Pentecostal ecumenical impulses: Past and present challenges
Marius NelIn die Skriflig/In Luce Verbi
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Abstract
Several leaders in the early Pentecostal movement interpreted the outpouring of the Spirit at the Azusa Street Mission and other places as a sign that the Spirit would now unite Christians across the borders of denominations in a new Pentecost that concurs with the events of Acts 2 which led to the formation of the Early Christian Church. They did not actively pursue ecumenism, but expected it as a natural and spontaneous result of the Spirit’s work, carried by their primitivist and restorationist impulses. Instead of the other churches appreciating and accepting Pentecostal experiences as interventions by the Spirit, most main-line churches alienated and rejected Pentecostals as a heretical sect. Within one generation, Pentecostalists entered denominationalism and by the 1940s, in an upward social mobility surge, aligned themselves with some evangelicals with a biblicist-literalist hermeneutics. Today Pentecostalism has accepted that Spirit baptism did not bring the expected unity ...
Key takeaways
- The aim is to motivate an on-going ecumenical interest as well as to provide guidelines for the movement to further effective ecumenical endeavours, because its focus on the Spirit ensures that the ideal of spiritual unity was never fully set aside by Pentecostals.
- Pentecostals' spirituality, informed by the experience of Spirit baptism, generated an explicitly ecumenical vision, writes Clifton (2012:578).
- Another opportunity exists for Pentecostals to engage in ecumenical dialogue with African Indigenous Churches, many of whom originated from classical Pentecostal circles (Nel 2005), although their parted ways historically excluded any cooperation.
- The movement's ecumenical successes would change not only its image with its partners, but also its own identity, because it will expose it to a global theological agenda that is multi-layered and diverse, going beyond Pentecostals' traditional interest in issues such as pneumatology, Spirit baptism, the charismata, and especially, glossolalia, faith healing and sanctification (Vondey 2013:9-27).
- Because the movement's distinctiveness is synonymous with its ecumenical identity as defined by its early leaders, making the ecumenical impulse an important part of Pentecostal DNA, Pentecostals should strive to sharpen their ecumenical focus and produce new and fruitful forms of dialogue on all levels.
