Table Of ContentA Study of the Ecumenical Nature of Charismatic Renewal:
with particular reference to Roman Catholic and Anglican
Charismatic Renewal in England
by
Philip Clifford Owen
A thesis submitted to
The University of Birmingham
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Theology
School of Historical Studies
University of Birmingham
October 2007
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ABSTRACT
The coming of charismatic renewal in the 1960s brought Pentecostal experience into
the historic denominations of the church. From its beginning, there were those who
perceived in the charismatic movement an ecumenical quality. Its ability to root
across a wide spectrum of traditions, suggested that it might have a significant
contribution to make towards the search for the visible unity of the Christian church.
This thesis sets out to explore more precisely the ecumenical dimension of the
charismatic movement. It largely focuses on the English Ecumenical scene, where
there have been significant ecumenical developments in the last twenty years; but
account is also taken of the broader canvas of the World Council of Churches and
Koinonia ecclesiology.
A special focus is made of the Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal, to see how the
movement impacted that church, and was critiqued by its own theologians in the early
years of the 1970s. The study looks in some detail at baptism and episcopacy, to see
how these traditional ecumenical sticking points could be resolved, when looked at
through a charismatic lens. It then moves on to analyse a sample of leaders, who have
both experienced charismatic renewal and engaged with it theologically, showing that
the personal theological changes are quite significant. Finally the study takes account
of where the Charismatic and Ecumenical Movements have reached in their
contemporary trajectories; and suggests how the charismatic movement can still make
a serious contribution to the search for visible Christian Unity. To do this, attention is
still needed in the area of sacramental theology, but in particular to the nature of truth
and its revelation through the Spirit. In that connection the thesis includes some
samples of fresh biblical exegesis on familiar ecumenically relevant biblical passages.
The study concludes that there is indeed an ecumenical dimension of charismatic
renewal. However, before that dimension can forward the visible unity of the whole
church, something of a largely lost earlier vision needs to be re-captured. When that
has been done, there is hope that both the charismatic and ecumenical movements
may discover their natural complimentarity and creative engagement.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1 Introduction p6
1.1 Defining the terms: Ecumenism and Charismatic Renewal
1.2 The ecumenical pioneers
1.3 Relevant evidence from previous research theses in British charismatic renewal
1.4 The Emergence of the main Research Question
1.5 Methodology
1.6 Division and Unity from the same Spirit?
CHAPTER 2 Setting the Ecumenical Scene in England p40
2.1 The failure of the first Anglican-Methodist scheme
2.2 Two Evangelical approaches to unity: (1) John Wenham
2.3 (2) Nottingham 1977 – Anglican Evangelicals on Unity.
2.4 The Inter-Church process 1984 to 1987.
2.5 The authority of Swanwick
2.6 Charismatics engaging with official ecumenism
2.7 Summary
CHAPTER 3 Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal p60
3.1 The Beginnings after 1967
3.1.1 Early authors
3.1.2. The attenuation of the charismata in the Patristic age
3.1.3 Prayer groups and Catholic culture:
3.2 The Contemporary Picture
3.2.1 Pilot fieldwork interviews
3.2.2 Two Catholic Renewal Masses
3.2.3 CCR Headquarters and Good News
3.2.4 The Pivot of Spirit Baptism in Good News
3.3 Catholics and the Alpha Course
3.4 The movement considers its future
3.4.1 Charles Whitehead outlines the future for CCR
3.4.2 A charismatic Bishop’s response
3.4.3 The Newman Consultation
3.4.4 Summary
CHAPTER 4 The World Council of Churches and Koinonia Ecclesiology p118
4.1 Defining Koinonia
4.2 Koinonia in the life of the churches
4.3 Disappointed Reaction to Canberra
4.4 Hollenweger’s Ecumenical Vision for the WCC
4.5 David J. Du Plessis
4.6 Fifth World Conference on Faith and Order
4.7 Describing an interim location for worldwide unity.
4.8 Santer on practical ecumenical issues
4.9 Summary
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CHAPTER 5 Baptism and Episcopacy p133
Baptism
5.1.1 Baptism: the beginning of Christian life?
5.1.2 ‘Sacramentalised but not Evangelised’
5.1.3 The Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue
5.1.4 A fresh theology of baptism
5.1.5 Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry
5.1.6 Summary
Episcopacy
5.2.1 A recent book on Church of England ecumenism
5.2.2. The Historic Episcopal issue
5.2.3 The transmission of ecclesial authority
5.2.4 Charism and Institution
5.2.5 The Contemporary Church
5.2.6 The significance of the Porvoo Agreement
5.2.7 Restorationism
5.2.8 The ministries of Ephesians Chapter 4
5.2.9 Apostles of Unity
5.2.10 Ecumenical Episcope in Milton Keynes
5.2.11 Summary
CHAPTER 6 Relating Experience to Scripture p176
6.1 The theological shift of individuals
6.2 The Spirit as Revelator.
6.3 A place for the ‘Liberal’ theologian
6.4 The demonic in congregational division
6.5 Scriptural authority from the Roman Catholic side.
6.6 Revisiting scripture on some issues of ecumenical relevance
6.7 Hocken’s exegesis on Messianic Judaism
6.8 The visibility of the Church.
6.9 The Transfiguration motif
6.10 Colin Buchanan
6.11 Summary
CHAPTER 7 Reconstructing ecumenical theology: towards a closer visible unity
p232
7.1 The indelible ecumenical root of Pentecostalism
7.2 The decline of the charismatic ecumenical vision
7.3 Official Ecumenical pessimism
7.4 From vision and leadership to closer unity
7.5 Summary of main research findings
Appendices p249
1. Ecumenical Dialogues in process in 1996
2. 1977 Nottingham Conference of Anglican Evangelicals: statement on the Roman Catholic Church.
3. On the unique place of England in Ecumenism
4. Ecumenical Linkages in Good News
5. The text of the Porvoo Declaration
6. Material from the Orthodox Churches
7. Roman Catholic fieldwork: a.Pilot fieldwork questionnaire b. Interviews with Roman Catholic
Charismatics. c Two Renewal masses.
8. Indiscriminate Infant Baptism
Bibliography p275
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Acronymns and Abbreviations used in this study
ARM Anglican Renewal Ministries
BCC British Council of Churches
BEM Baptism Eucharist and Ministry, WCC ‘Lima’ Document
CCR Catholic Charismatic Renewal
CCU Council for Christian Unity of the General Synod of the Church of England
CPD (or VPD) Catholic (Vatican) / Pentecostal dialogue
CTBI (CCBI) Churches Together in Britain and Ireland (Council of Churches for BI)
CTBO Called to be One Process.
CTE Churches Together in England
FGBMFI Full Gospel Businessmen’s Fellowship International
GS General Synod of the Church of England
HTB Holy Trinity Church Brompton, London
LEP Local Ecumenical Partnership
MD Malines Document 2
Meissen The Meissen Agreement between the Church of England and the German
Evangelical Churches
NSC National Service Committee for Catholic Charismatic Renewal
Porvoo The Porvoo Agreement of the Nordic and Baltic Churches
WCC World Council of Churches
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Defining the terms: Ecumenism and Charismatic Renewal
Does Charismatic Renewal have an inherent ecumenical property, and if it does, how
can that property be defined and its effects measured? If in measuring such an
ecumenical property of charismatic renewal it is found to be significant, can it be also
demonstrated that it has significance for the ‘mainline’ or official ecumenical
movement. This thesis sets out to explore this important issue.
By ‘charismatic renewal’ is meant that particular movement of the Holy Spirit, which
began around 1960, which was first known as ‘neo-Pentecostalism’. Its distinguishing
location was the older traditional denominations; its distinguishing experience ‘Spirit
Baptism’ and the spiritual gifts, which were a feature of the original Pentecostalism.
The words ‘ecumenism’, and its adjective ‘ecumenical’, are common in ecclesiastical
parlance, and both words have attracted a variety of meanings and nuances. In some
contexts the word ‘ecumenism’ may be used in a rather lightweight sense to describe
any activity that reaches out beyond the boundary of a single Christian denomination.
In other contexts ‘ecumenism’ may be used to convey something close to its original
meaning of ‘oikoumene’, the whole-inhabited world or the global context. There is a
strong prima facie expectation that Charismatic Renewal ought to be ecumenical. It
has become commonplace to refer to the original Pentecostal Movement emanating
from the Azusa Street, Los Angeles, revival of 1906 with the Black Leader William
Joseph Seymour as ‘ecumenical’ in the sense of it being multi-ethnic and socially
integrating. Hollenweger describes the range as: ‘white bishops and black workers,
men and women, Asians and Mexicans, white professors and black laundry-women’
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(1997:20). Harvey Cox, in his study of Pentecostal Spirituality (1996:16-17), notes
Pentecostalism’s rise from a small sect to ‘a major, world-wide religious movement’.
He sees this as an ecumenical feature, referring in particular to the ability of
Pentecostalism to root itself across cultures and denominations.
The Roman Catholic Charismatic group meeting at Malines in May 1974 officially
declared: ‘It is obvious that the Charismatic Renewal is ecumenical by its very
nature.’(Suenens 1978:113)
As recently as 2006, J.K. Asamoah-Gyadu in a paper for the summer Conference of
the Lutheran Ecumenical Institute of Strasbourg, referred to Pentecostalism as
‘inherently ecumenical and this in spite of its seeming inability to work very
transparently with existing ecumenical communions.’ Later he has: ‘There is an
inseparable relationship between Pentecostal spirituality and the ecumenical
orientation of Pentecostalism as a distinct stream of Christian expression.’(2006:1)
And of course, there is the primal New Testament inference, that if Pentecostalism is
understood as a movement of, and rooted in the third person of the Trinity, then
pneumatologically, it ought to be ecumenical by derivation from Ephesians chapter 4
v 3, where the Spirit is described as rooting the unity of the Body. In the latest report
of the Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue there is: ‘(the Spirit) forms and
unites the Church...’(Anglican Communion 2006:36, para 40). Is not therefore the
ecumenical dimension of the charismatic renewal something to be expected at the
outset? Is it a return to the beginning of the church on the Day of Pentecost?
1.2 The Ecumenical Pioneers
There is nothing new in noting the assertion that Charismatic Renewal, and
Pentecostalism before it, displayed an ecumenical dimension. But until the coming of
charismatic renewal into the historic denominations in the 1960s, the Pentecostal
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movement had largely inhabited a separate ecclesiastical world. How aware was it of
its own ecumenical significance?
It was noted in the pioneer Seymour. Hollenweger labels Seymour a ‘black
ecumenist, in the oral Afro-American culture…’(1997:397) He also mentions several
other key examples of early ecumenical Pentecostal pioneers particularly Jonathan
Paul (1853-1931), Louis Dalliere (1887-1976) Alexander Boddy (1854-1930) all of
whom demonstrated in different ways that Pentecostal experience had an ecumenical
instinct (1997:334f). But Gerrit Roelof Polman (1868-1932) serves to make an
interesting example of how the ecumenical promise ‘gets stuck’. The Dutch scholar
and first generation Pentecostal minister Van der Laan, writing of Polman back in
1919, quotes him as saying: ‘The purpose of the Pentecostal revival is not to build up
a church, but to build up all churches.’ (Hollenweger :345) Van der Laan goes on to
say that in the end, Polman failed as an ecumenist because: ‘Polman’s ecumenical
heart collided with his fundamentalistic Evangelical head. His Spirit Baptism had
generated a loving attitude towards all fellow Christians, but he was unable to fully
assimilate this ecumenical experience into his thinking’ (Sectarian Against His Will:
in Hollenweger:346) Hollenweger asks how the early ecumenical spirit of Dutch
Pentecostalism could be recaptured. Van der Laan sees a need to accept conflict as a
necessary context for innovative theology.
This requires an ecclesiology in which pluriformity becomes a hallmark of the
church, a dynamic pluriformity that allows room for conflict and change. It calls for
a theology that refuses to make its own position normative; a theology that partakes
in an intercultural learning process. A true Pentecostal/Charismatic theology should
welcome conflicts as being essential for the continuous work of the Spirit. Conflicts
provide the context in which the charismata operate. (Sectarian Against His Will.
306f)
From the beginning of the Pentecostal movement it is possible to trace the ecumenical
instinct but when that impinges upon received traditions it brings the creator Spirit
into inevitable creative conflict. It creates a tension for the pioneering individual like
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Polman who may be unable to resolve the tension. There have been several over the
twentieth century who have sensed in their early leadings of the Spirit an urge towards
a more integrated church and yet somehow cannot run all the way with it. A stalling
process or reversion then sets in, in which the pioneer reaches back to his theological
base for security and remains there. (see discussion in chapter 5) So what seems to be
required in charismatic ecumenists is a provisionality in theology, and an ongoing
fluidity of theological reflection. This fluidity, coupled to the owning of a common
spiritual experience, is the linking theory, which runs through the present study.
1.3 Relevant evidence from previous research theses in British Charismatic
renewal.
Dunn (1970) wrote probably the earliest thesis of the modern era on charismatic
renewal, Baptism in the Holy Spirit. His purpose was an in-depth theological analysis
of Christian initiation, evoked by the term ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’, at precisely
the time when that term was new and controversial. He concluded by disagreeing
with the fundamental two-stage initiation of classical Pentecostalism, conversion and
subsequent baptism in the spirit, and substituted conversion-initiation as a wholesome
package focused around a one stage initiation.
Quebedeaux (1975) probably wrote the first historical-theological account of the
origins of charismatic renewal in the United States and Great Britain covering the
whole period from 1901-1974.
Mather (1980) provided in her thesis a more concentrated historical-theological
overview of the development of the Charismatic Movement in Britain from 1964 up
to1980.
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