Pentecostalism and the evaluation of personal experience

In the current edition of Books & Culture, Arlene M. Sanchez Walsh reflects on an afternoon tour she took of Angelus Temple, where the late Pentecostal hero Aimee Semple McPherson ministered. Sanchez, herself a licensed minister in the Pentecostal denomination called International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, writes that "the Pentecostal cult of personality tells us more about who Pentecostals are than it does about the leaders they hold in such high esteem."

The personality cults abound in Pentecostal and charismatic versions of Christianity. Right now, in Lakeland, Fla., some of my friends and family members are visiting an "outpouring" that is being presided-over by one of the latest personalities to gather a cult following: Todd Bentley, who can be seen on numerous YouTube videos leading crowds into near-hysterical frenzies.

The problem, these days, in our mass culture, is that charismatic personalities (using charismatic in the broadest sense of the term) and intense experiences are considered indications of reality or truth or God's presence. No one seems to think that senses and perceptions could be manipulated -- wittingly or unwittingly -- by a leader or by a crowd, in politics as well as religion.

"When a leader has the quality of charisma, he is able to arouse an extraordinary level of trust and devotion from his followers," wrote Wendy Duncan in her book I Can't Hear God Anymore: Life in a Dallas Cult. "The charismatic leader attracts people to his ideas and causes them to desire to be in his presence."

What follows that initial devotion, though, is a movement from one personality to the next, from one "move of God" to the next, from one "outpouring" to the next, from one "revival" to the next. Len Oakes, in his book Prophetic Charisma: The Psychology of Revolutionary Religious Personalities (Syracuse University Press, 1997), wrote, "The followers surrender not to the person of the leader but to the power manifest in him, and they will desert him if his power fails. The followers attain freedom from routine and the commonplace by surrendering to the leader and -- through him -- to their own emotional depths."

Following Oakes, it seems to me, based on my own 20 growing-up years in neo-Pentecostal/charismatic churches, that the promise of a new personality, as well as the alleged new move of God that comes with him, is never delivered and eventually fades away, so one is always eagerly looking for that next fix, whether it is a fix that will finally bring healing or guidance, or a fix that will bring a new experience of "emotional depths."

Consider again Oakes' phrase "freedom from routine and the commonplace." It is interesting that a common accusation against institutional churches is that their rituals and their orderliness smack of spiritual deadness. To be sure, as Jaroslav Pelikan said, "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." But what are the accusers of institutional churches seeking from the charismatic leader and the latest outpouring, the latest revival? Not truth. Instead, they seek experiences. The accusers of institutional churches never seem to consider that rituals and orderliness might be structured in such a way so that truth could be handed down to generation after generation.

But if a guy has been brought up with television and rock 'n' roll, how is he going to see the value in quietness and orderliness and the repetition of old texts unless he has the help of a little teaching or training? He wants sensation. Sensations dictate to him whether or not truth is being communicated. If the sensations come with Jesus' name attached, then they must be from God, never mind all affronts to historical doctrine and theology, never mind the atmosphere created by music and the mantra-like repetition of phrases.

Perhaps he should consider that church and worship are not about his personal experiences.

The fact that he does not consider such thoughts is evidence enough that Sanchez was right: "the Pentecostal cult of personality tells us more about who Pentecostals are than it does about the leaders they hold in such high esteem." All they want, as Oakes said, is "freedom from routine and the commonplace" and the resulting experience of "emotional depths."

-Colin Foote Burch

What Mitt Romney should have said

Here's the speech Mitt Romney should have given regarding his Mormon beliefs:

Good morning, and thanks for coming out today.

I've been encouraged to suggest a comparison between myself and John F. Kennedy, our first Catholic president.

After all, many Americans wondered what it would mean to have a Catholic president, just as many Americans today are concerned about the implications of having me as their first Mormon president.

I am not, however, going to take that approach today.

I'm simply going to point out what happened the last time we elected a born-again Baptist president.

Remember the hostages in Iran?

How about very long lines at the gas pump?

So if you think evangelical beliefs are so important, ask yourself: What was so great about Jimmy Carter?

Excuse me, I'm going to sneeze -- muh... muh... muh... MikeHuckabee!

Pardon me. Please rest assured that I am an American as well as a Mormon, and I will always do what is in the best interests of our nation.

Thank you, and may God bless America.

Creativity: Madeleine L'Engle, 1918-2007

It has only been within the last two weeks that I finished reading Madeleine L’Engle’s Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. When I heard about her death on Thursday, I choked up and whispered a “thank you” to her. Walking on Water is one of the most life-affirming, creativity-affirming, and art-affirming books I have read.

Only my two-year-old was with me, sitting at the kitchen table on which I had my computer, which I used to view the news stories and the Wikipedia entry about L’Engle. Although I never met L’Engle, I think I said something like, “One of daddy’s friends died,” and my face briefly contorted toward a cry, but little Sadie laughed, thinking I was clowning. Childlike laughter might be the best way to remember L’Engle.

She proved that childlikeness can be intelligent and broad-minded. Like comedians, children’s writers are often overlooked in the intellectual realm, yet they have both serious and playful minds. Here are some of the passages I underlined in Walking on Water.

Our work should be our play. If we watch a child at play for a few minutes, “seriously” at play, we see that all his energies are concentrated on it. He is working very hard at it. And that is how the artist works, although the artist may be conscious of discipline while the child simply experiences it.

Also:

When I am working, I move into an area of faith which is beyond the conscious control of my intellect. I do not mean that I discard my intellect, that I am an anti-intellectual, gung-ho for intuition and intuition only. Like it or not, I am an intellectual. The challenge is to let my intellect work for the creative act, not against it. And this means, first of all, that I must have more faith in the work than I have in myself.

And:

…I try to take time to let go, to listen, in much the same way that I listen when I am writing. This is praying time, and the act of listening in prayer is the same act as listening in writing.

And this fragment, which could be a life goal:

…accepting the discipline of listening, or training the ability to recognize something when it is offered.

I did not recognize what was offered soon enough. I began Walking on Water years ago and put it down, distracted by the parts of life that do not involve being quiet and listening.

Now that I have recently finished it, I want to read her children’s books, none of which, I am ashamed to say, I have read. I eventually recognized Walking on Water after it had been offered for a long time, and now that I have read it, I am eternally grateful to L’Engle. May light perpetual shine upon you.

Self-renewal in science and free societies

"The life of the scientific community consists in enforcing the tradition of science and assuring at the same time its continuous renewal. A dynamic free society lives as a whole in this way. It cultivates a system of traditional ideas which have the power of unlimited self-renewal."
--Michael Polanyi, from the preface to the Torchbook edition of Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy

This might explain the success of Christianity, which could be described as "a system of traditional ideas which have the power of unlimited self-renewal."

A Thought About God

"God does not cease to be a mystery in the event of revelation. The self-revealing God never becoms a controllable object or a manipulable possession."
From Daniel Migliore's Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology

Hitchens' culturally illiterate readership?

Christopher Hitchens, author of God is Not Great, "must be banking on a readership that has not read Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and Dostoyevsky. These Christian authors dramatized the themes and stories of the holy book that Hitchens disparages."

So writes Mary Grabar at TCSDaily.com.

She quotes Hitchens making this paradoxical assessment:

We are not immune to the lure of wonder and mystery and awe: we have music and art and literature, and find that the serious ethical dilemmas are better handled by Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Schiller and Dostoyevsky and George Eliot than in the mythical morality tales of the holy books.

Hitchens is a brilliant man and he's often a thrill to read, but in the above paragraph it seems he's cutting off the branch on which he sits. That's my assessment. Grabar makes her full case here:

http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=061507A