Religious identity through religious experience
Charismatic movement: the experience of gifts of the Spirit in churches other than Pentecostal
denominations from the 1960s to today.
What does charismatic mean?
Comes from the greek ‘charismata’ means ‘gifts of grace’.
This is the word the Apostle Paul uses to refer to special qualities that Christians receive
through the Holy Spirit.
There are several lists of ‘spiritual gifts’ in the New Testament. The gifts are not standardised
over all passages, attention was being drawn to the numerous ways to express God’s grace.
In the early centuries of the Church there was development of formal leadership and very little
evidence of miraculous gifts in regular practice in Christian worship.
The most extensive discussion is in 1 Corinthians 12-14.
Paul aims to make the Church aware of the true purpose of spiritual gifts: to strengthen the body
of Christ. The gifts aren’t supposed to make an individualistic spiritual ‘high’ they are to be
shared with others so everyone can experience a deeper relationship with God.
Paul discouraged a chaotic practice of the gifts where there were multiple and simultaneous
display of tongues or prophecies, so that all an observer would hear is a confusing babble of
noise.
E.g. He thought tongues would be better for private worship, or used in public worship in such a
way everyone could understand.
Pentecostalism
Is the early twentieth-century movement that believed the miraculous events in the Book of
Acts, with its outpouring of the spirits on the Apostles, mass conversions and miracles of healing
shouldn’t be seen as a past age, but as a present reality.
This movements origins have been traced to a temporary Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, led
by preacher Charles Fox Parham.
Parham believed that the Holy Spirit was going to descend in a special way on the Church. He
asked his students to read the book of Acts and to pray that they would receive the Holy Spirit.
One of his students Agnes Ozman is reported to have spoken in tongues and soon after many
students experience what they believed to be the gifts of the spirit.
An itinerant African-American preacher, William James Seymour, also followed Parham’s
ministry.
In 1906 Seymour moved to Los Angeles and led a small prayer group which rapidly grew as a
Charismatic movement: the experience of gifts of the Spirit in churches other than Pentecostal
denominations from the 1960s to today.
What does charismatic mean?
Comes from the greek ‘charismata’ means ‘gifts of grace’.
This is the word the Apostle Paul uses to refer to special qualities that Christians receive
through the Holy Spirit.
There are several lists of ‘spiritual gifts’ in the New Testament. The gifts are not standardised
over all passages, attention was being drawn to the numerous ways to express God’s grace.
In the early centuries of the Church there was development of formal leadership and very little
evidence of miraculous gifts in regular practice in Christian worship.
The most extensive discussion is in 1 Corinthians 12-14.
Paul aims to make the Church aware of the true purpose of spiritual gifts: to strengthen the body
of Christ. The gifts aren’t supposed to make an individualistic spiritual ‘high’ they are to be
shared with others so everyone can experience a deeper relationship with God.
Paul discouraged a chaotic practice of the gifts where there were multiple and simultaneous
display of tongues or prophecies, so that all an observer would hear is a confusing babble of
noise.
E.g. He thought tongues would be better for private worship, or used in public worship in such a
way everyone could understand.
Pentecostalism
Is the early twentieth-century movement that believed the miraculous events in the Book of
Acts, with its outpouring of the spirits on the Apostles, mass conversions and miracles of healing
shouldn’t be seen as a past age, but as a present reality.
This movements origins have been traced to a temporary Bible school in Topeka, Kansas, led
by preacher Charles Fox Parham.
Parham believed that the Holy Spirit was going to descend in a special way on the Church. He
asked his students to read the book of Acts and to pray that they would receive the Holy Spirit.
One of his students Agnes Ozman is reported to have spoken in tongues and soon after many
students experience what they believed to be the gifts of the spirit.
An itinerant African-American preacher, William James Seymour, also followed Parham’s
ministry.
In 1906 Seymour moved to Los Angeles and led a small prayer group which rapidly grew as a
