The Charismatic Renewal, 1960 onward

Affiliation

Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa; Assemblies of God (credentials revoked 1962, restored 1980); Pentecostal World Conference

Appears in

The Charismatic Renewal, 1960 onward

Profile

Link to this profile

Life

Huguenot roots and Pentecostal youth

David Johannes du Plessis was born on 7 February 1905 at Twenty-Four Rivers, near Cape Town, South Africa, into an Afrikaner family of French Huguenot descent. When he was eleven his parents joined the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), the Pentecostal church founded through the work of John G. Lake and others, and in 1918 he received the baptism in the Spirit and spoke in tongues. He studied at Grey University College in Bloemfontein but did not complete a degree. He married Anna Cornelia Jacobs in 1927; they had seven children.

Leader of the Apostolic Faith Mission

He was ordained in 1928 and became one of the AFM's leading figures: editor of its magazine, secretary-general from 1936 to 1947, and a skilful administrator who helped the church secure legal recognition from the South African government.^†

The Wigglesworth prophecy

In 1936 Smith Wigglesworth visited South Africa. According to du Plessis, Wigglesworth burst into his office one morning, pushed him against the wall and prophesied that God would bring a revival through the old-line denominations "that will eclipse anything we have known throughout the history of Christianity", and that du Plessis would have a great part in it. He kept this word privately for years.

Pentecostal World Conference

In 1947 he resigned his AFM office to help organise the first Pentecostal World Conference in Zürich, and served as its secretary. He moved to the United States in 1948. After a serious car accident in 1949, he said, God told him to go to the leaders of the World Council of Churches, newly formed in 1948, and tell them about the Pentecostal experience.

"Mr Pentecost"

In 1951 he visited the WCC's offices in New York and found a warm welcome. From 1952 - when he spoke at the International Missionary Council at Willingen, Germany - he attended WCC assemblies, including Evanston (1954), New Delhi (1961) and Uppsala (1968), as well as countless church gatherings, telling mainline and Catholic leaders of the baptism in the Spirit. He insisted that he came to share an experience, not to make Pentecostals. Leaders such as John Mackay of Princeton Seminary and Henry P. Van Dusen of Union Seminary took up his message; Time magazine called him "Mr Pentecost".

Expelled and restored

His ecumenical contacts scandalised many Pentecostals, who regarded the WCC as liberal and the Roman Catholic Church as the harlot of Revelation. In 1962 the Assemblies of God, with which he had ministered in America, revoked his credentials. He continued as a member of a local Assemblies of God congregation and ministered independently. The credentials were restored in 1980.

Vatican II and the dialogue

He attended the third session of the Second Vatican Council in 1964 as a guest, at the invitation of Cardinal Augustin Bea, and later met Pope John XXIII's successors Paul VI and John Paul II. When the Catholic Charismatic Renewal began in 1967, he was one of its early friends. From 1972 he co-chaired the International Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue with Fr Kilian McDonnell, OSB, a dialogue that continues. In 1983 Pope John Paul II awarded him the Benemerenti medal, the first time it was given to a non-Catholic.^†

Key dates

• 1905 - Born near Cape Town, 7 February
• 1918 - Baptism in the Spirit in the Apostolic Faith Mission
• 1927 - Marries Anna Jacobs
• 1928 - Ordained in the AFM
• 1936 - Wigglesworth's prophecy, by his account
• 1947 - Organises the first Pentecostal World Conference, Zürich
• 1948 - Moves to the United States
• 1951-52 - Begins contacts with the World Council of Churches
• 1954 - WCC Assembly at Evanston
• 1962 - Assemblies of God revoke his credentials
• 1964 - Guest at the third session of Vatican II
• 1972 - Co-chairs the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue
• 1977 - A Man Called Mr Pentecost
• 1980 - Credentials restored
• 2 February 1987 - Dies in Pasadena, California

Teachings and claims

Experience before doctrine

Du Plessis taught that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience God gives to Christians of every church, Catholic and Protestant, and that it unites them across doctrinal divisions. "The Holy Spirit is not a Pentecostal," he liked to say. He did not ask those who received the experience to leave their churches.

Classical Pentecostal theology

He held the classical Pentecostal teaching that the baptism in the Spirit is distinct from conversion and normally accompanied by tongues, and he never abandoned it. But he softened the insistence that tongues must be the evidence.

Unity through the Spirit

He believed that the Spirit was bringing the churches together in a way that ecumenical negotiations could not, and that Pentecostals had a duty to share with others rather than condemn them. He urged love and humility rather than argument.

Forgiveness

A favourite theme was forgiveness, which he taught as the key to unity: "Forgive them, and you'll be free of them."

Documented controversies

• Ecumenism. His contacts with the WCC and with Rome scandalised many Pentecostals, and the Assemblies of God revoked his credentials in 1962.
• The Wigglesworth prophecy rests on his own later account.
• Doctrine and experience. Critics in the historic churches thought he treated doctrine too lightly, as if a shared experience could overcome real disagreements about the Church, the sacraments and authority; some evangelicals thought he compromised the gospel.
• His own accounts. Some details in his autobiography, written decades later, cannot be confirmed.^†

No personal or financial scandal is recorded.

Death

Du Plessis died in Pasadena, California, on 2 February 1987, five days before his eighty-second birthday. His papers are held in the David du Plessis Center for Christian Spirituality at Fuller Theological Seminary.

Legacy

Du Plessis did more than anyone to bring Pentecostal experience to the attention of the historic churches, and to bring Pentecostals into conversation with them. The Roman Catholic-Pentecostal Dialogue he co-founded is one of the longest-running ecumenical conversations. The Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Orthodox churches found in him a friend and advocate. His insistence on humility, forgiveness and love across church lines is remembered with respect even by those who disagree with his Pentecostal theology.

Measured against the creeds

Du Plessis's charity towards other Christians and his refusal to proselytise are commendable, and the dialogue he helped begin has clarified much on both sides. The Catholic participants, for example, have explained the Church's teaching that the Spirit is given in baptism and confirmation, while the Pentecostal side has explained its experience.

The difficulty lies in his assumption that a shared experience can stand in for shared faith. The four traditions hold that the unity Christ prayed for (John 17:21) is unity in the apostolic faith, the sacraments and the Church's order, and that experience must be tested by these, not the other way round. A Spirit baptism understood as separate from water baptism and confirmation, with tongues as its normal sign, remains outside what the Church has taught. And the claim that the Spirit is renewing the churches is something the churches themselves - not one prophecy recalled years later - must discern.

Major writings

• The Spirit Bade Me Go (1961)
• A Man Called Mr Pentecost (with Bob Slosser, 1977)
• Simple and Profound (1986)

Affiliation

Independent evangelist; Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation, Pittsburgh

Appears in

The healing revival, 1947-58, and after, The Charismatic Renewal, 1960 onward

Profile

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Life

Concordia, Missouri

Kathryn Johanna Kuhlman was born on 9 May 1907 on a farm near Concordia, Missouri, and grew up in the town, where her father, Joseph, was a respected businessman and later mayor. Her father was a nominal Baptist and her mother a Methodist; Kathryn was converted at fourteen in the Methodist church, weeping in her pew during a revival service. Her father, whom she adored, was killed in a car accident in 1934, a loss she said taught her to depend on God alone.

The itinerant years

At sixteen she left home to travel with her older sister Myrtle and Myrtle's husband, Everett Parrott, an evangelist, working as their helper in tent meetings in the north-west. She briefly attended Simpson Bible Institute in Seattle. By 1928 she was preaching on her own with a pianist, Helen Gulliford, in Idaho and Colorado, sleeping in turkey houses and farm sheds, and was ordained by the Evangelical Church Alliance.^† In 1933 she settled in Denver, where her Denver Revival Tabernacle (1935) drew large congregations and she broadcast on the radio.

The marriage

In 1935 the Texas evangelist Burroughs A. Waltrip preached at her tabernacle. He soon divorced his wife, who had two sons, and in October 1938 he and Kuhlman married. Her Denver congregation largely abandoned her, and her ministry collapsed. They lived together for about six years; she left him in 1944, and they divorced in 1948. She later called the breaking of his first family the greatest regret of her life, and seldom spoke of the marriage. She said that she walked away on a dead-end street in Los Angeles, saying "I give it all to You".

Franklin and Pittsburgh

After years of small meetings she came in 1946 to Franklin, Pennsylvania, where her radio ministry flourished. In April 1947, she said, a woman stood up in a service to testify that she had been healed of a tumour the previous night while Kuhlman was preaching on the Holy Spirit, without anyone praying for her. This, Kuhlman said, was the beginning of her healing ministry.

In 1948 she began meetings in Pittsburgh, at Carnegie Hall in Allegheny and then in the First Presbyterian Church, and Pittsburgh became her base. She formed the Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation in 1954. Her "miracle services" in Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Ohio, and from 1965 in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles drew capacity crowds for nearly thirty years.

Television and the Charismatic Renewal

From 1966 to 1976 she hosted the CBS television programme I Believe in Miracles, recording more than 500 half-hour episodes. Her services drew large numbers of Catholics, Episcopalians and other mainline Christians just as the Charismatic Renewal was spreading in their churches. In 1972 she was received by Pope Paul VI in a private audience, and Oral Roberts University gave her an honorary doctorate.^†

Key dates

• 1907 - Born near Concordia, Missouri, 9 May
• 1921 - Converted in the Methodist church
• 1923 - Begins travelling with her sister and brother-in-law
• 1928 - Begins her own preaching ministry
• 1935 - Denver Revival Tabernacle
• 1938 - Marries Burroughs Waltrip
• 1944 - Leaves Waltrip; divorced 1948
• 1946 - Radio ministry in Franklin, Pennsylvania
• April 1947 - First reported healing in her services
• 1948 - Begins meetings in Pittsburgh
• 1954 - Kathryn Kuhlman Foundation
• 1962 - I Believe in Miracles
• 1966-76 - CBS television programme
• 20 February 1976 - Dies in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Teachings and claims

The Holy Spirit, not Kathryn Kuhlman

Kuhlman insisted that she had no power to heal and no "gift of healing". "I have nothing to do with it," she said. The Holy Spirit heals, she taught, often without anyone laying hands on the sick. She would sense where in the auditorium a healing was taking place and announce it - "Someone in the balcony is being healed of a back condition" - and invite people to come forward to testify.

Healing and medicine

She did not forbid medicine, and asked those who claimed healing to have it confirmed by their doctors. She said she did not know why some were healed and others not, and that it was one of the questions she would ask God.

"Slain in the Spirit"

When she prayed for people, many fell backwards, an experience her followers called being "slain in the Spirit" or "resting in the Spirit". She did not invent it, but her services made it widely known, and it spread through the Charismatic Renewal.

Salvation first

She placed conversion above healing and often said that the greatest miracle was the new birth. She did not teach that tongues are the necessary evidence of the Spirit and rarely spoke in tongues in public.

Documented controversies

• The marriage to Waltrip (1938), as above.
• Medical investigation. The surgeon William Nolen followed up twenty-three people who testified to healing at one of her services and found no cures of organic disease (Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle, 1974). Some with cancer had died; one woman who had thrown away her brace after declaring her spine healed suffered a collapse of her vertebra. Supporters replied with their own documented cases.
• Wealth and lifestyle. She dressed in expensive gowns, lived comfortably and collected art and jewellery. In 1975 her former administrator, Paul Bartholomew, sued her, alleging that she kept large amounts of jewellery and art for herself; the suit was settled.
• Her age. She gave her birth year as 1910 or later for most of her life.
• Her will. She changed her will shortly before her death, leaving most of her estate to her last business manager and his family rather than to the foundation, which provoked bitterness.

^†

Death

Kuhlman had suffered from an enlarged heart since the 1950s. In 1975 she collapsed and was taken to Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she had open-heart surgery. She died there on 20 February 1976, aged 68, and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California.

Legacy

Her style of quiet, dignified healing services - music, preaching on the Holy Spirit, words of knowledge, testimonies and people falling - shaped the Charismatic Renewal and later healing ministries more than any other woman's. Several later evangelists have presented themselves as her successors. Her emphasis on the person of the Holy Spirit, and her openness to Catholics and mainline Christians, helped bridge Pentecostalism and the historic churches.

Measured against the creeds

Kuhlman's refusal to claim healing power for herself, her preaching of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and her willingness to submit healings to medical confirmation stand out among the healing evangelists. She affirmed the Trinity and the historic creeds.

The difficulties lie elsewhere. The "word of knowledge" announcing anonymous healings in a crowd cannot be tested, and Nolen's investigation suggests that many such announcements were mistaken. Falling in the Spirit, which became the expected sign of God's power, has no clear precedent in the Church's tradition of prayer for the sick, which is quiet, sacramental and pastoral (James 5:14-15). And a ministry built around one charismatic woman's stage presence, outside any church's oversight, depended heavily on her personality; her marriage and the disputes at the end of her life show the cost of that independence. The Church holds that healing and the gifts of the Spirit belong to the Body of Christ, not to a single celebrated figure (1 Corinthians 12:4-27).

Major writings

• I Believe in Miracles (1962)
• God Can Do It Again (1969)
• Nothing Is Impossible with God (1974)
• Captain LeVrier Believes in Miracles (1973)

Affiliation

Episcopal priest; rector of St Mark's, Van Nuys (1953-60) and St Luke's, Seattle (1960-81)

Appears in

The Charismatic Renewal, 1960 onward

Profile

Link to this profile

Life

London and California

Dennis Joseph Bennett was born on 28 October 1917 in London, England, the son of a Congregational minister, and emigrated with his family to California in 1927. He studied at San Jose State College and worked for a time in radio and as a salesman, then trained for the ministry at the Chicago Theological Seminary (BD, 1949) and was ordained in the Congregational Church. Drawn to liturgy, the sacraments and the historic episcopate, he became an Episcopalian and was ordained deacon and priest in the Episcopal Church in 1951-52.

St Mark's, Van Nuys

In 1953 he became rector of St Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, a parish of the Diocese of Los Angeles, which he built up to some 2,600 members. In 1959 a young couple in a neighbouring parish, John and Joan Baker, told him that they had received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. Bennett was sceptical but impressed by their changed lives. In November 1959, at a prayer meeting in their home, he prayed for the Spirit and began to speak in a new language. Over the following months some seventy members of St Mark's, quietly, had the same experience.

Passion Sunday, 1960

On Passion Sunday, 3 April 1960, Bennett told his congregation at all three services what had happened to him. At the second, an assistant priest took off his vestments and walked out; a member stood on a chair shouting "Throw out the damn tongue-speakers!" Bennett resigned at the end of the day to avoid splitting the parish. Bishop Francis Eric Bloy of Los Angeles banned speaking in tongues in his diocese's parish services. Newsweek (4 July 1960) and Time (15 August 1960) reported the story nationally, and it is usually counted as the public beginning of the Charismatic Renewal in the historic churches.

St Luke's, Seattle

Bishop William Fisher Lewis of Olympia invited Bennett to take charge of St Luke's, Ballard, a small, debt-ridden mission in Seattle that the diocese had considered closing. He arrived in July

1. St Luke's became the centre of the charismatic movement in the Pacific North-West, with

regular Friday "information meetings" that drew Christians of every denomination. It grew to be one of the largest Episcopal congregations in the diocese. Bennett remained rector until 1981.

Second marriage and the wider ministry

His first wife, Elberta, died in 1963. In 1966 he married again. His second wife, a Southern Baptist who had received the baptism in the Spirit, worked alongside him; together they wrote and spoke widely. His autobiography, Nine O'Clock in the Morning (1970), sold widely and introduced many in the historic churches to the renewal. With his wife he wrote The Holy Spirit and You (1971), a practical guide. He helped found the Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship (later Episcopal Renewal Ministries). After leaving St Luke's in 1981 he and his wife ran the Christian Renewal Association from Edmonds, Washington, travelling and teaching internationally.

Key dates

• 1917 - Born in London, 28 October
• 1927 - Family emigrates to California
• 1949 - Graduates from Chicago Theological Seminary; Congregational minister
• 1951-52 - Ordained in the Episcopal Church
• 1953 - Rector of St Mark's, Van Nuys
• November 1959 - Baptism in the Spirit
• 3 April 1960 - Announces his experience to St Mark's; resigns
• July 1960 - Vicar, then rector, of St Luke's, Seattle
• 1966 - Marries for the second time
• 1970 - Nine O'Clock in the Morning
• 1971 - The Holy Spirit and You
• 1981 - Leaves St Luke's
• 1 November 1991 - Dies

Teachings and claims

The baptism in the Spirit for every church

Bennett taught that the baptism in the Holy Spirit, normally accompanied by speaking in tongues, is available to Christians in every church, and that it releases the Spirit already received in baptism and confirmation. He presented it within an Anglican framework, as a renewal of grace already given, rather than as a Pentecostal "second blessing".

Stay in your church

Unlike earlier Pentecostals, he urged charismatics to remain in their denominations, loyal to their bishops and liturgy, and to bring renewal from within. He kept the Prayer Book, the Eucharist and vestments at St Luke's.

The gifts for today

He held that all nine gifts of 1 Corinthians 12 are for today. The Holy Spirit and You included practical teaching on how to receive and exercise them, including how to begin speaking in tongues.

Healing and the inner life

With his wife he taught prayer for healing, including "inner healing" of emotional wounds, in the setting of the Church's sacramental life.

Documented controversies

• Van Nuys. His announcement divided his parish; he resigned, and Bishop Bloy banned tongues in parish services.
• Episcopal criticism. Critics in the Episcopal Church regarded the movement he led as divisive, emotional and theologically naive; several dioceses issued cautionary statements in the 1960s.
• Method. Critics within and outside the renewal objected to coaching people to speak in tongues, as The Holy Spirit and You did, arguing that it risked producing a learned behaviour rather than a gift of the Spirit.
• Inner healing. Some of the inner-healing techniques associated with the later renewal drew criticism from evangelical and Catholic writers as borrowing from psychology.

No personal or financial scandal is recorded.

Death

Bennett died suddenly of a heart attack on 1 November 1991, at the age of 74, at his home in Edmonds, Washington.^†

Legacy

Bennett is generally regarded as the father of the Charismatic Renewal in the historic churches. After 1960 the renewal spread to Lutherans (through Larry Christenson and others), Presbyterians, Methodists and, from 1967, Roman Catholics. Its spirit of renewal within the churches, rather than separation from them, owes much to him. In the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion, charismatic parishes and movements such as Anglican Renewal Ministries trace their origins to his example.

Measured against the creeds

Bennett stood within the Anglican tradition: he affirmed the creeds, used the Prayer Book, honoured the sacraments and submitted to his bishops. His teaching that the baptism in the Spirit releases grace already given in baptism and confirmation is closer to the historic faith than the Pentecostal two-stage pattern, and is similar to the "release of the Spirit" language later used in the Catholic renewal.

The questions the four traditions raise concern emphasis and method. Treating tongues as the normal sign of the Spirit's fullness sets aside St Paul's question, "Do all speak with tongues?" (1 Corinthians 12:30), and his ranking of love above every gift (1 Corinthians 13). Teaching people how to begin speaking in tongues risks confusing a technique with a gift. And a renewal centred on a particular experience can divide parishes into those who have had it and those who have not, as Van Nuys showed; the Church's unity rests on the one baptism and the one Eucharist that all share.

Major writings

• Nine O'Clock in the Morning (1970)
• With his wife, The Holy Spirit and You (1971)
• The Trinity of Man (1979), with his wife
• How to Pray for the Release of the Holy Spirit (1985)
• Moving Right Along in the Spirit (1982)