Agnes Sanford
I'm reading Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer's Extraordinary Knowing (which I'll write about in full later, because I'm loving it), but a name she threw out at random in the chapter on healing struck me as familiar in a Pentecostal/Charismatic context.
Yep, there's a link there all right, and I think it's a big one. Agnes Sanford (or at least her Inner Healing technique) is associated with the Vineyard Christian Fellowship (with which I'm very familiar, mostly in a good way), with not a little controversy attached. She also apparently was a prime mover in the Charismatic wave of the 1950s-60s (as opposed to the Pentecostal wave earlier in the century). Her book, The Healing Light, was a how-to manual.
Most of the controversy in evangelical Christian circles that seems to be associated with her centres around her being 'too New Age'. And given this description I guess I can see why:
Agnes Sanford began a healing ministry in the '40s; received Pentecostal exp., in '53/54; pioneered teaching for the "healing of memories"; part of the "positive thinking" movement she presented God's healing work as following the laws of nature and positive thinking; she believed that God could work through "good" spirits as well as the spirits of people who have died; she taught that God used some mediums to heal; she believed that angels and dead saints could "speak and act in and through us."
What fascinates me most, though, looking at this now, is that she represents a line drawn right down the middle of the cluster of Spiritualist, New Thought and Pentecostal phenomena that I've been following from the Fox sisters and Mary Baker Eddy, through Azusa Street and taking in Jungian psychology, Walter Russell, A Course In Miracles and Star Gate remote viewing along the way.
I've been looking for a person who would intersect the set. She looks like being that, as well as a huge historical influence on the Charismatic movement. Interesting indeed.
August 8th, 2007 - 22:15
Leviticus 19:31 Regard not them that have familiar spirits
August 9th, 2007 - 22:32
cautious: Yes, that passage and a few others like it from the Jewish canon would probably be the main objection evangelical Christians would have against anything that appears to involve communication with the spirits of the dead. Even though the Catholic church has a long tradition of accepting saints as actively involved in the world and even responding to prayers, most Protestant denominations (if their worldview includes the supernatural at all) consider the mere thought of such practices an invitation for outside evil forces.
I guess I would have been in that category until fairly recently. I certainly didn’t particularly want to read the Stephen Experience book until I met the people involved first-hand and they appeared to be reasonably sane and not particularly demonic.
What I find more interesting is the content of some of the messages purporting to come from dead saints. At least the ones I’ve read (which is to say, the subset which have so far passed my internal ‘smell test’, which is not all of them) appear to be describing a spiritual worldview that highly correlates with what Jesus teaches in the Gospels and what Christian contemplatives report.
When Paul says (speaking of freedom, and against those who attempted to impose Mosaic law on the Christian church) ‘if I or an angel from heaven teach a different gospel let him be accursed’ — to me this suggests that the important factor in judging the acceptability of a spiritual teaching is its *content*, not its apparent source. If a messenger from an unknown country teaches *the same gospel* to the one Jesus taught, dare we throw them out?
(And what is the gospel Jesus taught? Love the One God and love your neighbour as yourself, is my reading of it.)
August 10th, 2007 - 16:24
No matter what anyone considers, it looks to me like God has made up His mind on the subject of communication with the dead!
August 10th, 2007 - 23:01
http://www.billcloud.org a word from bill might be of interest, at least to me after morning reading of joshua 22:5
August 26th, 2007 - 21:57
Just one more thing, I know I’m not a Catholic, but beyond that, if you asked me what an evangelical Christian is, I’d probably go blank and after that would not really know what to say either. I don’t like all these categories. I am a Christian. I look for Jesus’ leading, that is IT.
August 27th, 2007 - 14:19
“if you asked me what an evangelical Christian is, I’d probably go blank and after that would not really know what to say either. I don’t like all these categories.”
I appreciate that you don’t think words like ‘evangelical’ are useful. However, sociological categories do exist, whether or not one likes them, and they make it very useful to talk about and navigate around the world. This is one of the things that I’ve had to learn – a whole language, practically, which was not taught to me in the church culture you and I grew up in. Lack of linguistic and historical knowledge will not stop us from having a relationship with God – Who transcends our categories anyway – but it’s not actually a positive *good*. One should not be *proud* of not knowing a surrounding culture’s words for things unless one’s goal is to isolate oneself from that culture. If you value communication and understanding, on the other hand, learning words is important.
There are many different interpretations of the Christian faith, which is why knowing which flavour one aligns with the most is quite useful. The other thing is that all the various divisions and factions within Christianity are the result of historical events, and if you don’t know the history then you are at a disadvantage if the same types of crises reoccur. Not that history repeats itself exactly, but it is very, very important to get an understanding and awareness of the general sweep of things, and realise that our little piece of time is not the Last Days or the First.
I would recommend Wikipedia’s article Evangelicalism as an introduction.
As a rough guideline, at the moment, ‘Evangelical’ Christianity is pretty much a subset of ‘Protestantism’, and increasingly linked with Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement. The Baptist, Vineyard and various home churches would be near the core of this sector. Evangelical Christians in the United States tend to be politically conservative (itself a complicated word). In New Zealand, however, there are a few evangelical churches which would have either a centrist or a strongly Labour-Green-socialist political slant.
If you consider yourself a ‘Bible-believing Christian’ then you are likely evangelical. If you believe in the ‘power of the Holy Spirit’ then you are likely Pentecostal (if you are in one of the historical ‘Pentecostal’ denominations such as Assemblies of God or Elim) or Charismatic (if you are in one of the ‘mainline’ denominations). But a lot of cross-denominational blurring has occurred due to Christian literature and music, and boundaries which formerly were huge are now melting. I think this is mostly a good thing, as many of the boundaries were set up in the first place out of anger and bitterness rather than principled disagreement. And even those who seriously disagree on matters of worship and politics can still cooperate on those things where they do agree.
One of the ‘big lies’ that we were taught (and which is still being taught today) is that there is only ever one kind of Christian, and that if you want to follow Jesus you have to also buy into a certain very specific package of social and political beliefs. While I believe there are some things binding on all Christian believers, there is actually a far wider spectrum of beliefs you can have and still be a genuine Christian.
August 27th, 2007 - 20:36
Thanks for all this, but can you give me one Word out of the mouth of Jesus, that had anything to do with secular politics ???
August 27th, 2007 - 21:47
And may I say, Nate, that one has to be CAUTIOUS not to throw a wrong light on certain places, because such and such was done in another place. As for the church that you and I shared at one stage, {and I did not grow up in it}, but heard probably just about every single message preached from 1980 to 1989 I cannot remember one word on politics. Believe me, I would have cringed.
August 27th, 2007 - 21:57
When it comes to sociological categories, what would you apply to the very first Christians???
August 29th, 2007 - 00:49
“Thanks for all this, but can you give me one Word out of the mouth of Jesus, that had anything to do with secular politics ???”
‘Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves’ comes to mind. And of course ‘render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God’s’. It’s important to know the difference – if we pay no attention to the environment around us, we can fall prey to the belief that everything that happens inside the Church is from God’s domain rather than Caesar’s. That doesn’t necessarily mean we should take sides in any particular political arena – but I think there are some issues is important to come to one’s own conclusions on rather than being led into following the consensus of the crowd, whether it’s a secular crowd or a religious crowd.
“And may I say, Nate, that one has to be CAUTIOUS not to throw a wrong light on certain places, because such and such was done in another place.”
I’m not sure how to take that. To me it is vitally important that we stand guard against abuse that is done in the name of religion, because there are huge abuses being done in the name of Jesus right now. That abuses were done ‘in one place’ is one thing – and I can forgive the past. But I will NOT stand idly by while the SAME abuses are repeated in other places. There is no such thing as a ‘wrong light’ to me. If it’s light – if it’s truth – it’s right. I’m not afraid of confronting my past honestly and exposing all my beliefs and upbringing to the light of truth as best as I now understand it.
In view of current world events – and I’m talking here about the constant talk about a ‘clash of civilisations’ and a ‘religious war between Christendom and Islam’ – I find I need more than ever to examine what my religious faith is, and sweep out all the scary things inside me that want to hide from the light. I cannot afford to have a Christian faith that is unexamined and that contains doctrines I can’t in good conscience justify.
If there are ‘certain places’ in our religion that we feel uncomfortable ‘throwing a wrong light on’, then perhaps those are the very ones that NEED most urgently to be examined, now while there is still time – before a religious war consumes the world and battle lines start getting drawn which will be hard to cross later.
“I cannot remember one word on politics. Believe me, I would have cringed. ”
Just because you did not hear ‘one word on politics’ doesn’t mean a political message wasn’t preached. Some of the most powerful political messages are the ones that disguise themselves in nonpolitical language, such as ‘just plain common sense’ or ‘what every right-thinking / Bible-believing person knows’. These ideas are the ones we particularly need to examine to see if they really come from God or if we’ve absorbed them from a religious subculture.
The particular religious stream we came though *did* have a political stance, we were just unaware of it because it was never debated in those terms. It was generally right-wing, though with some left-wing overtones – we didn’t believe in giving to the poor, as I recall, because ‘that was the Government’s job’. Making money was considered a sign of God’s blessing, and we were very comfortable with private ownership of property – large amounts of very expensive property, in fact. We were staunchly against public and especially tertiary education (‘the mind is the Devil’s playground’) and we held strong views about abortion, evolution and sexuality. Like it or not, having controversial opinions on those subjects is a very political act – and many of the ‘Christian’ writers and speakers who have views on those subjects also have a very strong and much wider political agenda that it is important to understand and decide if we accept or not – or if we feel we can accept some parts but not others. We had a fairly right-wing approach to war – although nobody I know served in a war, we celebrated ANZAC Day, claimed war service to be an honourable thing, respected the British Monarchy and we did not talk much at all about peace studies, Vietnam, or Hiroshima. Being involved in any of these things was considered ‘political’, and certainly we’d never be seen dead at a protest march – but being prepared to kill people for the government in a time of war was not ‘political’!
On the other hand, we had a bit of a left-wing/Green slant when it came to the environment, which is quite unusual compared to American right-wing Christianity. We read Rachel Carson in the church school and had a visiting tutor talk about organics and biodynamic agriculture.
But nobody was really *allowed* to talk about politics – or many issues in the wider world – in that church, and I think that is a huge shame. You don’t have to take up swords, but knowing what the factions and options are can be a lifesaver when you come to make major life decisions. Otherwise, you risk all your decisions being made for you, and not by people who necessarily have your or God’s interests at heart.
August 29th, 2007 - 01:15
“When it comes to sociological categories, what would you apply to the very first Christians???”
That’s what makes reading the Bible fun! It’s all full of this stuff! They were very clearly first-century Roman citizens with roots in occupied Judea, for a start.
In the Gospels alone, several major political factions are identified, which form the backdrop and a large part of the tightrope that Jesus walks in his sayings. There’s the Romans, a ‘secular’ occupying power (but originally called in to stabilise a Jewish civil war after the Maccabees seized power) – a situation very much like that of the Americans in occupied Iraq right now. The Romans were tolerant of the private practice of Jewish religion but did not allow any disrespect of Rome. (Pilate was later recalled to Rome for a massacre; even by Roman standards he got a bit brutal.)
Then there’s the Sadducees, who believed in appeasing the Romans and maintaining a delicate balance of power which prevented the Jewish people from being exterminated. Caiaphas speaks for this party, the voice of compromise and pragmatism, when he says ‘it is better for one man to die for the people’. There’s Herod, the puppet Jewish ruler who tried to buy his way into popular grace by building a big splashy Temple. Against them were the Pharisees – feeling a little like modern-day fundamentalists – who were trying to revive Jewish culture and religion and purge it of the elements they considered sinful. Then there were the Zealots, who we’d call Terrorists or Insurgents today, who just wanted the occupying forces out by any means necessary. They didn’t have suicide bombers but they came close. They would later have their final Alamo stand at Masada. And in the background, the Essenes, of whom Jesus may have been one, who were probably a bit like a cult or commune: secretive, retreating from the world, apt to get lost in rituals, more mystical than the Pharisees but like them probably fairly judgemental of anyone they didn’t think measured up to their standards of ‘holiness’ through separation from everything bad.
How Jesus navigated this religious and political minefield with such wisdom and grace astounds me.
Later on, the tensions between Jewish and non-Jewish Graeco-Roman believers are a huge part of the political dynamics of the Book of Acts and the letters Paul writes. James reads like an anti-capitalist rant against rich merchants who don’t take care of the poor. Revelation is political from beginning to end, warning about the downfall of Rome.
And of course, the Christian story doesn’t stop when the Bible ended and blink on again when Luther or Azusa Street or William Branham pops up. There’s the Church Fathers, and the whole sweep of church history – deeply entwined with European and Middle-East and later African, Asian and Pacific politics. And even as recently as WW2, there’s huge shadows over, for instance, Vatican involvement (or at least blind-eye-turning) in Nazi atrocities, and later, in American-supported Fascist anti-Communist networks such as P2 and Gladio. Or on the light side, various social movements such as the fight against slavery in which Christian activists like William Wilberforce played a key role, or the efforts of the Salvation Army in countering poverty in industrial England. And then there’s grey causes, like Prohibition, which Christians fought fiercely for (often in the same breath as advocating women’s right to vote) and then discovered not to be such a good idea.
Against the backdrop of all this is where we live our lives, where we have to find our own stories and work out what we have inherited from our parents and what God is telling us on our own.
August 29th, 2007 - 01:49
Lord, plant my feet on higher ground!
August 29th, 2007 - 02:24
(deleted by site admin at request of poster)
August 31st, 2007 - 04:51
RE: Comment of Aug. 27 at 2.02 Is that the same person talking as the one on 18.02.07 in24/7 prayer?
August 31st, 2007 - 09:39
RE: August 9. 2007 “And what is the gospel Jesus taught” Now there we have a good question! “You shall love the Lord….” is not the gospel. It is a command. “How about repent and be baptized for the KINGDOM IS AT HAND”?
August 31st, 2007 - 10:04
To be exact on the above: Mt.4:17 Jesus began to preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Acts2:38 Peter: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the Name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” As I learned today, the kingdom consists of the Father and the Son, who are in heaven and the Holy Ghost, who is like the governor on earth.
September 1st, 2007 - 20:28
Reuth: Yes, what I am trying to say here is exactly what I am trying to say in my post on 18 February. We are not reducible to any single political or sociological category, but it is vitally important that we know what those categories are so that we know where we match them and where we don’t. Categories are names; names are words; all words are lies; yet without words we cannot communicate, except via direct spiritual contact, and we’re not very good at telepathy yet (though it does occur).
There are religious orders who take vows of permanent silence, so as not to let the words get in the way. I’m not going to say that’s not a valid path for some. It may well be a useful practice at times. I don’t believe what our church tried to do, in isolating ourselves permanently from society, was a healthy practice at the time when I knew it, though I think it started out, as all bad ideas do, from good impulses.
For me, a very large part of my spiritual journey over the last six years has been to deliberately seek out words, concepts, philosophies, politics, structures, patterns that match even partly the sense of inner intuition I have about what reality is like. I feel like I am assembling a patchwork or kaleidoscope of ideas that gives shape to an otherwise invisible picture.
Does that make any sense to you?
September 2nd, 2007 - 06:16
What do you do once you have a picture? Is it static?Looks to me like your job will never end. Where are you at so far and what is your “sense of inner intuition” And what kind of reality are we talking? Yours, everybody”s?
September 2nd, 2007 - 09:06
No, my ‘picture’ is not static, it is continually growing, but the parts of it that do fit together don’t contradict others. In that sense I’m quite happy to have a job that will never end. At the moment though, what I’m particularly trying to work towards is some kind of loose working philosophy of living in the world, right here and now, because when I found that a lot of the doctrines I had picked up from seventeen years in a closed Pentecostal church and another thirteen in the wider New Zealand Evangelical / Pentecostal world did very much *not* fit together. They not only had gaps and broken bits, they had entire contradictions and jagged edges. Ever since leaving the old church, I had an inner sense of faith that eventually I would make all the broken edges of the jigsaw fit together – that I was waiting for answers to come. But now (and I am talking specifically about the days after 9/11) I felt that the answers I needed had already been provided and that I better start looking for them.
(The kind of contradictions I’m talking about are things like: ‘Christians don’t kill’ vs ‘but Israel and America need nuclear weapons’, ‘we should care for the Earth’ vs ‘but the Greens are the enemies of Christianity’, ‘Christ is not limited to one church or era’ vs ‘we don’t have to know anything about the entire Catholic era of church history, except for Martin Luther’, ‘God wants to work miracles of healing’ vs ‘but it is dangerous to learn too much about miraculous phenomena’, ‘God is the source of all wisdom’ vs ‘but the scientific method doesn’t apply to faith’. And so on.)
It was very definitely a choice to trust my own inner intuition and not let myself be distracted by the surface form of arguments, but by what my ‘gut’ felt. However I believe that the reality I’m finding, to the extent that I can see it, is real for everyone, yes, or I wouldn’t bother to look for it – the concept of ‘a reality that is not real for everyone’ is something alien and outside my mind’s ability to grasp. That doesn’t mean that I necessarily want to impose my idea of what reality is on others by force, because I may well be at least partly wrong. But there are certain parts of the picture so far that it would take a lot to make me give up.
How best to describe what intuition feels like? To me all I can say, and it’s not really correct, but that some writers or books or ideas just seem to have a sort of glow about them. The spiritual ones particularly; there is almost a palpably shining aura around some works. That and a sense of gentleness, a sense of quiet, a sense of space, a sense of being able to breathe freely, and a sort of ‘a-ha!’ feeling like clockwork finally clicking together. Compared to thoughts which feel hurried, pressured, stressed, dark, jagged, incomplete, fake, angry.
It would take a while to detail all the parts in the puzzle so far, and maybe I’ll do that in an upcoming post. My list of links on the right-hand side of this website, particularly ‘Spirituality’, sketches in some of the outlines.
September 2nd, 2007 - 10:15
Let’s subtract of those above quoted 17 years at least the first six. Even though you were a bright kid I cannot imagine that you picked up a lot of doctrine during those first years of your life. If I think of my own religious education from 6-12 I cannot remember anything except that I liked the teacher from7-10. I even went to Sunday school in a little church. Memory of doctrine zero. I did love Jesus however. So don’t you think it would be more correct to talk about 5 years of conscious intake of doctrine?
September 2nd, 2007 - 21:26
The word DOCTRINE according to Encyclopaedia Britannica: THE EXPLICATION AND OFFICIALLY ACCEPTABLE VERSION OF A RELIGIOUS TEACHING. How many doctrines that fit this definition, or which doctrines did you pick up in your first 17 years? “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof,but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth” I understand this to mean right now, that you cannot catch the Spirit and put it in a box and make a doctrine out of it. I have to say, I have been to a number of places and of course heard plenty on radio and tv over the years, I can’t really think of any preaching that was more spiritually direct and doctrine free than what we had. I am just talking about the preaching here. And I also have to say, that I desperately miss it.
September 2nd, 2007 - 23:27
“So don’t you think it would be more correct to talk about 5 years of conscious intake of doctrine?”
What makes you think intake of doctrine is a primarily conscious process?
September 3rd, 2007 - 00:03
“I have to say, I have been to a number of places and of course heard plenty on radio and tv over the years, I can’t really think of any preaching that was more spiritually direct and doctrine free than what we had.”
What exactly do you mean by “doctrine free”? I can only parse that as “content free” or “belief free”, which is not a good thing.
There were a lot of doctrines that we believed as a church, but as with politics, we didn’t discuss them. That didn’t mean they were there. We just sort of absorbed them subliminally. Those kind of teachings, rather than the ones that are clearly and consciously laid out and named, are the ones I find that are hardest to sift through and sort out afterwards.
My impression of our church doctrines is a mix of: Exclusive Brethren-like emphasis on separation from “the World”, defined as any organisation not under the control of the church leader; total abstinence from alcohol or presence in bars or clubs; strict regulation of relations between the sexes, no dancing, no unsupervised dating, marriages requiring the consent of parents and the church leader; strict regulation of dress (hats or scarves for women, long trousers for men, no bright colours); no makeup; Pentecostal style ‘baptism in the Holy Spirit’, speaking in tongues, and ‘tarrying’ prayer meetings; prayer for healing (including praying over handkerchiefs for absent members); anticipation of a coming ‘revival’ (expected as 1940s-style revival crusade); fear of a coming one-world government, Mark of the Beast, Rapture; strong belief in a one-strong-man style of church government (the Pastor, the Lord’s Annointed) and a hand-picked team of ‘elders’ – no voting or any other democratic church governance; avoidance of all other church denominations as backslidden, deceived, abandoned by God, or ‘not having the light we have’; avoidance of involvement in politics, civil society or any kind of non-church-based, non-business organisation; small emphasis on world missions but no participation in any inter-church missions groups; one-to-one street evangelism (‘personal work’) as the primary form of church growth, and personal ‘sinner’s prayer of repentance’ conversion moment expected even for second-generation church members; strong discouragement of tertiary education or any form of advanced knowledge or education that ‘could lead to pride’; reliance on the King James Version of the Bible as the only ‘correct’ translation, avoidance of any more recent translations such as Good News or NIV; use of selected hymns and choruses, mostly from the nineteenth century, no Christian music after the 1950s; belief that salvation consists largely in ‘going to Heaven when you die’ but also in the manifestation of miracles in everyday life; the public reporting of miracles in church meetings (‘testimonies’) as a requirement for Christian life; the lack of reportable miracles being an indication of one’s lack of faith; full-immersion adult water baptism and Holy Communion as the two main sacraments; baptism requiring a personal faith commitment as well as selection from the eldership; Communion only offered to those who have accepted baptism in the denomination; a Trinitarian view of God, Christ and the Holy Spirit; mandatory and total shunning of those excommunicated from the local fellowship.
Would you not call these doctrines?
September 3rd, 2007 - 00:27
An important thing to me is that all those doctrines I quoted didn’t just spring into being from thin air – they are each the product of various separate church traditions, several genuinely miraculous waves of the Holy Spirit, and bitter arguments and disputes. Our church was a hybrid, formed at the intersection of several movements: a huge influence was Smith Wigglesworth‘s healing evangelism tour of New Zealand in the 1920s and the controversy and disputes between denominations that resulted; later, the healing/prophetic ministry of William Branham in the 1950s; at some point I am sure that there must have been a connection of some kind with the Exclusive Brethren in New Zealand, because the ritual phrases that we used to use to introduce the offering (‘let us take up a freewill love offering toward the expense of our Lord’s work’) and Communion (‘now let us partake of the emblems’) are ones I have never heard elsewhere but have strong resonances with those described in Ngaire Thomas’s Behind Closed Doors (a book I highly recommend). But I can’t be certain yet whether there were actual links between us and the NZ EBs, or whether both groups just shared similar liturgical traditions and resources from whatever faction(s) they broke away from originally.
I would seriously like to research our church history, as I think tracking down these kind of influences is important. The eldership didn’t like to talk much about our history – I think because there were various painful splits and disputs which did not always reflect well on the Pastor. So much history was suppressed and wilfully erased, and when we lose our history (as George Orwell argued powerfully in Animal Farm and 1984) we lose a sense of who we are as people – our whakapapa.
September 3rd, 2007 - 00:54
These two articles from Christian Family Church and Wikipedia are very interesting to me. It looks like Wigglesworth was in fact the man who birthed the ‘Pentecostal Church of New Zealand’ (which is now Elim Church). The PCNZ however fragmented into many factions, of which our church was one among many.
The story of our church is the story of the wider PCNZ, from Wigglesworth through New Life to Destiny Church, and I would really, really like to see the full truth of that story told, hiding neither the miracles nor the abuse. Because without understanding this, we don’t understand a huge event that shaped both Christianity and hostility to Christianity in New Zealand society – and one that currently (via Destiny) has strong political ambitions.
As Christians, it’s high time we stopped keeping secrets. Even the dark history has to be aired. We gain nothing from pretending abuse didn’t occur. Those who have been burned and who now distrust all expressions of faith – often with good reason – will only suspect the worst as long as we still have skeletons in the closet.
September 3rd, 2007 - 02:03
Re: “Would you not call these doctrines?” You must have overlooked one sentence, which I extra put in there, because I anticipated what you would say. I said: I can’t really think of any preaching that was more spiritually direct and doctrine free than what we had. I AM JUST TALKING ABOUT THE PREACHING HERE. And after I wrote it I went and got an old tape and listened to it. And I stick with what I said. Scripture interpreted with scripture. No church doctrines, theories, traditions or interpretations,but pure Word. Do you have any old tapes? I suggest B.D.
September 3rd, 2007 - 02:15
RE: “What makes you think that the intake of doctrine is a primarily conscious process?” I guess it does not have to be, but I was referring to the definition of the Enc. Brittanica: THE EXPLICATION or SPELLED OUT VERSION of doctrine in contrast to applied version.
September 3rd, 2007 - 02:59
Personally, I don’t think digging around in the past is that helpful, because you just can never get all the facts together, to get a truthful idea of what really happened. It is nice to get explanations occasionally, which I guess the Lord can give if He thinks they are necessary. “Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before” is probably the most important thing to do.
September 4th, 2007 - 21:39
“Personally, I don’t think digging around in the past is that helpful, because you just can never get all the facts together, to get a truthful idea of what really happened.”
With all due respect, I absolutely disagree with that statement.
We won’t find anything if we deliberately choose not to look. It is important to approach the past in a spirit of , but I don’t agree that “you can never get all the facts together” or that everyone we might consult must be lying. I have myself talked to several current members of the church, and they’ve told me a lot of background information that has helped explain many things to me.
September 4th, 2007 - 21:51
I still do not understand what you mean by ‘spiritually direct’ and ‘doctrine free’. The word ‘doctrine’ seems to have a very negative connotation to you, which it does not for me. To me it merely means what one believes, practices, and teaches others. You want very much to avoid using it, to the extent that you’ll dig up the Encyclopedia Britannica and quote it at me, which is quite irrelevant to this conversation. Why? Why are you that afraid of me using that little word? Who made you afraid?
The preaching in that church was not telepathic. Information was transmitted as words, words which were invented by other people, other Christian songwriters and preachers. Yes, we believed in the Evangelical and Pentecostal doctrine of the ‘quiet time’, of ‘wrestling with God’ and obtaining direct revelation from Scripture, all the time and every time, without fail. But that we believed this does not mean God was obligated to override all the laws of the universe to make this belief true, and in fact it was not so. We taught and repeated interpretations and traditions that came from the wider Pentecostal movement, from teachers such as Wigglesworth and Branham. Occasionally there may have been flashes of true revelation on top of this, or to the side. But the substance of what was taught was inherited from others.
What do you understand the message of the preaching to have been? And do you think it was in line with what we actually believed and did?
September 6th, 2007 - 23:36
I’ve been doing some reading, and am continuing to. For a little bit of historical context, this online history of the Assemblies of God in New Zealand is interesting. It’s the first Pentecostal Church of New Zealand related document I’ve found so far that specifically mentions the Wilson brothers, and which links in British Israel teaching to the ECC cluster (though I remember my mother talking about that). Along with that, the New Zealand Pentecostal scene was heavily influenced not only by Wigglesworth in the 1920s and Branham in the 1940s, but W. H. Offiler of the Bethel Temple in Seattle in the 1940s, the ‘Latter Rain’ from Sharon Bible School, Canada in 1948, and the ‘Full Gospel’ evangelist Tommy Hicks in 1957. The PCNZ fragmented multiple times into AOG, ECC, Christian Revival Crusade, Elim, Full Gospel / Indigenous Pentecostal / New Life, and then the Charismatic wave began in the 1960s. At some point in this process the ECC must have ‘dropped out’ and then fragmented even among itself.
The New Zealand Pentecostal scene was notoriously fractured and led by many strong, competing, authoritarian personalities, and fiercely opposed in the pre-WWII years by many of the mainstream denominations. In all this swirl of confusion, there were good ideas mixed with bad. It’s important to be able to look back and take stock, and neither uncritically accept everything, or uncritically reject it all.
September 9th, 2007 - 05:48
Did you listen to any old tape?
September 9th, 2007 - 06:08
Regarding “digging around in the past” . This was meant to be a more general statement in view of your efforts to get together some kind of Weltbild and also to find church history. I never implied anybody would be lying about anything. What I meant was, with all due respect: “It is {to me anyway} a useless endeavor”.
September 9th, 2007 - 06:30
Re my fear of the word doctrine: Go ahead, Nate, say it. Say doctrine! It doesn’t bother me a bit. DOCTRINE DOCTRINE DOCTRINE. I’m not scared at all.
September 9th, 2007 - 06:46
Seriously: On the whole, what was preached was the Word of God, scripture interpreted with scripture. This is what the Lord speaks to you through. You get your own message and if you act on it, is up to you. Why don’t you listen to a tape, like I suggested. Regarding British Israelism,I have to say that was one thing I was uneasy with.
September 9th, 2007 - 10:48
By “useless endeavor” 3 comments further up I mean, that you cannot go into the future by taking things of the past, analyzing them and use them as a navigation tool, because the future is new and different. Jesus said: I am the way. and somewhere else it says, that the Lord works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform {can’t find it right now} What I’m trying to say is, if one is not willing to make steps without an understanding of all the details of past, present, future and whatever, one can miss the way. He is the pilot. It is walking by faith and not by sight.
September 9th, 2007 - 12:26
And “quiet time” I would not call a doctrine,but a discipline or practice. And even if one wants to call it a doctrine, it would not be an evangelical doctrine or pentecostal doctrine because it is as old as Methuselah or rather Enoch, and if you don’t want to go that far back, at least Nathanael was having a quiet time under his fig tree.
September 9th, 2007 - 17:37
PASTORS! Do you have an idea how hard it must be to be a Pastor? How lonely a job? There he is, trying his best, giving his all to a church, and what does he get for it from inside and outside? Mainly criticism, attack and gossip. Like I was trying to say once before, a lot of work and dedication went for example into the school. It would be unfortunate if the ones who benefitted from a school like that did not appreciate, what they had. Anyway, love covers and does not dig up old stuff. How about praying for whoever you think has hurt you and for their family. Bet you anything you’ll be blessed yourself for it.
September 9th, 2007 - 21:12
One last word about my DOCTRINEPHOBIA. I am glad to find myself in good company, because Jesus Himself did not seem to like that word. He uses it only twice. The one time in a negative sense: Matth.: 15:9 and Mark 7:7 “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men”. The other time the same Greek word is used in John7:16 and 17 in the sense of His general teaching, which is of God. [ John 6:45 and they shall all be taught of God]
September 9th, 2007 - 21:21
P.S.: Overlooked Rev.2:14,15 and 24. Again the word doctrine is used in a negative connection.
September 9th, 2007 - 22:28
Thanks for replying, Cautious/Reuth. I do appreciate this conversation, even if I come across a little confrontational at times. And I bear no personal ill-will to the people who I nevertheless believe to have lived and taught serious error. God heals all wounds, and love fills the gaps. And yet I will adamantly continue to stand by the faith and sanity that I feel I had to wrestle angels (and get my arm wrenched) to come to, often ‘despite’ rather than ‘because of’ my experience of Pentecostal religion.
“Did you listen to any old tape?”
No, and I say that without apology. I neither enjoyed nor agreed with the sermons when I heard them the first time. I have little enthusiasm for repeating the process, even with the distance of time. Even reading about the history of the movement at an arm’s remove has been an emotionally wracking process.
I think you will find a similar reaction from the people who were members of that church, even the ones who attend its new and more relaxed version. It’s been over seventeen years for me and – even though I still keep in touch and am on good terms with those who remained and didn’t flee into a splinter cult – many of us are still healing emotional wounds incurred there.
(I lost a classmate and a good friend to that splinter cult. To this day she still hasn’t checked in with any of us that I know of. The rest of us were a bit luckier, but from what I heard last week the guys of the class of ’77 still haven’t got married. Part of our soul, our self-esteem and our sexuality, was sucked away, I think. We got the triple-strength dose because we were born in the system and were beta-testers of that school before the bugs were sorted out. And I say that knowing full well that many people sacrificed much and gave much love to create that school. And the school has survived and transformed itself since those days. But the fact remains, that good intentions do not necessarily amount to good results.)
I would, though, like to think that some of those old tapes have been preserved, so I can listen to a few once I feel emotionally stronger. Heck, if you’ve got an MP3, I could probably stand to listen to one now. It would be a gruelling event for me but I have friends in both Charismatic and Anglican circles who could support me, and I would actually be interested to get their reactions.
“On the whole, what was preached was the Word of God, scripture interpreted with scripture.”
You keep saying that, and I know it is a core belief in the Pentecostal world that merely quoting Scripture without wider context is sufficient to interpret it correctly (and that quoting Scripture on its own automatically frees one from any prior interpretative grid), but I have not yet seen a Pentecostal use of the Bible which does not have a preconceived theology lurking at the back of it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing – I believe theology can be good or bad, accurate or misleading. And not all Pentecostal theology is bad in my eyes. But I believe many Pentecostal preachers uncritically pass along bad theology that they have learned from extra-Biblical sources. Heck, I don’t even think that reading the Bible is *necessarily* enough to hear the Word of God, if one has heard many other Words preached using those old familiar verses. And there are many passages in the Jewish Scriptures (that we Gentile Christians rather arrogantly call the ‘Old Testament’ without making any attempt to learn the centuries of rabbinical interpretive tradition since Jesus! Did you know Rabbi Hillel invented the sandwich?) which can be and have been used to justify terrible atrocities.
If you show me a Pentecostal sermon preached using ‘just Scripture’, I bet I can point you to the theology that lies behind it and that informs the ‘inspired’ word. I do believe in the inspiration of the Holy Spirit (I’ve witnessed it too many times not to) but I also believe that He ‘speaks’ to us using whatever is already in our mind, and that includes not only our knowledge of Scripture but of men’s words that interpret it. And of course, the men who translate our Bibles also are not necessarily free from their own biases.
“By “useless endeavorâ€? 3 comments further up I mean, that you cannot go into the future by taking things of the past, analyzing them and use them as a navigation tool, because the future is new and different.”
And yet! The Bible is ‘a thing of the past’! How can you cling to the Bible and yet disrespect the history which formed it and made it what it is? If you really believed that the future had no relation to the past, you wouldn’t quote 2000-year-old documents at me.
You believe all of Scripture is inspired by God. I believe God has been at work in all the years of the Christian faith since the Scriptures started being laid down from oral tradition to paper.
“PASTORS! Do you have an idea how hard it must be to be a Pastor? How lonely a job?”
I have some idea, yes. My brother is one. And yet, the job becomes ten times harder, more lonely and bitter when a pastor takes to himself – as ours did – God’s job and tries to micromanage the spirituality and personal lives of all his flock.
“There he is, trying his best, giving his all to a church, and what does he get for it from inside and outside? Mainly criticism, attack and gossip.”
Sorry, sister. Nobody gets a free pass for spiritually and emotionally abusing people they have authority over, ESPECIALLY not if they’re a self-made authority . Criticism of that church regime and of all like it is not only justified, it is a duty.
“Anyway, love covers and does not dig up old stuff.”
I believe the Catholic Church used to use that argument in the past to hide the activities of paedophile priests. You’d be in favour of that?
But I do get your point, and I have no particular wish to upset people from our congregation, emotionally scarred as we are. I will tread slowly and ‘cautious’ly and for the moment will confine myself to talking in general terms about the dangers I see in the Pentecostal movement as a whole, without naming specific names unless I have to.
“The one time in a negative sense: Matth.: 15:9 and Mark 7:7 “teaching for doctrines the commandments of menâ€?. ”
The way I read this, the problem isn’t *doctrine* as such. The problem is *what* doctrines one is teaching. A doctrine of love? Or a doctrine of exclusivity, separation, and shunning?
Oh, and I’m quite aware that love and abuse can coexist in churches just as they do in families. A church (or even a cult) is like an extended family, after all. Talking about the abuse that exists in extended families, even when it is obviously huge (such as appears to be the case in some Maori, Pasifika and immigrant African / Middle Eastern communities in New Zealand at the moment) can be a wrenching, horrifying experience for all concerned, and there sometimes can be no right answers as to which way one should proceed. To tell or to hide, either way someone hurts. Guilt and pain accompany confession.
But abuse is there in our churches, it is real, it is ongoing, it has been hidden, it is slowly coming to light, and we will all be the better for opening our hearts to discuss it honestly and restructuring our teaching and practices so that the name Christian (especially ‘Pentecostal’ or ‘Fundamentalist’ Christian) no longer means a harsh person, a manipulative person, a dishonest person, a frightened person. Because that is what we were in that church, and though we were outliers in some respects, we were far from alone. Abuse in evangelical Christianity is real, embedded, ongoing, and in this geopolitical moment in which we now live, poised on the edge of an apocalyptic war of religion, it has newly minted aspirations for political power.
We can’t afford to keep turning our heads and pretend all is fair and sweet in Evangelical/Pentecostal Christendom. It’s not. We have to repent and change, before we fall into the abyss.
September 10th, 2007 - 00:18
I don’t know,what to say any more. Probably should just shut up. Sorry.
September 10th, 2007 - 03:05
And here I go already again, but I feel like suggesting to you to read your own piece on PTSD.
September 10th, 2007 - 10:09
Frankly, I don’t remember any harsh, manipulative or dishonest persons, Nate.
September 10th, 2007 - 10:21
Unless you mean me. I guess harsh could apply in any case. Don’t mean to be though, but life can get you there, if you don’t watch it.
September 11th, 2007 - 22:23
“I don’t know,what to say any more. Probably should just shut up. Sorry.”
I do encourage you to keep talking. I admit I’m trying to change your mind, you’re trying to change mine, and perhaps neither of us will succeed, but isn’t it worth at least trying to communicate?
I mean, maybe I’m not trying as hard as I can to empathise with your point of view… but sheesh, I feel like I’m in a bad remake of 1984 here.
“Frankly, I don’t remember any harsh, manipulative or dishonest persons, Nate.”
How can you say that?
Don’t you remember the practice of totally shunning excommunicated members? That’s not harsh? It’s one of the standard cult indicators, Reuth! The Moonies do that! Scientology do that! It’s not normal human behaviour!
Don’t you remember having ‘private interviews’ with elders and being told not to tell anyone – even your closest family? Don’t you remember being told that you can’t travel more than 50km away from the church while on holiday? Don’t you remember people being told exactly who they could and could not MARRY? That’s not manipulative?
Don’t you remember being told that we were THE ONLY REAL CHRISTIANS LEFT IN THE WORLD? That all other churches were deceived? That was a lie! There ARE other Christians! That wasn’t honest!
Do you disagree that these things happened?
So, we have harsh behaviour, we have manipulative behaviour, and we have dishonest behaviour – but there weren’t any harsh, manipulative or dishonest persons who did it? Did it just happen, somehow, out of thin air, on its own?
I mean, I know people can change, and I don’t find I can hold anyone responsible for things they now regret. But it hurts like hell to hear someone flat-out deny that these things did, in fact, occur, or that if they did, that they were in fact that bad. It hurts me to think that you are still in a position where you haven’t acknowledged the harm done *to you* by that experience. Because that means you’re probably in a situation where the same kind of abuses are reoccurring, with your consent – and you aren’t emotionally able to recognise it.
That scares me.
September 11th, 2007 - 23:11
By the way, I largely agree with you about Quiet Time. The cultivation of inner quietness as a spiritual practice is something that recurs very strongly in many of the Christian spiritual traditions I am studying at the moment, and though I am not particularly good at it, it is something that I feel God is pointing to as being important.
What I meant to say was, although I think the Pentecostal practice of ‘Quiet Time’ is largely based on a true revelation, the belief that doing quiet contemplation is *sufficient* for Bible study and preaching, is what became an error. The error, as far as I can tell, grew out of combining this true way of approaching God with the arrogance and spiritual pride which is the besetting sin of Pentecostalism: the belief that since ‘God will give us everything we need’ that there is therefore no need to rely on any human source for information or education. But I believe (from experience and observation) that God actually delights in scattering nuggets of truth through multiple sects and denominations, so that it becomes something that helps to draw us together. When the early Pentecostals failed to realise this, and started emphasising the ‘come out and be ye separate’ doctrine, the myth of Quiet Time began to slide into a belief that ‘the Man of God’ needed nothing else but a Bible and some time set aside in the morning to guide him, and could therefore cut all other connections without harm. With this too came the fear of ecumenism, the idea that all secular education at university level was harmful, as well as the force that drove Pentecostal denominations to continually split away from each other.
(And even then, I think it’s a bit more complicated and slippery than that. I believe there are times and cases when the Holy Spirit *does* give unusual clarity for teaching or power for healing, and this kind of power does seem to come through personal introspection and contemplation, and sometimes withdrawing from the world to do this lonely inner spiritual work can look from the outside very much like separation based on pride or fear.)
The Pentecostal ‘Quiet Time’ practice isn’t quite pure contemplation or meditation, as far as I can tell; it’s more a sort of lectio divina, though of course we weren’t taught much about the Catholic origins of the practice. There are several other equally ancient and equally valid schools of Christian contemplative practice, and I believe these ought to be taught as well. And that the Bible should be taught in its historical context and not just thrown down as words on a page. God *can* use the medium of ‘Bible alone’ to communicate with us, but I don’t think it’s necessarily optimal, and sometimes He doesn’t. I really think the adoration of the Bible as ‘the only guide to life’ is a bit of a Protestant heresy and arose because they needed something tangible to put in place of the Pope. The Anglican idea of ‘Scripture, tradition, and reason’ as a three-fold cord seems healthier to me.
September 12th, 2007 - 01:55
O.K. What was I trying to do? Originally, I was trying to pull you back from a more imminent abyss in your life, than the one mentioned above. One does not necessarily need to get very deep into the occult, just reading books like e.g. Steiner, Blavatsky, whatever is enough to muddle your spirit. {I repeat 2.Cor. 11.2}
September 12th, 2007 - 02:07
Next: Everything you are saying maybe fine and valid and interesting for you, and I appreciate the effort you are making, but ultimately I am not thinking in terms of pentecostal, charismatic, evangelical etc. It is to me just like a lot of noise I can’t be bothered with. Probably sounds proud and arrogant to you again. What I was trying to do in this matter is to get you somehow beyond all the clutter and as you quoted yourself onto some “higher ground” {Pressing on the upward way}
September 12th, 2007 - 02:30
For the record: I had 2 private interviews. I greatly enjoyed them. Would have loved a lot more. Was never told not to tell anything to anyone. I don’t know what happened to others. That is all I can say about my experience.