Can The Charismatic Movement Be Saved?
As a little kid I grew up with an awareness and belief in God. I prayed often, and I knew Jesus was my friend.
But, it was at a charismatic church conference in 1999, where I encountered the Holy Spirit and it was life-changing.
For the first time, the God who was an idea to me became real in the experience of electricity and warmth in my body, physical healings, prophecies, and people speaking in tongues. And, while the shape of my faith has evolved and changed over the past three decades, this ‘encounter’ is an unpickable thread woven throughout the tapestry of my faith which now includes many other traditions too.
There is a part of me that will always be charismatic. It’s the part that still prays for healing, still prays in tongues, still offers people words of knowledge, and still believes that there are specific moments where God interrupts our lives in dramatic ways that transform us more than any curriculum or catechism ever could.
For many of us who experienced these things, our faith has continued to be sustained into mid-life despite the decline of the church and the growing complexity of holding a faith in the post-Christendom West. I’m no longer surprised when I find out that many of the most influential and passionate leaders in the church today had a season in the charismatic movement which set them on a lifelong path of faithful obedience to Jesus.
And yet, the charismatic gifts are increasingly out of fashion.
Consider a blog by Ian Paul that recently asked: “What is the place of charismatic theology after Mike Pilavachi?” Paul puts his finger on something key. The charismatic gifts have sometimes been the Trojan Horse from which all kinds of abuse, greed, and manipulation have invaded the Church. Those who claim to have a direct line to God and God’s power become unquestionable and unaccountable in a way which has perpetuated shocking physical, psychological, and spiritual abuse.
And yet, charismatic theology doesn’t have a monopoly on abuse or coercion.
My own Anglican whānau has recently had to face up to the shocking revelations of abuse at Dilworth College. Revelations of Catholic abuse are manifold too. While some post-charismatic Christians would argue for the safety of liturgy and ancient practice, we can see that even our most quiet saints - like Jean Vanier for example - have been shown to be extraordinarily deceitful and abusive. Their more reserved spiritual practices didn’t insulate them from evil.
The same people who put down the charismatic gifts because of Mike Pilavachi don’t put down the Prayer Book because it contains words from James K Baxter. I wonder: Is everything toxic, or is everything redeemable?
I am someone who believes that the tangible power of God as demonstrated in the charismatic gifts makes up a crucial part of the Church’s witness in the world. I long for Christians to live in both the quiet constant faithfulness of God, as well as her sometimes instantaneous liberating power in a moment. Both, I think, are crucial. The daily and the dramatic, the chronos and the kairos, the whisper on the wind and the booming voice from heaven.
I believe that many of us in the West have done to charismatic theology the same thing we have done to evangelism. We have welded together the Godly expression of these gifts with the excesses and abuses of people who used them badly.
But the answer to bad theology is not no theology. It’s to replace it with good theology. Rather than abandon charismatic theology, perhaps we could creatively reform it?
What do the gifts of 1 Corinthians 12 - words of knowledge, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, speaking and interpreting tongues - look like when they are tethered and grounded in the equally miraculous fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control?
Could we find a humble, kind, safe, gracious, compassionate charismatic theology that is honouring of the whole person, while believing in a God who is bigger and more powerful than any of us?
What I am not arguing for is a return to the 1980s, but I’m also not keen for a return to the 1880s either. What I desire is a church with the courage to re-embrace the charismatic gifts in all their splendour, rather than leave them behind because of where our human frailty distorted them.
As we celebrate Pentecost, we get to decide what to do with Acts 2 and all that unfolds from it. We meet the Spirit of God descending in clouds and flames, causing people to speak in tongues, resulting in miraculous signs and wonders, and sending disciples out to proclaim the Gospel to the far flung corners of the world. We will hear these scriptures and choose whether to repackage this as a metaphor for individual spiritual growth, or to be challenged by the same Spirit who wants to meet us now in many of the same ways to bring radical transformation.
Rev. Scottie Reeve
Scottie heads up the Catch Network. He loves helping people starting brand new things to make it through the trickiness and the loneliness of starting from scratch. Scottie is based in Wellington.