Charismatic Renewal in Britain
Charismatic Renewal in Britain
Charismatic Renewal in Britain
RENEWAL
IN BRITAIN
Roots, influences and later developments
Introduction
The root Scriptural paradigm for Pentecostal and Charismatic spirituality is the
experience of the disciples on the Day of Pentecost in Jerusalem, when 'all of
them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages,
as the Spirit gave them ability' (Acts 2:4). While Pentecostals today advocate
this same 'filling' or 'baptism' with the Spirit as a 'second' blessing subsequent
to conversion, the ability to speak in other recognised languages (xenolalia) is
less central for present-day Pentecostalism than the more general gift of
'speaking in tongues' (glossolalia). In practice, this is taken to include
unknown 'tongues of angels' and various other utterances 'too deep for
words' (1 Cor. 13:1; 14:2-19; Rom. 8:26). While Pentecostals typically regard
glossolalia as normative for individual Christians, the use of other
‘supernatural’ or 'extraordinary' spiritual gifts like prophecy, healing and
deliverance is assumed for each Pentecostal congregation, if not for each
church member (cf. 1 Cor. 12:4-11). Although the Charismatic Movement
takes its name from the Greek word for the same gifts emphasised in
Pentecostalism (charismata), it has tended to be less insistent on the need for
glossolalia, and has regarded 'baptism with the Holy Spirit' in a less
programmatic way. These distinctions will become clearer when we come to
look more closely at these two movements. However, given their shared claim
to biblical and apostolic origins, it is important to consider at some length
those streams of renewal which flowed before they themselves came into
being - streams which also claimed the power and blessing of the Holy Spirit,
and which can fairly be seen as precursors of both.
3
The sacred songs, prayers and art produced by the Celtic Christian
communities which existed in the British Isles from second century onwards
appear to have maintained a generally high view of the Holy Spirit,
particularly in relation to the Trinity.3 The great Trinitarian hymn 'St Patrick's
Breastplate' is perhaps the best-known reflection of this - whether it was
actually written by Patrick himself (c.370-460), or by a later Gaelic author.
When depicted more specifically, the Spirit was most often portrayed as the
dove of Jesus' baptism, and sometimes as the flame of Pentecost. Further on,
it also appeared as a more indigenous wild goose, although the origins of this
symbol are disputed and may in fact have been pagan.4 An account of the
ordination of a deacon called Samson records Bishop Dubricius and St Illtyd
viewing a dove above the candidate's head,5 while another bishop was said to
have seen a tongue of fire on Brigid when professing her a nun. Patrick
recounted a vision in which he saw the Holy Spirit praying both within and
above him,6 while Adamnan's biography of St Columba describes the famous
Irish missionary to Scotland being 'visited' by the Spirit for 'three whole days
and nights'.7
By the end of the sixth century, however, this situation had changed.
Between the first major Anglo-Saxon incursions of the early 500s and the
arrival of Pope Gregory's emissary Augustine from Rome in 597, the whole
spiritual landscape of Britain altered dramatically. For one thing, the invaders
ensured that the heartlands overwhelmingly reverted to paganism, forcing
Celtic Christian traditions back into Wessex, Wales and Cornwall. At the same
time, the use of extraordinary spiritual gifts was significantly waning within
the life and worship of the Church world-wide. Where earlier continental
leaders like Justin Martyr (d. 165), Irenaeus (d. 202), Novatian (d.257) and
Ambrose (340-398) had described the persistence of prophecy, tongues,
4
and words of knowledge were typically eclipsed by set rites and forms of
prayer.
Despite all this, there do seem have been exceptions, and it is to these that
we shall now turn.
By this stage, the Western church had officially split from its Eastern
counterpart, but in the latter, the same basic pattern of mainstream formality
and exceptional charismatic spontaneity pertained. Undoubtedly the Byzantine
Rite bound different patriarchates into a common liturgical order; yet the
writings and ministries of Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022),
Athanasius of Constantinople (1230-1310) and Gregory Palamas (1296-1359)
confirm that healing, exorcism, words of knowledge, tongues and a more
6
1.4.1 Luther
Whoever comes forward, and wants to read, teach, or preach, and yet
speaks with tongues, that is, speaks Latin instead of German, or some
unknown language, he is to be silent and preach to himself alone. For
no one can hear it or understand it, and no one can get any benefit
from it. Or if he should speak with tongues, he ought, in addition, to
put what he says into German, or integrate it one way or another, so
that the congregation may understand it.26
As well as challenging Rome, Luther saw his task as resisting what he took to
be sectarian excess among fellow advocates of Reform. Even in the pre-
Reformation period, certain groups had developed radical, enthusiastic
7
If Martin Luther was scathing about the potential for licence and excess in
Anabaptist worship and spirituality, the French reformer John Calvin (1509-
8
64) was equally strong in his opposition, linking Anabaptism to libertinism and
charging that it confused the plain sense of Scripture with a subjectivist
'fantasy of the brain'.32 Despite this, it can hardly be said that Calvin
neglected the importance of the Holy Spirit in his writing and teaching;
indeed, he paid the Spirit significant attention partly in order to correct what
he perceived to be the misunderstandings of the Anabaptists. It was with
some justification, in fact, that the Nineteenth Century Princeton scholar
Benjamin Warfield dubbed Calvin a 'theologian of the Holy Spirit'.33 Certainly,
Calvin stressed that the Christian life originates in, and is continually renewed
by, the Spirit's power.34 Likewise, he viewed the Spirit as the source of all that
is good, true and beautiful, even among pagans and atheists.35 The authority
of Scripture, for Calvin, is validated and mediated by the Holy Spirit,36 and the
Spirit is nothing less than 'the bond by which Christ links us effectually to
himself.'37 Indeed, as John Hesselink points out, Calvin implies that without
the Holy Spirit all that has been accomplished by Christ would count for
nothing.38 More distinctively, Calvin presented the Holy Spirit as the motor of
regeneration among those being saved, and was very concerned to highlight
the role of the Spirit in providing assurance of salvation to those who already
profess Christ.39 As Hesselink underlines, such assurance of faith is 'the very
thing so earnestly desired by charismatics'.40
Notwithstanding this generally high theology of the Spirit, Calvin does appear
to have believed that the 'extraordinary' gifts had ceased some time after the
age of the apostles. In his commentary on the Book of Acts, he suggests in
particular relation to the gift of tongues that whereas it had once served as an
'adornment and honour of the gospel itself', it soon became 'corrupted' by
human pride. Indeed, Calvin sees the problems occasioned by this gift in 1
Corinthians 14 as a sign that such corruption had set in quite early. On this
basis, indeed, Calvin proposed that God had intervened to remove glossolaliac
utterance from the Church's life, rather than allowing it 'to be vitiated with
further abuse'.41 In similar vein, when discussing the full range of
extraordinary gifts in his magnum opus, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
Calvin expresses sympathy with Augustine's view 'that the natural gifts were
corrupted in man through sin, but that his supernatural gifts were stripped
from him'.42 Moreover, while justification by grace through faith meant that
Christians could experience some restoration of natural gifts like love of God,
charity towards neighbours and zeal for holiness, Calvin does not envisage
any similar restoration of the supernatural charismata to believers. Rather, he
argues that 'the gift of healing, like the rest of the miracles, which the Lord
willed to be brought forth for a time, has vanished away in order to make the
new preaching of the gospel marvellous forever'.43 Indeed, inasmuch as
preaching has thus superseded charismatic ministry, Calvin concludes that the
latter 'has nothing to do with us, to whom the administering of such powers
has not been committed'.44
There remains some debate about whether this stance implies an absolute
confinement of supernatural charismata to the early church, or whether
Calvin leaves any room for their possible resurgence in some future renewal
9
or revival. Warfield, for one, developed Calvin's thinking along the former line
in his two volume work Counterfeit Miracles, and thereby consolidated a
Cessationist theology which tied the extraordinary gifts much more exclusively
to apostolicity - that is, to the unique and irrecoverable status enjoyed by
those who had witnessed the risen Christ and founded the first generation of
churches.45 While Warfield's position proved influential in Reformed circles on
both sides of the Atlantic for several decades afterwards, the rise of the
Pentecostal and Charismatic movements has latterly prompted many in the
same tradition to challenge it on both experimental and exegetical grounds.46
Meanwhile, others have been led to re-examine the history of the Reformed
faith in the light of more recent witness to the work of the Spirit. In particular,
this has led to a reappraisal of the life and thought of the English Puritans.
As their name suggests, the Puritans sought to purify the worship, doctrine
and discipline of the English church by expunging from it those anti-biblical
and extra-biblical accretions which they attributed to the influence of Rome.
As distinct from the Separatists, who broke away to pursue what one of their
leaders, Robert Browne, called 'Reformation without tarrying for any', the
Puritans worked from the 1550s for change from within the structure of the
established Church of England. This quest attracted considerable opposition
and often proved painstaking, but the Puritans' cause was championed by
Oliver Cromwell and many of their goals were realised during the
Commonwealth. However, the return of Charles II in 1660 and the re-
imposition of the Book of Common Prayer in 1662 saw many of them leave to
form their own 'Dissenting' churches. In pursuing their reforming agenda, the
Puritans drew substantially on the work of Calvin, and broadly reflected his
view of the extraordinary gifts. Even so, as Michael Eaton has shown, this did
not mean that their understanding and experience of the Holy Spirit lacked
dynamism or emotive force, and in these more general respects certain
Puritans could be said to have anticipated modern Pentecostal and
Charismatic concerns.47 Two such Puritans were the Cambridge scholars
Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) and Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680).
Calvin's emphasis on the role of the Spirit in assurance was clearly reflected in
the work of Sibbes. However, whereas Calvin had tended to present the Spirit
as effecting silent, internal confirmation of the work of Christ within the heart
of a believer, Sibbes interpreted the 'sealing' of the Spirit described in
Ephesians 1:13 as a more overt process - one which might have conscious,
outward and 'sensible' effects: 'When God has heard us cry a while', he
wrote, 'until we be thoroughly humbled, then he takes us up in his arms and
dandles us, making his Spirit after a sensible manner unto us the assurance of
our salvation'. Then follows 'joy unspeakable and glorious, and in such
measure that the soul is wonderfully pleased.'48
congregation which met in various locations around the City of London in the
early 1640s before settling at St Dunstan's in the East. This church is widely
thought to have been the first manifestation of what would later be called the
City Temple. Since, as we shall see, the City Temple would go on both to
foster and embrace charismatic renewal in the late twentieth century,
Goodwin's pneumatology takes on added interest.
Just as Goodwin’s understanding of the Holy Spirit was enhanced by his time
on the Continent, so members of certain Continental European Christian
groups brought fresh perspectives on the Third Person of the Trinity to
Britain. One of the most important such influences was exerted by the French
Protestants, who after 1560 became known as Huguenots. Initially persecuted
by the French Catholic establishment, the Huguenots were granted religious
liberty by the Edict of Nantes in 1598, but when this was revoked by Louis
XIV in 1685, thousands sought exile across the English Channel. Among these
was a contingent from the region of Cevennes in southern France who spoke
a distinct regional language of their own but who, because of their emphasis
on the direct inspiration of the Spirit, had become known as the ‘French
Prophets’. Young children were reported as having prophesied fluently in their
meetings, which featured people falling, twitching, hyperventilating and
entering trances.52 Holding that the Bible nowhere presented God as
suspending the supernatural gifts, the French Prophets also characteristically
11
used tongues and visions in worship.53 One of their number who escaped to
England was John Vernett. A native of Bois–Chastel, Vernett recalled that
when seized by the power of the Spirit his mother spoke French, which she
had never learnt.54 Meanwhile, the aristocrat Sir Richard Bulkey was
converted by French Prophets who were resident in England, and recalled
how one of their leaders, John Lacy, would repeat ‘long sentences in Latin,
and another refugee speak in Hebrew, neither of whom could speak a single
word in these languages when not in spiritual ecstasy.’55
Later, the French Prophets who had remained in the Cevennes were
persecuted by government forces, and mounted an armed defence. This was
put down in 1711, but it subsequently gained them the name ‘Camisards’,
probably after the characteristic shirts they wore as part of their uniform.
Some decades further on, their impact was sufficiently well known that the
great English revivalist John Wesley could cite them when challenged to
adduce instances of post-apostolic glossolalia.56
While the Puritans were seeking to reform the Church of England from within,
a radical extension of the Separatist agenda emerged in the 1650s in the form
of the Quakers. Officially called The Religious Society of Friends in reference
to Jesus’ having dubbed his disciples ‘friends’ in John 15:15, Quakers owed
their more popular name to their habit of trembling in prayer and worship.57
They were founded by the Leicestershire visionary George Fox (1624-91). As
a young man, Fox struggled hard to develop an intimate, personal
relationship with God, but in doing so found the national church more of a
hindrance than a help. In the midst of a spiritual crisis, however, he heard a
voice tell him, “There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy
condition.”58 Thereafter, he began to emphasise the witness of the ‘Inner
Light’ (Jn. 1:9) – that is, the authority of ‘Christ within’ (Col. 1:27) as distinct
from the authority of the established church and its liturgies, canons and
hierarchies. Deeply opposed to clericalism, Fox and his followers evolved a
corporate approach to worship, in which ‘meetings’ of the faithful would
proceed in silent prayer until any member of the congregation was moved to
‘minister’ to others – whether through a ‘word’ of biblical exposition or insight,
a prayer, or a prophetic utterance. The accent was firmly on spontaneous
response to the ‘leading of the Spirit’, with an expectation that the presence
of this Spirit might be manifest in quite dramatic ways. In his Autobiography,
Fox himself recalls leading a meeting in which ‘the Lord’s power was so great
that the house seemed to be shaken.’ Alluding to the Day of Pentecost he
then adds: ‘When I had done some of the professors said it was now as in the
days of the apostles, when the house was shaken where they were.’59 What
Fox called ‘the Lord’s Power’ was often ‘so mighty upon’ him that he ‘could
not hold but was made to cry out’.60 Furthermore, glossolalia was reported to
have occurred in some Quaker meetings. Edward Burroughs, a close associate
of Fox, once again invoked Pentecost when he testified that ‘we received
often the pouring down of the Holy Spirit upon us...and our tongues were
12
loosed and our mouths opened, and we spake with new tongues as the Lord
gave us utterance, and as His Spirit led us, which was poured down upon us,
on sons and daughters.’61
Within a short time, such zeal was directed towards missionary work, and
Moravians spread the gospel with remarkable speed across Europe, North and
South America, Asia and Africa. Perhaps the greatest single impact of this
evangelistic endeavour, though, was its effect on a young Anglican clergyman
called John Wesley (1703-91)
While studying at Oxford, Wesley and his brother Charles founded a Christian
group, the ‘Holy Club’, whose rigorous spiritual disciplines earned them the
nickname ‘Methodists’. Their father Samuel Wesley was Rector of the parish
of Epworth, and in 1728, aged 25, John himself was ordained to ministry in
the Church of England. For the next few years, however, he struggled to
develop a sense of spiritual purpose. Part of his exploration of possible ways
forward included a trip to Georgia alongside a party of Moravian missionaries.
Although this journey would itself prove a personal disappointment for
Wesley, he continued his restless spiritual search back in England, and at a
meeting in Aldersgate Street, London on 14 May 1738 famously found his
heart ‘warmed’ when listening to a reading from Luther’s Preface to Romans.
This experience proved to be a turning point in Wesley’s ministry, spurring
him to join his fellow priest and Oxford contemporary, George Whitefield, in
travelling throughout Britain and preaching to many who had become
alienated from formal church life. Whitefield was a Calvinist whose theology
emphasised the eternal decrees of God in salvation and the cessation of
supernatural charismata, whereas Wesley espoused an Arminian view which
placed more stress on human freewill and ongoing devotional experience as
contributory to salvation. While these differences would lead to serious
division later in their ministries, both men’s preaching aroused similarly
startling spiritual reactions in many of those who heard them. Whitefield
recalled a typical response in one meeting he led, at which ‘most were
drowned in tears’, some ‘were struck pale as death’ and others were found
‘wringing their hands, others lying on the ground, others sinking into the arms
of their friends, and most lifting up their eyes to heaven and crying out to
God.’68
As his own evangelistic work led to full-scale revival, however, Wesley more
distinctively acknowledged the influence of the Moravians’ stress on the
importance of sanctification and personal holiness as a distinct ‘phase’ of
14
As for speaking in tongues, while Wesley himself does not seem to have
exercised this gift, he appears to have been open to its contemporary use by
others. One of his friends, the early Methodist leader Thomas Walsh, records
that on 8 March 1751 ‘the Lord gave me a language I know not of, raising my
soul to Him in a wonderful manner’.71 When challenged on this and other
modern-day instances of glossolalia by the sceptical theologian Conyers
Middleton, Wesley argued that far from ceasing with the apostles, ‘many may
have spoken with new tongues, of whom this is not recorded’, adding that in
fact ‘it had been heard of more than once, no farther off than in the valleys of
Dauphiny’ – a reference to the use of tongues by the French Prophets. He
then went on to quote 1 Corinthians 12:11, declaring ‘He who worketh as He
will, may, with your good leave, give the gift of tongues where he gives no
other; and may see abundant reasons to do so, whether you and I see them
or not.’72
Given Wesley’s emphasis on the work of the Spirit after regeneration, his
encouragement of a more overt personal experience of that work in the
believer, and his openness to supernatural charismata, it is hardly surprising
that when it emerged in the early 1900s, the Pentecostal movement would do
so largely out of the Wesleyan ‘holiness’ tradition. Indeed, the Pentecostal
15
historian Vinson Synan has on this basis called Wesley the father of modern
Pentecostalism.77 Before we trace this connection more closely, however, we
need to consider another leading 18th century revivalist whose ministry is
associated with phenomena as dramatic as those witnessed by Wesley, but
who by contrast maintained a cessationist position on the extraordinary gifts.
In the United States, a ‘Second Great Awakening’ followed between 1800 and
1840, starting once again on the East Coast, but this time spreading to
Kentucky before widening to touch much of frontier America. In Britain, a
similar outpouring occurred in Ulster in 1859. From a specifically charismatic
point of view, however, the most significant British episode of the nineteenth
century was probably that which centred on the later ministry of the Scottish
Presbyterian, Edward Irving
1.8 Edward Irving, the Albury Circle and the Catholic Apostolic Church
If they ask for an explanation of the fact that these powers have
ceased in the Church, I answer, that they have decayed just as faith
and holiness have decayed; but that they have ceased is not a matter
so clear. Til the time of the Reformation, this opinion was never
mooted in the Church; and to this day the Roman Catholics, and every
other portion of the Church but ourselves, maintain the very contrary.81
From 1828-1830 Irving and his assistant Alexander Scott undertook a series
of preaching tours to Scotland, in which the interests and emphases of the
Albury Circle were widely promulgated. In the spring of 1830, a revival duly
broke out in the Gareloch and Port Glasgow. On 18 March, in the town of
Fernicarry, a young woman called Mary Campbell was visited by the Spirit
while dying of tuberculosis, and was reported to have spoken ‘at great length,
and with superhuman strength, in an unknown tongue’.82 The next month in
Port Glasgow, James McDonald was filled with the Spirit and on commanding
his terminally ill sister to rise from her deathbed, saw her miraculously
healed.83 Having heard about Mary Campbell, he also wrote to her, and on
reading his letter she, too, was made well. Then on 18 April, both McDonald
17
himself and his brother George began to speak in tongues.84 Within weeks,
the whole region was caught up in a new spiritual fervour, and began to
attract visitors from far afield.
Around 800 Regent Square members left with Irving to form the first
congregation of what would become the Catholic Apostolic Church. The break
was then completed with a heresy trial on another point. Irving had taught
for some time that although personally sinless, Christ had taken on sinful
human flesh in the incarnation. In 1833, he was charged for this by his home
Presbytery of Annam, and was removed from the Church of Scotland ministry
altogether.
1.9 Nineteenth Century Holiness: Keswick, Charles Finney and D.L. Moody
Despite his eventual exclusion from the Church of Scotland, Irving had shown
how charismatic experience could affect Reformed church life. Indeed, as his
own and the Albury Circle’s stress on personal holiness became more popular
during the Nineteenth Century, so more leaders from Presbyterian,
Congregationalist and Calvinistic Baptist backgrounds began to assimilate it
into their ministries. Here in Britain, many of them converged on the Keswick
Convention – an annual revivalist meeting in the Lake District which promoted
what Presbyterians increasingly came to call the ‘higher Christian life’ and
Baptists the ‘rest of faith’.92 In America, the New York based revivalist Charles
Finney (1792-1873) also reflected this trend. Initially Presbyterian and then
Congregationalist, Finney maintained a characteristically Reformed emphasis
of expository preaching, and refrained from exercising an explicit healing
ministry. Nonetheless, he introduced a range of ‘new measures’, like the altar
call and the ‘anxious seat’, which were designed to elicit an emotional
response from his hearers and prompt them to public displays of repentance.
The practical implication was that overt demonstrations of commitment to
Christ, from unconverted and converted alike, were seen to play a part in the
process of regeneration and sanctification. Certainly, Finney’s meetings were
replete with people falling, swooning, weeping and crying out.93 Later,
indeed, Finney would formally embrace the concept of baptism in the Spirit as
a distinct work of grace, and would link it to a transformative experience of
his own, in which he ‘wept aloud with joy and love’ and ‘literally bellowed out
the unutterable gushings of my soul’.94
I was crying all the time that God would fill me with His Spirit. Well,
one day, in the city of New York – oh, what a day! – I cannot describe
it, I seldom refer to it; it is almost too sacred an experience to name.
Paul had an experience of which he never spoke for fourteen years. I
can only say that God revealed Himself to me, and I had [such] an
experience of His love that I had to ask Him to stay His hand. I went to
preaching again. The sermons were not different; I did not present any
new truths, and yet hundreds were converted. I would not be placed
back where I was before that blessed experience for all the world – it
would be as the small dust of the balance.95
Fired by this new energy, Moody travelled to Britain in June 1873 with his
singer and co-evangelist Ira Sankey, to undertake a preaching campaign. This
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trip was so successful that Moody and Sankey stayed until August 1875,
having set up a base at Priory Street Baptist Church in York. In his role as
Priory Street’s pastor, the leading British evangelical F.B. Meyer was
fascinated to discover in Moody and Sankey’s ministry a new, expansive
approach to evangelism - an approach that eschewed conventional forms of
worship in favour of a more informal, extemporary, populist approach. Later
Meyer was to describe how, through Moody, he saw ‘a wider, larger life, in
which mere denominationalism could have no place’.96
The ecumenical mood that the holiness movement inspired was demonstrated
in a growing acceptance of ‘Pentecost’ language across denominational
divides. A wide variety of activities, from camp meetings to choirs, were by
now routinely described as ‘Pentecostal’ in holiness circles, and there was
increasingly common spirit of ‘primitivism’ – that is, an expectation that God
would restore to the Church her original commitment and power, whether
glossolalia or other extraordinary gifts were taken to feature in this or not.97
By the turn of the century, these sentiments had spread to Bethel Bible
College in Topeka, Kansas and more dramatically still, to 312, Azusa Street in
Los Angeles, California.
2 Pentecostalism
seen that this emphasis on tongues as ‘initial evidence’ had already been
promulgated by Edward Irving seven decades earlier, J. Roswell Flower hardly
exaggerates when he comments that it was this which ‘made the Pentecostal
Movement of the twentieth century’.99
Although southern segregation laws meant that Seymour could not learn
alongside white students in Houston, Parham arranged for him to sit in an
adjoining room, and listen to lectures through an open door. As a result,
Seymour became convinced of the ‘pentecostal’ doctrine of Spirit baptism,
despite the fact at this stage, he had not yet experienced it for himself.103
However, before he completed his studies in Texas, Seymour accepted a call
to another black Holiness congregation in Los Angeles. Parham paid his train
fare, and he arrived at his new charge in February 1906.
Seymour’s first sermon at his new church was based on Acts 2:4, and
immediately broached the subject of tongues as ‘initial evidence’. When he
returned for the evening service, though, he discovered that this new-found
theology was unacceptable to the lay leadership: the doors were padlocked,
he was out of a job, and was forced to lodge with a sympathetic family called
the Asberrys, on Bonnie Bray Street. Here, he and other members of the
family received the baptism of the Spirit and began to speak in tongues.
Soon, the Asberrys’ household became a magnet for spiritual seekers, and
following a few overcrowded meetings they rented a former Methodist
Episcopal Church, latterly converted into a warehouse, at 312 Azusa Street.
From the first service there on 14 April 1906, intense charismatic activity was
the norm. Meetings were long and unstructured, with Seymour himself
spending much of the time in prayer, rather than seeking to lead events in a
proactive way. As one eyewitness, Frank Bartleman, described it, ‘Someone
21
might be speaking. Suddenly the spirit would fall upon the congregation. God
Himself would give the altar call. Men would fall all over the house, like the
slain in battle, or rush to the altar enmasse to seek God...We simply prayed.
The Holy Spirit did the rest.’104
The Azusa Street revival progressed phenomenally through to 1909, but after
that, internal divisions led to its gradual decline. One of the most significant
features of the fellowship in its first years had been its interracial character:
the original board of directors, for instance, comprised seven whites and three
blacks, together with the black pastor Seymour. (In addition, seven of the
board were women). Sadly, with time, race became a point of conflict rather
than integration, and several whites left to form their own churches and
missions.105 As Harvey Cox has pointed out, Pentecostalism still has some way
to go to recover the racial harmony of the early Azusa Street meetings.106
Despite this, the fact that Pentecostalism now accounts for around 15% of
the world’s Christians across a whole range of nations and cultures107 is due
in no small part to the point that what happened early on in Azusa Street was
so powerful that it spread quickly across the state, the country and the world.
Indeed, such was the long-term global impact of the revival there that it can
effectively be regarded as the wellspring of modern Pentecostalism.
One of the first Europeans to be affected by the events at Azusa Street was
the Norwegian Methodist Episcopal minister Thomas Ball Barratt (1862-1940).
Barratt had originally journeyed to America to fundraise for missions, but on
hearing about Seymour and his fellow-revivalists, sought out baptism in the
Spirit. In 1907, he duly found himself singing and speaking for the first time
in tongues. Barratt returned to Oslo transformed by this experience, and
began to preach a Pentecostal message. His meetings soon attracted large
numbers from different denominations, who in turn ‘took the fire with them to
the towns round about’.108 Swiftly, visitors began to flock to hear him from
overseas. One such was Alexander Boddy (1854-1930), Rector of the Church
of England parish of All Saints, Sunderland. Boddy was deeply touched by
Barratt’s ministry, and on his return, All Saints and its vicarage became a
focus for those pursuing baptism in the Spirit from all over the British Isles. A
memorial plaque in the entrance of the parish hall famously reads:
‘September 1907. When the fire of the Lord fell it burned up the debt’ – a
reference both to the cleansing of sin experienced by many who went there,
and to the fact that the ‘Sunderland Revival’ allowed the church to pay off a
substantial building deficit in remarkably quick time.
Just three years previously, in 1904, Evan Roberts (1878-1951) had led a
major revival in Wales, which anticipated much of what occurred at
Sunderland. However, whereas this ‘Welsh Revival’ had harked back to the
more general awakenings inspired by Edwards, Wesley and Whitefield in the
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Eighteenth Century, and to the Ulster Revival of 1859, All Saints was
distinctive in that placed Spirit baptism and glossolalia at the very heart of its
ministry.
Among the many who were inspired by events in Sunderland, the most
influential was almost certainly Smith Wigglesworth.
I have been sent by the Lord to tell you what he has shown me this
morning. Through the old line denominations will come a revival that
will eclipse anything we have known throughout history. No such
things have happened in times past as will happen when this
begins...Then the Lord said to me I am to give you warning that he is
going to use you in this movement.110
While Bennett was still there, St Mark’s, Van Nuys began to attract curious
visitors from other Anglican provinces, including the Church of England. One
of these was Philip Hughes, editor of the conservative evangelical journal
Churchman. Steeped in the Reformed tradition of Anglicanism, Hughes might
not have been expected to embrace what he saw. On returning to England,
however, he reflected constructively on what he had witnessed and asked his
readers: ‘Dare we deny that this is a movement of God’s sovereign Spirit?’115 .
Among an increasing number of mainline denominational Christians who
answered ‘No’ to Hughes’ question was Michael Harper (b. 1931). Harper was
serving as Curate to the renowned evangelical Anglican leader John Stott at
All Souls, Langham Place in London when, in September 1962, he attended a
conference in Farnham, Surrey and was ‘filled with all the fullness of God and
had to ask God to stop giving more’. Like many others who resisted neo-
pentecostal theology, Stott maintained that ‘baptism in the Spirit’ should not
be treated as a distinct work of grace apart from conversion, and Harper left
All Souls in 1965 to found the Fountain Trust – an interdenominational
organisation dedicated to fostering local church renewal. By now, corporate
charismatic ministry had taken root in a number of parishes, including St
Paul’s, Beckenham in SouthEast London, and St Mark’s, Gillingham in Kent.116
Over the next 15 years, the Fountain Trust would encourage many Christians
in a range of historic church streams to assimilate charismatic worship,
spirituality and theology. Indeed, several of those who attended its
conferences went on to form their own denominationally specific
organisations. Thus, Anglican Renewal Ministries networked the influential
charismatic outreach of St Michael-le-Belfrey in York under the leadership of
David Watson, the evangelistic work of St Andrew’s, Chorleywood led by
David Pytches, the New Wine festival, Soul Survivor and other initiatives. It
was also linked with a significant number who would go on to hold high office
in the national church, including Archbishop George Carey, Bishop Graham
Dow and Bishop Cyril Ashton. In 1970, Charles Clarke and other Methodist
charismatics founded the Dunamis Renewal Group, which later merged with a
similar network, Headway. Benefiting from the support of the training centre
Cliff College in Derbyshire, Headway continues to promote renewal among
British Methodists. Similar priorities characterise Mainstream – the charismatic
25
group for the Baptist Union of Great Britain. Indeed, of all the mainline
Christian traditions in the UK, Baptists seem to have welcomed charismatic
renewal in the greatest proportions. Writing in 1997, the leading Baptist
charismatic Douglas McBain could observe that ‘the majority of Baptist
ministers in Britain who began their ministry in the middle to late 1970s
onwards appear to be willing to identify themselves with whatever they
perceive as the positive attributes of renewal.’117
While all these developments were taking place in British Protestant churches,
charismatic renewal also touched Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom. At
the epochal Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Pope John XXIII had called
the Roman church to revive itself ‘as by a new Pentecost’. Although this did
not specifically refer to the burgeoning charismatic movement, Cardinal
Suenens of Belgium in particular did much to champion charismatic ministry
as a legitimate response to this more general challenge.119 Influenced by
renewals at Duquense and Notre Dame Universities in the USA in the late
1960s, the Catholic charismatic movement reached Britain via the European
continent, and was consolidated by major conferences at Roehampton and
Guildford in 1972-3.120 By 1980, a high proportion of delegates to a National
Pastoral Congress of Catholics in Liverpool were reported as ‘either actively
involved in’ or possessed of ‘more than a passing contact’ with charismatic
ministry.121
26
In his seminal 1985 study of these New Churches, Restoring the Kingdom,123
Andrew Walker observed that Restorationism had by then sub-divided into
two key streams, both of which featured personalities with strong, singular
leadership styles. ‘Restoration 1’ churches remained somewhat closer in ethos
to Wallis’ rigorous model of discipleship, and were clustered around the
Bradford-based ministry of Bryn Jones. Jones developed a closely structured
network of churches under the ‘Harvestime’ banner, which expanded into
Christian merchandising and high-profile Bible Weeks in the Yorkshire Dales
and Sussex Downs. These Bible Weeks also attracted both classical
Pentecostals and denominational charismatics, some of whom persuaded their
churches to join the Harvestime network. For a period in the late 1970s,
Jones worked alongside the former Baptist Terry Virgo, who oversaw a set of
churches centred on Brighton and Hove. Together, they founded the
periodical Restoration, which articulated the core doctrines of the network,
including the controversial teaching that Pentecostal and neo-pentecostal
renewal had helped to revive the office of ‘apostle’ – traditionally limited to
the first generation of Jesus’ disciples, but now, apparently, entrusted to
those, like Jones and Virgo, who founded and led church groupings which
practised the full range of spiritual gifts.
Virgo later separated from Jones’ network and renamed his organisation ‘New
Frontiers International’. This grouping has continued to attract and partner
charismatic congregations from mainline churches - most notably Baptists,
whose congregationalist polity allows them to form such links quite readily. It
27
also runs an annual Bible Week at Stoneleigh, and has expanded significantly
overseas. In Britain, it currently has around 150 churches with 25,000
members.124 Meanwhile, in 1990, Jones moved his headquarters to Nettlehill
near Coventry, and subsequently re-named his network New Covenant
Ministries International. Under this heading, he appointed a number of
‘apostles’ to develop the work, including his brother Keri, Michael Godward,
Alan Scotland, Andy Owen and Paul Scanlon. Bryn Jones died in 2003, but
these men maintain his legacy, and today the New Covenant organisation
numbers around 7000 members. Scanlon has attracted particular attention as
pastor of Abundant Life church in Bradford – a large, high-tech operation
which has experienced dramatic growth.
Although they were originally close to Wallis and Jones, another group of
Restorationist leaders, including Gerald Coates and John and Christine Noble,
moved in a different direction from 1976, forming what Walker called the
‘Restoration 2’ stream. This group took a more open view of cinema, popular
music and other aspects of ‘secular’ culture, which Wallis and R1 had tended
to regard as incompatible with radical holiness. It was also generally less
separatist in ecclesiology, and through the 1980s contributed significantly to
the resurgence of the Evangelical Alliance. In addition, it has encouraged the
leadership ministries of women, whereas R1 churches have reserved pastoral
and teaching offices for men. As well as Coates’ Surrey-based Pioneer
network and the Noble’s ‘Team Spirit’ ministry, this R2 stream includes the
Ichthus Fellowship in SouthEast London. Founded by Roger and Faith Forster,
and enhanced by the prodigious songwriting of Graham Kendrick, Ichthus has
combined tireless evangelism and innovative worship with a range of social
projects, including literacy training programmes and job centres. Today,
Pioneer and Ichthus together comprise around 10,000 members, but R2 also
includes a variety of smaller groups, among which are Barney Coombs’ Salt
and Light network and Cornerstone, led by Tony Morton.125
3.3 John Wimber, the Vineyard Churches and ‘Third Wave’ Renewal
A former rock musician and producer from California, Wimber and his Roman
Catholic wife Carol were converted in 1963, whereupon they joined a Quaker
congregation at Yoruba Linda. From 1970-73, Wimber took a degree in
Biblical Studies at Azusa Pacific College while co-pastoring at the same
church. In 1975, he and Carol moved to Pasadena, where he enrolled on a
28
church growth course at Fuller Seminary. This course was taught by Prof.
Peter Wagner, who would become a close friend. Wagner’s 1973 study, Look
Out! The Pentecostals are Coming! had a major influence on Wimber at this
time.126 Wimber had previously inclined towards Cessationism, but Wagner’s
work led him into a significant exploration of spiritual gifts. This also included
study of work by the English Pentecostal Donald Gee and the Episcopalian
charismatic Morton Kelsey. As a result of all this, Wimber became convinced
that effective preaching and evangelism depended as much on demonstration
as declaration. In the Gospels, he concluded, Jesus consistently matched his
words with works of power such as healing, exorcism, resurrection and
feeding the hungry; indeed, Wimber came to hold that the two ministries
were inextricably linked. He concluded from further reading in missiology and
anthropology that that this emphasis on ‘signs and wonders’ was still evident
in many vibrant Third World church settings, but had been lost in the modern
West. Sensing that a recovery of such ‘power evangelism’ and ‘power healing’
could transform American Christianity, Wimber sought to put his ideas into
practice with a new fellowship, which started to meet in his home in 1977 and
which linked with Chuck Smith’s group of Calvary Chapels.
Also in 1982, Wimber was invited back to Fuller to teach a course entitled
‘The Miraculous and Church Growth’. Listed in the Fuller School of World
Mission Catalogue as MC 510, this course ran on Monday evenings and
started with around 130 students. By 1985, when it was discontinued amidst
theological dispute in the seminary, it had become the most popular course in
Fuller’s history. Wagner became one of its most enthusiastic supporters and
contributed personally as a teacher on the course.128 During the three years
in which the course ran, Wagner developed the theory that it, and Wimber’s
church, were modelling a ‘Third Wave’ of modern renewal, which was
dependent on, but distinct from, the first two ‘waves’ of Pentecostal and
Charismatic Christianity. In contrast to classical Pentecostalism, Wagner wrote
that the Third Wave defined baptism in the Holy Spirit as coincident with
conversion, rather than with a ‘second blessing’. He also stressed, over
against Pentecostalism, that the Third Wave saw speaking in tongues as
neither particularly important, nor as ‘initial evidence’ of Spirit baptism.
Furthermore, whereas the Charismatic Renewal movement had often created
friction with established structures and practices, Wagner followed Wimber in
defining the new movement as dedicatedly assimilationist and ready to
compromise on such things as the necessity of tongues, raising hands in
worship and methods of prayer, in order to maintain harmony. Moreover,
29
By 1986, Wimber’s church had accumulated around 5,000 members and had
taken up residence in a large warehouse building in Anaheim. Wimber himself
had been groomed by Ken Gulliksen to take over leadership of the Vineyard,
and had developed an extensive itinerant ministry through the specially
formed organisation, Vineyard Ministries International (VMI). In this context,
he had already made his first main tour the UK (in October 1984), at the
invitation of David Watson. As Vicar of the leading charismatic Anglican
church, St. Michael-le-Belfrey in York, Watson had been in touch with Wimber
since 1981, and had helped him make major impact on other Anglican
congregations. These included St. Andrew’s Chorleywood, St. Thomas,
Crookes, in Sheffield, St. John’s Harborne in Birmingham and Holy Trinity,
Brompton, in London.130
Also in 1986, Terry Virgo’s New Frontiers network invited Wimber to lead a
four-day conference at the Brighton Pavilion. This attracted large numbers
from a wide range of denominations, with a particularly large proportion of
Baptist pastors being affected by events during the conference itself, or by
gleaning its ministry model from friends and colleagues who attended.131
Despite all this, over the course of the next year, Wimber was forced to re-
evaluate his relationship with the Kansas group, and by the summer of 1991,
found himself on another London platform, apologising with Mike Bickle for
their errors and excesses, while seeking to recover the original Vineyard
emphasis on equipping and empowering church members for evangelism.133
fellowships active across Britain.134 However, at this time, both Wimber and
the Vineyard faced another major challenge in the form of the ‘Toronto
Blessing’.
In an article for the London Times on Saturday 18th June 1994, Ruth Gledhill
reported that the phrase ‘Toronto Blessing’ was becoming a popular nickname
for a ‘religious craze’ of ‘mass fainting’ which had ‘crossed the Atlantic to
cause concern in the Church of England’.135 As it was, the ‘craze’ to which
Gledhill alluded had several antecedents, involved rather more than ‘mass
fainting’, and prompted debate and discussion well beyond the Church of
England.
From at least 1986, significant instances of ‘holy laughter’ had been recorded
in various Vineyard fellowships, along with already-established phenomena
like slumping or falling to the floor, trembling and weeping.136 Despite the
growth and rising profile of the Third Wave/Vineyard movement, by the early
1990s, a number of its pastors and leaders appear to have been seeking fresh
impetus and ‘anointing’. Arnott had periodically pursued new sources of
blessing and inspiration through his life and career, having previously drawn
much from the healing evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman and the Israeli-born
preacher Benny Hinn.137 In late 1993, he and various colleagues visited key
figures in the ‘Argentinean Revival’ – a significant wave of evangelical church
growth centred on Buenos Aires.138 While they were looking towards South
America, another Vineyard leader, Randy Clark of the St Louis Vineyard in
Missouri, was undergoing a radical personal transformation under the ministry
of Rodney Howard-Browne.
Howard-Browne had come to the USA from his native South Africa in 1987,
convinced that God was about to visit a ‘mighty revival’ on the nation. A child
of devoutly Pentecostal parents, he testified to having been converted at the
age of five, and to having been filled with the Holy Spirit at eight.139 After an
unremarkable beginning, Howard-Browne’s American ministry gained
considerable momentum in 1989, when laughter and ‘slaying’ or falling down
in the Spirit became more prominent in his evangelistic meetings.140 While
such things were hardly unknown in Vineyard circles, Randy Clark found them
occurring around Howard-Browne at a level of intensity which deeply
impressed him. Clark had been virtually burned-out by a demanding
pastorate, and this condition appears to have prompted him to overlook
doubts about Howard-Browne’s style and theological background. Very much
31
Back in St Louis, during April and May Rodney Howard-Browne led a series of
equally spectacular meetings, some of which were attended by Terry Virgo,
then overseeing the work of his New Frontiers International network in the
USA. Along with other Britons who had attended TAV during this period, Virgo
reported what had been happening to his colleagues in the UK, and various
outbreaks of ‘Toronto-style’ manifestations began to occur here.144 Queen’s
Road Baptist Church and the Ichthus Fellowship had already started to
experience such manifestations when John Mumford’s wife Eleanor travelled
from the Vineyard’s Putney congregation, to meet with the leaders of Holy
Trinity, Brompton, on Tuesday 24th May.145 After reporting a recent visit to
TAV, Mumford saw key members of ‘HTB’s’ leadership team rendered virtually
immobile as they, too, fell, shook, rested and laughed.146 The next Sunday,
she preached at HTB with similar effect,147 and news that hundreds of largely
upper middle class Knightsbridge churchgoers were rolling around as if ‘drunk’
and ‘helpless’ at services soon caught the attention of the press. Hence the
interest of the Times, and Ruth Gledhill’s coinage of the term ‘Toronto
Blessing’.
Within weeks, the ‘Blessing’ had spread to hundreds of churches across the
British Isles, and by the end of 1994, estimates were suggesting that between
2000 and 4000 congregations had embraced it.148 It became one of the
biggest stories covered by the British Christian media in recent times, and
remained so through 1995 and into early 1996. It also appeared frequently as
a subject of debate and discussion in the secular press - not only in the
religious pages, but in the news sections, too. Between late 1994 and 1998
the Blessing prompted the publication of at least 30 books in the UK, not to
mention a slew of papers, conferences, tapes, videos, web sites, radio
features and TV programmes. Major studies of it were commissioned by the
Methodist Conference, the Church of Scotland, the House of Bishops of the
32
While ‘first wave’ Pentecostalism had seemed striking and disturbing to many
in the mainline churches and media, until the 1960s they were able to treat it
largely as an exotic, sectarian religion with its own dedicated networks and
institutions.150 The ‘second wave’ of the charismatic/neo-Pentecostal renewal
brought things more centre-stage, and as we have seen, certainly led to
higher profile tensions and splits. But partly because so many of its leaders
remained loyal their existing denominations, liturgies and spiritual traditions,
and partly because no one episode or incident served to concentrate those
tensions sufficiently to threaten really cataclysmic division, it was gradually
absorbed and in some cases, actively welcomed into the mainstream as a
positive force for growth.151 By contrast, the Toronto Blessing seemed to
many – not only liberals, traditionalists and conservatives, but also some
established Charismatics – to represent a dangerously potent and fast-
breeding strain of fanaticism which could seriously de-stabilise the Church.
Over the years, the majority of Pentecostals and Charismatics had readily
identified with Evangelical Christianity’s typically high view of Christ and
Scripture, its commitment to conversion, its activism and its objective view of
atonement. Not every Evangelical – and especially not those in more
classically Reformed circles – had been happy confirm this identity, and a
good deal of familiarly heated evangelical debate has arisen as a result. Even
so, in all but the most separatist and fundamentalist quarters, a degree of
tolerance and mutual co-operation developed in the British context during the
1970s and ‘80s. This was particularly evident in the diverse and growing
membership of the Evangelical Alliance, the common organisation of Billy
Graham missions, and the resurgence of that broad-based evangelical social
concern which was both epitomised and boosted by the 1974 Lausanne
Covenant.152 With the rise of Toronto, however, old fault-lines were once
again exposed, and concerns which had either been sublimated or suppressed
for the greater cause of unity, were reiterated. Many of those who welcomed
the emergence of ‘Toronto’ (mostly charismatic Evangelicals) were confirmed
in their view that those who opposed it (mostly non-charismatic conservative
Evangelicals) had an insufficiently dynamic understanding of the Holy Spirit.
Similarly, opponents tended to present the Blessing as evidence of a long-
held conviction that despite its protestations to the contrary, the charismatic
movement in fact relied too much on experience, and not enough on
Scripture.
expelled TAV from its membership. While Wimber’s own ministry had long
featured most of the eye-catching manifestations associated with the
Blessing, the AVC Board judged that the Toronto church’s focus on them had
become excessive in comparison with established Vineyard priorities of
evangelism, teaching and discipleship. 153 Although personal hurts were later
addressed, and although the Toronto church continues to this day as an
independent proponent of the Blessing, this very public and somewhat messy
divorce effectively put paid to it as a major international movement. If the
Blessing has continued as a force within global renewal at all, it has done so
inasmuch as it has transmuted into other initiatives – not least Holy Trinity
Brompton’s Alpha Course, which appears to have been gained considerable
impetus from the Toronto outpouring.154
Alpha, a 13-session introduction the Christian faith, has become one of the
most successful initiatives ever produced by a charismatic church body.
Though intended for use in a whole range of traditions, its focus on the
doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and on the role of the extraordinary gifts, clearly
reveals Holy Trinity Brompton’s own commitment to a charismatic worldview
with ‘Third Wave’ influences. The course has now been used by hundreds of
thousands of people in over 100 countries, and is still expanding.155
On one level, this rapid growth illustrates what Murray Dempster, Byron Klaus
and Douglas Petersen have called the modern-day ‘globalization’ of
Pentecostal and neo-pentecostal spiritualities.156 Then again, the survey
presented here confirms that these forms of Christian faith have always to
some degree been ‘global’ in character. In their referencing of the first
outpouring on ‘all flesh’, and the promise it held for those both near and ‘far
away’ (Acts 2:39); in their discerning of historical precedents from across the
centuries and continents; in the pilgrims who flocked from various parts of
the world to Azusa Street; in their debt to those who brought that flame back
home and took it to the world in mission; in the transatlantic links which
aided their acceptance by mainline churches; in the expansion of New Church
ministries abroad - in these and other respects, Pentecostal and charismatic
movements have in a very real sense been international from the outset.
Thus, edifying and instructive as it may have been to chart the British
dimensions of this remarkable story, it is a story set to touch ‘every nation
under heaven’, just as it was when it began (Acts 2:5).
1
This paper makes no great claims to original research. It is intended as a summary of the history of
renewal movements in Britain for educational purposes, and as such is dependent on a range of more
extensive studies in this field – studies which are referenced through the text and detailed in the
following notes. With respect to the material on overseas influences and precedents in particular, Eddie
L. Hyatt’s 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity (2nd. Edn) (Dallas: Hyatt International, 1998) has
been an especially useful source, both in terms of its narrative structure and its guidance on primary
sources. As I point out, however, the ‘pre-history’ of charismatic renewal is much contested, and if
Hyatt strains to present a sanguine view of this pre-history, a considerably more sceptical survey is
provided by the somewhat misleadingly titled Encyclopedia of Pentecostal History, 200AD – 1900AD,
34
29
William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story: An Introduction to Sixteenth-Century Anabaptism (Grand
Rapids/Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1996), 273-83; Horton Davies, Worship and Theology in England:
From Cranmer to Baxter and Fox, 1534-1690, Vol. 1 (Grand Rapids/Cambridge Eerdmans, 1996),
337-43.
30
Davies, Worship and Theology in England, 325-45.
31
Davies, Worship and Theology in England, 340-41.
32
John Calvin, 'Introduction to the Arming of all the Good Faithful Against the Errors of the Common
Sect of the Anabaptists', in Treatises against the Anabaptists and against the Libertines, trans. & ed.
Benjamin Wirt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1982), 43-6.
33
B.B. Warfield, Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1956),
21-24, 107.
34
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. F.L. Battles
(Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1960), 3.1.3-4, 540-42.
35
Calvin, Institutes, 2.2.12-20, 270-80.
36
Calvin, Institutes, 1.9.1-3, 93-96.
37
Calvin, Institutes, 3.1.1, 537-42.
38
John Hesselink, 'The Charismatic Movement and the Reformed Tradition', in Donald K. McKim
(ed.), Major Themes in the Reformed Tradition, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992, 379.
39
Calvin, Institutes, 3.2.15, 560-61; 3.2.14-16, 559-62.
40
Hesselink, 'The Charismatic Movement', 379.
41
John Calvin, Acts, Vol. I, 318; Hamilton, The Charismatic Movement, 73.
42
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.2.12, 270.
43
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.19.18, 1467.
44
Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.19.18, 1467.
45
B.B. Warfield, Counterfeit Miracles, (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976 [1918]).
46
See, for example, Report of the Special Committee on the Work of the Holy Spirit,
Submitted to the 182nd General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church USA, 1970; Barbara A.
Pursey, Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed), 1984; For a critical
overview of Reformed cessationism, see Jon Ruthven, On the Cessation of the Charismata: The
Protestant Polemic on Postbiblical Miracles (Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series, 3),
1993.
47
Michael A. Eaton, Baptism with the Spirit: The Teaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Leicester: IVP,
1989)
48
Richard Sibbes, A Treatise Unto a Declaration Whether a Man be in the Estate of Damnation or in
the Estate of Grace', in Works of Richard Sibbes, Vol. 7, ed. A.B. Grosart, , (Edinburgh: Banner of
Truth, 1973-83 [1862-64]), 382.
49
Thomas Goodwin, the Works of Thomas Goodwin Vol. 1, ed. J.C. Miller (Edinburgh: James Nichol,
1861), 258;
50
J.I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway
Books, 1990), 182-83.
51
William Barker, Puritan Profiles: 54 Puritans - Personalities Drawn Together by the Westminster
Assembly, (Fearn: Mentor, 1996), 72.
52
John Lacy, A Cry from the Desert (London, n.p., 1708), 15.
53
Hamilton, The Charismatic Movement, 75.
54
Lacy, A Cry from the Desert, 14.
55
George B. Cutten, Speaking with Tongues: Historically and Psychologically Considered (New
Haven: Yale, 1927), 55.
56
John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley (Vol. 10), (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, n.d.), 56.
57
Robert Barclay, An Apology for the True Christian Divinity: Being and Explanation and Vindication
of the Principles and Doctrines of the People Called Quakers (Philapdelphia: Joseph James, 1789
[1678]), 359.
58
George Fox, An Autobiography (ed. Rufus M. Jones, Philadelphia: Ferris & Leach, 1919), 82.
59
Fox, Autobiography, 90.
60
Cit. Hamilton, The Charismatic Movement, 71.
61
George Fox, The Great Mystery of the Great Whore Unfolded; And Anti-Christ’s Kingdom, in The
Woks of George Fox, Vol. 3 (New York: AMS Press, 1975), 13.
62
George Fox, Book of Miracles (ed. Henry J. Cadbury, London: Cambridge, 1948), 137, 125.
63
Fox, Autobiography, 185.
36
64
Richard A. Baer, Spittler (ed.), Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism, 154.
65
John Greenfield, When the Spirit Came (Minneapolis: Bethany, 1967), 24-5.
66
A.J. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing (Harrisburg: Christian Publ., 1961), 60, 67-8; Stanley M.
Burgess, ‘Medieval and Modern Western Churches’, in Gary B. McGee (ed.), Initial Evidence
(Peabody: Hendrickson, 1991), 32.
67
Cit. Gordon, The Ministry of Healing, 67.
68
George Whitefield, George Whitefield’s Journals (London: Banner of Truth, 1965), 425.
69
John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, Vol. 1 (Grand rapids: Zondervan, n.d.), 187, 189, 210, 271-
73, 403.
70
Wesley Works, Vol. 8, 458-59.
71
Cit. William R. Davies, Spirit Baptism and Spiritual Gifts in Early Methodism (Jacksonville: Cross
Fire Ministries, 1974), 12.
72
John Wesley, ‘A Letter to the Reverend Dr Conyers Middleton’, in The Works of John Wesley (3rd
Edn.) (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1978), X, 56.
73
John Wesley, Journal, Fri 9 May, 1740; Wed 21 May, 1740.
74
Robert Southey, The Life of John Wesley (New York, 1847), 240.
75
John Wesley, Sermon 4, ‘Scriptural Christianity’ in Sugden, Sermons of John Wesley, 1:93, Cit.
Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism, 45.
76
Wesley, Works, Vol. 8, 465.
77
Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1971), 13.
78
David S. Lovejoy, Religious Enthusiasm and the Great Awakening (Englewood Cliff, NJ.: Prentice
Hall, 1969), 5ff.
79
Edwards, Jonathan, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Edinburgh: Banner of
Truth, 1984 [1741], 109-20.
80
C. Gordon Strachan, The Pentecostal Theology of Edward Irving (London: Darton, Longman &
Todd, 1973), 55.
81
Cit. Strachan, Edward Irving, 82.
82
Irving, quoted in Jean C. Root, Edward Irving (Boston, 1912), 71.
83
Edward Irving, ‘Facts Connected With Recent Manifestations of Spiritual Gifts’, Frasers Magazine,
January 1832, Cit Strachan, Edward Irving, 66.
84
Robert Norton, Memoirs of James and George MacDonald of Port Glasgow, 109-110, Cit. Strachan,
Edward Irving, 68.
85
Strachan, Edward Irving, 13.
86
D.D. Bundy, ‘Irving, Edward’, in Stanley M. Burgess, Gary B. McGee & Alexander H. Patrick
(eds.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 471;
Hyatt, 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, 130.
87
David Dorries, ‘Edward Irving and the Standing Sign’, in Gary B. McGee (ed.) Initial Evidence
(Peabody MA: Hendrickson, 1991), 49.
88
D.D. Bundy, ‘Irving, Edward’, 471.
89
See, for example, J. Nicol, The Pentecostals (1966), D. Gee, Wind and Flame (1967), V. Synan, The
Holiness-Pentecostal Movement (1971), D. Brandt-Bessire, Aux Sources de la Spiritualité Pentecotiste
(1986).
90
Hyatt, 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, 131.
91
Church of Scotland Panel on Doctrine, The Toronto Blessing, (Edinburgh: Church of Scotland,
1995), 17-19.
92
C. Price and I. M. Randall, Transforming Keswick (Carlisle: OM, 2000).
93
Charles G. Finney, An Autobiography (Old Tappan: Revell, 1908), 37, 161-62.
94
Finney, An Autobiography, 20.
95
William R. Moody, The Life of D.L. Moody (New York: Revell, 1900), 149.
96
I. M. Randall, ‘Incarnating the Gospel: Melbourne Hall, Leicester, in the 1880s as a model for
holistic ministry’, The Baptist Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 8 (1994), pp. 394-5; I M Randall, ‘Mere
Denominationalism: F. B. Meyer and Baptist Life’, The Baptist Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 1 (1993), p. 20.
97
Hyatt, 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, 145.
98
Sarah Parham, The Life of Charles F. Parham (Baxter Springs, KS: Apostolic Faith Bible College,
1930), 48.
99
J. Roswell Flower, ‘Birth of the Pentecostal Movement’, Pentecostal Evangel, 26 November, 1950,
3.
37
100
Sarah Parham, The Life of Charles F. Parham, 52.
101
Sarah Parham, The Life of Charles F. Parham, 54.
102
For an account of this, see, Hyatt, 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, 163-71.
103
John G. Lake, Spiritual Hunger/The God-Men (Dallas: Christ for the Nations, 1980), 13.
104
Frank Bartleman, Azusa Street (ed. Vinson Synan, Plainfield: Logos, 1980), 60.
105
Hyatt, 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, 159-60.
106
Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion
in the Twenty-First Century, (London: Cassell, 1996).
107
D.B. Barratt, ‘Statistics, Global’, in S.M. Burgess & G.B. McGee (eds.), Dictionary of Pentecostal
and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 811-30.
108
Stanley H. Frodsham, With Signs Following (Springfield MO: Gospel Publications, 1946), 71-2.
109
C. Whittaker, Seven Pentecostal Pioneers (London: Marshall Pickering, 1983), 26.
110
Cit. Whittaker, Seven Pentecostal Pioneers, 4.
111
H.V. Synan, ‘Presbyterian and Reformed Charismatics’, in Stanley M. Burgess, Gary B. McGee &
Alexander H. Patrick (eds.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (Grand rapids:
Zondervan, 1988), 470-71.
112
Synan, ‘Presbyterian and Reformed Charismatics’, 470-71.
113
Peter Hocken, Streams of Renewal: The Origins and Development of the Charismatic Movement in
Great Britain (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1986), 115.
114
Cit. Hyatt, 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, 195.
115
Cit Hocken, Streams of Renewal, 118.
116
Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 229-30.
117
Douglas McBain, Charismatic Christianity (London: Macmillan, 1997), 46.
118
Nigel Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium (2nd Edn.), Eastbourne: Eagle, 2000, 16.
119
Hyatt, 2000 Years of Charismatic Christianity, 196-97.
120
Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium, 17.
121
‘Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Britain’, Renewal No. 104, April/May 1983.
122
Arthur Wallis, The Radical Christian (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1981)
123
Andrew Walker, Restoring the Kingdom: The Radical Christianity of the House Church Movement
(Revsd Edn), (Guildford: Eagle, 1998 [1985]).
124
Peter Brierley, UK Christian Handbook: Religious Trends1998/1999 (Carlisle: Paternoster), 9.9.
125
Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium, 25.
126
Peter Wagner, Look Out! The Pentecostals are Coming! (Carol Streams: Creation House, 1973).
127
For a helpful biography and analysis of Wimber see Scotland Charismatics and the New
Millennium, 200-18.
128
Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium, 203-6.
129
C.P. Wagner, ‘A Third Wave?’ Pastoral Renewal (July-August 1983), 1-5; idem, ‘The Third
Wave’, Christian Life (September 1984), 90; ‘Third Wave’, in Stanley M. Burgess & Gary B. McGee
(eds.), Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988), 843-
44.
130
Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium, .302.
131
Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium, 205-6; Mainstream (Baptist Charismatic
Magazine), No. 26, September 1987.
132
Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium, 163-4, 221-22; Oropeza, A Time to Laugh, p.55;
Nigel Wright, ‘An Assessment’, Themelios, 17 no. 1 (Oct/Nov 1991), 20; John Wimber, ‘Revival Fire’,
in Equipping the Saints, Winter 1991, 10-13, 21.
133
Renewal, August 1991, 21.
134
David Pytches (ed.), John Wimber: His Influence and Legacy (Eastbourne: Eagle, 1998), 312.
135
Ruth Gledhill, ‘Spread of Hysteria Fad Worries Church’, The Times, 18th June 1994, 12.
136
Murray Robertson, ‘A Power Encounter Worth Laughing About’, in Kevin Springer (ed.), Power
Encounters Among Christians in the Western World (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), 149-57;
W.J., Oropeza, A Time to Laugh: The Holy Laughter Phenomenon Examined (Peabody, Mass.:
Hendrickson, 1995), 17.
137
Guy Chevreau, Catch the Fire (London: Marshall Pickering, 1994), 21.
138
Chevreau, Catch the Fire, 23; Oropeza, A Time to Laugh, 22; Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing, 31.
139
Rodney Howard-Browne, Manifesting the Holy Ghost (Louisville, Ky., R.H.B.E.A, 1992), 5.
140
Dave Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing (Eastbourne: Kingsway), 1994, 85.
141
‘Rumours of Revival’, Alpha, July 1994, 46; Oropeza, A Time to Laugh, .22, citing Richard Riss,
‘History of the Revival, 1993-1995’, unpublished paper (7th ed., Jan. 17, 1995).
38
142
Chevreau, Catch the Fire, 23-4.
143
Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing, 20-1.
144
Terry Virgo, A People Prepared, (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1996), 13-14.
145
Rob Warner, Prepare for Revival (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1995), pp.2-3; Patrick Dixon,
Signs of Revival (Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1994), 19-21.
146
Roberts, The ‘Toronto’ Blessing, 25; ‘A Day By Day Diary of What We Have Seen’, HTB in Focus,
June 12th 1994, 3; Mike Fearon, A Breath of Fresh Air (Guildford: Eagle), 115-6.
147
Eleanor Mumford, ‘Spreading Like Wildfire’, in Boulton, Wallace (ed.), The Impact of Toronto,
(Crowborough: Monarch, 1995), 17-19. For a fuller transcript, see ‘A Mighty Wind from Toronto’,
HTB in Focus, June 12th, 1994, 4-5.
148
Mike Fearon, ‘Principal of Laughter’, Church of England Newspaper, November 11th 1994, 8; Clive
Price, ‘Surfing the Toronto Wave’, Alpha, May 1995, pp.6-9; Gerald Coates, in Rumours of Revival
(Video), (Milton Keynes: Nelson Word, 1995); 148 Charles Gardner, ‘Catching a Glimpse of God’s
Glory’, Joy, March 1995, 17-18.
149
The debate in question was over relationship of Evangelicals to mainline, ‘mixed’ denominations.
For fuller accounts of it, see David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, (London: Unwin &
Hyman, 1989), 267-70; Iain Murray, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith, 1939-1981,
(Edinburgh: Banner of Truth), 513-67.
150
Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain,198; William K Kay, Pentecostals in Britain,
(Carlisle: Paternoster, 2000), 1-36.
151
Peter Hocken, Streams of Renewal: The Origins and Early Development of the Charismatic
Movement in Great Britain (Revsd. Edn.), (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1997 [1986]); Bebbington,
Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 247ff.; Scotland, Charismatics and the New Millennium, 9-35.
152
Peter Lewis, ‘Renewal, Recovery and Growth: 1966 Onwards’, in Steve Brady & Howard Rowdon
(eds.), For Such a Time as This: Perspectives on Evangelicalism, Past, Present and Future,
(London/Milton Keynes: Evangelical Alliance/Scripture Union, 1996), 178-94; Bebbington,
Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 249-70.
153
James A. Beverley, ‘Vineyard Severs Ties with ‘Toronto Blessing’ Church’, Christianity Today, 8th
January 1996, 66; Wright, Strange Fire, 29.
154
Dave Roberts, ‘The Toronto Divide’, Alpha February 1996, 4-6; Gethin Russell-Jones, ‘Whatever
Happened to the Promised Revival?’, Christianity, December 1997, 30; Jon Ronson, ‘Catch Me if You
Can’, Guardian Weekend, 21st October 2000, 10-21.
155
Ronson, ‘Catch Me if You can’, 19.
156
Murray W. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus and Douglas Petersen (eds.), The Globalization of
Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel, (Carlisle: Regnum, 1999).