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  • The Old WASP Church Loots Its Trusts

    In this case, the Soper Trust:

    For the past forty years, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington has been the beneficiary of the Ruth Gregory Soper Trust fund. Constructed as a trust handled by Riggs Bank and then its successor PNC Bank, the diocese received interest from the body of her money.  Under PNC’s careful investments, the trust had developed from about $7 million into over $27.4 million dollars. 

    In 2010 in a bold attempt to get control of the money, the administration of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington initiated legal action against the Ruth Gregory Soper Trust and its trustee PNC bank. This bank waged a valiant battle against these Diocese of Washington officials, yet ultimately failed. Secret maneuvers and agreements sealed the fate of the Soper trust.

    Even though PNC bank persistently asserted that the Diocese of Washington’s plans violated the expressed intentions of Ruth Gregory Soper, on April 11, 2013 a judge from the circuit court of Montgomery County, Maryland, signed a court order terminating the Soper Trust.

    Two years ago I wrote a piece entitled The Church of the Palm Crosses Becomes the Church of the Double-Cross.  In that piece (which concerned the Diocese of Virginia, just across the Potomac from this episode) about property disputes I wrote the following:

    I’ve said many nasty things about Episcopalians and their church, but I’d never have believed that I would come to that conclusion about this church.  The Episcopal Church was supposed to be the place where this kind of thing didn’t happen, but happened it did.  In the past Episcopalians, lay and cleric alike, could comfort themselves in the conceit that, while rude “Bible-thumpers” went on television to enrich themselves at the expense of the impecunious, the Episcopal church was basically above such tasteless social climbing.  One can only conclude that the church is currently held captive by a bunch of left-wing arrivistes who, while attempting to maintain the appearances of the past, are at best no better than those they ridicule.

    And it happened again; the cash-strapped Diocese of Washington had the Soper trust broken so that they could “make expenses” because their congregations are so shrunken and devoid of stewardship consciousness that the Diocese, including the National Cathedral, can’t keep up the day with the regular income.

    It’s conventional wisdom that trusts are basically inviolable.  That’s not always the case.  My guess is that PNG, with no help from the MD AG and probably none from Mrs. Soper’s family, decided to throw the towel in before the legal expenses drained them and trust alike.

    But it’s bad policy for any non-profit to use its trust money (or proceeds from real estate for that matter) to cover its operating costs.  It’s a sign of desperation, usually caused by a lack of income combined with poor management of expenses.  At one time there were enough people with business sense in the Episcopal Church to head this off, but they’re gone.

    Some would say that the Episcopal Church was the place for people with more money than brains.  There’s some truth to that, but now they look like the church for those with neither.

    FWIW, I took interest in this because my grandfather was a member of the Board of Directors of Riggs National Bank, where this trust was set up to start with, and because I went to Episcopal prep school with a Soper.

  • Don't Level the Playing Field, Just Tilt the Table

    I was surprised that the groups referenced even had to ask Eric Holder to do this:

    This week, 90 religious, educational, civil rights, labor, LGBT, women’s, and health groups signed a joint letter (full text) to Attorney General Eric Holder asking that the Office of Legal Counsel withdraw the Bush Administration’s June 29,  2007 memo allowing faith-based organization that receive federal grant funds to give a preference to co-religionists in hiring. 

    But then again, Eric Holder may be thinking ahead.

    If he can rewrite the rules vetting religious organisations to exclude those which, for one reason or another, the government finds distasteful, and include those which it doesn’t, then the preference they give to their co-religionists will be in line with their public policy idea.  Given the current idea of the Occpuant and his people, that would be an acceptable result to the petitioners, although they haven’t figured that out quite yet.

    The real end game in this country isn’t to level the playing field but to tilt the tale in another way from where it was before.  The sooner everyone recognises this, the better.

  • The Children of Paradise Lost: Reflections on Being a South Floridian

    Everyone has milestones in their life they stop and either celebrate or reflect on.  In my case, it is something that looks superficial but made a profound difference.  Fifty years ago this month, my parents, brother and I packed up my mother’s car and pulled out of the place I live now to move to Palm Beach.

    It’s easy to minimise the effects of moving, especially in the United States.  Europe likes to pride itself on the cultural differences of each region and town it has, as opposed to the supposed homogeneity of these United States.  But this country is diverse as well, a diversity that has been papered over in various ways.  In my case, it’s not an understatement to say that moving from an area that is a mixture of Appalachia and the Old South to the place “where the animals are tame and the people run wild” (which I shamelessly cribbed from Monkey Jungle) might as well have been a move abroad.

    American Boomers largely grew up in a “core” culture was based on a country whose centre was the Northeast and Midwest.  We think of four seasons (my Arkansas mother thought Chicago had only two, Winter and August) with white Christmases, leaves dropping in the Fall and new Easter dresses in the Spring.  That whole scenario is frankly ridiculous in the context of South Florida.  We had but two seasons: rainy and dry, the former punctuated by hurricanes (we had two in Palm Beach the year we moved there).  Who needs to fool with multiple wardrobes in a place like this?  How can Santa Claus crawl down chimneys in a place where most houses don’t have them?  People who grow up in such a place develop nonchalant habits about the weather that are hard to break when they move elsewhere.

    The natural beauty around us is something we, unfortunately, took for granted.  One year we travelled to California, driving down from Oregon.  Stopping at the fruit inspection station at the state line, the inspectors marvelled that we would even think of leaving such a paradise to come and see the place (which we found to be an awesome break from what we were used to).  My first elementary school, a Spanish style building with a central courtyard, had bananas growing in it.  One of my mother’s fairway shots at the Breakers was ruined when a palm frond fell to the ground in the middle of her back-swing.  And, of course, there were the orange trees in the back yard, next to the pool.

    We spent a great deal of time on the water, in keeping with our long nautical history.   Our house was half an island width from the ocean, not too far from the Kennedy complex.  When we wanted quintessentially American burgers and fries from the drive-in, West Palm Beach’s premier car hop place, The Hut, was right across Flagler Drive from Lake Worth.  One could sit in the car and see the shimmering lake and Palm Beach across it.  We also, being at the edge of the country in every sense of the word, went to the Bahamas, where we continued our sub-tropical life on our boat, although sometimes things got eventful with things like this and this.

    It’s hard to encapsulate the place in a short piece.  Facebook dwellers can take in more than they have time to absorb on the page I Grew Up in South Florida in the 60s 70s and 80s, which has literally thousands of photographs and reminiscences of the place.   But many who stop and comment lament the changes that have taken place.  It’s inevitable that it would change, but it’s hard to imagine a region that filled up and remade itself in such a short time, and usually not for the better.   Between the end of any kind of open space and the environmental destruction that such rapid development in a fragile place incurs, there’s a strong tug of regret at what’s happened to the place, and that tug transcends differences in politics and outlook.

    And what did we replace it with?  That’s the hard part.  In many ways, to grow up in South Florida in that era was to grow up in the country’s future, a future that, like the effect on the environment, isn’t an improvement.

    The first futuristic part of living there was the demographics. Today we’re regaled with stories about our aging demographics, but for South Floridians this is old news: we grew up in a place with a very grey population.  The focus on the elderly, as opposed to the dominance of the young that was the hallmark of early Boomer times, fell hard to some extent on those growing up.  Yes, a youth culture was certainly out there (thanks in part to things like WQAM) but we knew we weren’t the stars of the show.  We weren’t shy about expressing our feelings about it either: making fun of the old people was a favourite sport, but now the shoe is on the other foot.  Today we are the old people we used to make fun of.

    The second part of this was the lack of community of the place.  South Florida is a transient region, certainly for the retirees but for everyone else too.  People came from various races and cultures, but they didn’t get along very well.  In this millennium Tom Wolfe was surprised that South Florida’s original “cracker” settlers had been displaced, but that happened a long time ago, much to glee of Miami Herald Liberals who took their places in the driver’s seat of society.  Although there are exceptions, in a place where the regional bird is the middle finger, the multicultural dream of a diverse region living in unity is just that–a dream.

    Without any community to resist, the Sixties went through the place like Hurricane Betsy.  This is my extended reflection on that reality, so I won’t spend much time on that here.

    Finally South Florida proved a tough social system where just about everyone played for keeps.  For me a lot of that came from living in Palm Beach, although I discovered that getting away from there to other parts of the region wasn’t the cure-all either.  There’s an upside to that, though: had, for example, the conservatives had at the helm a few South Floridians instead of people who were busy trying to reconstruct their idealised past, the right wouldn’t be in the tight place it is today.  (OTOH, if the left hadn’t doped its way through the 1970’s, another good South Florida habit, they might have finished the job sooner, too).

    But such are speculations.  The reality is that anyone who is raised in such a place is detached, to a greater or lesser degree, from the country it’s supposed to be a part of.  That leaves an indelible impression, one that isn’t effaced by going elsewhere.  For us who experienced the place, it’s impossible to shake the memory–and the effects–of the region where the animals are tame and the people run wild.

  • Tea Party Ivy-Leaguer Beats Eric Cantor

    In the moderate panic (are people who are really moderates supposed to panic?  isn’t that for emotionalist extremists? ) this is easy to overlook about Dave Brat, the Roman Catholic economic professor who upset Eric Cantor in the Republican primary for his U.S. House seat:

    Brat, who is Catholic, got his masters from Princeton Theological Seminary, an institution that, according to its mission statement, “prepares women and men to serve Jesus Christ in ministries marked by faith, integrity, scholarship, competence, compassion, and joy, equipping them for leadership worldwide in congregations and the larger church, in classrooms and the academy, and in the public arena.”

    First, I hope that my more liberal seminary academic friends note his Princeton pedigree.

    Second, it’s getting to the point where the only way the Tea Party can really get ahead is to do it the same way everyone else does in politics: put up Ivy Leaguers.  The most famous Ivy Leaguer in the Tea Party is of course Ted Cruz, who (by virtue of his educational background) is probably the only Republican candidate with a shot at the White House in 2016.

    That’s just the way it is in American politics.

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  • A Clarification on My Position on Civil Marriage

    Those of you who follow my Twitter feed noted an link to a CNBC article about why my contemporaries are cohabiting in their dotage.  I sensed a little pushback on Facebook on this, so I think that, in my advocacy for the abolition of civil marriage, some clarification is in order.

    I do not think that it is “meet and right” (or “dignum et iustum” for you BCP and Latin fans) for people to have conjugal relations outside of Holy Matrimony, to say nothing of cohabitation.  The key there is “holy matrimony”; neither do I think that civil marriage and holy matrimony are one in the same.  The institution of marriage took place long before the formation of the state.  Since God made this institution, it makes sense that, in the current covenant, Christian people who are married in the sight of God should do so in the context of the church.  (That gets into the whole church authority issue; I’ve put it as broadly as I know how).

    I think it is a serious mistake of Christian leaders to lose sight of that simple fact.  They have fought the battle for “traditional marriage” under the assumption that the state has the right to legitimise marriage (as have their opponents).  They have not understood that to have the power to legitimise marriage is the power to redefine it.  We have seen this in the changes in divorce, and learned nothing from that experience.  Now we are attempting to fend off same-sex civil marriage when we gave away the fundamental principle up front.

    To make matters worse, the fear is out there that the government will force our ministers to officiate same-sex marriages.  That fear is well founded, because each time a minister officiates a marriage, they do so as agents of the state.  If the state says that same-sex marriages are OK, then failure to do so will be discriminatory.  (Ministers in countries with “two marriages” where they do not officiate on behalf of the state are relieved of that problem).

    What churches need to do is to begin organising themselves to recognise Christian matrimony independent of the state.  Some churches and religious organisations, such as the RCC, are well positioned to do this.   How Evangelicals carry this out with their desultory organisation is hard to know, but given the stakes they’d better find out in a hurry.

    Getting back to the subject of the CNBC article, much of what drives people’s decision on entering in to civil marriage depends upon their legal, estate and tax status and not on their doing it before God.  Doing the separation proposed above would end this kind of game.  One figure on the religious left has slammed the door on this: Episcopal Bishop of Southeast Florida Leo Frade is happy to officiate same-sex blessings, but refuses to do so for opposite sex couples, who face many of the issues described in the CNBC piece.

    Hopefully this will put some of my friends at ease on this subject.  Others will find this objectionable, but after years of experience dealing with the legal system in this country, I refuse to revert to a more naïve view of same, a view that drives much of the insanity of our political discussion.

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  • The Russians Look for a Fistful of Yuan

    And they may find it, too:

    Russian companies are preparing to switch contracts to renminbi and other Asian currencies amid fears that western sanctions may freeze them out of the US dollar market, according to two top bankers.

    “Over the last few weeks there has been a significant interest in the market from large Russian corporations to start using various products in renminbi and other Asian currencies and to set up accounts in Asian locations,” Pavel Teplukhin, head of Deutsche Bank in Russia, told the Financial Times.

    Both Russia and China have come a long way from the days when both had state controlled “soft” currencies, as described here and here.  But one thing hasn’t changed: the U.S. Dollar was then and is now the world’s reserve currency.  That in turn has created the condition of “dollar hegemony”, which has insulated the United States from the consequences of its fiscal profligacy.  Put another way, the only way we have been able to run up the public (and to some extent private) debt we have is because of dollar hegemony; if same is lost or faded, we’ve got a mess on our hands.

    With the shrinking American share of the world’s economy, the likelihood that dollar hegemony to be seriously challenged increases.  That shrinkage isn’t due solely to our own anemic/nonexistent recovery from the Great Recession, although that doesn’t help.  It’s because the rest of the world is growing and finding its way out of poverty.

    The U.S. has a strong interest in keeping dollar hegemony intact.  The two keys to that are the strength and size of our own economy and the free convertibility of same currency.  One way to screw the latter up is to apply sanctions and restrictions on capital flow, and that’s what has the Russians concerned these days.

    Up to now the U.S. has not pushed sanctions very hard, probably because people who know what’s going on a) realise that sanctions are a blunt instrument that can backfire in the current situation and b) have some input to the Occupant’s decision-making process, such as it is.  If someone decides to overplay the U.S.’ hand in the situation–and with the self-confidence level at an all time high here, that’s a distinct possibility–the targets of such a policy will look for a “Plan B”, and either having one or responding to those of others aren’t American strong suits either.

    Many Americans are looking for an apocalyptic “dollar collapse” but a more likely scenario is a chipping away at dollar hegemony which leads to a tipping point.  Currently our government, deep in public debt, is putting ongoing pressure on the Fed to keep interest rates in the tank and so keep the debt service manageable.  I can’t help but think that, sooner or later, they will lose control of the situation, and a recession of dollar hegemony would only make that more likely.

  • Has Everyone Forgotten About Utah Beach? (And a comment about the VA to boot)

    Today, of course, is the seventieth day of the Allied invasion of Normandy.  We will be regaled with films of American soldiers under fire as they hit the beach.  Just about all of those films will, by necessity, come from one beach–Omaha.  So what about the rest of the Allied forces that participated in the immense Operation Overlord?

    It’s worth remembering that there were five invasion beaches at Normandy: Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.  The last three were taken by the Canadians, British and Free French.  It’s become an unfortunate American conceit to forget that we did have allies and that, without them, World War II would not have been won.  (The Russians reminded me of that alliance when I visited them twenty years ago).

    Beyond that, the American invasion at Utah Beach tends to be forgotten in the immediate drama of Omaha.  Utah was an uneventful landing as amphibious invasions go, punctuated by the explosion of underwater mines.  The 82nd and 101st Airborne were a part of that, and their D-Day experience was as tough as anyone’s.  The hard part for Utah’s invaders came afterwards, when they moved up towards Cherbourg and found themselves in the thick hedgerows which favoured the defender.

    One of those was my father-in-law, who served in the 12th Infantry Regiment and who was nearly blown to pieces a couple of days after the landing.  He ended up 100% disabled, and that in turn placed him in the care of the Veterans Administration, the subject of one of the latest scandals.  So some comment based on experience is in order.

    The problems of the VA are of long-standing, as anyone who’s had any experience with the organisation is well aware.  One the one hand, the VA was in later years generous with its benefits, and gave a good life to my in-laws, better than many of their contemporaries simply on Social Security and Medicare.  My wife got her education on the GI Bill.

    On the other hand the VA is an opaque bureaucracy with a Byzantine structure where it takes a great deal of effort to find the “right people” to get what the law and regulations allow.  It’s easy to get stymied in the process of getting a determination or approval of benefits.  I don’t think our experience is unique in that regard; dealing with the VA can be very frustrating.

    One thing that complicated our situation was that, although we had easy access to an outpatient clinic, using the VA for hospital care required a fair amount of travelling.  Our solution for this was to use Medicare and stay in town (they had CHAMPUS to cover the difference).  I think that’s a solution that the VA would do well to consider for conditions that can be treated outside of the system.

    Turning to the current situation, I think the Occupant was between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the VA was the “single payer/single provider” type of system that was and is the end game of the left’s idea of health care in the United States.  Making it work properly and well would have been a strong selling point to move the rest of the system in that direction. On the other hand, the left’s perennial dislike of the military left them unmotivated to tackle the VA’s problems.

    Had the Occupant taken a longer view of the politics–and a more energetic one at that–he would have done more to upgrade the VA.  But he didn’t, and now all of us are dealing with the fallout.

    As far as the waiting lists (and the people dying on them) are concerned, as I pointed out a long time ago,  you can’t have a single payer system without rationing and “death panels” (or something like them) in place without bankrupting the system.  It’s that simple.  Most countries that nationalise their health care do so with a population which by and large doesn’t have access to it and for which it’s an improvement, even with rationing.  The Occupant had the bad timing to move in that direction (to be honest, a single payer system would be an improvement over Obamacare) with a population which has been spoiled, not only with the health care it has but by corporations which provide fast and efficient customer service and which make the government look bad by comparison.

  • Born to be Alive: After the Second Chapter

    For the entire work and an interactive table of contents, click here.

    It is the custom of Evangelical and Pentecostal authors these days to finish their works with the confident assertion that, if the reader follows what is in the book they have just read, everything will be all right, as the advice given is sound Biblically and workable.  I have made every attempt to insure that the contents of this book are both.  But if we are honest with ourselves we realize at the end of a journey through any portion of Scripture that what we have written is totally inadequate to explain what is set before us in the Word.  For we are dealing with the movement of God in the Second Chapter, just as we do in Spirit filled worship and prayer.  And how can we as people adequately explain such a thing?  “Where can I go from your Spirit?  Where can I flee from your presence?  If I go up to the heavens, you are there if I make by bed in the depths, you are there.  If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”[1]  Dante put the matter poetically in his vision of God when he wrote

    Like a geometer wholly dedicated
    to squaring the circle, but who cannot find,
    think as he may, the principle indicated–

    so did I study the supernal face.
    I yearned to know just how our image merges
    into that circle, and how it there finds its place

    but mine were not the wings for such a flight.

    But in the end our inadequacy to explain the Pentecostal experience, with all of its implications and ramifications, is the whole purpose for it.  For no one can ultimately explain God but God himself, and by pouring out his Spirit he does this to every believer who seeks the experience.  “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.  For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship.  And by him we cry, Abba, Father.  The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.  Now if we are children, then we are heirs — heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”[2]  Those who are born of the Spirit ultimately need no explanation, because they have received and are receiving such illumination from God himself.

    And this passage is an excellent introduction to the heart of this book, and perhaps to the heart of Pentecost and the whole Pentecostal experience.  God’s purpose in pouring out his Spirit — and in sending his Son as well — was not to establish martial law in the church, but to give life to those who partake of it.  The church needs to set for itself, its members, and its leaders high standards of moral and ethical conduct, and consistently expect everyone to live up to them.  But dead people cannot live up to anything.  It makes no difference whether the people are physically or spiritually dead.  Before we press on to the mark of the high calling, we must first be alive, and this life is what Pentecost and the Holy Spirit are all about.

    At the very outset “the Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”[3]  God gave life to man from the very start, and placed him in a situation where men and women would not have to experience death.  But man, in his inimitable fashion, rejected this life, and so brought both sin and death into the world.  Jesus Christ came so that man could really live again, and the Holy Spirit came so that this eternal life could be partaken from the moment a person became God’s child on into eternity.  Physically speaking, man is born to die.  In Jesus Christ man is born to be alive, and through the pouring out of the Spirit, he can partake of that life from the hour he first believes.

    “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”[4]  When we obtain life from God, we obtain the ultimate liberation that can be found in all of creation.  Freedom and license are frequently confused these days.  When we are free in God, we are free from the most restrictive jailor or all — ourselves.  When we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, we are not only free from our sins, but free from our limitations as finite creatures, having the power of God within us to carry us through.  In this day when many are seeking such power for themselves through all manner of methods and ending up either in a fantasy or worse in a demonic reality, Pentecostal and Charismatic believers carry in themselves something that no mere spirit guide can offer, and that is the constant companionship of the Creator and Master of the Universe.

    Many will say that most of what has preceded this point is not uniquely Pentecostal or Charismatic that at some point in Christianity’s long course — even after the Apostolic Age — every one of these features claimed for Full Gospel Christianity has been experienced by someone else.  However, just as the day of Pentecost and the Apostolic Age had the fullness of the Gospel with all of its features, so also does Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, coming at the end of the church age, sums up in itself all of the important features of authentic, Apostolic Christianity.  While it has continuity with what has gone before, it is more comprehensive because of the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

    But there are dangers about us these days.  The world, steeped in rationalism but still insecure, worries about the unleashing of divine power through a group of people it would rather consign to the margins.  But the largest potential obstacles to future Pentecostal greatness — no matter how long or short that future might be, until heaven sounds the last cry — do not come from the world or the Devil but from ourselves.  We and our forefathers have been set ablaze but are we too wet with sin and self-sufficiency to stay lit?  Or will we be obstacles to others and to ourselves in the quest to spread the good news that people can be fully indwelt by God if they will allow him in.

    What is to be done?

    As we said it would be from the start, most of this book has been one of reflections on Pentecost and what it means to those of us today who bear the name.  But we cannot live in books, and we cannot even live in church services or seminars we must live in the real world, where real people live out real problems, and we are called by God to minister to them.  What do we do with all of the benefits that God has conferred upon us?

    The first thing that we must do is to be born again, to be saved.  It doesn’t matter whether we were raised in church or not, because God has no grandchildren.  Each and every one of us must come to know God through Jesus Christ in a real salvation experience, not someone else’s experience.  It’s not much important where this happens either.  Christian churches have developed many techniques over the years to help bring people to a decision about Jesus Christ, and there are many have testimonies about meeting God “at an old fashioned altar”.  But God’s saving power isn’t restricted to altars or to churches or vacation Bible schools, but can touch us anywhere we are ready to receive him.  When Peter preached at Pentecost, he didn’t have a mourner’s bench ready for the sinners even if he had, it probably wouldn’t have been big enough to accommodate the response he got.

    Following this, we must proceed to get all God has for us in sanctification and the baptism in the Holy Spirit.  Spiritual progress isn’t optional for the Pentecostal he or she does not have the luxury of sitting for a lifetime on a salvation experience.  Drawing closer to God is a lifetime adventure, and by reemphasizing the biblical concepts of sanctification and of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, this growth is gracefully reintegrated into the Christian life.

    Along with this we must stick to the Word of God in our daily life.  Preachers emphasize this, but neither they nor lay people can do so too much.  We must know the Word of God and we must be able to turn it into reality in our own lives.  We must not place what we or others think is biblical practice with what really is, but to be salt and light both to the world and to our fellow believers.

    We must also communicate with God regularly through prayer.  Having a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ implies that, like any other personal relationships, we have regular, two-way communication.  This can come in a variety of ways, and the ways people talk about should be biblical helps and not rigid regulations.  We must also maintain a dialogue with God, to listen to him as well as present our needs.  No one likes to deal with a person who does all of the talking and none of the listening we should keep this in mind when we consider God’s position in this relationship.

    Finally, we must learn to live out the greatest commandment, to love one another.  It is a waste of time for us to separate ourselves from the world when all we end up with is either a group of bickering, snarling, self-righteous people or a stuffy society whose highest aim is respectability rather than righteousness.  If we love one another, bear one another’s burdens, and lift each other up as Christians, the world will see something they just don’t have.

     

    Stick with the course

    All of these things are important but most of all they must be backed up by commitment.  We must be really saved, sanctified, baptized in the Holy Spirit, knowers and doers of the Word, and people who stay in touch with God.  One of the major advances evangelical churches made is to encourage — perhaps require is more accurate — people to be sold out to God on a daily basis, and this is both biblical and Pentecostal.

    People who dislike Christianity frequently do so because of all of the perceived hypocrites in the church, or about being hurt in church, or about some other problem with the people there.  These kinds of problems also sap the morale of Christians.  Such problems should remind us “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”[5]

    The Pentecostal thing to do, of course, is to call on the power of God to rectify such problems.  Long after the first Pentecost and even longer before the second one, about 450 Leo the Great wrote a letter to Rusticus, a bishop in what is now southern France.  Rusticus was having quite a lot of trouble with many of his church people who, unhappy with his performance, were hounding him with their mouths.  Rusticus was ready to quit, but Leo responded with advice primarily for ministers but which is equally applicable to laymen as well who face many of the same problems.  We would do well to follow this advice as we see the Lord coming in the end:

    But I am surprised, beloved, that you are so disturbed by opposition in consequence of offenses, from whatever cause arising, as to say you would rather be relived of the labors of your bishopric, and live in quietness and ease than continue in the office committed to you.  But since the Lord says, “blessed is he who shall persevere unto the end,”[6] whence shall come this blessed perseverance, except from the strength of patience?  For as the Apostle proclaims, “All who would live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution.”[7]  And it not only to be reckoned persecution, when sword or fire or other active means are used against the Christian religion for the direst persecution is often inflicted by nonconformity of practice and persistent disobedience and the barbs of ill-natured tongues: and since all the members of the Church are always liable to these attacks, and no portion of the faithful are free from temptation, so that a life of either of these nor of labor is devoid of danger, who shall guide the ship amidst the waves of the sea, if the helmsman quit his post?  who shall guard the sheep from the treachery of wolves, if the shepherd himself be not on the watch?  Who, in fine, shall resist the thieves and robbers, if love of quietude draw away the watchman that is set to keep the outlook from the strictness of his watch?  One must abide, therefore, in the office committed to him and the task undertaken.  Justice must be steadfastly upheld and mercy lovingly extended.  Not men, but their sins must be hated.  The proud must be rebuked, the weak must be borne with and those sins which require severer chastisement must be dealt with in the spirit not of vindictiveness but of desire to heal.  And if a fiercer storm of tribulation fall upon us, let not be terror stricken as if we have to overcome the disaster in our own strength, since both our Counsel and our Strength is Christ, and through him  we can do all things, without him nothing, who, to confirm the preachers of the Gospel and the ministers of the mysteries, says, “Lo, I am with you all the days even to the consummation of the age.”[8]  And again he says, “these things I have spoken unto you that in me ye may have peace.  In this world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer, because I have overcome the world.”[9]  The promises, which are as plain as they can be, we ought not to let any causes of offence to weaken, lest we should seem ungrateful to God for making us his chosen vessels, since his assistance is powerful as his promises are true.

    [1]Ps 139:7-10

    [2]Rm 8:13-17

    [3]Gen 2:7

    [4]2 Cor 3:17

    [5]2 Cor 4:7

    [6]Mt 24:13

    [7]2 Tim 3:12

    [8]Mt 28:20

    [9]Jn 16:33

  • The Downhill Run of Roman Catholicism

    As documented by Thomas Aquinas about the frequent reception of the Eucharist, in Summa Theologiae, 3, q. 80, a. 10 (I have added the papal dates):

    In the primitive Church, when the devotion of the Christian faith was more flourishing, it was enacted that the faithful should communicate daily: hence Pope Anaclete (76-88) says (Ep. i): “When the consecration is finished, let all communicate who do not wish to cut themselves off from the Church; for so the apostles have ordained, and the holy Roman Church holds.” Later on, when the fervor of faith relaxed, Pope Fabian (236-50) (Third Council of Tours, Canon 1) gave permission “that all should communicate, if not more frequently, at least three times in the year, namely, at Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas.” Pope Soter (166-175) likewise (Second Council of Chalon, Canon xlvii) declares that Communion should be received “on Holy Thursday,” as is set forth in the Decretals (De Consecratione, dist. 2). Later on, when “iniquity abounded and charity grew cold” (Matthew 24:12), Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) commanded that the faithful should communicate “at least once a year,” namely, “at Easter.” However, in De Eccles. Dogmat. xxiii, the faithful are counseled “to communicate on all Sundays.”

    I’ve said earlier that, contrary to most of my evangelical counterparts, I don’t think that the current organisational state of Christianity is God’s “Plan A” but that the original churches, having made their downhill run, left it open for the “Plan B” that is so common today.

    And I don’t think that the Reformation, the first subsequent major reaction to this state of affairs, is the end all either.  The combination of state support and a decidedly fatalistic theology swapped one form of cultural Christianity for another.

  • Born to be Alive: Everything in Common

    For the entire work and an interactive table of contents, click here.

    They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.  Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles.  All the believers were together and had everything in common.  Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.  Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.  They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all people.  And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.[1]

    A United Church

    People who spend any time in church these days will most likely read the above passage with envy for one reason — the Jerusalem Church, in the wake of Pentecost, was united and at peace with itself and the outside world.  It is very sad that the nearly two millennia that separate us from them have seen as few situations like this as they have.  But the Jerusalem Church wasn’t the product of dumb luck, but of the Holy Spirit moving in the membership both individually and collectively.  When this happens, the happy condition of the Jerusalem Church can be replicated today, just as is the case with the rest of the early church.  Too much conventional wisdom tells us that this is not practical, but if we never try to achieve this, how can we ever hope to get close?

    The world is not impressed with our divisions and our internal strife.  If we are truly representatives of the Prince of Peace, then we must strive to first secure peace amongst ourselves.  The first step in this process is submission to God — this is where the Lordship of Jesus Christ comes into play, as we have already seen.  The second is submission to each other.  Many Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and groups practice foot washing to a greater or lesser degree.  Done long enough, it can become another ecclesiastical routine.  But Jesus’ original purpose in instituting foot washing was to teach his disciples to submit one to another as part of their walk with him, both when he was here and after he left.  The disciples spent a lot of time trying to figure out who was going to be first if we consider that this was done around God’s own Son, we realize that the disciples were pushing divine presumption (as the Devil had done earlier) very hard.  When he taught the disciples foot washing, Jesus’ reply to this was, “`Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.  I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.  I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.’”[2]  Like those before us who walked with Jesus in the flesh and who also loved to be first, we also should take heed.

    It is no accident that the pattern of submission is identical to the pattern of love.  The greatest commandment consists in first loving God, and then our neighbor.  We must come to both in loving submission.  Not enough time is spent on the subject of love in all the preaching and teaching that comes out of churches.  We spend too much time trying to construct our churches with correct doctrine, government, and methodology that we overlook the power of love — love of God and each other — to build our churches.  Does not love cover a multitude of sins?  Are people who are not Christians supposed to identify us who are by our love for one another?  We might have to surrender some of our personal autonomy and all of our pride.  But such losses are like every other loss for God the payback far exceeds the expense.  It is, as we would say financially, an investment with an unlimited return.

    Selling All

    While we are on the subject of surrendering and finances, we need to take a look at one aspect of the Jerusalem Church that has detonated a good deal of discussion over the centuries.  This concerns the holding in common of goods that was the norm for this church, which implies that the people individually had nothing.

    Some people and groups have held that this is the norm for Christian living and have, with varying degrees of success, put this into practice.  In addition to this passage, they point out Jesus’ own poverty on this earth, and especially to his instructions to the rich young ruler to sell all, give to the poor, and follow him.  Others point out that the Jerusalem church was the only church featured in the New Testament to handle the people’s goods in this fashion in the churches that Paul writes to, for instance, we don’t see this practice repeated, at least not that we know of.

    This author does not hope to definitively solve this debate in this book.  Today, however, we see that the vast majority of Christians have abandoned, for better or worse, the practice of selling all, and churches for the most part do not require their members to contribute everything they have to the church and live communally in one form or another.  It is probably unrealistic to expect, for instance, that Christians as a whole will sell all and live as the Jerusalem Church did it is hard enough to get them to tithe and love one another.  Also, given the history of Christian attempts to return to the model of the Jerusalem Church, when such an effort is complete the spiritual condition of the believers that are left may or may not be better.  But the connection between people being Christian and lacking wealth either by default or by giving it up is one that deserves more investigation than it has received, especially if we look at it in the history of Christianity in general and recent Full Gospel Christianity in particular.

    Not a Wealthy Church

    Before we explore the topic of wealth in the church, we need to first take a brief look at the economic system of the ancient world, the system that the early church moved in.  In much teaching today on the subject of economics and the Bible, it is tempting to project our current mechanisms of wealth creation into the life of the early church.  This temptation should be resisted because the ancient world, while remarkable in many respects, did not possess the ability of modern economies to create wealth.  There are a number of reasons for this, but the two principal ones were the lack of sufficiently advanced technology and the lack of the proper social organization to foster the creation of wealth.  Technology is necessary to multiply the ability of people to do work from sheer, unassisted sweat of the brow it is difficult to create wealth when this is all you have to work with.  Social organization would include such institutions as the corporation, with its limited liability, and a legal and financial system that would foster economic enterprise.  These, along with a number of other important factors, were not sufficiently abundant in the Roman Empire to enable a broad spectrum of people to accumulate wealth.

    The result of this situation was the lack of a middle class, that venerable creation of modern economies.  People were mostly either wealthy or poor, and the vast majority of them were the latter.  In the cities the poor lived very simply.  Their small houses or apartments had a few sticks of furniture.  They took most of their recreation outside of their homes, in the baths, games, or forum.  They subsisted from day to day on whatever livelihood they had, whether it be work or welfare.

    Now it is true that there were a few wealthy people in the church Paul devoted an entire letter of the New Testament (albeit the shortest one, Philemon) to a man who was at least well off enough to own slaves.  James makes an unmitigated attack in his letter on giving special treatment to wealthy people if there were none around, this would be unnecessary.  There were other people in the early church with enough resources to provide a house for the church to meet in.  But a church with a sprinkling of wealthy people is not automatically a church for the successful this is equally true then and now.  A church for the well to do is a church where the well to do make up the majority of the membership.  When a well to do person elects to join a church where most members do not have what he or she has, it represents the culmination of a serious process, as we will see.

    Furthermore, the Apostles would have been foolish if they aimed their ministry primarily at the wealthy of their day.  They preached to anyone who would listen, but it is noteworthy that most of their recorded appearances to the high and mighty of their day were in chains and under armed guard.  Most people in their time were poor.  They preached and ministered amongst the people who were there.  Thus, when the Jerusalem church was formed, as a group the membership was in all probability not well off, and led by those Galilean fishermen their transition to a system of communal property was not as dramatic as it would be with a middle class congregation of our day.

    It was under these conditions that the early church grew and prospered.  The Church was sent into the world to gather a harvest of people, and that is what the church of the Apostolic Age did.  They may have not brought much with them when they came, but then again this was not a condition that Jesus had put on his Church.  It was a long time before the Church was able to claim members at the pinnacle of power.  If we assume the day of Pentecost to have taken place in the year A.D. 30, it was a long way to 312 A.D., when the Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity by the Edict of Milan.  The propagation of the Gospel had trickled upward in those three centuries, even reaching members of whatever Imperial family was in power at the moment.  After that time, Christianity became the state religion, at which point conversions became wholesale amongst the powerful.  By then Christianity had become an asset to the advancement of the important, but the addition of these to the Church was done at the expense of the moral integrity of the Body of Christ.

    The reach of Christianity into the upper socio-economic groups of society was impeded by a number of factors.  For one thing, Christianity was illegal until the Edict of Milan.  This is a serious impediment for people who are seeking to be acceptable in society.  But ultimately the difficulty that the well to do have always had with Christianity both in the Roman Empire and in later history is not rooted in local situations or in the nature of the preachers. It is rooted in the very nature of wealth itself.

    Self-Sufficiency

    What do people get out of wealth?  This question is important but seldom asked, because too much of our approach to life is geared by that question being a premise.  For much of society today, to ask that question is an insult.  What would life be, many would ask, if we answered that question in a way other than with good things?  But our first purpose here is not insult but investigation.

    Let’s start with the basics.  An income is essential for necessities, so that life might be sustained.  With more income or wealth, one can afford and enjoy more creature comforts and leisure.  Depending upon how much and in what way he or she deals with the media, one can also gain fame and esteem amongst other people.  Power over others is also possible, and this can be used either offensively or defensively.

    But perhaps the most basic benefit of wealth is a degree of self-sufficiency.  When one is poor and has little, one lives from day to day dependent upon others.  Will I or my spouse get laid off from the plant?  Will the crops come in this year?  Will I get sick and be unable to work and make a living?  Will my paycheck last until the next one comes in?  If I am in a life of crime, will I get caught by the police or my fellow criminals?  Although many attempt to bluff their way through this with pride, in such circumstances one is at the mercy of forces beyond one’s control, dependent upon the generosity or the circumstances of others.

    When a person acquires wealth, however, such dependence upon caprice can be reduced.  In addition to the cushion of savings for hard times, if there are multiple income sources, the end of one does not mean the end of all.  If a person’s influence stretches far enough, he or she can “call in the chips” so to speak and get favors to get through a tight spot.  This is especially true if these favors come from the government.  Any individual or group who plans to stay in the money for the long haul better plan to be well entrenched politically.

    This type of self-sufficiency for adverse conditions, if sustained long enough in a person’s life, will have a psychological and spiritual impact.  In fact, many who seek for personal self advancement adopt this type of thinking in their quest for monetary gain.  They work hard and beg nothing from others, and in this way they get ahead.  Those who have wealth attempt to impart this ethic of self sufficiency to their offspring.  Some of these get packed away to boarding schools in an attempt to foster self-reliance and independence.  Most all of these are exhorted and motivated to achieve much on their own efforts.  This was as true in the days of the Apostles as in our own.  In fact, in those days the religion of Stoicism was very popular with the wealthy, and self-sufficiency was a central tenet of that faith.  Today those in the upper classes who still hang on to some form of Christianity — and these are fewer in number all the time — frequently attempt to bend Christianity to the self-sufficient ethic that put them where they are.

    But is this legitimate?  The starting point of an individual’s Christian experience is the recognition of two facts.  The first is the reality of a person’s own sinfulness.  The second is the discovery of a person’s own inability to get out of it by their own efforts.  According to the gospel of self-sufficiency, a person should be able to get out of this mess on their own without the help of others.  But this is not God’s way the Scriptures tell us that we must be totally dependent upon God to be extricated from our morass of sin and death, to be reborn into the Kingdom of God, to live for God in this life, and finally to make to heaven in the next.  We cannot do this on our own.  Only with the power of God can we make something worthwhile of ourselves or the life we live.  This biblical concept is a major slap in the face to the idea of self-sufficiency.

    Self-sufficiency and its wealthy followers don’t take this lying down.  It is very difficult to show a person who has spent a lifetime making it in the world by an ethic of self-sufficiency to recognize that he or she will not be really happy in this life or in the next by letting go and letting God take over and bring them home to him.  “A certain ruler asked him, `Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’  `Why do you call me good?’ Jesus answered.  `No one is good — except God alone.  You know the commandments: Do not commit adultery, do not murder, do not steal, do not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’  `All these I have kept since I was a boy,’ he replied.  When Jesus heard this, he said to him, `You still lack one thing.  Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.  Then come, follow me.’  When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.  Jesus looked at him and said, `How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God.  Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.’”[3]  This reply didn’t sit well with the rich young ruler it doesn’t sit well with many rich rulers today either.

    In addition to making up the vast majority of the population of the Roman Empire, the poor represented the most receptive people to the Gospel because they knew that they needed divine power of some kind to get them from one day to the next.  They knew that they were dependent for their life.  When the Apostles and other Christians told them that they would need to be dependent upon God for eternal life, they had been prepared by their living that this message was right.  They knew that they could not make it on their own.  They still know this.

    Self-Sufficiency and Pentecost

    We have seen that the early church was made up of the same type of people that made up the general population of their time, namely the poor.  This was probably true from the very start, from the day of Pentecost itself.  We also know that this situation continued for a long time afterwards pagan and Christian writers alike made reference to this fact.  We also know that the acquisition of wealth and wealthy church people took place for the most part after Christianity was legalized.  What relevance does this have for Pentecostals and Charismatics today, with so many conditions different?

    Most Pentecostal churches started out among people with few of this world’s goods.  In this respect, it emulated (voluntarily or not) the early Church.  However, by the time the modern Pentecostal movement got started, Christianity had permeated and indeed dominated large portions of Western society.  Many nations then had state churches and considered themselves Christian nations.  While the United States did not have a state church, thanks to the zealous efforts of many Christians the Christian influence was everywhere.  Why was it necessary for Pentecostal churches to minister where they did?

    One way to explain this is to observe that most Pentecostal preachers, being poor, were more suited to minister to poor people like themselves.  Paul tells us to be all things to all men, but Christianity has had a hard time with this.  The next best thing is to send out someone who is like the people he or she is ministering to.  This is good missionary strategy but really this explanation of the outreach of Pentecostal preachers begs the question.  If we say that Pentecostal preachers ministered to poor people because like attracts like, then we must explain how and why Pentecost appealed to these poor preachers to start with.

    Others say that the “emotionalism” of Pentecostal worship appealed mostly to poor people, while their wealthier counterparts had somehow learned to hold it in better.  And there is no doubt, when the Spirit moves, it touches every part of your being, emotions included.  But “heartfelt” religion is something that Pentecostal churches, while they practice it par excellence, did not originate.  There was and is sufficient emotionalism in enough of Christianity not to require the introduction of Pentecostal practice.

    Another explanation is that the Pentecostal, and later the Charismatic movement, were reactions by unsophisticated people to the advance of modern science, especially to Evolution and higher Biblical criticism.  The hidden implication — well hidden, because many liberals try to achieve social justice in the midst of personal snobbery — is the equating of unsophistication with poverty.  There were and are many people unhappy with the watering down of the Gospel through such devices as higher criticism, ethical relativism, and the abandonment of the claim of Jesus being the only way to Heaven.  However, many people who opposed the Modernists opposed Pentecostals with equal vigor, while at the same time producing a religion that had greater acceptance amongst middle class people than the Pentecostals had.

    To understand the real reason why Pentecostals had their greatest appeal amongst the poor, we need to strip away the externals and get down to the heart of the matter by examining the very nature of Pentecost itself.  We have observed the inherent dependence of those in poverty.  These people know they cannot make it through life on their own resources many aren’t sure they can make it through another day.  Pentecostal Christianity offers first the continuous and intimate presence of the Holy Spirit, doing his work of comforting and counseling, which everyone needs but which is most painfully evident to the destitute.  Moreover, with this continuous presence of the Holy Spirit comes the continuous power of God.  This makes matters even more attractive to those with little.  Rich people don’t need to believe for miracles because they lack nothing.  Poor people need them because they lack everything, and need all from God that they can get.  Having no large supply of their own, poor people must turn to God for what they have the wealthy can get by on their own resources.  We are back again to that business of self-sufficiency, but this time in Pentecostal Christianity we are looking at God’s total sufficiency, not only for the next life, but for this one too.  This has made Pentecostal churches attractive for the poor, and they have responded in numbers from the dawn of the modern Pentecostal movement to the present.

    The division of Christianity along socio-economic lines is a tragedy of the first magnitude.  It was certainly not the purpose of Pentecostal pioneers to create a church just to get away from the wealthier elements of the congregation.  In fact, many of the wealthier elements have responded by making the poverty of the Pentecostals a weapon to use against those who might consider joining up.  Most of the attention given to the divisions between churches who embrace the Pentecostal experience and those who don’t center around issues of doctrine and practice.  This is most applicable when we are talking about differences at the clerical level.  At the lay level, things are a little different.  The use of socio-economic superiority against Pentecostals and their churches is one from which many Christian lay people have not shrunk.  It has been a powerful weapon over the years in impeding the growth of Pentecostal churches.

    Charismatic Renewal

    This state of stratification continued on for most of the first half of this century.  Complicating matters was the insistence of most churches that those who were baptized in the Holy Spirit be unceremoniously ejected from the church.  The Pentecostals were thus forced into their own denominations in their own part of town, where they carried out their work of ministry in the Spirit.  They carried the message of Pentecost into all parts of the world, and it went into places many had never heard of to start with.  But while they could go around the world and be received gladly, they could not get across the tracks.  Pentecostals peered out from their churches across these steel dividing lines, sometimes with longing, sometimes with contempt, but always across.  It was a mission field that was so near, yet so far.

    There are three ways to open a new mission field.  The first is to wait until you can get some of your own membership into it and work in it from there.  In this case, this involves having some of the church members work hard enough to gain some wealth and thus some credibility in higher places.  This is a typical way to solve this problem, and many churches before the Pentecostal ones had done this.  In the intervening years, some Pentecostals have succeeded in doing just this.  But there are dangers with this method, as we will see.

    The second method is to train people to work effectively with other types of people.  For instance, if you want to minister in a nursing home, you could train people especially to relate to people who live there.  The same method could be applied to prisons and jail ministry, to ministry amongst people in the military, to people with specific problems (drug and alcohol abuse, rape victims, etc.).  On paper at least, Pentecostal churches could have trained people to work in the wealthier parts of town on a mission basis, with preachers and pastors specially trained for the task.

    While this approach has its merits in some cases, unless you can give the right people the right kind of training for the task, you will be better off picking some poor layman with a mind unclouded by ministerial education, sending him or her into this new field and seeing what happens.  This last approach can be very effective, because in many cases lay people can gain credibility with people that preachers cannot, especially in a society as hostile to church as ours is today.  But in the early days neither the preachers nor the lay people were prepared for such an enterprise and so it was for the most part never carried out.

    The last approach is simply to let God open the door to the new field and then just go in and reap the harvest.  This is obviously the simplest and most effective way to carry the job out.  With all the emphasis Pentecostals put on depending upon God, this is the really proper way to do what is needed.  Although Pentecostals were not necessarily fully prepared for the Charismatic Renewal (no one else was either), in the end all of Full Gospel Christianity was the beneficiary of this movement of the Spirit.

    The subject of the Charismatic Renewal is a controversial one among a great number of people, both those who faced it in the churches first affected (especially the liberals who had their own agenda for these institutions) and the Pentecostals, who for some time watched from a distance.  The liberals’ anxiety is understandable had the Charismatics succeeded in taking partial or total control of many of the churches they were in, the liberal, humanistic program for these churches would have been in ruins.  As for those who opposed the Charismatics as fundamentalists and evangelicals, their opposition was simply a repeat of what they gave the Pentecostals earlier in the century, so there was no change there.

    But why so much of the early anxiety amongst Pentecostals about this?  To understand why this happened, we need to see again that, in the beginning, many of the Pentecostal pioneers came out of fundamental churches of one kind of another, with all of the implications of church doctrine and polity that implied.  They were also not the wealthiest people in the world, as we have also seen.  They had been run out of their original churches and forced to form their own denominations as well.  Overall it had been a long, hard road for these people.

    The Charismatics, on the other hand, were in many cases middle class people.  They came out of churches that had heretofore not contributed anything to the Pentecostal movement, not even in rejection many were not even evangelical!  They were used to different patterns of worship and doctrinal emphases, although Charismatics brought more fundamentalism into their churches than they realized and ultimately more than most of their churches would tolerate.  Most Charismatics believed that it was unnecessary to leave the churches they were in, but to stay and to minister to the people that were there.

    These differences between the two groups contributed to some mutual hard feelings.  We need to remind ourselves, however, that only one Holy Spirit fell on the day of Pentecost, to be poured out on all flesh.  This outpouring crossed all human boundaries, whether they be racial, ethnic, socio-economic, or even of religious tradition.  In the days of the Apostles, the great chasm was between the Jews and the Gentiles.  If the Holy Spirit can cross this line, what barrier of religious tradition is too high for him?  “Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear.”[4]  If the one Holy Spirit is the cause for both of these movements, then they are one, and we are one, “For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body — whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free — and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”[5]

    This is not to say that each side has not made mistakes, because both have, both individually and with respect to each other.  The Holy Spirit went where the Pentecostals and the Charismatics each could not go, which is only one more proof that those of us who are baptized in the Spirit have something that is greater than we are or can conceive to be.  And so on this subject, we say with Paul: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more that all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”[6]

    Need at All Levels

    This discourse leaves at least one large loose end, and that concerns the large scale entry of middle class people into the Charismatic Renewal and thus into the Pentecostal experience.  This was something that was out of reach for many early Pentecostals.  As we have seen, this was due to the very nature of Pentecostal Christianity itself.  What changed in the two events was not God’s message but the hearts of the people.

    The poor are quickest to acknowledge their dependence upon outside forces because it is constant and obvious.  For those with more, it is easier to conceal this need with wealth.  This can be dealt with in two ways either by taking away the wealth, or by making its transitory and feeble nature evident to the holders.  Over the years the Lord has done both.

    Everyone will part with whatever they have at death.  The rich man who passed by Lazarus at his gate every day found this out the hard way.[7]  Anyone, rich or poor, who thinks they can beat death is fooling themselves.  It is here at death’s door that everyone’s dependence upon God becomes most evident.  If we were to put the kick back into our teaching and preaching about death and the afterlife, we could pack our churches with all classes, especially with the recent increase of interest in the subject.  Death is the great leveler of all of the human race.  To restore our awareness of it is to restore our need to make our way into eternity.

    As far as changing our perceptions of the value of our wealth, liberal thinkers love to characterize the Charismatic Renewal by saying that it was a reaction to the social upheavals of the 1960’s and 1970’s.  This thought is both true and hypocritical.  It is hypocritical because most of the upheaval was caused by the liberals themselves, armed as they were with a pliant media and a total disregard for the consequences of their actions.  They expected us to joyfully greet the atheistic anarchy they started.  When people truly turned to God instead, they become bitter because it was just the opposite of what they had intended.  It is true because these chaotic times shook many out of their complacency and made them see that they needed more than they had to get through life.  And so they turned to the one true Source of direction and power, and discovered that “…Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.  For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”[8]  And they did this in the move of the Holy Spirit, as was the case in the days of the Apostles.

    Prosperity Teaching

    One innovation that needs to be discussed at this point is prosperity teaching.  This type of teaching and preaching has been caricatured mercilessly by both its opponents and its supporters.  On the surface, it is a direct contradiction to the roots of many Pentecostals and some Charismatics in poorer circumstance but careful examination reveals a situation much more complicated than that.

    Reduced to its essentials and homogenized from its principal teachers as best as possible, prosperity teaching has two basic tenets.  The first is that Christians, as true children of God, have a right to be prosperous.  The second is that they can believe and receive from God whatever resources are necessary to achieve this prosperity.  Like it or not, prosperity teaching has a kernel of sound Biblical teaching.  We have seen that, right from the start of the church age, Christians have been clothed in the omnipotence of God prosperity teaching is simply a way of exercising that omnipotence, and to achieve some level of prosperity without losing one’s consciousness of dependence upon God.

    Counterattacks against this type of teaching have attempted to refute this teaching in many ways.  Some attempt to do so Biblically.  This is easier for those who are not Pentecostal or Charismatic for those who are, it is nearly impossible.  The power of God poured into man for the working of miracles and other wonders of all kinds is central to the Pentecostal message, too central to sluff off something such as this.  Others attempt to tie prosperity teaching together with psychic and demonic methods of miracle working.  This charge only shows that every real spiritual phenomenon has a counterfeit, produced by the great faker himself, the Devil.  We should not shrink from God’s harvest of wheat because Satan is out sowing weeds in the same place.  This matter deserves more careful and balanced examination than it frequently gets.

    First, prosperity is a relative term.  A person who lives in a two room house will find a four room house a major improvement.  Another will only see two shacks.  This is important when we consider the first basic premise of prosperity teaching, the right of believers to prosperity.  David tells us “I was young and now old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”[9]  For some, this is prosperity for all, this is reliance on God’s provision that separates the voluntary, Christian surrender of wealth for grinding, miserable poverty created by people’s own ignorance and poor attitude.

    In the course on reliance on God, the problems come when people who are encouraged to believe for their prosperity end up believing for someone else’s more opulent prosperity for themselves, which may or may not be God’s plan for them.  Also, people who are never satisfied with what they have will never be prosperous no matter how much God gives them, if they always lust for more they are always poor, always in need.  People who can be satisfied will find prosperity sooner.  “Two things I ask of you, O Lord do not refuse me before I die Keep falsehood and lies far from me give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.  Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, `Who is the Lord?’  Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.”[10]

    Second, prosperity teaching, contrary to many of its advocates’ claims, is not a way of making the Full Gospel more acceptable to wealthier people, either by itself or by enriching the congregation.  Prosperity teaching is eminently for people who don’t have wealth.  Rich people don’t need it because they already have found a way to acquire wealth that works.  Also, if a congregation becomes wealthy either in whole or in part by practicing this teaching, regular wealthy people won’t be more attracted than before because they will bring their ethic of self-sufficiency with them, which will still clash with the God-dependent prosperity of the existent members.

    Finally the biggest problem with prosperity teaching — and the one that has gotten many into trouble — is that it works.  In many cases people were prospered through their belief only to let things go to their head and either flash the cash with an ostentatious lifestyle or, if they owned their own business, to overextend.  Either of these courses proved the great hidden corollary to prosperity teaching: you can’t outgive God, but you can sure outspend him.  To accomplish this most resorted to credit.  But God does not need credit to prosper his people.  The bubble burst, many lost much, and the whole thing fell into disrepute because teachers and followers alike had fallen into silliness.

    “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.  But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”[11]  God is as generous with wisdom as with material things. If we do not seek wisdom first, like Solomon, we will end up without either wisdom or material things.  When Christians are as zealous in seeking wisdom as in seeking wealth, they find they have plenty of both.

    A Prosperous Future?

    Although prosperity teaching has influenced to some degree most all of Full Gospel Christianity, many therein have become prosperous without the direct benefits of such teaching and practice.  This is not surprising, really, if we consider what happens to a person when they let God into their life.

    Let us consider the case of a typical sinner, the one evangelists love to preach about.  This person drinks, smokes, these days takes drugs, cheats on the spouse and has had several, can’t hold a job through all this chaos and unsurprisingly hits bottom.  At this point this person gets saved.  Out goes the booze, cigarettes, drugs, and cheating.  With a mind cleared by all this, this person can hold a steady job and do fairly well at it.  He or she can be the kind of parent necessary for proper child raising and have a stable home with happy kids.  With God’s purpose for their life, they don’t need to fill it with expensive substitutes, so they can save some money and advance financially (if they stay away from too much credit!).

    Although this example may seem contrived, it demonstrates an important point, and one that has been proven with many people over the years.  Christianity, by its consistent practice, will bring prosperity of some kind without really having to believe for it.  It is in this way that Pentecostal churches, even without the conversion growth of Charismatics, would in time see some of their members move up in society.  And Pentecostals are not the first to experience this process.  Other churches starting out in similar circumstance have seen this happen to them.  But this process has dangers with it that Pentecostal churches are only now beginning to face.  We emphasize Pentecostal churches because their Charismatic counterparts are not that old, and thus not as subject to the same historical forces, but the potential for both to experience problems is still there.

    When we look at the course of many Christian denominations and movements, we see a very depressing pattern emerge.  All start out with the fire of the Gospel in their bones.  All experience rapid growth in the early years, but then lose much of their vigor as time wears on.  They lose their evangelistic and missionary zeal and allow people who are not committed to the true faith to take control of their seminaries, publications, pulpits, and finally denominational leadership.  Then they stagnate or decline, and their witness to the world is dimmed, sometimes beyond recognition.  Christian institutions which have lost their effectiveness in being a witness for Christ call into question God’s continuing purpose for their existence and when God is through with you, you are through indeed.

    Many preachers who attempt to address this subject do so on a strictly spiritual level.  They speak of the fire having gone away, and use various techniques to attempt to revive it.  Most of these center around the reinstitution of the “old time religion,” whether this is embodied in doctrine, form of worship, music, or some other practice from the past.  In this way, the preacher and the lay people who are sympathetic to him hope to recreate the fervor of the past, and by doing this move the church forward rather than nowhere or in reverse.

    The main obstacle to success with this approach is neither in its intent nor principally in the preaching but in the people.  The proclamation of the Gospel must be made understandable to the various groups of humanity to which it is proclaimed, as we have seen earlier.  In this case we are dealing with people who have been preached to in the accepted way for a long time and who are established in the church.  However, the preachers of yesteryear broke the Bread of Life for people who have changed, and the main difference centers around the wallet.

    Most Christian revival movements since John Wesley’s time have started in the poorer classes of society, and Pentecost is no exception.  Through diligent practice of a Christian lifestyle, people can advance themselves financially, without generally leaving the church where they started.  This is a multigenerational process.  In the long course of time, people can forget that God put them where they are.  They begin to think their own efforts are responsible for their success they replace an ethic of God dependence with one of self-sufficiency.

    Additionally, in acquiring wealth over the years, people and families pick up other influences in society, such as expanded secular education, exposure to people and ideas hostile to the one they embraced to start with.  If they develop an inferiority complex about these things, which all too frequently happens, their faith can be made a shipwreck.  Finally we must include in all of these disasters the one of self-sufficiency, which dulls a person’s consciousness of his or her need for God.  This is inimical to Pentecostal Christianity.

    Churches who acquire people who have undergone experiences such as the above will find their vigor sapped, their witness dimmed, and themselves prepared for the final assault on true Christianity: the introduction of liberal teaching and the denial of basic Christian truth.  This generally begins at two levels the lay people, being more prosperous, develop a guilt complex about this and abandon evangelism to do social work the clergy, sent to liberal institutions, are exposed to liberal Biblical criticism and relativistic ethical systems, and attempt to cram these down the throat of their home denominations rather than seek more congenial pastures and leave the home folks alone.  Churches who allow things to get to this stage will find members leaving the denomination in droves to escape the insipid atmosphere in fact, much of the Charismatic Renewal was started as a reaction to just this process.

    Most of this is fueled by the growing material prosperity of the membership.  Today Pentecostal churches are faced with this prosperity in many congregations and with many of the members.  Will this ruin Pentecostal churches as it has ruined others?  Will Pentecostals be like the Popes, unable to say either “silver and gold have I none” or “rise up and walk?”  Will Pentecostal churches end up on a liberal ash heap with so many of their “Main Line” counterparts?  These, perhaps more than any other, are questions Pentecostal and Charismatic churches must face and face successfully in order to maintain their own doctrinal and ecclesiastical integrity.  There are many issues discussed these days — the cross-cultural issues, missionary approaches, questions of personal practice and life — are important.  But if the members already in church start replacing daily dependence upon God with their own self-sufficiency, Pentecostal and Charismatic churches are finished.

    Pentecostal and Charismatic churches claim a special presence of the Spirit, both for the church and for the membership.  It will take all of this presence, and our willingness to follow the Spirit, to avoid the terrible disaster that awaits us if we do not.  We must never forget that it is God and God alone who has given us the provision to be who we are in him and who we are in the world.  If we, like ungrateful children, turn our backs on him and follow what looks right in the world, we must not only face the destruction of our churches, but ultimately the destruction of our souls, ourselves, and our children in the fires of Gehenna.

    [1]Acts 2:42-47

    [2]Jn 13:14-17

    [3]Lk 18:18-25

    [4]Is 59:1

    [5]1 Co 12:13

    [6]Ep 3:20,21

    [7]Lk 16:19-31

    [8]1 Co 1:24b,25

    [9]Ps 37:25

    [10]Pr 30:7-9

    [11]Jas 1:5,6

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