgery will cause. So your care is most appreciated.

Last year, Jesus Manifesto had a writing competition that examined Pentecost in some wonderful ways. From a specifically Pentecostal perspective, John O’Hara and others on Facebook have been discussing what the two movements have to say to each other, and I try to bring this up often here, as well.

The Jesus Manifesto was a really interesting one for me, as I see the Pentecostal movement at its beginning as the close descendant of the Anabaptist movement. Both movements, I think, need to be challenged moving into the future as they have each adapted in good and bad ways, and failed to adapt in good and bad ways. My hope is that the broader emerging church, and Emergent in particular, can shape and be shaped in light of Pentecost, and in the newer Pentecosts that happened at Azusa Street and other places.

My Pentecost

My first encounter with the Spirit of God happened in a fairly intense situation, and is the reason that I decided to seek after Jesus, or seek to understand and love the Scriptures, or seek to share who God is and what he is doing in the world. When this Spirit came upon me, I immediately knew that it was the most powerful thing I had ever experienced, and wanted to experience more.

As I continued to seek to grow in the knowledge of God, I became acquainted with the practice of glossolalia, which is still a part of my prayer life and experience with the Spirit. I’m not, in this post, interested in looking at the characteristic Pentecostal doctrine of initial evidence, and I don’t at all want to discount the pain and hurt that abuse of this experience has caused to many people. I am truly sorry for this; while it has not affected me personally, it has affected people close to me.

In addition to this, there have been many times of extended periods sitting on the floor in the presence of God, praying with and praying for others, and great times of worship that I wouldn’t trade for anything. They are wonderful, mystical experiences where I have and continue to learn great things about the nature of God.

What Pentecost offers

It is often very easy for those in the Pentecostal movement to pretend that church history didn’t start until 1906, ignoring powerful movements from the Desert Fathers and Mothers, to the medieval mystics, to the Anabaptists and early Methodists. It is also very easy for many of us who have felt the excesses of the modern movement to pretend that we cannot share in these experiences.

While again, I am cognizant of the excesses to which the Pentecostal and charismatic movements have often been susceptible, and I do not want to look at specific doctrines at the moment, I want to submit that these kind of experiences are powerful and subversive experiences from which we in postmodern culture and the emerging church have much to learn.

Pentecost offers to all of us those tangible, powerful experiences with the Spirit of God, asking us to authentically empower our mission of seeking to join in what God is doing in the world. It asks us to be willing to subvert our minds, our voices, our time, our expectations, and our rationality.

I’m convinced there is a great deal that we can glean from this movement, as we create a generous orthodoxy, and I want to raise some more of these things. This is partly in response to a seminar on The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity that I attended the other day.

The seminar was led by the book’s author, Soong-Chan Rah, and discussed how the church has bought into the dominance of Western Christianity. Possibilities were presented to us, from the idea that, as whites in a position of power, it can be good for us to submit ourselves to other forms of church and theology. My thinking took me to those first years of the Pentecostal movement, when “the color line was washed away in the blood,” as well as gender lines and economic lines that still do dominate most of Western Christianity.

The Pentecostal multi-culturalism

So think about this: in 1906, when there were still Jim Crow laws, and women couldn’t vote, a movement began that was led by a black man who was the son of slaves. It allowed women to hold leadership positions. It served the poor to dramatic extents, especially considering that many of its members were poor. It really lived the way of Jesus in the power of the Spirit.

Now, of course in the coming decades, Pentecostalism faced a dilemma: would it move toward the social gospel and liberalism, or would it move toward fundamentalism? I can sit here, looking back at the 1920s and 30s, and say that they should have created a third way and moved forward in it, but that is easier said than done. Regardless, they didn’t do it. They moved with fundamentalism, seeking to gain respectability in the broader church, while maintaining a high view of Scripture.

In the years that followed, of course, they moved with evangelicalism as it developed, and there they sit now. Much of the National Association of Evangelicals is made up of Pentecostals and charismatics. They have, in general, left behind their emphasis on serving the poor.

While they may be more likely to have multi-racial congregations, they still have basically shaped their worship and ecclesiology and theology after Western, white culture. They are often among the biggest proponents of political conservatism, including the abandonment of their pacifism even to the point of advocating torture.

Emergent multi-culturalism

Many of us within Emergent are concerned about the issue of multi-culturalism, among other things, and there are great signs that it can and will do that (this post has a great discussion about the book, and the issues that it brings up, both in the post and the comments).

A common part of the discussion shaped by books like The Next Evangelicalism seems to be concerned with the ways that we, as the dominant people in culture, can move to join with non-Westerners in our churches and our theologies. I think we can learn much from early Pentecostals in doing things like this, and we can learn much from the choices they made in later decades, as well.

Another part of the discussion that is being brought up from those within Emergent is that many other-ethnic churches and denominations and theologies are at least as patriarchal and/or as conservative as the evangelicalism that many of us have left behind. Again, early Pentecostals can show us a way to move forward in this, as they were among the first groups within Christianity to fully embrace egalitarianism.

My hope for Emergent, and the broader emerging church, is that we will begin to understand the dual sides of the coin that are postmodernism and post-colonialism, and begin to move in both. I think books like Everything Must Change, and similar books and events and thoughts with which many of us have been involved, have the potential to help us do that.

As we move in these directions, it is essential that we take into account the issues that books like The Next Evangelicalism bring. We must, for example, not take these kind of ideas of submitting to other forms of church into our minds as a form of pity, or of us doing something for the Other, or we have missed the point that Emergent is trying to seek.

In activist circles around organizations like Invisible Children, Falling Whistles, and Acholi Beads, among others, there is a powerful quote that is often said and genuinely meant:

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s

I imagine that most of my Pentecostal/charismatic friends would be shocked to discover that the vast majority of Christians that experienced the revival at Azusa street (the revival that birthed Pentecostalism world-wide) also believed that the proper Christian response to war is conscientious objection. Most of the historic Pentecostal denominations that exist today started out as officially pacifist. As a matter of fact, the Assemblies of God didn't officially change its position until 1967. Perhaps even more shocking is that some of the Pentecostal pioneers were imprisoned and — yes, it can happen in America — tortured for their refusal to participate in World War I.

It is a fascinating and depressing change that the Pentecostal and charismatic movements have undergone in the last half century. While it happened much faster this time (50 or so years, for the most part) than it did for the early church that eventually baptized the Roman Empire (150 years or so), it has much in common with that transition.

I have to again state that this transition in the early church nearly coincided with the transition away from belief in miracles, charismatic experiences as a whole (from praying/speaking in tongues, to prophecy, to the continued existence of apostles), and of course the idea that the church shouldn’t endorse the State.

The transition has begun. I’m wondering where it will go in the next hundred years or so? Will another movement (Emergent? A broader movement toward Anabaptism? Something else?) reclaim this combination, as current trends would seem to indicate?

I’ve tried to show how the problems in how historical problems in how the church has looked at politics, culture, and pneumatology have led, in some ways, to current trends in American evangelicalism. One could easily bring in other issues that contribute to this, and there are people who have. But I think these in particular are important indications of what I’m seeing.

It is well-documented in church history that Christianity gained political acceptance within the Roman Empire in the fourth century. Many have made the connection between this and the failure of Christians to love their enemies, their willingness to kill their enemies for anything from heresies to differing opinions, and their failure to challenge the powers of empire. There were exceptions, but these lessened in number and influence as the years went by.

It is also well-documented in church history, though to a lesser extent, that in the third and fourth centuries Christianity lost its emphasis, and then lost its willingness, to experience the supernatural in the lives of everyday Christians. There were exceptions to this as well, but these also lessened in number and influence as the years went by.

What I’m seeing, then, is that the church in this time period was willing to trade the power of the Spirit as well as the power of the Cross for the power of the State. We have yet to fully recover from this.

In recent decades, we have seen the explosion of the Pentecostal and charismatic church to numbers of over half a billion people and influence far beyond those numbers, and other movements have sought ways to speak to and challenge the power of the bomb, the legislative pen, and the judicial bench. Few, though, have combined these sides. Those that have, for the most part, have only done so for a limited number of years (as in the case of many Pentecostals who were pacifists in the early 20th century).

In light of this, one of my greatest hopes for the emerging church as it develops is that it will learn to reject the power of the State, and instead seek the power of the Cross and the power of the Spirit.

It is well-documented that the early church sought a very active engagement with the Holy Spirit. In today’s church, this engagement and what it means for today is viewed in, basically, the following ways:

1. During the early church, the church was being built in preparation for the completion and canonization of the Bible. After this happened, there was no need for spiritual gifts, miracles, and most other tangible manifestations of the Spirit’s activity. Because we have a completed Bible today, we should not expect or desire these things.
2. The early church was trying to legitimize itself as something distinct from Judaism, and so it invented miraculous stories to suggest that God was on its side. These recorded occurrences never happened, and that’s why they are not happening today.
3. The early church began to lose its desire for these manifestations as it became institutionalized, beginning in the third century and intensifying in the fourth century. It traded the Spirit’s power for accommodations to culture, the desire to build doctrine, a hierarchical structure, sin, and tradition. The church does not see these things on a widespread level today because it is still making this trade, and it does not want to change bad enough.
4. The early church lost these things as indicated in #3, but they are not seen today because there are too many fakes, or because God mysteriously chooses not to engage us in these ways.

Certainly there are nuances and exceptions to these ways, but the basic principle stands. The scholarly and popular support for #1 has dropped significantly, but there are still denominations that hold to it. #2 holds strongly in traditional liberal theology, which again has dropped significantly in the last half century or so. Modern liberalism typically has more respect for the supernatural than that. #3 is typically what is believed by the modern Pentecostal and charismatic churches, and #4 is held by many who have grown bitter from watching the excesses of the modern Pentecostal and charismatic movements.

In the book 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, there is evidence presented through quotes and narratives that this kind of experience of the Spirit never truly died out of the church. Rather, it has been present in every significant movement of church history, from monasticism to the Reformation to the American Great Awakenings and Methodism, leading to the birth of the modern Pentecostal and charismatic movements. The book contains an incredible selection of things that are often not taught in church history classes.

So, if the supernatural life of the church did not die, but rather died out of specific movements as they developed, what does that mean? My contention is that this supernatural experience died out as the movements were unwilling to continue moving.

They developed traditions, doctrines, and explanations that rendered this kind of work of the Spirit either irrelevant, unneeded, or sinful in the eyes of members. Remnants have always existed in all of these movements, and some of these remnants have gone to start other movements and some of them have stayed to try to challenge their existing ones. In their developments, the majorities of these movements have traded the power of the Spirit for other kinds of power.

At the moment, I’m not dealing with any specific doctrines, such as initial evidence or divine healing, as they are for other discussions and have not necessarily been constant parts of charismatic experience through the centuries of the church.

However, I fear underestimating the importance of the overall idea: that as movements cease moving and changing, they lose their supernatural life, whether it is sudden or gradual. This is, again, not something that is entirely unique to me. As this series continues, though, I want to look into the consequences of this loss, and how these consequences relate to the decomposition of movements, and their regression into things like the approval of torture and baptism of political parties.