The Charismatic Movement

Pentecostal Experience Beyond Pentecostal Walls

The charismatic movement is the spread of Pentecostal experience beyond Pentecostal churches. From the 1950s onward, people in Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Roman Catholic congregations, and in time a host of new independent churches, began to seek and report the baptism in the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing, without joining a Pentecostal denomination. Within two generations it had changed the face of world Christianity, and the sound of Sunday morning in many churches that have never spoken in tongues.

Charismatic and Pentecostal Are Not the Same

The two words are often used as if they meant the same thing, but they describe different groups. Classical Pentecostals belong to the denominations that grew out of Topeka and Azusa Street in the early 1900s, such as the Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, and the Foursquare Church (see Pentecostal Denominations). Most of them teach that the baptism in the Holy Spirit is a second experience after salvation, and that speaking in tongues is its initial physical evidence.

Charismatics share the expectation that every spiritual gift is active today, but they arose later, usually stayed in their own churches, and often hold the Pentecostal doctrines more loosely. Many charismatics do not insist that every Spirit-baptized believer must speak in tongues, and some reject the idea of a second baptism altogether. In a wider sense, the word now covers nearly every form of Pentecostal-style Christianity that differs from classical Pentecostalism in its affiliation or its doctrine, including the many independent and nondenominational churches that have grown up since the 1970s.

Historians often tell the story in three waves: the Pentecostal movement that began in 1901 and 1906, the charismatic renewal in the historic denominations that became public in 1960, and the so-called Third Wave of the 1980s, among evangelicals who embraced signs and wonders without taking either label. Pentecostal and charismatic Christians together are now commonly estimated in the hundreds of millions worldwide.

This study traces how the movement spread, describes its worship fairly, and weighs both by Scripture. The concern throughout is not the sincerity of charismatic believers, many of whom trust Christ alone for salvation. It is a principle: in movement after movement, experience has steadily taken the place that belongs to the written Word. As the first study in this series showed, what we believe shapes how we worship, and how we worship teaches what we believe.