Pentecostal, Ecumenical Movements Have First Formal Contact

Few greater opposites may exist in American Christianity than the National Council of Churches on the one hand and the Pentecostal and charismatic churches on the other. Normally embarrassed or fearful over the other’s ways, they have kept their distance.

The National Council of Churches, consisting of mostly Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations, has drawn its influence from a base of well-to-do, education-honoring, formal and highly organized churches. The 31-member ecumenical council is often liberal in theology and ethics, and its leadership tends to focus on the most pressing social justice issues.

Pentecostalism, for most of its history, has attracted poorer and less-educated churchgoers to informal, enthusiastic services--even ecstatic rolling in the aisles in the most flamboyant churches. Though similar to other evangelical Christians in their conservative social codes and Bible beliefs, they also proclaim that healing, exorcism, speaking in tongues and other presumed signs of the supernatural abound today.

But, as disdainful as the two groups have been to each other in the past, representatives of both groups met this week at Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary in a first-ever consultation and many agreed that they could be mutually enriched if they would stop giving each other the cold shoulder.

However, one of the most influential Pentecostal leaders in North America said in the final session Friday that he did not know if he could take part in any further conferences, if some are organized later. “We were called (at this meeting) racist, sexist and chided for proselytizing non-Christians,” said Vinson Synan, a Pentecostal Holiness minister who is chairman for a planned gathering of 70,000 Pentecostal and charismatic Christians next July in New Orleans.

Much of his reaction was to a frank paper by Barbara Brown Zikmund, dean of the Pacific School of Religion. Among other things, she said that rapidly growing Pentecostal churches in Africa are harshly intolerant of any beliefs other than Christian.

But Synan also complained privately to NCC officials about the participation in consultation discussions of women ministers from the homosexual-oriented Metropolitan Community Churches. An NCC official responded that any non-member church may participate in its meetings. Synan told a reporter that he does not think he can justify his presence to colleagues “back home” under those conditions.

The three-day consultation, co-sponsored by the church council’s Faith and Order Commission and the David du Plessis Center for Christian Spirituality at Fuller, is the second time this year that the interdenominational, evangelical seminary has hosted such a dialogue. Members of an ongoing, international Roman Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue met in May on the campus.

Consultation Co-Chairman Cecil M. Robeck, assistant dean of Fuller’s School of Theology, said Fuller has consciously tried to act as a bridge-builder between Pentecostalism and the rest of Christianity. Robeck, an Assemblies of God minister, is one of three Pentecostal faculty members. More than 30% of the students are Pentecostal or charismatic, Robeck estimated.

Although none of the papers written for the consultation brought it up, an informed, accurate picture of Pentecostalism could have timely political consequences.

The nearer that religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, a charismatic minister, comes to a decision on the race for the 1988 Republican presidential nomination, the closer politicians and journalists will be examining his religious beliefs.

Such was the case with evangelical Jimmy Carter, an active Southern Baptist, in his successful 1976 campaign for the presidency. The evangelical term “born again,” which signifies a deliberate decision to believe in Jesus Christ as savior, was scrutinized along with just who the “born-again Christians” were.

Conceivably, religious scholars say, the same kind of curiosity will arise over Pentecostals, who say they are not only born again, but additionally “baptized in the Holy Spirit,” and often claim to possess extraordinary spiritual gifts.

Modern Pentecostalism dates from the first few years of this century. But phenomena such as speaking in tongues date to the 1st Century when, on the Jewish holiday of Pentecost, according to the New Testament Book of Acts, the apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit and began a mission-oriented church. Christian doctrine considers the Holy Spirit a person along with the Father and Son in the Trinity and generally regards the Spirit as a guiding force for Christianity in the world.

“The crucial point of demarcation between Pentecostals and other Christians is the unique Pentecostal emphasis on the person, work and gifts of the Holy Spirit,” Synan said.

The “greatest accomplishment” of Pentecostalism, Synan said in a paper for the consultation, is revealing the presence of satanic forces in the world. “The church in recent years has come to understand anew the reality of spiritual warfare,” Synan said, using mythological images that many mainline church members find disconcerting and anachronistic.

But Pentecostalism has taken different directions as it entered different socioeconomic levels and cultures. Synan outlined these major paths in the movement in his paper:

- The “classical Pentecostals.” These denominations, such as the Assemblies of God, owe their origins to the Pentecostal revivals in Topeka, Kan., in 1901 and at Los Angeles’ Azusa Street Mission in 1906. These churches hold that speaking in tongues, technically glossolalia, is the necessary first evidence that one has received “baptism in the Holy Spirit.”

- Mainline Protestant charismatics. They emerged amid controversy in the 1960s within Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran and other churches and adopted the name “charismatics” to distinguish them from Pentecostals. They seldom subscribed to the theory that tongues-speaking was the first sign of baptism by the Holy Spirit and “they practiced a more restrained form of worship than their more demonstrative Pentecostal counterparts,” Synan said.

- The Catholic charismatics. Originating in 1967 from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal grew rapidly as long as it adhered, under the scrutiny of the bishops, to Catholic doctrine. It shared similarities with classical and Protestant charismatic churches, but it “developed a unique style and structure which made it an indigenous Catholic movement,” Synan said.

- The independent groups. Formed by magnetic individuals, who in many cases have learned the use of preaching crusades, massive distribution of literature and expert use of television, they “divide the overall movement, causing shifting alliances and loyalties among the faithful,” Synan charged. He cited the “Faith churches” inspired by evangelists Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland as examples.

- Third World indigenous groups. Synan called these the fastest-growing movements in the world, but ones that are independent of Western mission agencies and that sometimes are erroneously classified as Pentecostal “because of superficial similarities in worship.”

The director of the Latin American Council of Churches told the consultation in Pasadena that the Pentecostal movement in Latin countries has become “a divisive force,” with some exceptions.

Carmelo E. Alvarez, the council director and a Disciples of Christ minister, said the Pentecostal churches generally isolate themselves from ecumenical churches. “Many Pentecostals fear that an ecumenical involvement means losing the evangelistic fervor (because) those who stress ecumenism, it is said, promote theological liberalism,” Alvarez said.

Exceptions, Alvarez said, include the Pentecostal Church of Chile, the first Pentecostal church to join the World Council of Churches; the Church of God in Argentina, headed by Gabriel O. Vaccaro, a member of the World Council’s central committee, and the Evangelical Pentecostal Union of Venezuela.

Claire Randall, general secretary of the National Council of Churches from 1974 to 1984, added two more criticisms of some Pentecostal activity in Third World countries: Proselytism of believers of other faiths and support for the political status quo, even of regimes charged with repressing human rights.

Although the Pentecostal movement pioneered in ordaining women ministers (among them, Foursquare Gospel founder Aimee Semple McPherson and faith healer Kathryn Kuhlman) early this century, Randall said the ecumenical movement is also concerned about the “lack of visible women leaders” in Pentecostal churches today and the frequent Pentecostal view of women’s subservient role in society.

Nevertheless, Randall said the church council is interested in serious dialogue, “relying on the Holy Spirit to lead us into new relationships.”

Noting that the council’s forerunner, the Federal Council of Churches, was formed in 1908, in the same decade that Pentecostalism emerged, Randall said, in retrospect, “The Spirit may awaken different responses in different groups and different times.”

Cecil Robeck of Fuller made a similar observation in his paper: “Perhaps, in the interest of genuine Christian diversity these two movements, the Pentecostal and the ecumenical, have been called forth by the Spirit to supplement the work of one another.”

Robeck said he hopes that Pentecostal-ecumenical barriers could be broken down, but he said the initiative will have to come from the mainline churches--not only because of the Pentecostals’ fear of compromising their beliefs but also because of “their apparent success in this century” as mainline churches decline in membership.