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:
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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
 It
world view’s mantra:
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 worship
 Glossolalia 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
Pentecost Serves as a Compass:
 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)
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.