Pentecostalism, Catholicism, and the Spirit in the World

Stan Chu Ilo

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532650376
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

This volume's essays are an ecumenical ensemble of the best scholars and leading practitioners in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements from all four corners of the world. The contributors bring together various denominational perspectives and dialogue for understanding the present momentum of these Spirit movements in the world church. Their diverse methodologies transverse the traditional and new approaches to studying these movements. Pointing the way forward, the authors highlight some of the lessons learned in their scholarly engagement with Spirit movements. These lessons offer significant insight and viewpoints for the academy in the historical analysis of these movements. They also serve as a good guide forpastoral discernment and accompaniment for God's people in their daily lives, as well as for social ministries in the world church. This volume addresses questions of salvation and eschatology, health and healing, prosperity and poverty, suffering and death, fear and faith, despair and hope. Other topics include the conflict between charism and institution and the tension between cultic clericalism and the affirmation and use of the gifts and talents of lay members of Christ's faithful in the church.

Introduction: What We Have Seen and Heard (1 John 1:3)

Stan Chu Ilo

“The Catholic charismatic movement is one of the many fruits of the Second Vatican Council, which, like a new Pentecost, led to an extraordinary flourishing in the Church’s life of groups and movements particularly sensitive to the action of the Spirit. How can we not give thanks for the precious spiritual fruits that the Renewal has produced in the life of the Church and in the lives of so many people? How many lay faithful—men, women, young people, adults, and elderly—have been able to experience in their own lives the amazing power of the Spirit and his gifts! How many people have rediscovered faith, the joy of prayer, the power and beauty of the Word of God, translating all this into generous service in the Church’s mission! How many lives have been profoundly changed!”

—St. Pope John Paul II

When Pope John XXIII prayed for a “new Pentecost” in the Church in preparation for the Second Vatican Council, it was an invitation to all Christians to embark on the path of renewal and reform. This renewal and reform, it was hoped, would have profound effects on the lives of Christians and their witnessing to the faith in the world. It was also expected to touch the entire life of the Church and her structures, pastoral life, liturgies, teachings, and social commitments. It was an invitation to a renewal in the spirit and a healthy dialogue and engagement with the world through reading the signs of the times and following the movement of the spirit in history. Vatican II and its subsequent and ongoing reception is still seen by many as the greatest gift of the Holy Spirit to modern Catholicism.

More than fifty years after this prayer was said, one can say that God has indeed listened to the prayers of God’s people through the manifestation and renewed recognition and appropriation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Roman Catholic Church. This is particularly evident in the birth and presence of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement as one of the gifts of the Church’s openness to a new Pentecost since Vatican II. There are also many flourishing lay groups and sodalities in the Catholic Church which could be called new Spirit movements within the Catholic Church. They are all reviving the life of the church and her members especially in small communities and parish groups, in small Christian communities, among migrants and refugees, in prisons, and in slums in many big cities throughout the world. They provide, even in imperfect ways, new points of light from many marginal sites of human existence where faith in the shadows of life offers new hope and new grace.

When one looks at this irruption of the Spirit in the Catholic Church vis-à-vis what is happening in world Christianity today, one can say that Pentecostalism has become the new face of Christian expansion. There are certainly revival movements which make appeals to traditional Catholic spirituality—Eucharistic adoration, Marian devotions, cult of the saints as expressed through Toca de Assis in Brazil; however, all these forms of spirituality seem to coalesce in a unique way in the life of the Spirit. The momentum of Christian expansion in world Christianity today, especially in the global South, cannot be accounted for theologically without understanding the features of the Pentecostalizing thrust of evangelization and mission, as well as the new identities and faces that these new movements give to contemporary Christianity.

Indeed, the words of 1 John 1:3 about “what we have seen and heard” is, for me, a critical juncture in the narrative of the Christian mission in the world today. The Pentecostal story is not an add-on to the Christian mission, nor is it a new story in the history of the Church. The present shape and texture of Pentecostalism may carry within it the cultural currents of present history, but the continuing work of the Holy Spirit has been identified as central to the birth, life, and witness of the churches and her members from the early beginnings of the Christian movement. However, there are some questions that emerge in the present context of Christian mission: Are we as Christians, scholars, and leaders of God’s people paying attention to what God is doing in our world and in our churches? Are we allowing ourselves to be led into deeper mysteries through a humble openness to learning from these stories of the spontaneous irruptions of the work of God in the Pentecostalizing of the Christian mission in every corner of the globe? Do we see ourselves in these stories as scholars and church leaders, since these stories are the warp and weft of the narrative identity of faith communities in our neighborhoods, parishes, and church traditions?

How can we account for what we have seen and heard in world Christianity today? My proposal is that, in the Christian academy, there is the need to develop new navigational tools for following these emerging Pentecostal and Charismatic stories. These tools can help scholars to understand the cultural and spiritual currents driving the Pentecostalizing momentum in today’s Christianity. It will also offer some hermeneutical and historical tools which can help scholars to look at some of the commonalities and differences between these groups across different church traditions and across different cultural and regional groups. There is the need to dig deeper into these diverse stories, to understand and critically engage the stories emerging from the frontiers of faith driven by Pentecostal and Charismatic currents with a hermeneutic of humility, of hope, and an openness to following these narratives as pathways to finding the footprints of God in history. Particularly for the Catholic Church, openness is needed to stretch our gaze beyond our limited ecclesial horizon, to enable us to walk outside the road well-traveled and step into the arena of the Spirit with other churches. This, no doubt, would help the Roman Church to find, through these new movements, some helpful practices for ecumenical relations in the search for greater Christian unity through the Spirit who is the principle of unity (Eph 4:2–3).

The essays which we have assembled here represent the finest collection of the best scholars and leading practitioners in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements from all four corners of the world. It is an ecumenical ensemble of scholars who, in their contributions, have brought together diverse denominational perspectives and dialogue to understanding the present momentum of Pentecostal and Charismatic drive in the World Church. They demonstrate diverse methodologies which transverse the latest and emerging approaches to studying Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in world Christianity.

This volume is unique, because these contributors are not simply theorists. Rather, they are very active as leaders in their communities, and some have been involved in intercultural and interdenominational conversations and dialogue about the place and future of these movements in world Christianity. Their essays are not only descriptive but also illustrative, giving readers an adequate portrait of the range and depth of beliefs and practices of these movements as well as their appeal and legitimization through and outside of the traditional canons of Christian orthodoxy. These authors also move from illustration to giving explanatory account of these movements. They point the way forward for studying these movements and show some of the lessons learned not only for the academy but also for pastoral life, education, and social ministries in the World Church. In doing so, they show us new ways of understanding, interpreting, and judging the context of diverse Christian communities and how they construct ideas and practices for the future. The topics they address in this volume include questions of salvation and eschatology, health and healing, prosperity and poverty, suffering and death, fear and faith, despair and hope, as well as the conflict between charism and institution, and the tension between cultic clericalism and the affirmation and use of the gifts and talents of lay members of Christ’s faithful in the Church.

The contributors here ask the following questions in different ways: How does one validate the kind of religious claims which Pentecostals and Charismatics make? How is this kind of Christian faith consistent with or different from contemporary and past Christian traditions that represent fidelity to the faith, beliefs, and practices which have defined the movement of the Church from the time of Jesus guided by the Holy Spirit? Some contributors point to the lack of form and firm structure in these movements—their ecclesial status—particularly for those communities of faith gathered around charismatic leaders and founders who claim a pneumatic vocation to form a church or ministry. Some, on the other hand, see these irruptions of new movements as expressing the emergence of an unrestricted experience of the Lordship of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

What becomes obvious from this volume is that Pentecostal and Charismatic movements in the World Church are here to stay. They can no longer be simply dismissed as new Christian fads that are doling out Christian tranquilizers which have an expiration date. Indeed, these new movements are attempts on the part of many Christians to use the resources of the Christian heritage—especially biblical and cultural narratives—to address the challenging social context of suffering, poverty, political instability, disease, war, and death which have characterized the histories of many marginalized people in the world. In many cases, they are also some form of protest against a too-rigid and predictable clerical church where there is often no room for creativity and use of the gifts of the whole people of God. These groups, then, are developing new hermeneutics and exegesis which have never been applied elsewhere. They thus present, in many cases, new typologies of belief and practices which may not be properly and fully accounted for through theological traditions developed in the West. To borrow Zygmunt Bauman’s characterization of contemporary societies, these groups, therefore, represent a “liquid modernity,” because they are transgressing traditional norms and canons of faith while, at the same time, reinforcing the claims of traditional faith.1 In doing this, they are retrieving old traditions in new ways, while reinventing Christianity as something that possesses a genuine newness which cannot be contained in one cultural or ecclesial vessel or fossilized in time. Pentecostalism, therefore, represents a unique version of modernity which cannot be simply identified with any particular contemporary dominant discourse. Rather, it presents us with a “liquid modernity” that cannot be housed in the ideological world of either the liberal or conservative wing of the traditional churches, because it exudes multiple shapes in its teaching and practices which lead to many directions. Thus, for many Pentecostals and Catholic Charismatics in Ghana, Brazil, the Philippines, or Ukraine, the Spirit may lead them in different directions, but there is a unity of gifts which, when used to serve God and society, all lead to a new reality and the realization of God’s promises. This liquid modernity that is shaping a new culture within churches cannot be defined by Western epistemology but rather through narratives of dominion, conquest, victory, and restoration which Pentecostals and Catholic Charismatics hope will bring about a new heaven and a new earth.

Summaries of Chapters

The essays here are organized into four groups. The first section is on theologies of the Spirit where contributors explore particularly how to ground Pentecostalism through some theological foundations. In chapter 1, Simon Kim uses the christological and pneumatological images developed in the theology of the earlier councils as an exemplary portrait of how a theology of Charismatism can be born through an adequate Trinitarian and cultural foundation. As a result, he argues strongly for a theology of the Spirit which is deeply linked to cultural imaginings and representations not only of the Spirit but also of Christology. Drawing from the lived experience of Korean Catholics exemplified in the yeondo, forty-nine days of prayer for the dead, he shows the limit of folk and Charismatic spiritualities when they fail to develop a christological counterpart. This challenge is clearly manifest in the present spiritual experience of Korean-American migrants in the US whose spirituality and wholehearted embrace of the movement of the Spirit often face the limitations of incompletion without adequate christological cultural imaginations. Simon Kim shows the need for a more holistic and integrated, lived faith in the Charismatic groups, a faith that is grounded in an adequate Trinitarian theology and mediated through cultural images and symbols from the everyday experiences of people.

Like Simon Kim’s essay, Jakob Egeris Thorsen’s lifetime research and fieldwork on Latin American Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) pays special attention to “lived pneumatology” with stories of actual faith of Catholic Charismatics in Guatemala. In his chapter, Thorsen shows that the activities and ministries of CCR members have become very significant on the new Latin American map of Catholicism and Christianity in general. While these groups have made possible the unhinging of institutional control over the charismata, helped the baptismal priesthood to flower, and contributed to developing new tools for the New Evangelization in Latin America, there are some fundamental challenges which need to be addressed both pastorally and theologically. One such challenge is that of parallel ecclesiologies between the institutional church and the charismatic groups which sometimes have led to division and schism. Other challenges include the polarization and pluralization of religious practices in the Church which may give the impression of superior and inferior spiritual traditions in the Church and the failure to fully integrate CCR practices into both the liturgical life of the Church and her social mission.

Clement Majawa, in his essay, looks at Pentecostalism’s possible contributions to the transformation of human values and social justice. Majawa develops the African concept of Ubuntu which highlights the interconnectedness of all things and all humans in promoting the conditions for human and cosmic flourishing. He uses this concept to develop a road map for local and global transformation through global Pentecostalism. He sees the global nature of Pentecostalism as a sign of the positive values that can bring about a world where there is love, peace, and transformation. This can happen, he hopes, when people pay more attention to the movement of the Spirit in history and the Ubuntu spirit, which he identifies as the pulsating motion that moves the world to greater convergence around the practices and priorities of Jesus of Nazareth.

The volume’s second section explores the theme of spiritual warfare and healing which is very prominent in Pentecostal and Charismatic groups. Philomena Mwaura begins this section with an exceptional essay that brings together her research in psychology, theology, missiology, and cultural studies to help us understand spiritual warfare and healing in East Africa. Her essay asks the following questions: How do Pentecostals understand healing, deliverance, and spiritual warfare? What mechanisms do they employ to mediate healing? What is the meaning of healing, deliverance, and spiritual warfare in the self-understanding of the individual and churches? Concentrating on selected neo-Pentecostal churches in Kenya, Mwaura shows that, in many instances, these groups help people make sense of their condition through faith healing and bring greater integration to the community, restoring relationships with God, self, community, and nature. She warns, however, of the danger of over-spiritualization, amidst some other excesses which could arise where forms of healing, deliverance, and spiritual warfare are promoted that exploit people’s vulnerability.

In his chapter, Zorodzai Dube asks a fundamental question: Besides providing coded protest language, how does African Pentecostalism mediate alternative survival strategies, ethical instructions as a strategy for good citizenship, and a personal sense of agency? Dube locates African Pentecostalism’s exorcisms and faith healing within constructive postmodernism, which traces the creativity of postmodernity subjects dealing with oppressive local and global structures. He argues that these movements do not operate in a vacuum. Rather, they are responses to multiple issues, particularly within postcolonial African states. Using Zimbabwe as a good example of a postcolonial state that gradually slipped from economic glory into political and economic chaos, Dube shows that the nature of Pentecostal movements in such a country bears the marks of the socioeconomic and political miasma that plague the people of God.

In the next chapter, Candy Gunther Brown examines Francis MacNutt’s impact on universalizing healing ministries in both Pentecostal Protestant groups as well as Catholic Charismatic groups. She shows how MacNutt, in his global healing ministries, brought together different biblical, pastoral, and missiological dimensions of healing as integral to the work of evangeliza...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Introduction: What We Have Seen and Heard (1 John 1:3)
• Part One: Theologies of the Holy Spirit
• Part Two: Spiritual Warfare and Healing
• Part Three: Relationships between Catholics and Protestant Pentecostals
• Part Four: Prosperity and Poverty
• Part Five: Politics and Modernity