Pentecostal Reality Construction
An Inseparable Trinity
Modernization where secular replaces sacred lenses
Secularization provides alternative “prime movers.”
Reason is the queen and science her handmaiden
The Dilemma of Modernity
The inseparable trinity creates an iron cage in capable of providing individuals with meaningful social confirmation of their sense of reality
An Anthropological Protest Against Modernity
“A celebration in our generation that God has not forgotten His promises, that he is, in fact and deed, a loving God, totally committed to work in evidential ways through the lives of those committed to him.”
Richard Quebedeaux
The Construction of Charismatic Reality
Affective action replaces rational action
Encounter of reality is the initial framework or builder for constructing a worldview.
Left brain rationality is countered with right brain affections
“Once I was blind, but now I see” is central not peripheral.
Affective Action Yields a Worldview
Where it is central (normal) to experience the sacred in the midst of a profane world
Where it is central (normal) to expect divine guidance for personal and institutional guidance
Adaptive structures that refuse to immortalize tradition and the past
Personal participation by a majority of adherents in the “charismata”—catalyzing force of the movement.
Poloma’s Charex Index
Pentecostal-Charismatic Reality Construction as seen: Frequency of praying in tongues Receiving definite answers to prayer requests Divine inspiration to perform specific actions Giving prophecies at church services Giving prophecies privately to another person Being slain in the Spirit Receiving personal confirmation of Scriptural truth An anomaly that is helpful (p. 29) Positive relationship between education and the
Charex Index
The Crossroads
Transcendency depravation vs. the iron cage
Pentecostal identity is linked to what shapes the framework of its worldview The world view’s mantra:
It is not by might…
Ye shall receive power…
The Assumptions in Conflict
Secularization is inevitable Vibrant religious experience is inevitably
routinized by secular (non-divine) explanations of life
But re-sacralization is just as inevitable As religious vibrancy dims spiritual
hunger naturally arises
Charisma and Institutional Dilemmas
Thomas O’Dea Institutional Dilemmas The tendency for religious groups to move
from a prophetic to priestly stance
From a free flow of charismata to its routinization
The Dilemma of Mixed Motivation
From empowered call to professional career
Original motivation loses out to needs for prestige, drive for power and control
Drive for respectability and order
Case Study of professionalization of clergy and the role of women
The Dilemma of Administrative Order
The tendency of a structure to over-elaborate itself and make the organization an unwieldy machine
Case Study—the role of pastors navigating denominational structure and local church autonomy
Dilemma of Power
A temptation to compromise the “potential for influence”
A subtle temptation for religious leaders to avail themselves of close relation between religion and general cultural values in order to reinforce the position of religion itself
Accommodation and acculturation results
Case Study
When a religious organization becomes institutionalized and accommodates itself to the society and its values, faith is supplemented by public opinion and current ideas of respectability.
The Dilemma of Delimitation
There is a pit on either side of the charismatic road. One waters down the original message
and the other has a rigid position that kills the Spirit.
Case Study—is the pastor’s struggle to embody the tension between charisma and institutionalization?
The Dilemma of Symbols
The problem of trying to objectify the original charismatic moment in stable forms and procedures without routinization
Case Studies Praise and worshipGlossolalia in corporate worship Prophecy in corporate worship Preachers as prophets Altar services Testimony and witness
A Prognosis by Poloma
Social Functions of Conflict Positive if it does not question the basis of
relationship Negative if it attacks a core value
Question: Does the rapid growth of a movement and its institutionally “unconverted converts” create a threat or a new infusion of life?
Charisma and Dogma
A danger that the rigidity of fundamentalism will overpower the empowerment of charisma
The lack of theological critique of foundation which acknowledges the way Pentecostal identity has been shaped.
The creation of a “this is that” theology
Charisma Vs. Pragmatism
Does the success of growth, left uncritiqued, inevitably lead to institutional processes that can guarantee success in a less messy way?
The Ideal Real Gap
Accommodation wears away at the ideal, shifting Pentecostal ideology closer to modernity
The religious rhetoric of the ideal remains, but its context is diminished.
Wheat and Tares
An ambiguity difficult to navigate as the dilemmas become more obvious
But to abandon dogmatism for relativism, the supernatural for the natural, the ideal for real, or ambiguity for rigidity would destroy the distinctive identity of Pentecostal ideology
The Key Player
The guardians of charisma are not so much the upper-echelon leaders of a denomination as local congregations headed by charismatic pastors.
Look to Pentecost as an Historical Event for Biblical
Insight into Pentecostal Identity
Pentecost Serves as a Compass:
Theologically—it orients us to the inner logic of God’s incarnational manifestation in the world through Jesus Christ
Experientially—it orients us to the eschatological vision of redemption for the world through Christ’s presence and coming
Theologically—the Holy Spirit reveals to us the inner life of God the Father of Jesus and Jesus as the Son of the Father To receive the Spirit is to receive the mind
of Christ (1 Cor. 1:10, 16)Experientially—Pentecost is the
beginning point for our own relationship with God through Christ, for apart from the Spirit, we are alienated from the life of God (Rom. 8:9)
Pentecost Serves as a Compass:
Harry Boer—Reformed Theologian
Pentecost not the Great Commission was a conscious ingredient in the mission thinking of the Early Church
The mission imperative of the church is not centered on obedience to the Great Commission but on the empowerment of Pentecost.
The nature of the church is a continuation of the mission of Christ through the power of the Spirit.
The Great Commission becomes a command that is heard by the church already empowered by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Pentecost Determines the Nature of the Church
When the Spirit poured out at Pentecost is directly related to the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, Pentecost forms the basis for the nature of the Church.