Evangelicalism and the Charismatic Movement

Evangelicalism and the Charismatic Movement in Great Britain

What is Pentecostalism? What is Evangelicalism? What was the Charismatic movement in England in the 1960s, how widespread was the movement and what faith-based dynamics were the forerunners to that charismatic movement? These questions and other issues will be reviewed and identified in this paper, in order to bring clarity and understanding to this aspect of religious history in England.

What is Evangelicalism and what is Pentecostalism?

These labels cry out for clear definitions and Wheaton College in Illinois is the source of solid information vis-a-vis Evangelicalism and Pentecostalism. Wheaton College has within its campus community the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE) and the definition of evangelical embraces three senses. The first sense is to explain that "all Christians who affirm a few key doctrines and practical emphases" are evangelicals (ISAE).

The ISAE references British historian David Bebbington (to be referenced at much greater length later in this paper) and explains that -- still within the ISAE's first sense -- Bebbington has four "specific hallmarks of evangelical religion" (ISAE). Those four are: conversionism (believing lives need changing); activism (witnessing one's belief in the gospel); biblicism (very high regard for the Bible); and crucicentrism (a strong emphasis on how Christ sacrificed on the cross) (ISAE).

The second sense identified by Wheaton College is to view evangelicalism as an "organic group of movements and religion" -- and to understand that evangelicalism is as much a "style" of worshipping as it is a particular "set of beliefs." Keeping within the second sense, the ISAE points out that given the above-mentioned context (style vs. beliefs) religious organizations as diverse as the African-American Baptists and Dutch Reformed Churches, or Mennonites and Pentecostals, or Catholic charismatics and conservative Southern Baptists, all qualify as evangelicals. That is because they worship in evangelical style, with animated, enthusiastic, vocally powerful services.

Finally, the third sense that Wheaton College puts forward for evangelical is that it describes a "coalition" that emerged during WWII in response to the "perceived anti-intellectual, separatist, belligerent nature of the fundamentalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s" (ISAE). On another page the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals describes Pentecostalism as having "an exuberant worship style" and the practice of "glossolalia" (speaking in tongues); the act of speaking in tongues is viewed as a return to the "apostolic experience of the Book of Acts" and the "biblical Baptism of the Holy Spirit" (ISAE).

The Early Pentecostal Movement in Britain -- the Power of Women

To fully understand and appreciate the Charismatic movement in England in the 1960s one must look into the recent past and identify the origins of the Pentecostal movement, also referred to as Evangelicalism. Looking back to the early twentieth century, author Diana Chapman writes in the Journal of Pentecostal Theology that women in fact were pioneering in ministry by taking leadership responsibilities in churches and were important public speakers in religious conventions. Her article sheds a great deal of light on pertinent details regarding the genesis of the charismatic movement in the United Kingdom.

Chapman describes early Pentecostalism as a revival movement -- indeed a "charismatic moment" within a movement -- that began in Britain between the years 1907 and 1914 (Chapman, 2004, p. 217). Specifically, the origins of Pentecostalism in Britain, Chapman asserts, can be traced back to Reverend a.A. Boddy's church, the All Saint's Church, in Sunderland. Boddy is an iconic figure in the Pentecostal movement according to Pentecostal Pioneers (http://www.pentocostalpioneers.org) (PP). Boddy found "true salvation in Christ and received justification through the Blood" in 1892 and became a "leading figure of the Pentecostal League in 1904.

In 1906 he visited Pentecostal leader T.B. Barratt's ministry in Norway and was so moved by Barratt that he invited Barratt to Sunderland to preach. Boddy launched his magazine Confidence in 1908 and, the Pentecostal Pioneer article states, it was the very first Pentecostal publication and ran through to 1926 (141 issues in all). The magazine featured "teaching, testimonies and announcements of events" and was delivered to the U.S., New Zealand, Liberia, India and South Africa -- in addition to being distributed throughout the UK (PP).

Between August 31 and October 18, 1907, T.B. Barratt visited Boddy's church often and helped launch the movement. According to Chapman's account, the female preachers in the Pentecostal movement "could easily be overlooked" except for the amount of coverage the women received in Boddy's Confidence magazine (Chapman, p. 218). The Pentecostal movement in Britain was fueled in large part by the "Sunderland Conventions," according to Chapman, and at that time females and males ministered with "complete equality" (p. 218). However, the beginning of the First World War (1914) -- also the end of the Sunderland Conventions -- marked the beginning of the end of women as ministers in the Pentecostal movement. The male ministers and others in the church began to question the value of having women preaching and leading, leading to a nearly all-male Pentecostal leadership period.

Chapman reviews "Holiness Movements" -- the spiritual movements that preceded the Pentecostal movement -- and offers six factors that accounted for the prominence of women in those movements. First, the Holiness teachings emphasized a model that focused on a "sanctification experiences" (p. 223) that required men and women to publicly testify as to how God had reached them and led them. This concept was later embraced in Pentecostal services. And by speaking in public about their beliefs, women began to think about becoming preachers themselves. Secondly, Scriptures became the central doctrine in the Holiness teachings; one expressed one's own person experience relative to Scriptures but did not have to be bound by "literalist interpretations" (p. 223). The third factor, as Chapman explains, led to a "charismatic concept of leadership and ministry"; in other words, women testified in public that they had received a "call" to the ministry, and the concepts of "gifting" and "anointing for service" figured prominently in those testimonies (p. 224) by women.

The fourth factor in the development of the Holiness movement was the innovation relating to Bible readings. American lay preacher Hannah Whitall Smith popularized the format in which the speaker recited the Scriptural passage, then extemporaneously made "appropriate comments" about that passage (p. 224). Women could not speak informally in spiritual contexts "without using the title of a sermon" (p. 224). The fifth factor, according to Chapman was that Evangelicalism put both women and men on "an equal footing before God" -- and Evangelicalism had always championed the notion of human rights, which was important to female ministers. The sixth of Chapman's factors that empowered the Holiness movement within the female gender was the fact that informal and small meetings emerged and women grew into leadership roles "on the basis of availability and charismatic gifting" (p. 224).

Noll, Bebbington, and Rawlyk on Evangelicalism and its History

In the book Evangelicalism the noted authors Mark a. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George a. Rawlyk trace the evangelical experiences from the 1700s up to the 1990s. In the Introduction, the authors expresses that "From the start," among Protestant congregations in English-speaking countries, "news about evangelical experiences…was passed on with great excitement"

(Noll, et al., 1994, p. 3). An example of that excitement is offered on page 3; although Abigail Hutchinson of Massachusetts felt "despair" and "alienation" she nevertheless attended church services on a Monday morning in 1735. The pastor (Jonathan Edwards) explained in a published piece that when Hutchinson said the words, "The blood of Christ cleanses from all sin," she was filled with "a lively sense of the excellency of Christ" (Noll, et al., p. 3). Moreover, she was "filled…exceeding full of joy," Edwards remembered.

Protestants who had access to pamphlets and journals published in the 18th Century in were able to also read John Wesley's recounting of a meeting in London on Wednesday, May 24th, 1738. Wesley, a founder in the Methodist movement, was reading Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans; in that passage Luther was describing "the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ" (Noll, p. 4) and Wesley wrote that his heart felt "strangely warmed." But placing his full trust in Christ at that moment, Wesley went on, "…an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death" (Noll, p. 4). Soon thereafter, word apparently spread about these dramatic kinds of events and an "evangelical pattern of intense religious experience was established very quickly," writes Noll (p. 4).

Meanwhile, moving ahead to the Chapter 18 of the book, in Bebbington's essay he writes that by the 1940s, "On both sides of the Atlantic the oneness pentecostalists and charismatics whose practice of baptizing in the name of 'Jesus only' predisposed them to a modalist theology…"

(Bebbington, 1994, p. 366). And even though by 1940 the word "evangelical" had gone "out of fashion" because fundamentalism and modernism pushed it from popularity, the mainline Protestant denominations in Britain and the U.S. were not "hostile" to evangelicalism (Bebbington, p. 367). After WWII, the Church of Scotland and British Methodism launched "sustained evangelistic thrusts" and in Britain the "National Young Life Campaign" got involved in evangelical activities, Bebbington continued.

The American Presbyterian denominations announced in 1946 that they were to become "a crusading organ for evangelical religion" (Bebbington, p. 367). And when Billy Graham began preaching and healing in the post-WWII era he did "almost as much" to bring the evangelical movement strength in Britain as he did in the United States, Bebbington asserts. Even in the staid, conservative Church of England there was a "new evangelical revival" by 1959; further promoting the movement was the fact that the British and American evangelical movements linked their talents and strengths across the Atlantic Ocean.

Bebbington notes that the charismatic movement in Britain during the 1960s was in part inspired by the writings of David Wilkerson, who published Cross and the Switchblade, an account of his evangelical work with teenagers in New York City -- notably those involved with drugs.

Wilkerson, a Pentecostal missionary, wrote in his book about his education at the street level, meeting and working with gang members who were involved in drugs. The work was challenging to say the least, and there were times in his book that Wilkerson admitted he was putting his life in danger. He visited police stations, talked with social workers and parole officers and spent time in the library researching gangs and drugs. He also waded into gang territory many times and was laughed at and threatened because the gangster teenagers did not understand who he was or what he was up to.

"My total impression of the problems of New York teen-agers was so staggering that I almost quit. It was at this moment that the Holy Spirit stepped in to help"

(Wilkerson, 1986, p. 50). The Holy Spirit simply gave Wilkerson an idea, he writes. He coaxed a young boy into blowing on a trumpet to the tune of "Onward Christian Soldiers" as children began pouring out of tenement buildings and others, including gang members, arrived to see what was happening.

As Wilkerson watched in astonishment -- and his trumpet player played Onward Christian Soldiers "fifteen or twenty times" -- a hundred boys and girls had arrived at this street corner. And from a lamppost Wilderson began to preach, and he indeed got attention. Some gang members wore "a sharp-looking Alpine hat with a narrow brim" and just about everyone "wore sunglasses" (p. 56). But the problem was they couldn't hear him. He feared that he was not going to be able to make an impression if they couldn't hear him. But just then the street got very quiet; a police car pulled up and officers stepped out and the crowd got very quiet.

Eventually he was able to speak and he was heard. Maybe it was the Holy Spirit that brought the police at that pivotal moment, he believed. From that event he met a man who gave him the cash (he believes it was the work of the Lord) to rent an auditorium, and he held revival meetings in that auditorium. He used some of the money to hire busses to bring large groups of gang members to the auditorium.

The gangs included the Mau Maus (the most violent), the Chaplains, the Dragons and the GGI's (p. 75). He had some startling achievements in his ministry that one could only call success, and as mentioned, his writing inspired many youths and others in Britain in the 1960s just as the charismatic movement was taking hold.

The Charismatic Movement in Britain in the 1960s

In the book Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, Bebbington teams up with Davi Bebbington to further enlighten readers as to aspects of evangelical activities in Britain. Bebbington asserts that the first -- or one of the first -- cases of churchgoers speaking in tongues in the 1960s occurred at Beckenham, England in 1963. At that moment, a group of parishioners -- along with George Forester, Vicar of St. Paul's -- "started speaking in tongues"

(Bebbington, et al., 1989, p. 227).

This incident "hit the headlines, Bebbington writes; and this group of parishioners that had received "The Baptism of the Holy Spirit" began meeting regularly in fellowship sessions to cement their new-found faith. In the Church of England, too, similar experiences (speaking in tongues) were beginning to take place. In Scotland, too, the Glasgow Sunday Mail reported (headline) "Strange new sect in Scottish Kirk" -- and added that this new "sect" was observing a form of worship "bordering on the supernatural" (Bebbington, p. 227).

As Bebbington puts it, "An unfamiliar phenomenon was springing up" because speaking in tongues (glossolalia) had "hitherto been confined to the Pentecostal tradition, but now there were outbreaks within the mainstream churches." (p. 227). And moreover that outbreak did not consist of "inarticulate gibberish" said one Methodist recipient; rather, it was "a beautiful flow of words" that expressed a "sense of joyful praise" (p. 227). The author called the speaking of tongues the most "obvious feature of a movement that was not only being seen in Britain, but around the world in many places.

Where did the movement get its name, "charismatic" (which translated means "Of the Gifts of the Spirit")? Bebbington asserts that it got its name in the United States in 1962. The impact of the charismatic movement was felt initially in existing churches and Anglo-Catholics got involved as well. From 1967 on there was a charismatic movement afoot in the Roman Catholic Church with many people joining the Church after having been recruited from Evangelicalism (p. 227). Even the Church of England began holding charismatic prayer meetings and the very first parish to "enjoy corporate renewal was St. Mark's, Gillingham," a venue that was served by a vicar from the Evangelical citadel of All Souls', Langham Place.

Bebbington says the man who gets credit for propagating charismatic religious activities in England was Michael Harper; he became charismatic after receiving baptism in 1963, according to the author.

All the energy and publicity about the charismatic movement notwithstanding, it was not all smooth going for those who had come to accept a new way of worshipping. For example, on page 228, Bebbington writes that the "spread of renewal was…a painful business"; moreover, there were naturally tensions between those worshipping in traditional services and those congregations who were embracing the idea of speaking in tongues and being very animated in church (waving arms, shouting, moving about the sanctuary).

At a Methodist church in the North-West of Britain, charismatics began to raise their arms during a chorus "in a characteristic gesture of praise" but the minister asked the singing to stop and asked the charismatics "whether they wished to leave the room" (p. 228). There were discussions between the pastor and the charismatics and in the end, they left the congregation. Indeed this wasn't the only confrontation between charismatics and the traditional Protestant / Christian church and in time many of the new found "renewal" movement began going to private homes for worship. The movement within the charismatic movement -- people avoiding traditional churches and going into private homes -- was called "Restorationism." And when those groups grew too large to meet in private houses, "they rented or bought more substantial accommodation" (p. 228).

On page 229 Bebbington invokes the name of David du Plessis, a Pentecostal minister from South Africa who had been all over the world spreading the gospel of baptism in the "Spirit" came to Britain in 1959 and "made effective ecumenical contacts." Not only were there tensions between the charismatics and traditional Christian churches, there was indeed something of a schism between Pentecostalists and the new breed, charismatics. The suspicions that Pentecostal people felt toward the charismatics were based on several things. One, the Pentecostals did not approve of the charismatics' emphasis on testimonials rather than strict Bible teachings. As noted earlier in this paper, the Bible's passages were a big part of the Pentecostal faith. Also, the charismatics were "virtually unanimous" in their denial that "speaking in tongues is the indispensable first sign of baptism in the Spirit" (Bebbington, p. 229). This of course rubbed the Pentecostals the wrong way.

The Sixties of course was the decade of the counterculture in Britain and in the United States, as young people became restless with old traditional ways, they found that rock music, drugs and "free love" were preferable to serving in the Vietnam war or joining up with a corporate Britain. "The Vietnam war "increasingly symbolized for them the consequences of the capitalism against which they were rebelling, Bebbington write on page 232 of his book. Hence, the charismatic movement was the "Christian version of the counterculture," Bebbington explains.

Another dynamic that Bebbington believes contributed to the charismatic movement among young people in particular, was the fact that the growth of international trade after World War II brought about "unprecedented affluence" and young people believing that prosperity would always be there for them, "set out on a quest for higher values" and hence, the charismatic movement (p. 231). In fact Bebbington believes that the charismatic movement was a product of the "diffusion of cultural Modernism" which in turn was a product of earlier movements like the Enlightenment and Romanticism a century earlier. He invokes the name of iconic British author Virginia Woolf who wrote, "On or about December 1910 human nature changed."

Woolf was alluding to the opening of the first exhibition in London of Post-Impressionist art, considered a pivotal moment in the transition to the modernist movement. "All human relations shifted," said Woolf, quoted by Bebbington on page 231. She was talking about relations between masters and their servants, between husbands and wives and between parents and children. and, Woolf went on, when human relations change there is an accompanying change in "religion, conduct, politics and literature" (p. 231).

Another forerunner to the charismatic movement in the Sixties was the Oxford Group that was launched in Cambridge in the 1920s (p. 233). A Lutheran minister from Pennsylvania, Dr. Frank Buchman, was the key person in the origins of the Oxford Group, Bebbington writes; the Oxford Group made a "remarkable impact on Britain" during the deep economic depression in the early 1930s.

One idea behind the Oxford Group was that theological terminology can be tossed aside because it might be an "obstacle to evangelism"; indeed, people need to pass through whatever theological dogma they had originally been exposed to, Buchman preached. The Oxford Group blended "evangelicalism with the first ripples of twentieth-century high culture," Bebbington writes (p. 233). The Oxford group had a sense of joyful "spontaneity" and nothing was "proper" but everything was to be whatever seemed comfortable. There was a sharing in the movement and a time for testimony and confessions "in public or private"; by speaking publicly about their "sins" (such as having casual sex) the Oxford Group members believed they were engaged in a form of therapy, Bebbington explained on page 234. One of the chaplains at Oxford University who became part of the Oxford Group was quoted saying: