Defining Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity [Firebrand Big Read]
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The global Pentecostal-Charismatic (P-C) movement continues to surge on the world’s stage. As of 2020 the count was around 650 million with projections of hitting 1 billion, or one-third of global Christianity, by 2050. In this new global movement, Brazil, the United States, and Nigeria have the most P-C Christians, with Brazil outpacing the other two by over forty million. If this trajectory holds, by the middle of the twenty-first century the two dominant forms of Christianity will be Roman Catholic and P-C with significant overlap between the two in the Catholic Charismatic movement. Christianity will account for just over one-third of the global population, and over two-thirds of Christians will be P-C and Roman Catholic. This is the next Christendom.
How to define P-C Christianity has been a problem since the 1960s and 1970s as the shape of the global movement began to be visible to historians and sociologists. One challenge is the question of origins. Should one speak of a single origin through the Azusa Street Revival, or must one speak of multiple origins in different parts of the world? Closely related is the question of classification. Older taxonomies proposed “waves” as a metaphor (Pentecostal, Charismatic, Third Wave), but more recently Todd Johnson has preferred types because “waves” obscures what is happening as the movement unfolds.
These questions become critical when trying to describe various parts of the movement. I recently read a sociologist who incorrectly referred to Peter Wagner as a Pentecostal. Wagner was an evangelical who became a Charismatic in the 1980s and evolved into a Neocharismatic by the 2000s. Yet these kinds of mistakes and misapplications continue as the public presence of P-C Christianity rises.
To tackle these issues, I’ll begin with the question of origins and then turn to the common core of the movement. On this basis, I’ll then describe its institutional and theological diversity. Organizationally, the P-C movement is divided into denominations, networks/associations, and independent congregations. Theologically, it is divided into Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Neocharismatics. Once we understand how these distinctions function, we can better explain what Peter Wagner called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which is one network within a larger series of networks that comprise Neocharismatics.
Origins
P-C Christianity emerged between 1900 and 1910 within the radical stream of the holiness movement. This radical stream is the final expression of the holiness movement at the end of the nineteenth century during the Progressive Era (1890-1920). There are several features that took the holiness movement in a radical direction, but central to them was a critique of denominational Methodism (Methodist Episcopal Church, Methodist Episcopal Church South, African Methodist Episcopal Church) as having become wealthy, religiously nominal, and culturally compromised. The answer was to come out and build new structures.
A quick perusal of key leaders in the early days of the P-C movement places it firmly in the outworking of Wesleyanism through Methodist, holiness, and radical holiness trajectories. Most early Pentecostal leaders became Pentecostal by first going through Methodism or one of the new holiness groups, some of which became denominations. To give some prominent examples: Aimee Semple McPherson grew up in the Salvation Army in Canada; the West African prophet William Wade Harris came out of Liberian Methodism; Minnie Abrams in India had been part of the Methodist deaconess movement; Sarah Jane Lancaster in Australia came out of Methodism; and Charles H. Mason became holiness before he turned Pentecostal. Grounded in Methodism, the global Wesleyan movement with its expression in the radical holiness of the Progressive Era became the soil within which early Pentecostalism took root.
While P-C Christianity emerged from radical holiness, it constituted a global network akin to a global airline network in which planes intersect at a hub and then go out to other regional locations. It built on the networks that the British Empire allowed Methodism and then holiness leaders like Catherine Booth or A. B. Simpson to erect across the globe. To take the analogy one step farther, one can speak of an airline group through partnerships between individual airlines that fill out the entire network. From the beginning of the P-C movement, there was more than one organizational form, with each form functioning like its own airline in a partnership across a network.
We can group these forms into three large categories: denominations, associations of ministers and congregations, and independent congregations. These forms were simply extensions of holiness denominations, holiness associations or networks, and independent holiness or Methodist congregations. While there were other denominations like Baptists out of which early Pentecostals came, they usually entered the P-C movement through holiness circles.
The Azusa Street Revival functioned as the hub of the movement rather than its sole origin since so many early members intersected with this revival center. While I would locate the overall formation of the global network in the entire decade between 1900 and 1910, William J. Seymour is the founder insofar as he became a sort of air traffic controller, directing the flow in and out of the hub of Azusa. In important ways, he also set a theological agenda for the whole through his supervision of the Azusa Street Mission. Nevertheless, one can plot other centers, such as the Mukti Mission in India, the Hebden Mission in Toronto, and Sunderland in England. These centers functioned like smaller airports within a larger network. In addition, one can see various partnerships among denominations, smaller networks of churches, and independent congregations within this global network.
To be clear, revival centers functioned as hubs in the network while denominations, associations, or congregations functioned as partner airlines that filled out the network. Azusa was the central hub in the first ten years of the global movement alongside other revival centers. Yet Azusa faded, requiring other revival centers that continue to this day. For example, Toronto or Brownsville functioned as major hubs for a period of time. Modern P-C megachurches like Hillsong in Australia or Yoido Full Gospel Church in Korea function as both hubs and networks. Today, the largest example of partnerships within a global network with multiple hubs is the Pentecostal World Fellowship.
From the beginning of the movement, it consisted of a diversity of organizations that flowed in and out of one another. Yet while this organizational diversity gave rise to theological diversity, there is a core to P-C Christianity.
The Core of P-C Christianity
Understanding these historical origins reveals three major features of the global movement that together form a common core. P-C Christianity is a non-conformist tradition, a spiritual tradition, and a renewal and missionary tradition. One might summarize P-C Christianity as a non-conformist spiritual tradition that seeks to transform cultures by renewing the church and missionizing the world.
A Non-Conformist Tradition
As a non-conformist tradition, P-C Christianity is an extension of John Wesley’s mobilization of the laity to renew the structures of church and society. By the emergence of the Progressive Era, this mobilization had taken on the form of anti-institutionalization and anti-elite in favor of the charismatic power of the Spirit at work among the people of God. For this reason, populism and anti-institutionalization are part of the movement’s DNA.
Second, as a non-conformist tradition, P-C Christianity inhabits and transforms folk cultures, best explained through its global contributions to music from early blues, jazz, and gospel (black and southern) to early rock, and, finally, to the entire explosion of praise and worship music. One can also see this in Latino Pentecostalism such as in the way Mexican/Chicano Pentecostals borrowed and transformed Mexican folk music in their southwestern borderland hymnody. P-C Christianity has always lived among the people and inhabited the folk cultures of the people throughout the world.
Third, non-conformity reinforces the quest to maintain an encounter-driven understanding of salvation. P-C Christianity, in general, avoids religiosity or liturgical formalism. While one can find formal liturgies in some parts of the movement, this is an exception. This emphasis takes several forms but always pushes toward the encounter with God as a charismatic and sanctifying experience informed by personal revelation and illumination. The focus on prophecy in more contemporary expressions of P-C Christianity allows for nonconformity through the apostle and the prophet as leaders governed by personal revelation into scripture guiding networks or independent congregations.
Ultimately, non-conformity makes P-C Christianity a form of Christian mysticism that resists establishment Christianity in favor of the empowering work of the Spirit among the people of God.
A Spiritual Tradition
P-C Christianity is also a spiritual tradition rather than a confessional one. It expresses its soteriology primarily through spirituality rather than lengthy confessions of faith such as the Westminster Standards. One of the reasons why it continues to grow is that the expressive individualism and drive to authenticity that currently dominates postmodern life centers on spirituality. The age of authenticity is the age of spirituality.
The two major features of this spiritual tradition are narrative and journey. Salvation is a journey or way of faith that unfolds through the Spirit’s operations from the new birth to baptism in the Spirit. One can theologize about this journey as the birth, maturation, and perfection of love through the Spirit graciously conforming the person to the pattern of Christ. Alternatively, this journey is about the deliverance from sin, death, and the devil. Thus, there is a positive pole in being formed into Christ and a negative pole in being cured of or purified from sin. In P-C Christianity, there is always a sense in which the sanctifying and the charismatic dimensions (purity and power) reinforce one another. The fruit (purity) and the gifts (power) of the Spirit conform the individual to the character and mission of Christ, which, at the same time, delivers the person from slavery to sin’s corrupting condition.
Because this journey concerns formation to Christ and deliverance from sin and the devil, P-C Christians have a strong emphasis on the demonic. P-C Christians move easily from talking about a “spirit of depression” to depression as a psychological disposition because they see a continuum from the demonic to the disease of sin. The language of warfare and overcoming strongholds takes on meaning at the intersection of the demonic as an oppressive force seeking further to enslave and sin as a disease.
This continuum reflects their larger worldview of a fundamental continuity between the sacred and the secular or the bodily and the spiritual. The practice of pleading the blood over one’s life or circumstances is a good example of this continuity. It stems from the idea that Jesus’ death was also for the healing of the body and yet invokes the idea of the blood as life, provision, and protection. The emphasis on warfare drives the language of deliverance we see in all forms of P-C Christianity but is particularly expressed in the deliverance ministers one finds in Africa or in African-American congregations using “deliverance” in their names.
In addition, salvation as a journey concerns the here and now as much as the end of the journey. The healing of the body forms part of the sanctifying work of the Spirit to make persons whole and holy. Yet the emphasis on divine healing also reinforces the view that salvation is about human bodies as well as souls. This view spills over into emphases on divine blessing and prosperity as well as liturgical expressions like dancing before the Lord. The fusion of the language of purity and power around Spirit-filled and Spirit-healed bodies constantly pushes P-C Christians toward an optimism of grace that leads to the language of victorious living and blessing in all areas.
Believers testify to this journey by telling their own stories. Theology is a narrative enterprise that fuses charismatic revelation (the personal story) with scriptural revelation (the biblical story) and Christian tradition (the church’s story). Theology begins with the biblical story as a history of salvation that can be divided into dispensations or subplots (creation, Israel, Christ, the Spirit, and the End). This historical and narrative framework more than a confessional one best encapsulates how Pentecostal theology is constructed and expressed.
Yet, the historical narrative has a personal counterpart to it. The story of exodus is both a past and present reality. As a present reality the exodus event is replicated in the life of every believer who leaves slavery to sin through the new birth. The feasts of the church constantly reenact the story of Passover recapitulated in Christ and replicated by the Spirit in each believer. There is a historical Passover (Israel’s and Christ’s), an ecclesial Passover (the feast of Easter), and a personal Passover (the new birth). There is a historical Pentecost (the Day of Pentecost), an ecclesial Pentecost (the feast of Pentecost), and a personal Pentecost (the baptism in the Spirit).
This also means that scripture must be understood historically/literally and spiritually/allegorically. While most P-C Christians do not describe their approach to scripture as a movement from the historical to the allegorical, this is in fact how they continuously find deeper meanings to or novel interpretations of various passages. It is the fusion of the spiritual interpretation of scripture with personal revelation that is behind the language of receiving a “fresh word” or “fresh revelation” or “new insight” into the scriptures.
A Renewal and Missionary Tradition
Since theology is about storytelling, P-C Christianity functions as a renewal and missionary movement that enlivens confessional traditions and creates new structures and denominations.
In early P-C Christianity, several holiness denominations became Pentecostal such as the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) or the Church of God in Christ. Thus, denominations were renewed and transformed by the spirituality of the movement. Behind this emphasis on renewal was the historical paradigm of restorationism. P-C Christians sought to restore what they saw as forgotten elements of the apostolic Christianity in the first century. The historical paradigm of restorationism--and its framework of primitive ideal, fall, and return to ideal--informs many branches of the movement, including the NAR.
When P-C Christianity burst into mainline Protestant or Roman Catholic traditions, it did so as a form of renewal. Renewal was really about the recovery and transmission of the charismatic dimension of early Christianity through the language of Spirit-empowerment. A former Quaker like John Wimber might describe the charismatic in terms of “power evangelism,” but in doing so he was echoing a central tenet of the movement that Allan Anderson has connected to African Spirit-churches.
The push to renew European and American Christianity by African forms of P-C Christianity like the Church of Pentecost (Ghana) or the Redeemed Christian Church of God (Nigeria) is an extension of this dimension of the movement. Renewal of the churches through spirituality is a core feature of the movement.
Alongside the renewal emphasis was a drive toward missions. The missionary impulse was simply the other side of the charismatic dimension, which reinforced the idea that Christians renewed church and society through spreading holiness and mobilizing the laity. Yet this emphasis on missions was heightened by a premillennial eschatology that suggested that the return of Jesus was imminent. Eschatology drove missions just as much as the charismatic dimension did. Moreover, eschatology also reinforced the emphasis on spiritual warfare by placing it in a larger, cosmic frame. Charismatic gifts were in the service of deliverance from the demonic, disease, and sin.
Even though P-C Christianity is much broader than premillennialism, there remains a fusion of the eschatological with the charismatic. For the entire movement, the Spirit has brought the last days into the present. Heaven and earth collide as the boundary between the spiritual and the material becomes permeable. This is what drives the P-C desire to transform culture causing some persons like Bill Johnson to talk about “heaven on earth” in the way the Charles Wesley talked about “heaven below.”
Theological and Institutional Diversity in the Movement
To claim that there is a core to P-C identity does not remove its rich diversity. Since the core is rooted in non-conformity, spirituality, renewal, and missions, it remains highly flexible and adaptable. Terms like Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Neocharismatic speak to theological diversity while terms like denominational, associational, and independent identify organizational differences. Too often these are conflated, which produces confusion. One could be Pentecostal and independent or Neocharismatic and denominational.
The theological diversity of the movement represents specific developments and disagreements over its core identity. Early Pentecostals divided over the question of the Godhead with Oneness denominations and Trinitarian denominations forming and using distinct baptismal formulas. The latter retained the traditional baptismal formula while the former adopted a number of different formulas centered on the name of Jesus. The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, United Pentecostal Church, and Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ are three of the largest Oneness denominations. Nevertheless, this theological division did not mean a fundamental division over the spiritual core because Oneness Pentecostals retained Trinitarian language even while affirming God as a single person.
Moreover, although most Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostal denominations held that speaking in tongues was the initial evidence of the baptism in the Spirit, this was not universal. A disagreement occurred over the role of tongues with some in the movement seeing tongues as one possible gift among any number of spiritual gifts. Prophecy or healing could also function as signs of baptism in the Spirit.
The divergence into Pentecostal and Charismatic came at the beginning, not in the 50s with the emergence of the charismatic movement among Mainline Protestants or Catholics. One might describe the Christian Missionary and Alliance (CMA) as an early example of a charismatic denomination because of its theological commitment to healing and other gifts. One might also label F. F. Bosworth, an early healing evangelist, as someone who started out Pentecostal with the Assemblies of God (AG) and then left the AG over tongues and became a Charismatic. Charismatic, then, refers to the parts of the movement that rejected tongues as initial evidence and/or conformed the emphasis on charismatic life to existing theological structures or confessions of faith.
The prosperity theology that developed in the 40s and 50s healing evangelists concerned the fusion of divine healing, victory over sin, and the infusion of divine power for spiritual blessing. As a theological development of basic themes within the movement, prosperity theology is Neocharismatic. The Methodist-turned-Baptist and then healing evangelist E. W. Kenyon should be understood as Neocharismatic in his theology. By the time of his death in 1948, he had become the fountainhead of prosperity theology. His theology offered the basic framework for Kenneth E. Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and the Word of Faith movement.
Neocharismatic refers to parts of the movement that not only reject certain features of the spiritual core (tongues as initial evidence) but develop those features in ways that break the initial boundaries of this core. Prosperity theology is a recognizable trajectory from the spiritual core but the unique constellation of victory, blessing, and, at times, New Thought takes it into novel theological terrain. This novelty warrants the use of Neocharismatic.
The organizational diversity relates not simply to different forms, but the ongoing emergence of new denominations and networks. Many Spirit-endowed leaders will seek to establish a new ministerial association or network that may form a denominational structure or may be used to inform multiple denominations. We see this happening over and over in the history of the movement from the early leaders who formed the Assemblies of God out of existing ministerial networks to the rise of independent healing ministries in the 1950s and 1960s that gave birth to additional networks to the emergence of the Vineyard and even new apostolic networks. This is both a strength and a weakness of P-C Christianity and why leaders in mainline Protestantism or the Catholic Church remain suspicious of its efforts at renewal.
To understand the breadth of the diversity, one needs to consider its three organizational forms. First, one must examine denominational expressions of the movement. These expressions are of three types: 1) denominations formed by the movement; 2) denominations renewed by the movement, some of which are so transformed that they redescribe themselves in the language of P-C Christianity; 3) denominations that have recovered a more experientially-driven charismatic emphasis through their intersection with P-C Christianity.
Second, one must examine ministerial associations and networks that have always been part of the movement. William Seymour’s Apostolic Faith was first a network that Seymour turned into a small denomination, which ultimately did not survive. Healing evangelists like Oral Roberts created ministerial networks. In fact, in the 1970s we see the proliferation of ministerial networks and associations as the global movement exploded. Catholic Charismatics contributed to the networks by creating ecumenical bodies like People of Praise to which Amy Coney Barrett’s parents belonged. Some sociologists have described Neocharismatic Christianity as the rise of network Christianity, but, in fact, networks are just a feature of the movement that goes back to holiness associations.
Finally, there remain independent congregations, some of which morph into networks or come out of existing denominations to form new networks through daughter congregations. Bethel Church in Redding, California, and Hillsong in Australia both came out of the World Assemblies of God Fellowship to form their own independent congregations and start new expressions of P-C Christianity. The entire Word of Faith movement in P-C Christianity is essentially a series of independent congregations linked by a ministerial network.
Within this diversity, there is still a strong sense that P-C Christians think of themselves as a singular movement and even a family. Individuals can and do freely move between denominations or from denominations to networks and independent congregations. This organizational movement can make it extremely difficult for outsiders to see where one part ends and another begins. A good example of this is the confusion today over independent Neocharismatic networks and the NAR.
Neocharismatic Networks and the NAR
There is much confusion over the NAR because it represents a series of networks within the independent Neocharismatic wing of the movement. This is no doubt in part due to the poor historical and theological analyses given by authors like Doug Geivett and Holly Pivec. Their use of a standard evangelical lens (equating what is evangelical with “biblical”) and their conflation of Peter Wagner’s theology with the entire Neocharismatic wing leads to serious distortions.
One cannot situate the NAR without understanding the history of the independent and network associations in P-C Christianity since the late 1940s. The first two series of networks that emerged in the post-WWII era were the healing evangelists and the Latter Rain Movement (LRM). Healing evangelists like Oral Roberts, A. A. Allen, William Branham, and Arturo Skinner started their own ministerial associations and networks. They were not all Pentecostals. Roberts started as a Pentecostal but became Charismatic as his own theology evolved. Skinner came out of Pentecostalism to start Brooklyn Deliverance Center, with its two nine foot oil paintings of Jesus as a black man on either side of the platform, in 1958. Branham was never a Pentecostal. He started as a Charismatic Baptist but became Neocharismatic as his theology developed to include a heretical version of the Manifested Sons of God doctrine. The theology of Jim Jones was a version of Branham’s doctrine.
Alongside the healing evangelists was the LRM. It too was a series of networks centered on ministries. The major center was Sharon Bible School in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Canada. The early leaders like George and Ernest Hawtin were impacted by the revival meetings of William Branham in Vancouver in the fall of 1947. They returned to Sharon and revival broke out. Sharon Bible School quickly became a revival center for the LRM with many traveling to attend the meetings. Myrtle “Mom” Beale of Bethesda Missionary Temple in Detroit traveled to attend those meetings. Beale returned convinced of the LRM’s message. She starting holding meetings at Bethesda Missionary Temple and it became a center. Beale was an AG minister but she left the AG because she refused to abandon LRM teachings. Bethesda started as an AG congregation that then embraced LRM and became an independent Pentecostal megachurch under Beale’s leadership.
Two individuals that became associated with William Branham’s ministry were Gordan Lindsay and Ern Baxter. Lindsay founded The Voice of Healing magazine and went on to found Christ for the Nations, which still exists today. Baxter left Branham and entered the Charismatic movement connected with the men at the center of the New Wine network like Bob Mumford and Derek Prince. Baxter had grown up Presbyterian, had a brief stint in Pentecostal circles connected to LRM, and then worked with Branham. He eventually returned to his Reformed roots and became influenced by Rushdoony’s theology in the 1970s. Baxter embraced postmillennialism under that influence. He made the journey from Pentecostal to Charismatic as he adopted the spiritual core to Reformed theology.
Another emerging network was Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa under Chuck Smith. Smith had left the Foursquare Church started by Aimee Semple McPherson to found Calvary Chapel in 1965. He was joined by a young Hippie Charismatic named Lonnie Frisbee in 1968. Frisbee became one of the faces of the Jesus People Movement and Calvary Chapel grew rapidly. Out of Calvary Chapel came men like Kenn Gulliksen who went on to establish several fellowships under the label Vineyard.
By the mid-1970s, one can trace out a large number of independent ministries and associations within the Charismatic and Neocharismatic wings. There were the networks influenced by LRM, the networks connected to Word of Faith, the networks connected to healing evangelists like Oral Roberts, and the new Charismatic networks like New Wine or Calvary Chapel. On top of this, the entrance of Pentecostal spirituality into Mainline Protestantism and Catholicism meant that Lutheran charismatics like Larry Christenson or Harold Bredesen, Reformed charismatics like J. Rodman Williams, and Catholic Charismatics like Kevin Ranaghan were forming networks. Raised Southern Baptist, Pat Robertson became Charismatic in the late 1950s through Harold Bredesen’s influence.
By the time Peter Wagner, John Wimber, and Mike Bickle entered the P-C movement in the late 1970s, they were drawing on the massive Charismatic and Neocharismatic networks that already existed. All three entered the P-C movement as evangelicals who were initially suspicious of charismatic gifts. In fact, with Wagner, Wimber, and Bickle, one can see how the spirituality of P-C Christianity began to transform many individuals and congregations within evangelicalism. What we discover in the 1970s is a divergence between Pentecostals, Charismatics, and Neocharismatics, particularly as the latter two wings were much more deeply influenced by Reformed and Baptist theology.
While Wagner, Wimber, and Bickle became leaders within Charismatic and Neocharismatic networks, it would be a mistake to see their theology as fully aligned, especially in the 1990s as Wagner’s theology evolved in a distinctive direction that set the tone for the NAR. The NAR is really a small series of networks associated with Peter Wagner.
Some scholars have conflated ministers like Randy Clark of Global Awakening and Mike Bickle of the International House of Prayer with the NAR. This is a mistake. Clark’s ministry took off after the Toronto Blessing, which had little to do with Peter Wagner. Part of the confusion is that there was a time in the early 90s when Clark and Bickle were part of the Vineyard due to John Wimber’s massive influence. Wimber had prophesied over Clark in 1984 and then had intersected with Bickle’s ministry in the late 1980s. During the height of his ministry, Wimber became the hub around which many Charismatic and Neocharismatic ministries revolved. It’s better to see Bickle’s and Clark’s ministries and ministerial associations as overlapping organizationally with the NAR network that now revolves around Ché Ahn in California. Ahn essentially took over Peter Wagner’s leadership role.
The confusion over this side of the P-C movement is understandable. Many of these networks overlap organizationally while maintaining important theological distinctions. What one must do is trace out the trajectory of individuals and ministries in order to determine whether the particular network is Charismatic or Neocharismatic. It obscures and distorts to lump all of these individuals under the NAR label as Doug Geivett and Holly Pivec do. Their work is one step removed from the kind of distorted analysis one finds in John MacArthur.
The fastest growing side of the P-C movement is the networks within the Charismatic and Neocharismatic wings. These networks fit within non-denominationalism and the current suspicion of institutions we see among the religiously unaffiliated or so-called “nones.” These networks still share the core features of the broader movement although their theology represents a development within that core.
The P-C movement is a complex, theologically diverse group of ministries, networks, and denominations that trace their origins back to the early twentieth century. The reach of P-C Christianity is rapidly expanding, and all signs point to the continuation of this trend. Most Christians today, including P-C Christians, have little sense of the complexity and history of this movement, but it is a history worth learning. In many ways, the developments I have outlined above will continue to shape global Christianity in the days ahead.
Dale M. Coulter is Professor of Historical Theology at Pentecostal Theological Seminary and serves on Firebrand’s Editorial Board.