Origins of the US Evangelical Right

Well, according to a Christian cowboy he certainly would be shooting me! 

There was an article in the January 2021 Premier Christianity magazine by Martyn Whittock, a Church of England lay minister and historian. He has written books on the subject of the association of American evangelicalism with right-wing politics (Witness wide support for Donald Trump among US evangelicals for instance). I was therefore very interested in the article he had written, an article entitled "The Disunited States of America". In the article Whittock explains why he thinks right-wing politics and faith have became so entwined in America. Below I discuss some of Whittock's ideas.

ONE) Whittock tells us that in 1954 the words "Under God" were added to the pledge of allegiance. He makes a point similar to that  which can be found on Wiki:

Even though the movement behind inserting "under God" into the pledge might have been initiated by a private religious fraternity and even though references to God appear in previous versions of the pledge, historian Kevin M. Kruse asserts that this movement was an effort by corporate America to instill in the minds of the people that capitalism and free enterprise were heavenly blessed. Kruse acknowledges the insertion of the phrase was influenced by the push-back against Russian and Chinese atheistic communism during the Cold War, but argues the longer arc of history shows the conflation of Christianity and capitalism as a challenge to the New Deal played the larger role.

Here was an early step linking Christianity with capitalism, low taxation, gun rights and the American way, a way which was set over and against communist atheism. These items then naturally became mandated in the Christian right's agenda. For myself I've always traced low taxation and US diffidence toward government regulation back to the very formation of the US in the American revolution, a revolution triggered by the a rejection of colonial taxation and suspicion of a distant central regulator. This history seemed to become ingrained into America culture; as Ronald Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem. This ethos had the upside of helping economic growth via the market but the downside was an irrational suspicion of central government: Such attitudes do help create a power & influence vacuum which gives an opportunist the chance to step into that vacuum (which may be what Trump has done).

TWO)  In the 60s and early 70s there were government moves which were perceived as not favourable to the Christian cultural foundation of America. Viz: The banning of public prayers in schools, regulation of Christian academies, & legalisation of first trimester abortions. Quoting Whittock:

[Evangelicals] felt that Christian values were being overlooked, or caricatured, in the media. Furthermore, they felt that the school system drives a secular agenda. At the same time, the growth in LGBTQ rights challenged the traditional views of marriage and 'acceptable' sexual behaviour..... in short a cultural war began....

With this comment I feel I'm on familiar ground: My understanding of the rise of fundamentalist evangelicalism is that it is a response to the cultural marginalisation of Christianity especially during the 1960s (and into the 1970s) and especially among society's intellectuals who rejected the Christian rationale. In a reactionary move some parts of American evangelicalism became anti-intellectual and anti-science and the symptoms of this are seen in the rise of young earthism (latterly flat earthism) and fideist versions of Christianity that majored in the ecstatic. This was both a protest against the changing social mores and also against intellectual Christianity which was perceived to have failed. It was, I propose, akin to the response of the romantics, as puzzled but naïve Christians tried to regain a sense of sacredness in the creation and reaffirm the ecstatic component of Christian testimony. My understanding here has less to do with historical research than having lived through that time. But according to Whittock, because of conditions peculiar to the US, American evangelicals have also reacted by becoming very politicised and have expressed this via their support of the Republican party, a party which they perceive to be the party of traditional American Christian values. 

THREE)  Then in 2008, Barack Obama happened, says Whittock: He goes on to say:

The election of a young, intelligent, telegenic and highly articulate social progressive (committed to proactive federal government initiatives) was a sharp reversal of all that the evangelical right had been working on for more than 20 years. The Obama presidency was seen as an existential threat. Then the possibility of a political success for a socially progressive female Washington insider, in the form of Hilary Clinton, caused an upsurge of evangelical activism unparalleled in US history. 

FOUR)  Then in 2016 "Trump happened": According to Whittock:

It was this that led 81% of white evangelicals voting for Trump....It was a marriage of convenience in which Trump promised everything on the evangelical agenda.....Evangelicals reciprocated with intense support for a man whose personal and political morality  - which many feel is at odds with Christianity - was set aside in order to win what they perceived as a battle for the soul of America.  

His policy on immigration struck a chord, since polling reveals that 59% of white evangelicals see immigrants as threatening their cultural identity. 

For a group traditionally suspicious of government the necessary Covid-19 restrictions were often seen as unwelcome state interference.   In the same way, the shutting of churches was easy to present as state restrictions on religious freedom...the wearing if masks we seen as a sign of acceptance of state power. This occurred alongside a fear of economic decline as a result of lockdown, which further resonated with a group whose religious beliefs have long been associated with support for American free enterprise. 

....In the aftermath  of Trump's defeat, a well known US evangelical confided to me, in an off-the-record assessment, that the majority of evangelicals believe in Trump's narrative of a "stolen " election, a minority are resigned to a Biden presidency, but will keep fighting to change the abortion law; a smaller minority are relieved at Trump's defeat; and huge numbers of young evangelicals are leaving their highly politicised  spiritual communities. Clearly for US evangelicals the turbulence is far from over. 

***

It was almost as if Trump was stepping into a suit that had been specially tailored for him. The egotistical & cynical Trump exploited this situation to the full. He cynically made friendly overtures toward the crackpot professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and the crazy QAnon theorists - he was of course after the votes of their followers. The ultra-far right fascists and white supremacists were emboldened by Trump and crept out of from under their stones and appeared on the streets. Trump wanted their votes too and therefore wasn't vocal in condemning them. Trump talked the language that the right-wing wanted to hear; gun rights, low taxation, private health care, climate change conspiracy, America first etc; These things came onto the evangelical agenda and became almost mandatory adjuncts to their faith. Trump didn't care who or why people voted for him; he just wanted their votes, he wanted power. But underneath it he had complete contempt for the American system. He denigrated that system, its media and its governance with hints of conspiracy theorism and he attempted to bypass it with popularist rallies and social media. The Capitol Hill insurrection was a natural outcome of Trumpism whether he liked it or not. 

Trump had a sinister looking affinity & rapport with strong arm dictators like Putin, Kim Jong Un, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Mohammed bin Salman. If this was a sign (which think it is) that Trump had the qualities of a crypto-dictator then it is ironic that in some respects he stood for the very opposite of the things those right wing evangelicals elected him for: If allowed to have his way he was the antithesis of individual freedoms and small government. We saw hints of the kind of people Trump attracted when Michael Flynn, one of Trump's side kicks, suggested martial law be imposed to act on Trump's conspiracy theory that the election was rigged and force a re-count in Trump's favour.  But the survivor in Trump probably realised that would make America look like a tin-pot military state and blow his cover completely. The revelation of Trump's threatening phone call to a Republican election official telling him to find more votes or else, taken together with the Capitol Hill insurrection looked bad enough as it was! 

But the Christian right wing were blind to all this, blinded by their seeing the world through the paranoid spectacles of proto-Conspiracy theorism. For them mild social reforms, liberal attitudes, government initiatives and regulation were seen as the harbingers of a communist plot. 

Trump cynically exploited a run down and culturally debased evangelical community just as he had exploited the crackpot conspiracy theorists like Jones and QAnon. In fact there is an overlap between right-wing evangelicals and conspiracy theorism  (See here).  But many evangelicals, whilst  claiming to support freedom of the individual are the very opposite of what they claim to be; their cultural instincts lead them to favour a highly authoritarian fundamentalism with its absolute certainties, demagogic preachers, "anointed" patriarchs and Godfathers who rule almost by divine right. The notion of epistemic humility is utterly alien to them. They have, in fact, strong autocratic instincts; you will sometimes hear that "A church is a theocracy and not a democracy".  It is unlikely that they would feel such antipathy toward  government if government was in their hands; the tail seeks to wag the dog. Suspicious of government they may be, but I doubt they would be so suspicious if their subliminally dominionist vision came about and they at last held the reigns of power; it would be Rome all over again. 

Some right wing evangelicals attempted to excuse their support for a candidate of clearly compromised political and personal morality by likening him to Cyrus or King Jehu, Biblical figures who worked out God's plans in spite of themselves. That right-wing evangelicals drew this parallel is revealing of their autocratic tendencies: Cyrus and Jehu were Middle Eastern despots at the centre of monarchical systems, circumstances hardly paralleled in democratic America. Right wing evangelicalism's subliminally monocratic vision  of government was no model for democracy. I felt a certain amount of dubiousness when one citizen supporter of Trump told me that he believed the "Republic was being rebirthed".  On the news I heard another Trump supporter saying they wanted Trump to set up a Trump dynasty. So perhaps the "rebirth" was as a monocratic system with a Trump dynasty at its head? In which case it would no longer be a republic!

The much hoped for scenario of the right-wing evangelical imagination found expression in a solid wall of "charismatic prophecies" that wrongly predicted a Trump electoral win**. Well, if there had been a Trump win I can tell them this: According to Tolkien only one hand can wear the ring of absolute power, the one ring to rule them all.  That's why we have democracy instead of "Theocracy": Democracy attempts to distribute the power among epistemically and morally flawed humanity and forces them to give public account of themselves to one another. This may lead to untidy, messy and argumentative government, but such a system acknowledges that humanity is flawed, epistemically and morally, so that's to be expected. The fundamentalist kindergarten versions of Christianity abdicate their epistemic responsibilities and look for security & certainty and seek to end argument & debate with what they claim to be channels of unambiguous  divine revelation either in the form of so-called "plain readings" of scripture and/or the rule of "anointed" patriarchs. 

Relevant Links

The wasting of the evangelical mind

Footnote

** The news from America is that all the influential "charismatic prophets" wrongly predicted a Trump election win.  This systematic error is evidence of a systemic problem: One might argue that since we would stop listening to one prophet who got it wrong on many prophecies why should we listen to an ensemble of culturally related prophets all of whom got it wrong on one prophecy? One commentator on the failed Trump prophecies expressed his belief that some of the "prophets" had a good track record and were respected Charismatic patriarchs & therefore still worth listening too. But for me, given the sectarian complexity of evangelical culture, life's far too short to rake through this extensive and varied culture and make such fine tuned distinctions, if indeed they exist as substantive distinctions. I've got better things to do.

ADDENDUM 07/09/21

If the possibility of fundamentalist dominionists being at the head of a Western dictatorship seems farfetched let’s recall that many American Christian fundamentalists are closely linked to Donald Trump the man who:

a) Vowed to “drain the swamp” of America’s well established democratic government,

b) Attempted to by-pass established democratic institutions and set up his alternatives,

c) Hobnobbed with professional conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and gave credence to the QAnon theorists,

d) Seeded the democratic debate with conspiracy theories,

e) Arguably helped provoke the attack on Capitol Hill,

f) Emboldened race supremacists & fascists, (cf. the Charlottesville rally)

g) Had a rapport with dictators like Russia’s Putin (etc) 

h) Attempted to intimidate a republican election official into falsifying the vote count 

i) Had an adviser who suggested imposing Trump’s view of the election using military force.  

ADDENDUM 09/09/2021

In an address that can be seen here Steve Bannon, one of Trump's pardoned side kicks uses language that almost sounds as if he wants the 2024 US election to be the inauguration of a new dictatorship: He talks of 20k shock troops on standby ready to take over a country they effectively already control.....

If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct it, then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately .....pre-trained teams ready to jump into federal agencies.... .We’re winning big in 2024 and we need to get ready now.......We control the country. We’ve got to start acting like it. And one way we’re going to act like it, we’re not going to have 4,000 (shock troops) ready to go, we’re going to have 20,000 ready to go and we’re going to pick the 4,000 best and most ready in every single department.

Perhaps it's all just metaphorical election talk. I hope it is, but do people like Bannon talk in metaphors?  If the far-right win the 2024 election would they ever again concede an electoral defeat if they think of themselves as controlling the country? Having crawled over the back of Trump could Bannon one day call himself "president"?

News Monitor

On Steve Bannon:

Capitol riot: Lawmakers vote to hold Steve Bannon in contempt - BBC News

Trump to start social media under his control:

Trump to launch new social media platform TRUTH Social - BBC News

Prosperity Christianity Part IV and Covid-19.

They might be easy to do (Divinely speaking!) but they are not

so easy to find!

The previous parts of this series can be found as follows: Part I, Part II & Part III

I had intended Part IV to be about the tragic case of Bill Johnson's Bethel church's unanswered prayers for a resurrection. But since then there has been this post on PZ Myers' blog which showcases the following Tweet:

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of The River Church in Tampa Bay believes the coronavirus is a “phantom plague” designed to terrify people into receiving vaccines that will kill them.

Here, he asks congregants to turn around and greet each other. pic.twitter.com/yjS1f8lLT9

— Mark Elliott (@markmobility) March 17, 2020

The Tweet reads: 

Right-wing pastor Rodney Howard-Browne of The River Church in Tampa Bay believes the coronavirus is a “phantom plague” designed to terrify people into receiving vaccines that will kill them. Here, he asks congregants to turn around and greet each other.

Howard-Browne, of whom I've been aware for a long time, makes it into my criminally insane abominable Christian category; no two ways about it: He has a CV that few Abominable Christians could rival: Viz: Conspiracy theorist, hardened right-winger, Christian Gnostic elitist, ex-Benny Hinn lieutenant, laughing mania pied piper, father of the Toronto Blessing and finally, it is said that Browne tells Christians who criticise his laughing mania blessing they are going to Hell. More about the antics of this nasty pastor can be found at these links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Howard-Browne

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/rodney-howard-browne-used-his-sunday-service-to-spread-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories/

The reason why I link Browne to the Bill Johnson affair will become clearer as we proceed. For a start, as we have seen, Bill Johnson traces his blessedness back to Browne's legacy: Namely, the Toronto blessing.

PZ Myers entitles his blog post on Browne Christians are Selfish Awful People. That's just a little bit sweeping and unfair given that many, if not the majority of Christians, would utterly disown Browne; its like using the legacies of Stalin, Mao, Pol-pot, & Marxism to accuse all atheists of being selfish and awful. Moreover, Myers general categorisation is comparable to Browne's declaration that Christians who don't tow his line are Hell bound. It's also on a par with fundagelicals who accuse many otherwise good atheists, gay people and even fellow Christians of heinous sin for just being who they are. For fundamentalists of all flavours there is no middle ground; a miss is as good as a mile. This moral one-upper-ship is just the kind of thing that is readily used as a pretext for the persecution of those you disagree with; no matter what the details of their personality they are regarded as partakers of the same poison and therefore can all be written off as selfish and awful. This lack of discernment, found among both atheists of a "Stalinist" mentality & Christians who lean heavily toward hardened fundamentalism, doesn't take into account that people reinterpret and cherry pick "doctrines" in a way that is a function of their personality and experience and this reveals much about them as people. The "poisoned doctrine" paradigm doesn't make fine distinctions and is dehumanising. To be fair however there is some discussion on Myers' comments thread as to whether it is right to dump all Christians into the same league as Browne. Besides it is quite possible that the grumpy Myers needed to blow off some steam when he wrote his blog; after all, even as a Christian I find myself utterly repelled by Browne's  reprehensible views.

As I have already said, Bill Johnson traces he ministry's success back to the Toronto Blessing and therefore effectively back to Browne's laughing mania phenomena.  But in spite of that, in an official press release from Bethel chirch we can read the following:

As of Monday, March 16, 2020, all ministry gatherings and weekend services at Bethel campuses are postponed until further notice. Instead, Bethel will offer several online opportunities for members, attenders, and students to be a part of, including church online at www.bethel.tv streaming at 8:00 AM, 10:30 AM, 1:00 PM, & 6:00 PM PDT on Sundays moving forward.

Sensible people! I wonder what Browne, effectively a big influence on Johnson, would have to say about that! 

Finally in the same press release  I found the following a little bit ironic:

Changes to Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry: Bethel’s ministry school (BSSM) has decided to transition fully to online school sessions to continue to foster safety and health in the community. All in-person classes and gatherings at all campuses are postponed until further notice.

We have some disappointing news: As of March 10, 2020, Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM) has cancelled all student missions and ministry trips between now and graduation, both domestic and international.

Prosperity Christianity Part III

Bethel: Jesus Cult or Jesus Culture? 

(See part I and part II here and here)

The August 2019 edition of Premier Christianity magazine carried an article on the Brudehof Christian community. From the article alone one can be forgiven for assuming that Brudehof are just another Christian variant that can be placed in the mainstream. But anyone who understands the sectarian mind knows that Brudehof would likely vehemently reject this themselves; if my hunches about them are right then they would see the mainstream as at best a tainted compromised version of Christianity. In any case alarm bells should start to ring when one hears that the members of the group "share" their economic leverage; that is, all property and wealth rights are handed over to the trust of the group identity which in practice means that the (usually male) leadership hold all the economic cards. Moreover, more often than not we find that the leadership is in fact a headship, a headship which is all too ready to insist on their divinely bestowed right to rule and will no doubt very quickly turn to the NT passages on authority in order to justify their "covering authority".

The October edition of Premier Christianity carried a letter from an experienced cult watcher who took the magazine to task for letting Brudehof off the hook. The language of the letter was evidence that the letter writer had knowledge of cults and their ways and reflected my own concerns about what looks to be an exclusive community. But I'll give the author of the Christianity article the benefit of the doubt and allow that she may not have wanted to assume the role of a kiss and tell journalist. Nevertheless I feel there should have been some indication that all is not well with the Brudehof: They are a "nostalgia" sect who wish to return to what they fancy as "New Testament" purity: What that means in practice is removing arbitrariness from life as far as possible and giving it an unambiguous and secure shape by combing the Bible for the rules of life, rules that they believe are the key to good community, perhaps even a kind of heaven on Earth.

A similar situation arose in an interview with Bill Johnson the Bethel church-chain supremo, an interview which was published in the January 2015 edition of Christianity. The article makes very little mention of the controversy surrounding Bethel and one can be forgiven for thinking Johnson is a wonderful, wonderful prophet to whom we should all be avidly listening.The article tells how "God touched" Johnson at the Toronto Airport Fellowship, home of the notorious "Toronto blessing". The writer was clearly bowled over by Johnson and to all intents and purposes is one of his "converts".

Below I quote parts of the article and interleave my comments.

***

Johnson and Bethel inevitably have critics outside the Charismatic church but also within the movement. Some UK charismatics are wary of Bethel because it teaches that it is God's will for everyone to be healed. ....at Harrogate leaders' conference....a church leader asked him 'What is your theology of suffering?' Johnson's response  was as articulate as it was provocative: 'I don't have one . I refuse to have a theology for something that shouldn't exist' .... I was to learn much later that the provocation was deliberate and I'd rather missed Johnson's point. It was to get people to think .

MY COMMENT: The correspondent goes on to extol Johnson for his "Prophetic ability to provoke people to come to the Bible afresh and consider what it really says rather than simply accepting the received hermeneutic of a particular theological tradition.". As we saw in part 2 exactly the opposite is in fact the case: The ethos at Bethel favours a shutting down of thinking. In fact that's exactly what Johnson is trying to achieve here: Our world is full of strife, pain and evil and yet Johnson is telling us to forget the years of thoughtful faithful theodicy and just follow his "cease and desist" theology. As for "something that shouldn't exist"; that applies to the whole gamut of sin, evil and suffering. The irony is that this sin and suffering are precisely what Christianity targets with its message of salvation and new life; in fact one might argue that Christianity is nothing but a theology of suffering, sin and evil. Johnson's truculent response isn't especially wise as his naive correspondent thinks but rather is simply an excuse intended to deflect attention from the fact this "Yoda" like guru (See previous post) is simply in the same position as many of us humble mortals who find ourselves faced with a very similar conundrum; we simply don't have any adequate answers to the problem of suffering & evil. Johnson's pugnacious prosperity teaching is no answer to this age-old problem.

Interviewer: What exciting things do you see God doing at the moment?
Johnson:  Anywhere I see hunger with humility I know break through is in the air. I've seen hunger in the UK for a long time, but just recently I've started to see a measure of humility that is at another level.

MY COMMENT: As a rule gurus and even more so their followers measure "humility" in terms of the susceptibility to the package they have on offer. These followers look at their movement and see how successful it has been in its take-up, not to mention those highly esteemed guru-leaders; naturally enough this impresses the rank-file to such an extent that anyone willing to so much as challenge this phenomenal group identity is regarded as out of their pecking order and thinking above their lowly status ranking in the social scheme of things. Therefore those less than amenable to the group's teaching will appear to be lacking in humility or even arrogant. I've seen other sect members use the term "teachable" of those who "humbly" (and gullibly) absorb their message.

Johnson: .....to cultivate humility we need to return to the simple things. Complicated Christianity only thrives where experience is required. Where we have arrogance this is often a product of ideas without experience. 


MY COMMENT:  By "experience" Johnson is probably referring to two categories: a) Inner light experiences such as the Toronto Blessing and b) Signs and Wonders such as the "glory cloud", "angel feathers", "gold dust and diamonds", healings, and resurrections. We heard about the glory cloud in part 2. This part is about Johnson's views on healing and in part 4 we will hear something about resurrection. For an explanation of the other signs and wonders see the panel below which I have scanned in from Premier Christianity.

VNP doesn't have any a prior problems with epiphanies ("encounters" is the current vogue term!) but it does have a problem if they are used as a gnostic-like initiation into an exclusive spiritual elite and/or take on bizarre outward manifestations such as laughing mania or barking whilst on all fours (as we saw with Toronto). No doubt some would-be super-spirituals regard such manifestations as the epitome of humble submission to God's will, but to me it smacks of spiritual manipulation by the gurus who promote them.

When Johnson contrasts "simple things" with what he calls "Complicated Christianity" he is in fact pushing for a "shut down" (see part II) of theodicy in favour of his own theology (which he denies exists! - see part II) and instead tries to get past us the affectation and disingenuous "I refuse to have a theology for something that shouldn't exist";  what he means is that we should all be healthy (and wealthy?) and we don't need any theology to justify it!

Interviewer: Some in the UK have hailed you as the 'new John Wimber'
Johnson: ...I had the same theology that he had...

MY COMMENT: No, Johnson you certainly don't have the same theology as Wimber! Wimber wasn't afraid of Christian scholarship and scholars, but Johnson looks to be subliminally diffident about both; after all they tend to generate a lot of "complicated Christianity"! I very much doubt that Wimber would have claimed he hadn't got a theology and then try to prevent its examination by denying its existence. Johnson is using Wimber's name to normalise his theology, a theology which he claims he doesn't have!


Interviewer: But you differ from Wimber.. He took the view that God can heal when he soveriegnly chooses; the now and not yet. Why do you believe it is always the will of God to heal?
Johnson: Jesus healed everyone who came to him. If I am using him as a model I can't lower the standard because I don't see everyone healed. (My emphasis) I can't make up a theological reason that he didn't demonstrate. 

MY COMMENT: Congratulations to the interviewer! This is one of the few critically aware questions!.

If we analyse Johnson's response we find it empty of significant content: We all know that it is God's ultimate intention to remove sin and suffering but the question is over the long term plan. We all know that God doesn't always immediately ameliorate suffering and evil anymore than he immediately took away the cup of Jesus suffering in spite of Jesus prayer indicating that at one level he did not want this cup and asked his Father to deliver him from it (...but only if it was in his Father's permissive will). As I've emphasised in the quote above Johnson himself actually accepts that not everyone is healed. Big deal! The times I've heard that one! Further; we often can't find a theological reason for continued suffering, although we believe the Gospel will ultimately address this problem - in the long term. Johnson has told us nothing here that we do not already know and seek.

Johnson's motive, once again, looks to be that of wanting to close down thinking by placing a ban on thoughtful theology about the problem of suffering and evil. He then goes on to effectively build a straw man out of the rest of the church by insinuating that they don't accept the ultimate mystery of suffering and evil: But in fact I've been to many a discussion with thoughtful Christians who, although they may tender theological ideas as to why a sovereign God doesn't stop suffering and evil dead in its tracks, will nevertheless accept that in the final analysis there is an ulterior mystery here.  After all, there is the scriptural mystery of why Jesus' cup of suffering wasn't removed as he prayed it would. There is an apparent disconnect between what God wants and what God allows.  So  in spite of what Jesus (God) wanted he didn't get what he wanted there and then. As we know all goal seeking beings have a hierarchy of goals: In this hierarchy short term goals are notorious for conflicting with long term goals; the conflict is resolved with a system of priorities ('Morality' is about managing this system of priorities). In fact in one sense it is perfectly correct for Bethel to "teach that it is God's will for everyone to be healed", but we know that this goal is modulated by deeper theological goals and priorities; things that perhaps we will not fully understand in this life.

But oh, the irony of it all! On the one hand Christianity is nothing but a theology of suffering and evil addressed via the incarnation, sacrifice and salvation and yet here is Johnson trying to pass off the notion that he doesn't have a theology of suffering! He can't be serious!


Interviewer: A big problem in this position is that it's pastorally untenable. What about when people don't get healed?
Johnson: You have to teach people to live with the mystery.... I can and do teach people to live in the grace of what we are experiencing, because all things work together for good. It doesn't mean all things were designed by God. Not all things that happen are God's will. 

MY COMMENT: Once again Johnson is saying nothing startlingly original here. He alludes to the mystery of God's permissive will which Christians have acknowledged since time immemorial and he actually hints that the long term may trump the short term: Viz: all things work together for good. The fact is many Christians don't get healed and Johnson has really nothing new to say about it.  Johnson is trying to make out he is saying something new and challenging but he really isn't.

Johnson: I won't change my theological standard of what to expect in life and I won't blame God, myself or the sick person. I'm, not going to say 'it's because you don't have faith' - that's not sound theologically....I'd rather teach people to expect the best and then learn to walk through the mystery.

MY COMMENT: So which is it to be? Are we to "expect" healing without qualification or accept the mystery of why healing doesn't always come as we may be led to "expect" and accept that this is neither our fault, the sick person's, nor God's? Clearly Johnson is so qualifying his "theological expectations" that they no longer become necessary expectations!

I think we are seeing once again a straw man being applied to people who in Johnson's opinion are "changing their theological standard" while at the same time he is actually saying nothing that vastly differs from the very common Christian view of suffering and evil: Viz: We all seek to ameliorate suffering as far as possible and take it to God in prayer and yet we all know that the persistent existence of suffering, given the absolute sovereignty of God, is an ulterior mystery; one can hear such in many a church discussion group and one doesn't need to go to this guru to hear it. Notice that Johnson has conceded the important pastoral point: Blaming persistent suffering on a lack of faith isn't sound theology as Johnson says. So Johnson does have a theology after all, the hypocrite! In the final analysis it is clear that not everyone is healed and Johnson realises that he has to accept this fact as a mystery without recrimination. Big deal Johnson, that's what we all have to face! So what's new? Authoritarianism, fideism, gnosticism, spiritual recriminations. spiritual bullying and bizarre signs and wonders is what's new!  Actually, none of that is really new; plenty of highly sectarian groups major in these kinds of things.


Interviewer: ...some have said that it (Bethel) can appear to be soft on sin. When Todd Bentley (of the Lakeland revival)  stepped down  due to moral failure and then turned up at Bethel, he received a standing ovation. 
Johnson: I won't make public my conversations with Todd so that people will think I'm hard on sin. 

MY COMMENT:  I'm sure an unwillingness to scald people is not one of Johnson's faults and that he undoubtedly gave Todd a good telling off! After all Johnson is very ready to publicly scald us for not humbly accepting his incoherent prosperity doctrine of "high health expectations" in the face of the acknowledged mystery of suffering and evil!

However, Todd Bentley's sexual sins are just a spicy distraction. Male leaders of the pack across all sorts of traditions often face and often succumb to consensual sexual temptation given their high "alpha male" status and especially so in patriarchal church organisations. Frankly I'm not interested (unless it becomes abuse).  What is of far greater concern to me is Bentley's bizarre "ministry" and some of his theological claptrap. But I suspect it was Bentley's bizarre rallies which earned him his standing ovation at Bethel. I doubt Johnson scalded Bentley for his crackpot ministry because Johnson is going down a similar road. See below:

Inside Bethel's box of tricks (click to enlarge)

See here for further examples of "Johnsonease".

NEXT TIME:

In the news recently is the tragic case of the death of the child of parents who attended Bethel, one of whom was a worship song writer.  Bethel's very public prayers and expectation of the resurrection of the child did not have a happy ending. The story is here

https://www.faithwire.com/2019/12/30/bethel-church-holds-funeral-for-worship-leaders-daughter-after-praying-for-resurrection/

I have just discovered that this story is being told in the March edition of Premier Christianity. So, in part 4 I will look at this article. 

Prosperity Christianity Part II

Critique of the Bethel "Glory Cloud" from tbckawaii on Vimeo.

In part 1 of this series I introduced the "Signs and Wonders" ministry of Bethel church-chain supremo Bill Johnson. Originally this post was intended to look at an interview with Bill Johnson found in the January 2015 edition of Premier Christianity. I have, however, since discovered the video above and will be discussing this instead. I will look at the Christianity article in part 3. The above video gives us an example of one of Bethel Church's signs and wonders, the so called glory cloud.

The video is a critique of the glory cloud phenomenon and Bethel's accompanying apologetics. This critique comes from a Christian who probably classifies as a "Word" Christian; that is, someone whose main engagement with Christianity is mediated by reading the Bible.  I have to agree with him that the glory cloud is rather underwhelming and hardly leaves me in a state of great wonder. As the video suggests it looks suspiciously like dust (or glitter) catching the light as it is caught up in the circulating convention currents one might expect in a crowded auditorium and which is necessarily air conditioned in the hot Californian weather.

So, you have difficulty believing this "glory cloud" is anything special? Well, Bethel has ways of  making you believe....

The video then goes on to provide clips of Bethel's glory cloud apologist Danny Silk. In front of a supportive laughing crowd he ridicules any who might attempt to question the Bethel interpretation and look for explanations in anything less than supernatural terms. He advises disobedient people to "Shut up! You don't know, you so don't know!". 

The video rightly points to the psychological pressures, to the point of duress, being applied in the Bethel social environment: e.g. the peer pressures of group think, the emotional costs in contracting out once a commitment to the Bethel culture has been made and above all the guru status of authority figures like Bill Johnson who preside over the glory cloud meetings and interpret its meaning to his followers. The video also points out the glaring hypocrisy of Silk: Silk will tell critics that "You so don't know" but of course Silk thinks that he himself "So does know!"; one rule for him.....  Silk then goes onto lecture the audience on the need for discernment and yet his words make it clear that he wants to close down the questioning and analytical attitude that is necessarily implicit in any genuine discernment. He attempts to block genuine discernment with a mix of group pressure, ridicule and spiritual intimidation. For Silk genuine discernment equates to the subtext of Silk's address; that is "Agree with me or else risk divine displeasure!" 

The video then moves onto the night Bill Johnson was addressing his followers when the glory cloud appeared. Johnson explains the glory cloud as follows:

The church gathered for decades round a sermon. Israel camped around the presence (approving gasps from the audience). And we've known there are going to be some dramatic shifts in how we do life, how we do church. The presence of God is the greatest gift we have and to shut everything else down because of that is absolutely worth it to me....it's happening tonight as the church is camping around the presence..... (whoops and shouts of joy). ...finally the main thing has become the main thing...

That Johnson is regarded by his lieutenants as a guru and authority figure is evidenced when Silk says of Johnson's words "Yoda speaks!".  Notice how Johnson's words compare exposition of the Word unfavourably to the "presence", a "presence" which to him is the "main thing". For the sake of what Johnson is claiming to be a kind of theophany everything else, in his view, must be closed down; especially, no doubt, a questioning spirit and the exposition of the Word.

God, as we should know, is omnipresent although in spite of our finitude we may feel and/or see unusual tokens of his presence. But God is bigger than any experiences and/or revelations finite beings can have.  Such experiences are just one thing and  never can be the main thing. But I suppose it does become the main thing if you want to close down everything else and use the putative "main thing" to manipulate people. I have no a priori reason to reject out of hand the account of people who claim to have had an epiphany they cannot articulate or explain easily: In the historical church there has always been a tension between Word-laden and Wordless encounters with the divine. But Bethel weighs in to exacerbate the fault line between the analytical & intuitive and comes out in favour of a shut up! and shut down! fideism.

The creator of the video is a bit of a hard cop; I myself like to give Christians the benefit of the doubt knowing that confirmation bias and gullibility can fully account for this kind of stuff: But if Bethel  persists in maintaining its spiritually intimidating stance toward all who might at first cautiously balk at what they are claiming, hard cops are what Bethel has brought upon itself. 

Prosperity Christianity Part 1

Bill and Brenda Johnson with prosperity teacher Benny Hinn.  Hinn has recently recanted
of his long time association with prosperity teaching.  Hinn's lieutenant Rodney Howard-Browne 
was an influence on Randy Clark who initiated the Toronto blessing. Johnson acknowledges his
debt to the Toronto culture. 

Bill Johnson, the Redding based supremo of the "Bethel" church-chain, is thought by some to be the natural successor of John Wimber's "Signs and Wonders ministry". But Wimber, who died of cancer in 1997, was in my opinion of an entirely different frame of mind to Johnson: Wimber attracted traditional evangelical scholars like Wayne Grudem and  Jack Deere, people who would likely to have otherwise cold shouldered Charismatic Christianity. Wimber was a thoughtful man of conciliation and reconciliation. This is why Wimber's Wiki page can say this of him: 

Wimber strongly espoused Kingdom theology, and this approach to the charismatic differed from many of his peers and predecessors. Wimber's embrace of this new approach led a friend, C. Peter Wagner, to coin the phrase, "The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit" to describe the concept he taught. The Third Wave differed from classic Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement, foremost, in their approach to speaking in tongues. Whereas the previous groups had emphasized the gift of tongues as the only evidence for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, Wimber and those he influenced emphasized that this was just one of the many spiritual gifts available to believers, as taught in the Bible.

His teaching revolutionized what was a major theological stumbling block to some mainstream Evangelicals, and normalized the demonstration of "signs and wonders" in current times.[11] Wimber held influence with a number of them, most famously Jack Deere, C. Peter Wagner, and Wayne Grudem.

Services led by Wimber often included activities, described as Holy Spirit manifestations, where congregants appeared to be drunk, dazed, or uncoordinated.[12] But in the mid-1990s he led the Vineyard movement to split from the Toronto Blessing church primarily on the issue of bizarre manifestations and the church's extreme latitude for them.[13]

Wimber also differed from contemporaries in his rejection of the Word of Faith movement, and the associated doctrines and showiness. The pursuit of authenticity was at the core of Wimber's idea of church, and this was reflected in the worship as well.

I myself was generally left with a favourable impression of Wimber whenever I read him. However, the fact is his Third Wave of the Holy Spirit, a wave which was hoped would unite "holy spirit" charismatics and traditional "Word" based evangelicals failed to return the spiritual revolution hoped for. In my opinion this was because Wimber and scholars like Jack Deere failed to break a dualistic mold which was inclined to give an exalted place to direct inner light "touches of God" & mystical intuitive encounters with the divine and set them over and against Christians whose experiential joy & encounter with God was largely mediated through an intellectual engagement with the Word. This is the criticism I leveled against Jack Deere in his defence of Wimber. So, even someone like Wimber was unable to take on-board the idea that some Christians simply don't experience divine-gnosis events; in the "Third Wave" such personal events were still regarded as the acme of Christian experience. In consequence Wimber's Third Wave never really fixed the fault line between so-called "holy spirit" Christians and Word Christians. Its failure is evidence that the holy-spirit vs logos division isn't founded on a mandated one-size-fits-all blessing being resisted by Word Christians, but instead represents a combination of differences in Christian culture and personality types. After all, apart from these inner light epiphanies "holy spirit" Christians have trouble pointing to any other fundamental difference between themselves and devout logos Christians. Moreover, they are seldom able to point to miracles absent of evidential ambiguity.which authenticate their claim to have an exclusive spiritual superiority.

However, in spite of all that Wimber can nevertheless be credited for his gallant attempt to walk a conciliatory third path between "holy spirit" charismatics and traditional "logos" loving evangelicals. Not so Bill Johnson. Johnson epitomises the failure of the Third Wave to bring evangelical harmony  and he's turned the clock back to the bad old divisive days of the "holy spirit" vs "logos" war; tough on you if you are one of the latter.  Moreover, Johnson has been accused of teaching a prosperity gospel; Johnson's Wiki page says:

Johnson was featured in the 2018 documentary 'American Gospel: Christ Alone' as a prominent figure in the prosperity gospel movement, emphasizing supernatural miracles as evidence of salvation. Johnson has also the been the subject of criticism.

The prosperity gospel is sometimes referred to as "health and wealth" teaching and this is an acknowledgement that prosperity teaching often comes with two components; that is, the spiritually superior Christian is thought to prosper both in health and wealth: This is the teaching that one-time prosperity teacher Benny Hinn now disowns (See Pride and Prosperity, Premier Christianity, Oct 2019). But to be fair to Johnson I myself haven't heard him extolling the role of wealth as a mark of spiritual superiority (although he may have done). He has, nevertheless, been pretty heavy on the subject of health and healing. In fact in the February 2018 edition of Premier Christianity magazine, in article entitled "When God Doesn't Heal" Wes Sutton director of Acorn Christian Healing Foundation says this of Johnson:

Three years ago in Premier Christianity Magazine (Jan 2015), US church leader Bill Johnson said that he did not have a theology of suffering because "I refuse to have a theology for something that shouldn't exist". There is much in Bethel's ministry that is helpful, but I find his statement a little disingenuous as he clearly  does have way of pastorally ordering the world  when his prayers have not been answered. .....we are not yet seeing everyone healed (or saved) and we need a way of understanding this tension.

When faced with suffering, whether due to bad health or poverty etc, does Johnson back off and offer no spiritual consolation or explanation? Doesn't "it shouldn't exist" itself cloak an underlying theology? The cornerstone of the Christian faith is the suffering of Christ and yet does Johnson refuse to have a theology of salvation and atonement? In the garden of Gethsemane there is a schism in the God-head typical of human life as different levels of goal-seeking compete with one another: On one level Jesus didn't want to go through with the suffering before him and yet on another level He knew it was the will of his Father. At once the God-head both wanted and didn't want the ordeal before them. But the high level objectives entailed by the incarnation required it (Philippians 1:1-11).

For hundreds of years Christians have grappled with the problem of suffering & evil (which includes illness) and it is at the heart of the Gospel. But Johnson in his pastoral arrogance can confidently put a didactic red line through all that and erase the consolation many have found in theodicy.  And what is the Book of Job but a theology of suffering? When Johnson is faced with suffering that hangs around and as one who is inclined toward prosperity teaching we find that he is tempted to explain it all away in terms of the spiritual failings by someone somewhere and thereby actually introducing his own theology of suffering whether he admits it or not!

Johnson is a didactarian with a vengeance, much more so than John Wimber ever was. In part II of this series I will look back at the Premier Christianity article quoted by Wes Sutton. This article took the form of an interview with Johnson and is very revealing. Johnson tends to speak in indirect, coded & connotative terms, but with sufficient experience his words can be decoded and the article thereby provides an insight into Johnson's didactic persona..... and his theology.

Meanwhile, Back in Theological Toy Town....

Good News maybe, but it didn't last long! 
[Click to enlarge]

This post was triggered by an attic clear out. During that clear-out I happened across a 1994 Good News Christian newspaper for Norwich. The headline article was on the conversion of Samantha Fox (See above). Samantha Fox was a popular Sun newspaper Page 3 girl and that seems to be her main claim to fame. However, she eventually turned pop-star. I don't think she was ever a tip-top pop talent, but probably had enough of it to pull off a performance; except, that is, when she co-hosted  the Brit pop awards in 1989 with Mick Fleetwood. It was by all accounts a complete disaster and although certainty not her fault, I doubt if poor Samantha had the calibre to retrieve the situation. After the debacle at least one tabloid treated her cruelly; for them she was a slapper who could safely be made fun of. Not surprisingly she subsequently talked about moving to America where she thought her talent would be viewed more positively.

In spite of her treatment as a bimbo by some, she clearly was a thinking person and was looking for meaning and purpose and this may have lead her to Holy Trinity, Brompton's Alpha course. It was 1994, a bad year for evangelical Christianity; the so called "Toronto blessing" was at large and found fertile ground among Christians who were looking for spiritual fireworks to escape from the humdrum run-down cultural rearguard action that had so characterised Western Christianity since the 1960s. It seemed that as long a touted "new move of God" smacked of the supernatural anything would go, no matter how bizarre. As the article above makes clear the Toronto Blessing was identified by spontaneous bouts of laughter, crying, fainting and ecstasies. Rumour had it that barking, roaring and other animal noises were also among the manifestation of the blessing. As I have remarked before the whole phenomenon had suspicious similarities with the dancing mania of the middle ages. The "blessing" also came with a fair measure of spiritual pressure: People who didn't buy it were regarded as resisting the Holy Spirit and in one case even accused of being in danger of committing the unforgivable sin. This sort of intimidating behaviour is a proud conceit often found among super-spiritual Christians who readily equate any disbelief of their words with a disbelief in the Almighty himself.

HTB ran with the "blessing" (for a while) and it seems likely that this is what Samantha must have witnessed. In the light of her later rejection of HTB (and perhaps even Christianity itself) her testimony of Holy Spirit enlightenment in Good News comes as a grating jar; it is evidence that at least some of these testimonies of epiphany, testimonies which can sound so convincing, are little more than the aping of the words of a group think and are as shallow as an evaporated puddle. 

Not long after Samantha must have moved away from HTB circles because around 2000 she came out as a lesbian and was in a relationship with a woman; this would not have sat comfortably with HTB.  Her wish to disassociate herself with the HTB experience is expressed in a 2003 article in the Guardian:

'Well, on the Alpha course, you learn a lot. And what I learned was I've got my own faith.' She laughs her fizzy laugh and adjusts her two-tone hairdo. 'The people I met there... I felt more Christian than any of them. To me, it looked like a fashion show. I felt I didn't need to be there. I felt everyone there was a poseur. All the women were looking for these rich guys. I wasn't,' she pronounces a little sniffily, 'brought up like that.'

She must have started visiting Holy Trinity Brompton at the time when she was coming to terms with being gay, so I ask how she coped with the evangelical hostility to homosexuality. Actually, she says, Holy Trinity's position struck her as so bananas that her confidence in her own beliefs, about her faith as well as her sexuality, grew stronger.

'I think we've come a long way since the Bible was written. No, Alpha never made me feel bad about my sexuality, because I believe in love: at the end of the day, I think all God wants for us is to be happy and love each other. But Alpha was good because it helped me find myself a bit. It has taken me a while.'

This account is just so utterly at odds with the testimony of her HTB epiphany that I wonder where the truth lies. I wonder if Samantha's reference to "bananas" applies to the weird aspects of the Toronto blessing? In order to uphold their world-view some charismatic evangelicals may attempt to explain away this situation by telling us that perhaps Samantha had a genuine "touch of God" but is currently resisting the Holy Spirit: This is a common explanation among charismatic fundamentalists who, putting their world view first, are sometimes conceited enough claim to have privy to one's inner thought life; so much so that they will boldly offer such condemning judgements.

Another Christian account of Samantha fox's conversion can be found in this 1994 Cross Rhythm web article. Interesting is a comment from a Christian reader in the comment thread of this article. This reads:

Posted by Marion in Birmingham @ 21:58 on Aug 6 2016

 Any chance this could be removed after years passing waiting for confirmation of Faith, fruit. So sad. But please keep praying

In case this Cross Rhythm article should disappear from the web, I have a copy of it here. This tendency to erase inconvenient and perplexing Christian history only serves to feed a confirmation bias. In contrast the Gospels didn't erase Peter's or Judas' failures, as is so often remarked.  When the failures and the vexed questions are forgotten, a sanitized plastic version of Christian history emerges and salutary lessons and cautions are lost to posterity.

This now brings me to an article in the September edition of Premier Christianity magazine about the high profile Christians Joshua Harris and Marty Sampson renouncing their faith. Harris was known among fundamentalist Christians for writing a dreadful book on marriage and sex early on in his Christian career (which he later disowned) and Sampson was a well known song writer and worship leader for the the mega-church chain, Hillsong. The article quotes Sampson as giving the following reasons for rejecting Christianity (Presumably among others). Viz:

How many preachers fall? Many. No one talks about it. How many miracles happen? Not many. No one talks about it. Why is the Bible full of contradictions? No one talks about it. How can God be love yet send 4 billion people to a place, all coz they don't believe. No one talks about it. 

The article then goes on to quote Free Church minister David Robertson who addresses Sampson's complaint in an open letter:

You seem to have been living in some kind of sheltered cocoon. In the Christian circles I inhabit people never stop talking about these things!  Was your faith or your church background  really so superficial and shallow that these questions were never discussed? Little wonder that your faith collapsed like a house of sand, if it was built on such flimsy foundations  and was never tested! 

This is in fact an implicit criticism of the Hillsong culture*. But Robertson is right to contrast Sampson's experience with his own and question Sampson's undiscriminating and blanket accusation: For example, Christianity magazine itself  is not shy of facing and discussing awkward questions and issues. Also, theologians like Tom Wright and Alistair Mcgrath don't strike me as the sort of guys who wouldn't talk about and face up to theological conundrums. And yet I have to say that there are Christian subcultures out there where confirmation bias is rife and where toy-town and authoritarian doctrines are preached with little or no talk about their difficulties & inconsistencies and where a group think pressures uncritical acceptance. Any attempt at analysis and criticism is looked at askance as the thin end of the Satanic wedge. As Ellie Mumford, an aficionado of the Toronto Blessing, put it  "Don't analyse it". This is fideism. Moreover, sometimes diverging interpretations of scripture are rounded on as tantamount to rebellion against God. As might be expected the authoritarian fundamentalist theme park manager Ken Ham yet again provides a fine example of the kind of spiritual pressure one can expect if one doesn't tow the line. He accuses Christians who might be tempted to accept evolution of;

...undermining the biblical doctrine of sin and death being a result of Adam’s fall. Really, when someone rejects a literal Genesis, it affects the way they view the rest of the Bible and the Christian message, as can be seen with this author.....Once we abandon the Bible as absolute truth, anything goes, and anyone can just make God and his gospel message in their own image. But that gospel won’t save—only the biblical gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation  ("Progressive Children's book to offer a different picture of creation" 17 Oct 2019)

Once again Ham thrusts his perverse & paranoid thin end of the Satanic wedge logic into the mouths and minds of those he disagrees with and attempts to manipulate them onto a collision course with the Almighty. As one might expect from his inquisitional tactics he all but denies access to Gospel truth to his antagonists.This is the way fundamentalists attempt to forestall critical analysis of their position. (See also here)

So, although David Robertson is right, he is only right for selected Christian subcultures. Elsewhere the kind of toy town plastic theology bolstered by spiritual intimidation and which has deceived Sampson reigns supreme. As for those who are self-critical, analytical, exploratory, tentative, experimental and ask hard questions, they may find themselves being accused of at best resisting the Holy Spirit and at worst of being heretics!

Footnote:
* One of the factors at work here is the almost exclusive premium that is so often placed on purely intuitive engagements with God: Sensings, epiphanies, sublime revelations, touches of God, gnosis etc are regarded as the acme of faith; a more analytical approach is not just a poor relation in this context, but sometimes explicitly put down as mere head knowledge in comparison with the  superior "heart knowledge" of the super-spiritual Christian. The trouble is that when people like Sampson come out of their quasi-gnostic stupor they find roaring lions waiting for them, ready to devour their faith. Robertson's criticism is then justified.



Quoted links
http://viewsnewsandpews.blogspot.com/2017/11/confirmation-bias-and-terry-virgos-bad.html

http://www.crossrhythms.co.uk/articles/music/Samantha_Fox_The_Page_Three_girls_Christian_conversion/40205/p1/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-6584193/Samantha-Fox-52-turns-years-spangled-cheerleader-inspired-ensemble.html

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2003/feb/02/features.review7 

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/lifestyle/tv/what-really-like-disastrous-1989-14319405

In Search of Spiritual Fireworks

I've complemented Premier Christianity magazine on its mix of articles before: It doesn't present a plastic, sanitised or sectarian Christianity but instead an authentic version with all its warts, messy contradictions, unresolved questions and raw tensions. So if it's going to be representative of the true state of Christian affairs then along with what to me is agreeable I would expect to find articles by commentators that I wouldn't necessarily see eye to eye with; for example it has recently published another article by the fundamentalist leaning R T Kendall (See here for an earlier article). But even in Kendall's article we find him candid and up front about one significant aspect of Christianity as we shall see.

The article in question appears in the September 2019 edition of Christianity and is entitled Word vs Spirit. As I suggested in my earlier blog post Kendall is a dualist and probably a "gnostic" dualist at that;  that is, he sees Christian conversion only rightfully completed if one has gone through some kind  initiation into the "deeper things of the Spirit". In my previous post on Kendall  I quoted a certain Jonathan Hunt (Hunt seems to be associated with the conservative evangelical Metropolitan Tabernacle) who comments on Westminster Chapel in the days of R T Kendall's tenure (See here):

The sad decline of Westminster Chapel into the charismatic extremes of today was begun even then. (See the Rev Iain Murray’s comments upon RT Kendall’s ministry here)

Although this quote comes from a rather sectarian source and must be treated with caution*** it is evidence of Kendall's charismatic credentials. Given this background it is no surprise that in the current article we find Kendall taking it for granted that there exist "Word" and "Spirit" versions of Christianity which fall into quite distinct categories: For him one can major in "Word "Christianity and minor in "Spirit" Christianity or alternately one can major in "Spirit" Christianity and minor in "Word" Christianity. His desire is that this dichotomy is resolved.  But is it really such a clear dichotomy as Kendall makes out?

***

As in my first article on Kendall we find him once again casting aspersions on the church for its failure to live up to his expectations. His expectations are in fact predicated on his world view, a world view which filters his observations through a Word vs Spirit polariser. In his mind the church is culpable for not bringing together Word and Spirit. To solve the problem we must...

...all see the urgent need  for both Word and Spirit to come together as in the book of Acts. 

As is so often the wont of stern evangelicals like Kendall, he is not the kind of guy who minces his words about what he identifies as sin in need of repentance:

Those who read this (i.e Kendall's words) may - just may - be gripped to lament and repent over our situation and intelligently pray that the honour of God's name which has long been behind a cloud will be restored....there is no fear of God in the land or in the church....we are in a deep deep sleep with little or no expectancy and no great concern  or outrage over the conditions around us

Kendall has a low opinion of both Word centred and Spirit centred Christians :

Those [Spirit] people who run to church because they know they will be riveted by exciting and fearless preaching are hard to find. So much of what comes from Word pulpits  is "perfectly orthodox perfectly useless" as Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to say. 

For Kendall large swathes of the Church are in the doldrums of an utter uselessness. People who love the Word are not seeking power and people who love the power of the Spirit are not seeking the Word.

But what does Kendall mean by power? To this end he alludes to the signs, wonders and miracles in the book of Acts. Fair enough; a few restored amputated legs, the raising of the certifiably dead, authentic prophecies and miraculous insights etc would be a welcome manifestation of divine power.  (Although Kendall doesn't mention miracles of revival where there is seemingly inexplicably rampart conversion in response to preaching). Things like this are measurably hard evidence of God's paranormal power.  But in a candid admission Kendall tells us that this kind of thing is exceedingly rare:

I believe many need to hear this message - myself included. I long to preach with power and authority. I personally experienced that kind of power and authority only once or twice so far in my lifetime. I have seen some miracles and healings over the years but very few. True miracles and verifiable healings are exceedingly rare. 

Well at least Kendall has got something right; we see very little overt evidence of divine paranormal power.  So why this dearth of miracles and conversion avalanches? But Kendall thinks he knows the answer to that: He blames their absence on church people who have failed to address his dichotomy. Yes, he's that kind guy and his message of a lack of faith, expectancy and failure is common in charismatic churches who seek to rationalise and explain away the absence of what their version of Christianity leads them to expect. In an inversion of Peter Abelard* one can hear sentiments very similar to the following among Charismatic  leaders:

How many times have you said, “I’ll believe it when I see it!” That’s the traditional approach, based on the ability to tangibly see things to know they exist. But from a spiritual level, we want to switch that around. The Truth principle is this: I’ll see it when I believe it! This means we see it with our spiritual eyes, before it actually manifests in the real world.

This kind of philosophy provides a ready means of explaining away crushed expectations by apportioning blame for lack of faith. In practice what "I’ll see it when I believe it! " really means is "I'd better believe it when I first hear it from my spiritual guides".  What's being asked for here is that the "evidence" planted in the ears by the these guides should not be the subject of observation and critical analysis. "Don't analyses it" is a phrase that has been used by Ellie Mumford about the notorious Canadian Toronto Blessing. These epistemic attitudes disenfranchise the Christian's intellect and encourages the notion that a sheer teeth gritting belief is what is needed to conjure up the miraculous when the evidence, apart from the vehement assertions of one's spiritual guides, simply isn't there. When the promised miracles fail to materialise then the explanation that there is someone out there with deficient faith who is to blame is likely to cause bitter disappointment, recriminations, angry backbiting and division; when what they are hoping for and expecting doesn't come about a witch hunt may ensue as they seek for whoever is stultifying the power of the Spirit. What these people are unlikely to accept is that manifestations of divine paranormal power are not under the control of human strength of belief and that the appearance of this power is probably humanly inscrutable. There are times when divine paranormal power is very overt and other times when it is more covert. Overt measurable displays of paranormal power is an act of divine fiat and does not necessarily have a link with belief, expectation, holiness or prayer because the plan behind it may be beyond our understanding.

Given the bitter recriminations that often follow in the wake of the kind of world view that Kendall promulgates it is no surprise to me why many traditional evangelical "Word" orientated Christians (Such as we see in the Metropolitan Tabernacle quote above) have washed their hands of the likes of Kendall and even go as far as to suggest that overt Pentecostal power is confined to the early days of the New Testament. That may be going a bit too but I'll say this: In my experience many Christians cannot be blamed for a lack of motivation in seeking that the power of God's Word.  As the saying goes the pen is mightier than the sword and seeking sensationalist spiritual fireworks before something is declared to be "in the Spirit " is going to underrate and devalue much of what goes on in churches. Word and power go together; they cannot be separated into distinct Spirit vs Word categories. Sometimes divine paranormal power is overt and sometimes it is covert. But Kendall's dualist world view prompts him to dichotomise sight and sound even though both are active information bearers:

Most of my own preaching over the years - I wish it were not true - has been entirely Word preaching  with little power. When people listened  to me they would say "Thank you for your word". That is what they came for, that is what they got. They did not  come to see anything.; they came to hear.

You can't separate word and power like this: hearing and seeing are both God given senses. Words are never empty and sights always convey a message.

But the absence of hard measurable miracles doesn't mean to say people don't have their own anecdotes of experience of paranormal power; it's just that anecdotal miracles have an epistemic distance which means that only those who directly experience them can imbibe their reality. But for the rest of us the human weaknesses for unreliability, gullibility and confirmation bias can compromise the value of anecdotal testimonies which report on one-off events and erratic phenomena. Kendall simply hasn't  taken into account epistemic distance when he has declared his sweeping write-offs. Instead he embarks on a blame game which has all the potential to trigger off damaging witch hunts and divisions. Moreover, the spurious Spirit vs Word dichotomy can take Christians eye off the ball as they undervalue what they can do, what they see and what they hear and instead merely mark time waiting for enough holiness and prayer to usher in those spiritual fireworks. They then become perfectly useless. Kendall is part of the problem, not part of the solution: He is imposing his dualist categories on the church. No fear of God? Really? Am I really to believe that, say, reformist Christians who are so diligent in their study of the Word have no fear of God?  

Charismatic gurus have a tendency to fall for a version of gnosticism: They cannot identify God's power in the everyday, the prosaic and the common place especially so as the church becomes increasingly marginalised from and irrelevant to the surrounding culture and its learning. So in the absence of measurable paranormal power they turn in on themselves seeking God in the inner life and in inner-light revelations of gnosis. The mass swoon for Jesus events then become the vicarious measure of power and an existential fix for an existential crisis.  But such events are far too close to trance like states and group hysteria to be immediately classified as authentic. One has to be cautious about these "outpourings of the Spirit": They resemble too closely the phenomenon of dancing mania (and also this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-48850490) for them to be automatically and uncritically classified as authentic. 

Lastly we've got what is very likely going to be another entry in my false prophecy list: 

I truly believe that the Word and the Spirit are going to come together maybe soon. If Smith Wigglesworth has been quoted correctly, we are long overdue to see his 1947 prophecy fulfilled. He reportedly forecast that the Word and the Spirit would come together and that this move would eclipse the Wesleyan and Welsh  revivals and spread all over the world. 

Who knows; we may well see a display of overt divine power, but we won't see a coming together of Word and Spirit simply because it is predicated on the fallacies of a dualist world view. Whilst the activity of the "Power of the Spirit" is registered by dualists only in swoon for Jesus and mass trance  events you can be sure that the polarisation will remain in place; for many people swooning for Jesus  just isn't sympathetic to their personality and rides roughshod over their God given way of appropriating and expressing the faith.  Let us remember that John Wimber's "Third Wave"  never really infused the whole church**; that's in spite of the fact that Wimber's charismatic stance was more intelligent, more conciliatory and more inclusive than other charismatics before or since. The old divided order has reasserted itself probably along cultural and personality fault lines. But in the final analysis this may actually be a good thing: God doesn't keep all his apples in one basket. If one lot of apples go bad, there are still a lot of other baskets!

Postscript (19/9/19)

In the absence of the overtly paranormal (which isn't under human control, prayer or no prayer, holiness or no holiness) I can see straight away that Kendall's concept of a union of "Spirit" and "Word", will never happen. As I have said in the text Kendall's underlying dualist ideas are spurious.  What Kendall thinks of as a dichotomy is in fact nothing more than cultural and personality differences in the expression of faith; some people lean toward analytical and verbal expressions of the faith (Logos) and others a more mystical and intuitive union with the divine (Mythos). The fault lines here are  archetypal and can be observed throughout Christian history.

In my opinion what counts most is that different personality types and cultures cultivate mutual respect and appreciation. But even this is, I believe, a tall order given the human susceptibility toward spiritual conceits and deceits.. Kendall is an example of why mutual respect is difficult: The foible he exemplifies is that humans are precious about the maintenance of their own sense of spiritual one-up-manship and this leads to mutual badgering and the inflaming of mutual antagonisms. The irony is that Kendall himself is feeding these polarising fires and the harder he and others like him blow the more mutually hostile the opposing sides will become. As I have said below, although Wimber's "Third Wave" never broke the charismatic gnostic mould, the days of John Wimber do feel like a more reasonable albeit short lived era.

Kendall's article is evidence that the goal of some Charismatic Christians to "convert" the whole church to a quasi-gnostic version of the faith has failed: They brought no covert "supernaturalism"  to the church (as Kendall admits) and only succeeded in dividing Christians along personality and cultural fault lines. They would not accept that these fault lines can be resolved by rising to the challenges of reciprocal relationships and complimentary service. Instead they only succeeded in inflaming and polarising the differences with talk of initiation into superior forms of spirituality.


Footnotes
* "I seek understanding so that I might believe" rather than "I believe so that I may understand". Probably the truth is an iterative combination of these epistemic approaches.

** That may be because Wimber's new wave never really broke free from the old Pentecostal gnosticism. Since Wimber the "Bethel" brand of churches represents an example of a return to the old ways of thinking. See here for example. See also here for a reference to Grantly Watkins who is pushing Bethel thiinking.

*** Sectarian groups have a tendency to solve the problem of unity by drawing a line round one particular uniform (and sometimes controlled) Christian sub culture and then declaring it to be the one and only true representatives of Christianity. In some ways Kendall is only getting from the Met as good as he gives!