Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century.

Whatever the reason- the coming of a new millennium or a growing dissatisfaction with materialism-something has sparked a new wave of religious seeking throughout the culture. Though some caution that the "new" spirituality, with its personal, inward focus, is just another consumer commodity, many more claim it represents a genuine "awakening" that will indeed make the world a better place. Veteran Jesuit activist and author Daniel Berrigan is not convinced. To him, all the talk in the world about peace and love remains meaningless - unless it is connected to the larger issues of violence and injustice that continue to plague our society, and translated into deeds.

- Introduction to "For Better or Worse," The Plough, Christmas 1998

With Berrigan, I am suspicious of any spirituality that is not grounded in the realization of oppression. Contending with institutions which debase our dignity is integral to overcoming those inner drives that estrange us from the spiritual- the wellspring of all that it means to be truly human. Hence, I doubt that much of what is proclaimed as "millennial consciousness" or a New Awakening will prove to be really prophetic or rejuvenating for America's faith communities, old or new. Moreover, it seems off base to explain the stasis or decline of mainstream denominations as due to their failure to value this personal, inward spirituality. Such criticism usually ignores our need to face still more honestly and effectively the real sources of alienation and oppression in this fragmenting world.

Forty years of personal growth and commitment in the broad, liberal religious current, from Anglicanism to Ethical Culture, have convinced me that we "mainstreamers" thrive authentically only when we consistently take on the world's injustices, while building warm extended families of vision, support, celebration, and re-creation. Two scholars from the same liberal mainstream, however, bid us learn important lessons from our "new paradigm" evangelical and Pentecostal sisters and brothers. Many of their points are well taken.

The mainline denominations are "losing their market share," as Donald Miller bluntly puts it. His book, Reinventing American Protestantism: Christianity in the New Millennium (University of California Press, 1998) sounds the familiar siren: "In the past several decades denominations such as the Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians have lost between 20 and 40 percent of their members. These churches are filled with gray heads . . . [a]nd without [a] new generation of leadership, it is uncertain whether they can transform their worship and organizational style to attract a youthful and ongoing following" (4). Too familiar, but true. And especially sobering when compared with the often dramatic growth of conservative groups like the Southern Baptists, assorted Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Mormons. "The pastors of these conservative churches present unambiguous answers to the moral and philosophical quandaries of postmodern society. They offer a constantly evolving menu of programs that respond creatively to people's needs. [And] . . . they have been enterprising in building gymnasiums and hiring youth directors to engage the children of their congregations" (4). Beyond these generalities, how do we account for the growth?

In particular, Miller has carefully studied a group of fast-growing conservative congregations which he calls "new paradigm" churches. Started in the middle to late 1960s (when mainline churches began their decline), movements founded in Southern California- such as Calvary Chapel, Hope Chapel, and Vineyard Christian Fellowship- now represent over 1,000 churches nationwide. The majority of the members of these congregations were born after 1945 and contribute many hours of highly valued lay leadership each week. They participate in extensive small group ministries in which tolerance of personal styles is prized. Seminary training for clergy is optional; clergy and congregants usually dress informally; pastors who tend to be "understated, humble, and self-revealing," engage in Bible-centered teaching rather than topical sermonizing. Worship draws directly on contemporary cultural forms and technology and exudes a spirit of celebration and joy. "Bodily, rather than mere cognitive, participation" is normal and the "gifts of the Holy Spirit" are affirmed- although speaking in tongues usually occurs outside of corporate worship (20).

Miller is certain that the "counter cultural" dimensions of the new paradigm churches' approach account primarily for their spectacular growth. "In particular, new paradigm churches have responded to the therapeutic, individualistic, and anti-establishment themes of the counterculture" dating from the Sixties (21). Members spoke often to Miller and his interviewers about the "openness" and honest lack of pretensions they had found in these communities. But these congregants expressed a healthy skepticism about the narcissism they find in many contemporary therapeutic values. They value mentored friendships focused on moral choices in the present. While placing a high value on community, they are refreshingly hostile to bureaucracies and routinized aspects of organizational life. Perhaps most important, they demand for themselves an ethos beyond self-actualization.

The distinctiveness of new paradigm churches . . .is that they have incorporated aspects of therapeutic, individualistic, and anti-establishment values into congregational life, but they have simultaneously rejected the narcissism of these counter cultural orientations. They are in the business of rebuilding marriages; caring for children, not ignoring them to pursue personal goals; and providing viable alternatives to the perceived violence of contemporary culture. To outsiders, they often look conservative as they affirm traditional roles for women, demonstrate against abortion, and bash contemporary psychology. But this is not fundamentalism resurrected. Gone is the authoritarianism associated with that tradition, and absent is fundamentalism's vehement opposition to modernity, its romanticization of the moral innocence of the past and its belief that a return to a bygone era will solve the perceived chaos of the present. New paradigm churches are doing significant "cultural repair" that defies standard religious or political labels (21).

Harvey Cox takes on a much larger field of inquiry than Donald Miller's when he tries to make sense of the contemporary, world-wide Pentecostal movement. And he does so using more the tools of the poet than the sociologist:

I believe that the inner significance of speaking in tongues or praying in the spirit can be found in something virtually every spiritual tradition in human history teaches in one way or another: that the reality religious symbols strive to express ultimately defies even the most exalted human language. Virtually all the mystics of every faith have indicated that the vision they have glimpsed, though they try desperately to describe it, finally eludes them. As The Preacher in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes puts it:

All words wear themselves out;

a man cannot utter it;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

nor the ear with hearing.

Confronted with this verbal paralysis, what can people do? They sing, they rhapsodize, they invent metaphors; they soar into canticles and doxologies. But ultimately, words fail them and they lapse into silence. Or they speak in tongues (92).

In his Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Perseus Press, 1996), Cox examines this field of Christian mysticism, which he estimates is growing at a rate of 20 million new members a year, with a current international membership of 410 million - all from a small, spirit-filled mission to the socially, racially, and economically marginalized of Los Angeles, on Azusa Street, in 1906.

Like Miller's explanation of New Paradigm success, Cox names three factors accounting for the incredible vibrancy of Pentecostalism: primal speech, primal piety, and primal hope. Primal speech, Cox believes, may well be tapping into this century's "radical suspicion of the capacity of language- any language- to convey what is true and important." He cites Susan Sontag's view that, when this has occurred in all of the past civilizations of East and West, "the antecedents of art's dilemmas and strategies are to be found in the radical wing of the mystical tradition" (93). Primal piety describes pentecostalism's reversion to Durkheim's "elementary forms" of religious life, such as trance, vision, healing, dreams, and dance. Cox believes, as well, that such experiences may represent a kind of "universal spiritual syntax" similar to the "universal grammar" that structural linguists think underlies all human languages. The third dimension, primal hope, "points to pentecostalism's millennial outlook - its insistence that a radically new world age is about to dawn" (82).

In his investigations of these facets of strength- shared by many in the rest of the evangelical world- Cox repeatedly found open, likeable people eager to help him understand what he agreed were largely positive spiritual experiences. Yet he does not ignore the negative underbelly of the movement. Perhaps better than Miller, he grasps the danger of Pentecostal-evangelical fascination with such fascistic demagogues as Pat Robertson, who has recruited many of their number for his Christian Coalition. Cox is particularly sensitive in decrying the widespread incursion of "the health and wealth gospel" in many circles, explaining that Pentecostals talk about money more than mainstreamers "because they usually don't have as much of it, therefore they do not feel so guilty about it and can talk about wanting it with fewer qualms" (271). (Main current culture has not been immune to this idolatry of mammon, as witnessed by superparsons from Peale to Schuller.)

No one who was justly moved by Robert Duval's portrayal of interracial solidarity in "The Apostle" can gainsay the great strides many have made in the broader Evangelical camp toward overcoming the deadly divisions of skin color. Finally, neither Cox nor Miller shows full appreciation for the dangers of any ideology which proclaims that it holds exclusive and absolute truth- to the eternal damnation of the rest of us who may not assent to said truth in full. Fire From Heaven at least foresees the chaos of rival fundamentalisms fighting it out on a global scale. But we mainstreamers with deep commitments to Jewish people, to humanism, or to the varied communities of "other," rightly quake at a more immediate possibility of pogroms, and worse, in this country.

Likely Cox's most useful contribution is his discussion of the developing struggle between two tendencies contending for hegemony in the postmodern world:

As both scientific modernity and conventional religion progressively lose their ability to provide a source of spiritual meaning, two new contenders are stepping forward -"fundamentalism" and, for lack of a more precise word, "experientialism." Both present themselves as authentic links to the sacred past. Both embody efforts to reclaim what is valuable from previous ages in order to apply it to the present and future (300).

Fundamentalism, of course, is a pretty well-known critter. Cox analyzes it as a distortion, rather than a retrieval, of religious tradition, which, in a "frantic attempt to oppose modernity . . . (has) embraced . . . the same disability that plagues- and cripples the modern rational mind- literalism" (303). Experientialism, a genuinely attractive approach for mainstream religionists, is, by its nature, more "disparate and inchoate" (304).

It assumes different forms, but is unified by a common effort to restore "experience," albeit defined in different ways, as the key dimension of faith. In recent years liberation theologies and feminist theologies among many others have shared this penchant for experience. . . .

Like the fundamentalists, the experientialists also try to reach back past current distortions to the sources of the faith and to make these sources freshly available in the present. Unlike fundamentalists, however, they do not always claim to be the single authoritative voice of their tradition, and- like Merton- they often find much in common with people on other paths. In a troubled time, these two prevalent tendencies- fundamentalism and experientialism- stand like mirror opposites of each other, our benign and the malignant angels (304).

Indeed, experientialism vigorously pursued as a force of renewal may well afford a bridge to the lives of many Evangelicals and Pentecostals for those mainstreamers who see critical need for such a bridge. But my chief concern remains the same as Daniel Berrigan's: How do we all build our faith communities by responding authentically to the prophetic challenges facing humankind- perhaps more starkly than ever in the course of civilization!

The litany is well known; a recent summary in "The Nation" suffices. Thirty million Americans live in poverty, and a third of our sisters and brothers are ill-fed, ill-housed, ill-educated, and/or ill-doctored. These deprivations are visited on the young and the non-Caucasian in gross disproportion to their numbers. Our fastest growing industries are gambling and prison construction, while we still suffer an out-of-control drug epidemic and a devastating AIDS pandemic. A corpulent military drains our resources with human misery as its only product. Our foreign policy's most dramatic accomplishment is the daily death of hundreds of Iraq's most vulnerable. And over 7,000 nuclear warheads remain capable of killing most of us if Russia's new reign of freedom sinks much further into chaos.

Any movement, religious or secular, that does not address the grim agenda nailed above mocks the very name of humanity. And the solutions must be both deeply individual AND institutional- creatively involving every faith community on our green orb. Harvey Cox and Donald Miller are to be warmly thanked for shepherding us religious mainstreamers into communities we would otherwise be unlikely to frequent. Let us accept their guidance toward the creation of that One Community whose development is vital to any continued thriving of the human project: a truly "radical new world age."

JAMES GARRETT WHITE is Leader Emeritus of the Essex Ethical Culture Society. He is completing a collection of essays: The Coming World War, and What May Emerge From It.