Characters in the Medieval Church

Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

Anselm was the son of a landowner in Italy.  Went to France to study when he was twenty-three.  He then goes to a monastic school in Normandy.  He was a brilliant scholar.  He rises to become becomes Abbot at the monetary.  As head of this monastery he enjoys to certain diplomatic career.  He becomes someone who has the respect of William the Conqueror.  At the age of sixty, he becomes the archbishop of Canterbury.

Anselm is famous for his writings.  The work that we are going to briefly consider is called Cur Deus Homo (‘Why God became Man’).

Cur Deus Homo is cast as a dialogue between Anslem and a monk named Boso.  Boso comes to him and says, ‘I believe the incarnation, and I want you to explain why it had to be so.’  There had been an idea that a ransom had to be paid to the devil in order to redeem humanity.  Anselm reacts against this ‘devil ransom’ theory of the atonement.  He feels that it gives the devil too much right over humanity.  The devil has no such rights.  Instead, Anselm constructs an understanding of the atonement that is much more God-centred.  Anselm looks at how the incarnation relates to other doctrines.

Why can’t God just forgive sin?  Why does he need to have justice satisfied on the cross?  Anselm answers that God is both honourable and merciful.  Whatever way that God deals with our sins, it must in a way that God’s honour would be restored.  His thinking here is very much shaped by the feudal system of his time and the honour that is due to a feudal lord.  He could restore his honour by simply condemning the sinner, but it is more fitting to restore his honour in a means that also demonstrates his mercy.  The thing is that we have dishonoured an infinite God.  It would be one thing to spit on the wife of your feudal lord, but we have done something far worse, we have dishonoured the infinite Lord of all creation.  Anslem points out that we have not yet considered the weight of sin.

Anselm points out that in order to forgive sin, Jesus must be both God and man.  A mere human can’t make the payment for sin because the sin against God is of infinite value.  It would take a payment of infinite worth to restore God’s honour.  For Jesus to pay the debt on behalf of humanity he must become truly man.

Later reformers like Calvin would preach a similar idea of the cross being satisfaction for sin, but they replace the idea of God restoring honour with the idea of God satisfying justice.  The reformers were more influenced by the thinking of the law courts rather than the feudal landlord. 

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)

Bernard was born in Burgundy, France.  He was the son of a minor noble.  He became a monk and was the most successful monastery planter the Cistercians produced.  He set up sixty-eight monastic houses.  In 1115 he founds the monastery in Clairvaux. 

The Knights Templar was a military order of monks who were established by Bernard’s cousin in order to protect pilgrims in Jerusalem.  But how do you justify an armed group of monks?  Bernard justified this by suggesting that any violence they committed would be motivated by the best of reasons.  But aren’t monks supposed to be spending their time searching for God?  Bernard pointed out that these monks were based in the Holy Land, and so when they were not defending the pilgrims, they would be contemplating in that surrounding.

In 1130 Pope Honorius II dies.  The problem was that there was a split decision as to who Honorius’s successor should be.  Should it be Innocent II or Anacletus II.  Bernard spends the next eight years travelling around and using his considerable influence to rally support for Innocent II.  Innocent II becomes pope and Bernard’s reputation has become massively enhanced.

The most notorious event of Bernard’s life is his support for the second crusade (1146-48).  The crusade started with an alliance between the king of France and the pope.  Bernard preached that it should be a great pan-European action involving both the eastern and western churches invading the holy land.

Bernard was an expert on the nature of sin.  He was also an expert on the nature of love.  He taught we are to love for God’s sake.  ‘God is not loved without reward, but he should be loved without thought of God’s love.’  He sees the human ability to love as a reflection of the image of God is us.  God is to be loved because he is God.  He sees the essence of sin not as the destruction of love but the misdirection of love.  For example, you cannot love God and be motivated in life by the love of money.  God is infinite so he is to be loved in an infinite way.  Bernard sees God’s love as being permanently revealed on the cross, and that we should spend time contemplating the work of Jesus on the cross.  ‘God is the cause of loving God … He himself creates the longing.  He himself fulfils the desire.’

He spoke of the process of the Christian life in four stages of love.  The first stage is that man loves himself for man’s sake.  Sometimes this may prompt us to love others for our own sake (we might help someone with the hope that in the future they will help us).  The second stage is that man loves God for man’s sake (we cry out to God when we are in a crisis).  The third stage is that man loves God for God’s sake—you come to see God in his own being and see his beauty.  The final love is that man loves man for God’s sake.  You simply love people because they too are made in the image of God.  You love men and women because they are God’s men and women.  This final love is very much seen as an aspiration we are to aim at.  He thought of it only attained in heaven although some of the martyrs attained it on earth.

The Knights Templar

No decent conspiracy theory is complete without reference to the Knights Templar.  They even feature in Indiana Jones’s movies.

The Knights Templar (also called The Poor Soldiers of Christ and of The Temple of Solomon) were armed monks who protected the pilgrims visiting Jerusalem after Jerusalem was taken by the Christians in the first crusade in 1099.  At this time many pilgrims traveled across Europe to Jerusalem.

One interesting thing about the Knights Templar was their role in banking. 

The pilgrims needed to fund months of food and supplies, and they could not simply carry huge sums of cash with them.  So, the Knights Templar came up with a solution.  A pilgrim could leave cash at the Temple Church in London and withdraw the same amount of money in Jerusalem.  Now they simply needed to carry a letter of credit.  

This was not the first time such a system had been used, a similar system had been used in China several centuries earlier, but the Chinese system was operated by the government, whereas the Templars were operating more like a private bank—albeit owned by the Pope, king and princess across Europe, and run by monks who were sworn to poverty.

The also provided banking services to Henry III, facilitating the sale of an island to him.  In the 1200s, the crown jewels were kept at the Temple church in London as security on a loan.

The Templars lost their reason to exist after Jerusalem was lost to the Muslims in 1244.  They were disbanded in 1312. 

Francis of Assisi (1182-1226)

There are plenty of myths surrounding Francis of Assisi.  For example, he is pictured as preaching to the birds and making friends with wolves.  However, Francis must have been a formidable figure given the impact he made in the thirteenth century.  His contemporaries claimed that he lived out the Sermon on the Mount better than anyone else they knew of, other than Jesus himself.

Francis was born in Assisi in Italy.  His full name was Giovanni Francesco Bernardone.   He was the son of a wealthy merchant.  As a young man, he lived a worldly, carefree life.  He marched to war in the fifth crusade in 1202 and was taken prisoner in battle.  A year passed before his father could arrange a ransom for him.  Now in his twenties, he needed a year to recover.  During this time, he experienced dreams and visions.  While he prayed in a dilapidated church, he says he heard Christ saying, ‘Francis, go repair my house, which, as you can see, is falling completely in ruin.’  He proceeded to sell off family goods to repair that building.  His followers believed, however, that Christ’s world to repair the church referred also to the whole of the institution.

His father was furious with him for selling family good and dragged him before the local bishop to change his behaviour and pay the money back.  He left that meeting to become a hermit.  He wanted to be alone in solitude and silence.

One day in church he heard Jesus’ words to the disciples to, ‘take no gold or silver or copper in your wallet, no bag for the journey, nor two sandals or a staff.’  He took this for himself and began the life as an itinerant preacher.  He aimed at living simply and preaching the gospel.

Not all his habits would seem healthy to us.  In winter, he sometimes threw himself in a ditch full of ice and stayed there until every vestige of temptation departed.  To avoid lust, he fixed his gaze on the sky or the ground whenever he spoke with a woman.  While joyful, he disapproved of laughing. 

He wandered all over Europe and even visited crusaders in Italy.  He crossed enemy lines and tried to convert the Muslim sultan.

In 1209 he gathered around him twelve men who wanted to share his life and ministry.  He wrote a Rule, and so set up the Franciscan Order.  A rich woman of Assisi called Clare was fascinated by his message and set up a female Franciscan order known as Poor Clares.

Soon his followers were making trips all over Europe.  They preached a message of repentance, simple living and radical obedience to Jesus’ teaching

Francis was the first person it was claimed to have stigmata—his bloody receiving the bleeding wounds of Christ.  As he entered his forties, his body was racked with illness and his eyesight eventually faded completely. 

After his death, the Franciscans continued to grow.  He was made a saint just two years after his death.  A stunning basilica was built in his honour in Assisi in 1228, his relics were moved there in 1230. 

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274)

Thomas happened to be massively fat, he suffered from dropsy (a swelling caused by excess fluid trapped in your tissues) and had one eye that was hugely bigger than the other.  He was introspective in mood and was mostly silent.  When he did speak it was often completely unrelated to the conversation.  His classmates in college called him the dumb ox.  Yet today he is recognised as the greatest theologian of the middle ages.

He was born in an Italian castle.  At five this pudgy boy was sent to school at a nearby monastery.  At fourteen he went to University in Naples.  His Dominican teacher so impressed him, that Thomas decided that he would join the Dominicans.

His family fiercely opposed his decision to become a Dominican.  They wanted him to become something rich and influential, like an abbot or archbishop, rather than a friar who took a vow of poverty.  His brothers kidnapped him and held him in confinement for fifteen months to try and stop him being a friar.  His family tempted him with a prostitute and offered to buy him the post of archbishop of Naples.  Nevertheless, Thomas resisted their efforts and moved to Paris, which was the centre of theological learning.

Thomas wrestled with the question, ‘if knowledge could only come through God’s revelation, then how come many non-Christian teachers like Aristotle were so good at explaining things?  He decided to extract from Aristotle everything that was helpful.

His greatest work is called Summa Theologica. There he sought to distinguish between philosophy and theology, between reason and revelation (although he said that these did not contradict each other, and that both are from God).  He pointed out that reason can lead us to believe in God, only revelation can show us God as he really is.  Only the Bible can show us the triune God.

His works were attacked even before his death.  In 1277, the archbishop of Rome tried to have him formally condemned.  Over time the genius of his writings has been recognised.  However, Thomas may not have approved of this.  Towards the end of his life he had a vision that caused him to stop writing.  He had experienced many visions before, but this was different.  His secretary pleaded with him to start writing again, but Aquinas replied, ‘I cannot.  Such things have been revealed to me that what I have written seems but straw.  His Summa Theologica was left unfinished when he died three months later. 

Julian of Norwich (1343-1416ish)

Julian of Norwich was an anchorite.  Anchorites were people who had withdrawn from society to live a prayer centred life living in cells, that were often associated with a church.  She is particularly famous for her book called, ‘Revelations of Divine Love.’

For much of her life she lived in permanent seclusion in her cell.  Nothing is known of her life before she became an anchoress.  As an anchoress living in an urban area, she would have not lived an entirely secluded life.  She would have been allowed make clothes for the poor.  She was a respected religious authority at her time and would have given some people counsel. 

According to ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ she fell seriously ill when she was thirty.  A curate even served her the last rites on the assumption that she was dying.  As she did this she gazed upon his crucifix and began to see Christ bleed.  Over the next hours she had a series of visions.  She writes about these.

The main issue in the ‘Revelations of Divine Love’ is the problem of sin but she speaks of the certainty of being loved by God.  She likened God’s love to that of a mother.  She believed that God sees us as perfect and waits for the day when human souls mature so that evil and sin will no longer trouble us.  ‘God is nearer to us than our soul’, she repeated wrote.  Of her visions she recounted Jesus saying, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”  ‘This was said so tenderly, without blame of any kind towards me or anybody else.’  

Three questions that emerge from the patristic and medieval church

1.     When did veneration of Mary and the saints begin?

2.     When did the bishop of Rome become the dominant pope?

3.     When did the church start using church building?

Mary and the saints

It is important to realise that our Catholic friends refer to venerating Mary and the saints, not worshipping Mary and the saints.  Worship is something that is due to God alone.  It also has to be understood that the answer to this question is open to debate.  Our Catholic friends would say that Mary was venerated from the time of the New Testament.

The respect that Christians have for Mary can be seem in paintings found in the catacombs of Rome from the second century.  There she is seen as holding the baby Jesus.  Ambrose writes in praise of Mary.  Veneration of Mary was sanctioned at the Council of Ephesus (431).  Bernard of Clairvaux believed that Mary never sinned in her life and that we should call on Mary in times of temptation.

The spread of monasticism in the fourth century promoted the idea of celibacy as being the ideal.  The first notable Christian leader to have defended the idea of the perpetual virginity of Mary seems to have been Ambrose, who presided over the Synod of Milan (389), after which Mary’s perpetual virginity became the established view.  While the New Testament mentions Jesus having brothers and sisters, the Catholic response is that Joseph had been married before, and widowed, and that these were his children.  They would have been Jesus’ stepbrothers and stepsisters.

While the taught of Mary committing no personal sin was commonly taught, what about her original sin?  Augustine had said that original sin is transmitted from generation to generation through the sex involved in our conception.  Bernard and Anselm argued against the idea that Mary was born without original sin because the, given the belief that she lived a sinless life, she would not have needed Jesus as her saviour.

The Council of Basel (1431) declared Mary’s Immaculate Conception to be a ‘pious opinion’.  In 1854, Pope Pius X issued Papal Bull in favour of the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

Veneration of saints began with a belief that martyrs went directly to heaven, rather than having to go through purgatory, after their death.  Remember that Tertullian had designated saints as a special category of Christian rather than simply being all Christians.  Such a belief will affect how you read passages like Revelation chapter five verse eight, which speaks of the prayers of the saints in heaven being like bowls full of incense being presented before God.

The pope of Rome

From the third century the term pope was used of all bishops.  Bishop Stephen, around 250, seems to have been the first bishop of Rome to quote Jesus’ words to peter, ‘You are Peter, and it is upon this Rock that I will build my church.’  It was believed that Peter had established the church in Rome and then claimed that this meant that the bishop of Rome was to have to be the head of the bishops.  Cyprian argued that these words to Peter was not a charter for papacy but applied to all bishops.  The third Council of Carthage (256) asserted that the Roman bishop should not attempt to be ‘bishop of bishops’.  In the Council of Nicaea (325) three churches being given special place—Rome, Alexandria and Antioch.  Pope Gregory (590) claimed that the care of the whole church had been placed in the hands of Peter and his successors of Rome.  This claim did not go unchallenged.  Those in the east, whose centre was Constantinople, resented this claim of universal rule.  The doctrine of Papal Infallibility was declared in 1870, when Pope Pius XII defined the assumption of Mary as an article of faith.

Church buildings

In the New Testament the believers did not meet in a designated church building, but in homes (Acts 17:5, 20:20 and 1 Corinthians 16:19) or in Jewish places of worship (Acts 2:46 and Acts 19:8).  It is not until the second half of the third century that the first purpose-built halls for Christian worship were built.  Many of these were destroyed in the persecutions under Diocletian.  Large church buildings began to emerge from the time of Constantine’s conversion.

The Medieval Church (476-1400s)

The term middle ages, dark ages or medieval period, can be used to describe the time between the call of Rome (476) to the renaissance (1400s). 

After Rome fell no single state or government had such control over Europe.  In fact, it was the Catholic Church that had the most power.  One of the greatest leaders of this time was Charlemagne.  In 800, the pope (Leo III) named him ‘Emperor of the Romans.’  Over time his realm become known as the Holy Roman Empire.

In the middle ages ordinary people had to tithe a tenth of their income to the church.  This made the church very wealthy.

It was not just the church that was powerful, Islam was on the rise.  After the death of Mohammad (632), Muslim armies captured large parts of the middle east.  At its height, the Muslim world was more than three times bigger than Christendom.

The Black Plague

In 1347 twelve boats arrived in Sicily from the Black Sea with most of the sailors lying dead, and those who were not dead were covered in black boils.  From them spread a sickness called the bubonic plague.  You could go to bed feeling healthy but be dead in the morning.  This plague killed over twenty million people across Europe (about thirty percent of the population) in three years.  The plague caused fevers and chills, severe aches and pains, and, of course, death.  Many Christians were known for their compassion to those with the plague at the cost of their own lives.

Many people believed that the plague was a judgement of God.  Some people became ‘flagellants’, who travelled Europe arranging public displays of penance.  This could involve whipping and beating one another.  Others turned on the neighbours reporting those they believed to be heretics.  Thousands of Jews were killed and this time, with many Jews fleeing to the lesser populated parts of Eastern Europe.

Feudalism

In rural areas the system of feudalism was strong.  Under feudalism the king gave large pieces of land to noblemen and bishops.  In exchange for working in the land, peasants were allowed to make their home there and were offered protection from any invading armies. 

The feudal system began to change in the eleventh century with the development of the iron plough and crop rotation.  The land was now more productive, and the population increased.  Fewer labourers were needed, and many people headed to the towns and cities.  

In an article on the Gospel Coalition website, Gavin Ortland, points out that one of the doctrines that was emphasised in the medieval church was that of the incarnation.  The fact that God became man stands at the heart of medieval Christianity.  Their view of the world perceived God’s glory infused throughout creation.  Even food, sex and emotion can be appreciated as components of our spiritual existence before God.  Modern Christians have lost a sense of our own humanity—our work, our culture-making, our suffering and our dignity as God’s image bearers—because we’ve lost our focus on Christ’s humanity.

Corruption in the church

There was much corruption in the church.  Despite the fact that priests were supposed to be celibate, many priests and bishops had mistresses as well as wives.  There was also the practice of simony—the buying and selling of ecclesiastical office.  Unqualified men purchased church offices, feudal lords or kings.

Indulgences were a part of the medieval church.  In purchasing an indulgence an individual was promised that severity and time in purgatory would be reduced.  You could also purchase indulgences for the loved ones that had already passed on.

This period saw the growth of monasteries.  One particularly influential monk was Benedict (480-543).  His Benedictine Rule—a kind of written constitution laying out the standards for the monastery and congregation and limiting the abbots authority according to these standards—spread across Europe.  Benedict believed that ‘idleness is the enemy of the soul’ and he insisted that monks should do manual as well as spiritual labour.

At one stage during the middle ages there was three popes all seeking to be in control at one time.  One of the popes was in the Vatican, in an Italy that was torn by internal strife.  Another resided in Avignon in France.  This schism lasted for thirty years.  Finally, the cardinals lost patience with this situation and elected another pope at Pisa.  This third pope died and was promptly replaced by a successor.  This Great Schism lasted between 1378 with death of Pope Gregory XI and was not sorted out until 1449. 

The popularity of relics grew during the middle ages.  A relic was something that it was claimed had once belonged to or been touched by Jesus are a saint.  Popular relics included one fragments or nails and wood from the cross.  There were also claims to have straw from Jesus’ manger.  While most relics were fake, people believed that they could work miracles.  Churches could enhance their reputation by being the home of relics.   

The middle ages saw a thriving trade in relics.  The relics bought and worshipped by medieval Europeans ranged from the mundane to the bizarre.  Bones of saints and martyrs were highly demanded.  One church even claimed to have the brain of the apostle Peter (however, when it was accidently moved it turned out to be a piece of stone).  Relics of the virgin Mary were very valuable, and included her milk and samples of linen that the baby Christ was wrapped in.  Numerous churches claimed to have the foreskin from the circumcision of Jesus.

The reformer, John Calvin, pointed out that if all the relics were brought together "it would be made manifest that every Apostle has more than four bodies, and every Saint two or three."  He saw the whole thing as a hoax and a form of false worship.

While there was so much that was corrupt with the church at this time, some reforming popes, and the growth of monastic movements, sometimes caused a revival of sincere religion. 

The division of the church into west and east (1054)

In 1054 the church split between east and west.  The result has been that western Europe has been dominated by the Roman Catholic Church and eastern Europe by the Eastern Orthodox church.  His historic head of the western church is in Rome and the eastern church in Constantinople.  At the time of the split the pope in Rome was Leo IX, and the patriarch of Constantinople was Michael Cerularius.  These two churches excommunicated each other, although this excommunication was lifted by both sides in Jerusalem in 1965. 

The tensions between the church in eastern and western Europe actually went back to the fifth century.  In the early church of the second century three bishops stood out in prominence—the bishops of Rome, Alexandra, and Antioch.  Under Constantine (4^th Century) the seat of the empire moved from Rome to Constantinople.  However, Rome emerged as the prominent church.  The leading place given to the church in Rome was never acknowledged in the east.  There were also theological differences between east and west—with eastern theology rooted in Greek philosophy and western theology based on Roman law.

The differences in theology came to a head in debate regarding whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father (east) or both from the Father and the Son (west).  The Roman churches, without consulting the churches in the east, added the words ‘and from the Son’ to the part of the Nicene Creed that dealt with this issue.  The eastern church also resented the Roman churches enforcement of clerical celibacy, the idea that only a bishop could confirm people and the use of unleavened bread in the Lord’s Supper.

There was also division between the east and the west in relation to the use of icons (images of Jesus or other holy people).  This led to what was known as the iconoclastic controversy in the eighth and ninth centuries.  The iconoclasts were those who rejected images, believing that it was a type of idolatry.  In the early church the making of portraits of Christ and the saints had been consistently opposed.  But the use of such icons had steadily gained in popularity, especially in the east.  In the eighth century, the emperor in Constantinople, Leo III, took a public stand against the worship of icons.  His successor, Constantine V, severely persecuted those who venerated icons.  The use of icons was variously permitted and banned in the next couple of centuries.  The Eastern Orthodox church still celebrates the restoration of icon veneration by the Empress Theodora in 843 in the ‘Feast of Orthodoxy.’

The crusades (1096-1271)

The crusades were a series of religious wars fought in the middle ages mostly between the Christians and the Muslims.  It involved western Europe church teaming up with the Byzantine’s (eastern church), but it also saw the western church turn on the Byzantine empire.

The crusades began when Pope Urban II called on western Christians to take up arms and aid the Byzantines in recapturing the Holy Land from Muslim control.  This call to arms was met with great public enthusiasm.  Those who joined this pilgrimage wore a cross as a symbol of the church.  Groups such as the Knights Templar were set up at this time to protect the pilgrims travelling to Jerusalem.

The first crusade led to a Jerusalem being surrounded and when the city’s governor surrendered, the crusaders slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children.  

The second crusade took place after Muslim forces began to gain ground through holy war (or jihad) against the Christians, whom they called Franks.  The Christians in Europe were stunned when the northmost crusader state fell.  This crusade began with the leadership of the kings of France and Germany.  The crusaders tried to attack the Syrian stronghold of Damascus, but they were humiliatingly defeated.

In 1187 the Muslims began a campaign against the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem.  They managed to take back the city.  This prompted the third crusade.  Among the kings involved was Richard the Lionheart of England.  His troops approached Jerusalem, but they refused to lay siege to the city.  The third crusade ended with a peace treaty that reestablished the kingdom of Jerusalem (but without the city of Jerusalem).

The fourth crusade involved the crusaders turning of the Byzantine emperor and conquering Constantinople in 1212.  This bloody conquest involved looting and destruction in the magnificent city, and soured relationships between eastern and western churches.

Throughout the remainder of the thirteenth century, there were a variety of crusades aimed not so much to topple Muslim forces in the Holy Land, but to combat any group that was perceived to be the enemy of the Christian faith.

While the crusades did ultimately end in defeat for the Europeans to the Muslims, it may have extended the reach of Christianity and Western civilization.  It also saw an increase in power attained by the western church and the elevation of the pope.

Twentieth-Century Pentecostalism

As a young Christian I remember reading about things such as the gifts of tongues, healing and prophecy in the New Testament and wondering why they were not practiced in the church to which I belonged.  There have been two ways evangelical Christians have dealt with this discrepancy between the time of the apostles and today—there are those who say that such gifts were for then but not now (cessationists) and those who believe the such gifts should be pursued today (continuists).  This evening I am going to look at the waves of the continuist movement in the twentieth-century.    

Azusa Street Revival—Pentecostalism (1906-1915)

In a time of racial prejudice, a tiny group of poor, black and mostly women met with a pastor who had been thrown out of his church because of his claim that his people should be speaking with the gift of tongues.  It was Los Angeles, America’s fastest growing city at the time, and one that had a great mix of people unburdened by old church establishment.  It was 1906.

On the night of April 9^th, 1906, the preacher, an African-American called William J. Seymour and seven other men were waiting on God ‘when suddenly, as though hit by a bolt of lightning, they were knocked from their chairs to the floor,’ the other seven men began speaking in unknown tongues and shouting out loud praises to God.

Crowds came to see what was happening.  A few days later Seymour too began speaking in tongues.  Meetings were moved outdoors to accommodate the numbers, and people fell down under the power of God as they approached.  There were claims of healing, and people came to a living relationship with Jesus.  The meetings took place every day, starting at ten in the morning and lasted until late into the night. There was not much in the way of formal preaching but a heavy emphasis on testimony.  People regularly fell to the ground.

To accommodate the growing numbers the meeting moved to a depilated African Methodist Episcopal building on Azusa Street.  In this humble building a three-year revival took place that became known around the world.  The Azusa Street was multiracial, but black led, which was extremely unusual in America of that time.

Outside the building the words ‘Apostolic Faith Gospel Mission’ marked the building.  Inside the building people sat on planks balanced on empty kegs or brought their own chairs.  The room swarmed with flies.  In the corner there was a discreet offering box, because Seymour did not want people pressurized by the passing of an offering plate.  Around the box were wordless testimonies of transformed lives: abandoned pipes, bottles of liquor and crutches.

This revival is considered by historians to be the primary catalyst for the spread of Pentecostalism in the twentieth-century.  As money came in they refused to prettify the building but spent the money on mission.  Daughter churches were created who also refused to sink their funds into fixed assets, renting locations.  By the nineteen-twenties the movement had splintered into a number of denominations.  Seymour himself fell out with much of the community in 1911-1912 and was frozen out of the movement that was becoming increasingly white-led.  He died in obscurity in 1922.

Criticisms of the movement is that tongues were regularly been spoken without interpretation, a practice that the apostle Paul forbade (1 Corinthians 14:28).  Pentecostalism sees baptism of the Spirit as a secondary experience that occurs after conversion.  Groups descending from the Azusa Street revival believed that speaking in tongues was an infallible sign of being baptized in the Spirit.  Non-Pentecostals have always argued against this and it continues to be a debating point in Pentecostalism.  Seymour himself eventually rejected the idea that only those who have spoken in tongues could have been baptized in the Holy Spirit.     

As the movement spread there were reports of people speaking in known languages.  Sadly, sometimes people thought that they were speaking in a known language and went ill-equipped to the mission field in the anticipation of being able to speak to those they were trying to reach.  Some of these unprepared missionaries died destitute on the mission field.  However, in India one Marathi girl with no previous knowledge of English suddenly prayed in English.  Similarly, Sophia Hanson, a missionary in China, claimed to be given the Chinese language, though only for preaching.

The Charismatic Renewal

Less than twenty miles from the Azusa Street Mission almost sixty years later is Van Nuys.  While many see Azusa Street as the beginning of modern Pentecostalism (it is a little more diverse in origins than that) many see Van Nuys as starting place of the Charismatic Renewal. 

Dennis Bennet was the minister of saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Van Nuys.  He had been considering spiritual growth with a small group.  Not all in the church agreed with the direction that he was taking.  Tensions grew on Easter Sunday 1960 when he declared that he had received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.  The news was not well received and Bennet later resigned.

In the wake of Bennett’s resignation, the bishop in Seattle assigned him to the floundering parish of Saint Luke’s in Seattle.  His ministry grew there and the church became a training ground for charismatics.

The emphasis on the Baptism of the Holy Spirit and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit began to spread quickly through the mainline denominations throughout the 1960s and 1970s.  While many of the beliefs of this movement were in line with Pentecostalism, for cultural and theological reasons they avoided the label Pentecostal.  This charismatic movement impacted post-Vatican 2 Roman Catholicism, including in Ireland.

Charismatics in mainstream churches tended to be evangelical in belief.  As mainstream Protestant churches adopted more liberal views they tended not to fit in as well.  Many, but not all, left their churches to form independent churches.

What is the difference between been Pentecostal and charismatic?  They have different roots and slightly different emphasises.  The Pentecostals were associated with their own denominations, whereas the Charismatic Renewal was a movement that very much began in already existing denominations.  The Pentecostals put a big emphasis on calling people to faith and revival, and the charismatics emphasised the spiritual renewal in people already Christians (and using you gifts in the service of others, which led to an emphasis on every member ministry).   

The Third Wave—Signs and Wonders

Two of the key people with regards what is called the third wave are Peter Wagner and John Wimber.  Wagner was Professor of Church Growth at the Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of World Missions in California.  Wagner wrote a book entitled ‘The Third Wave of the Holy Spirit’ in which he explained this third wave as a gradual opening of mainline evangelical churches to the supernatural ministry of the Holy Spirit without the participants becoming either Pentecostals of Charismatics.  Wagner pointed out that the techniques of the church growth movement are not sufficient in themselves to bring growth, for the rocket needs fuel.

Wagner teamed up with John Wimber (who had been a part of The Righteous Brothers) and they launched a seminary course entitled, ‘Signs, Wonders and Church Growth.’  The principle of Fuller described this as the most popular and disruptive course in the seminary.

Third wave teachers do not believe that baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience secondary to conversion, but they do believe that all of the spiritual gifts are for today.  The Vineyard Movement would be associated with this third wave, but the third wave goes well beyond any denominational label.  The third wave is sometimes referred to as the sign and wonders movement.

Conclusion

Dramatic experiences of the Holy Spirit were not new to the twentieth century.  There was a reason why Quakers were called Quakers!  The radical Presbyterians of early seventeenth century Scotland and Ulster told tales of healings, resurrections, strange lights and preachers being moved to deliver sermons that they later could not remember.  There was also some tongue speaking in the holiness movements of the late 1900s.  But while the more dramatic gifts of the Holy Spirit were not new to the twentieth-century, an emphasis on such gifts as tongues, healing and prophecy is among the most notable features of twentieth-century Christianity.