Tradition · 1960

Charismatic

The renewal movement that brought Pentecostal experience, such as baptism in the Spirit, speaking in tongues and healing, into historic churches without members leaving them.

History

Roots

The charismatic movement is the second wave of a story that began at the Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles (1906). That revival produced the classical Pentecostal denominations, such as the Assemblies of God, which taught that believers should seek a baptism in the Holy Spirit after conversion, evidenced by speaking in tongues (Acts 2:4). For half a century the older churches kept Pentecostals at arm’s length, and Pentecostals returned the favour.

Two things softened the boundary after the Second World War. The healing revival of 1946–1958, led by evangelists such as Oral Roberts and William Branham, drew large crowds from every denomination (summary, secondary). And the South African Pentecostal David du Plessis, later nicknamed “Mr Pentecost,” began talking with the World Council of Churches and mainline leaders in the 1950s, presenting Pentecostal experience as a gift for the whole church rather than a reason to leave it (summary, secondary). Business groups such as the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, founded in Los Angeles in 1952 (history), gave lay people from historic churches a place to meet Pentecostals without changing membership.

Causes

The movement is usually dated to Sunday, 3 April 1960, when Dennis Bennett, rector of St Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, told his congregation that he had been baptized in the Spirit and spoken in tongues (summary, secondary). Part of the parish was delighted and part was outraged, and Bennett resigned. National magazines, including Time and Newsweek, covered the story (summary, secondary), and the publicity did more to spread the movement than any campaign. Bennett moved to a struggling parish, St Luke’s in Seattle, which grew into a centre of the renewal; he told the story in Nine O’Clock in the Morning (1970).

From the Episcopal Church it spread to Lutheran and Presbyterian congregations around 1962, and later to Methodist and Baptist ones. In England, the Anglican curate Michael Harper founded the Fountain Trust in 1964 to serve charismatics in all denominations (As at the Beginning, 1965).

The Roman Catholic wing began in February 1967. Two Duquesne University lay professors, Ralph Keifer and William Storey, had read David Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade and John Sherrill’s They Speak with Other Tongues; they attended an Episcopal prayer meeting, were prayed with for Spirit baptism, and then led a student retreat, the “Duquesne Weekend,” at which students reported the same experience (summary, secondary). The renewal moved quickly to Notre Dame and Michigan State, and Kevin and Dorothy Ranaghan’s Catholic Pentecostals (1969) introduced it to the wider church. The Second Vatican Council had prepared the ground: Lumen Gentium taught that the Spirit distributes charisms “whether they be the more outstanding or the more simple and widely diffused” among all the faithful (§12).

Influence

The renewal changed worship more than doctrine. Praise choruses, raised hands, extended sung worship and prayer ministry at the front of the church all passed from charismatic meetings into the mainstream of Evangelical and much Catholic worship. The Alpha course, developed at Holy Trinity Brompton in London, carried a charismatic “Holy Spirit weekend” into thousands of churches worldwide.

Rome chose to shepherd the movement rather than resist it. Paul VI addressed the Catholic Charismatic Renewal’s international conference in Rome during the 1975 Holy Year; Cardinal Léon-Joseph Suenens became its patron and wrote the Malines Documents to anchor it in Catholic theology. The service office moved to Rome in 1981, received pontifical recognition as ICCRS in 1993, and was replaced by CHARIS in 2019 (summary, secondary). Pope Francis called the renewal “a current of grace in the Church and for the Church” at Rome’s Olympic Stadium in 2014 (address).

A “third wave” followed in the 1980s. John Wimber, with Fuller Seminary’s C. Peter Wagner, taught that evangelicals could practice healing and prophecy without adopting Pentecostal language about a second blessing. Wimber’s Vineyard churches, his Power Evangelism (1986), and the independent charismatic congregations that multiplied in Africa, Latin America and Asia made the renewal one of the largest strands of world Christianity. Pew’s ten-country survey counted Pentecostals and charismatics together as “renewalists,” citing an estimate that they make up at least a quarter of the world’s two billion Christians (Pew, “Spirit and Power,” 2006).

Key ideas and contributors

The gifts continue. Charismatics share the continuationist conviction that every gift listed in 1 Corinthians 12:4–11, including tongues, prophecy and healing, is meant for the church in every age. Paul’s instruction “do not forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:39–40) is read as still binding. See Spiritual Gifts for the wider debate.

Baptism in the Spirit, reinterpreted. Classical Pentecostals treat Spirit baptism as a second experience after conversion, with tongues as its initial evidence. Most charismatics in historic churches kept the experience and loosened the doctrine. Catholics and many Lutherans describe it as the “release” or renewal of a Spirit already given in baptism and confirmation; Kilian McDonnell and George Montague’s Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1991) argued from the church fathers that it belongs to normal Christian initiation. Larry Christenson made a similar case for Lutherans in The Charismatic Renewal Among Lutherans (1976). Tongues are usually welcomed but not required.

Renewal, not separation. The defining choice of the movement was to stay. Bennett, Harper, Suenens and Christenson all argued that the Spirit was renewing the existing churches, so leaving them would defeat the point. This is why charismatics hold the full range of views on Sacraments, Church order and Salvation: an Anglican charismatic remains Anglican, and a Catholic charismatic remains under the Magisterium.

Prophecy as fallible speech. Wayne Grudem’s The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (1988) gave many evangelical charismatics their working theory: New Testament congregational prophecy is a human report of something God brings to mind, to be weighed (1 Thessalonians 5:19–21), and does not carry the authority of Scripture.

Power evangelism. Wimber taught that healings and words of knowledge are signs that confirm the gospel, as in Mark 16:17–18 and Acts, and that ordinary believers can learn to pray for the sick.

Key controversies

Have the gifts ceased? The deepest objection comes from Cessationism. Following B. B. Warfield’s Counterfeit Miracles (1918), cessationists argue that sign gifts authenticated the apostles and closed with the canon (1 Corinthians 13:8–10, Hebrews 2:3–4). John MacArthur pressed the case in Charismatic Chaos (1992) and Strange Fire (2013), which grew out of a conference of the same name and called the movement a counterfeit; Michael Brown answered with Authentic Fire (2015). The four-view volume Are Miraculous Gifts for Today? (1996), edited by Grudem, set out the range from cessationist to “third wave.”

Is Spirit baptism a second blessing? Evangelical scholars challenged the subsequence doctrine even among those open to the gifts. Frederick Dale Bruner’s A Theology of the Holy Spirit (1970) and James Dunn’s Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970) argued that the New Testament ties the gift of the Spirit to conversion and baptism (1 Corinthians 12:13, Acts 2:38). Classical Pentecostals in turn suspected charismatics of diluting the experience by dropping the tongues requirement.

How should churches respond? Denominations wrote studies through the 1970s. The Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod’s Commission on Theology and Church Relations issued The Charismatic Movement and Lutheran Theology (1972), critical of Spirit-baptism teaching. Other bodies, including the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (1970) and the Church of England (Gospel and Spirit, 1977, with the Fountain Trust), sought guidelines for living together (dates unverified). Many congregations split over the question.

Authority and abuse. The Shepherding movement of the 1970s, led by the “Fort Lauderdale Five” including Bob Mumford and Derek Prince, taught that each believer should submit major decisions to a personal shepherd. Pat Robertson publicly attacked it in 1975, and in 1989 Mumford issued a statement repenting of “unhealthy submission” (summary, secondary). Critics see in it a recurring risk: prophetic authority outrunning accountability. The later Kansas City Prophets and the New Apostolic Reformation revived the same worry.

Manifestations and discernment. The Toronto Blessing, which began at the Toronto Airport Vineyard in January 1994, brought “holy laughter,” falling and, by some reports, animal noises; it spread to Holy Trinity Brompton within months. Wimber’s Vineyard released the Toronto church in December 1995 over its emphasis on such manifestations (summary, secondary). Charismatics themselves disagree about where renewal ends and excess begins.

Prosperity and the faith message. The Word of Faith teaching of Kenneth Hagin and others spread through charismatic networks and television, joining healing to promises of financial blessing. Many charismatic leaders reject the Prosperity Gospel, but critics treat it as a fruit of the movement’s emphasis on experience over doctrine.

What remains unresolved

The charismatic movement won much of its argument with the churches: few traditions now forbid the gifts outright, and its worship style is everywhere. What remains open is theological. Charismatics have never agreed on what Spirit baptism is, whether tongues are a sign or one gift among many, or how prophecy relates to Scripture’s authority. Because the movement lives inside other traditions, each tradition supplies its own answers, and the renewal stays a shared experience rather than a single theology.