Is “moderate Charismatic” an oxymoron?

The reason for posing this question is that whilst the excesses of the “Hypercharismatic” megachurches are plain to see, and have been so for many years, they still seem remarkably attractive to the undoubtedly sane and generally sound Charismatics in most British Evangelical churches.

My evidence? Well, to begin with, a majority of the songs that Evangelicals like to sing come from Bethel Redding, Hillsongs, and Elevation Music – all Hypercharismatic Megachurches. Now, although it is part of the strategy of these outfits to spread their Hypercharismatic theology using the bait of theologically quite orthodox songs, I have often been told that it is the quality of the songs we select that makes up for their origins being tangled up with the New Apostolic Reformation or the Word of Faith movement.

But have you noticed how many of these songs concentrate on God as “Miracle-worker” or “Great Healer” when, in truth, actual miracles and healings are a Hyper-rare blessing in most churches? Likewise the Hypercharismatic theme of dominion over society informs lyrics that express a vague triumphalism that our God is greater than anyone and can do anything, when the predominant mood out there in the real world is that everything is going to the dogs. Our songs seem more about an idealised Charismatic experience (as promoted by the likes of Bethel) than our actual experience, let alone the teachings of the Bible. I wonder how useful that virtual-reality is, especially for children.

But as well as the songs, there is an inexplicable sympathy among mainstream Charismatics towards the blasphemous disorders of the Toronto Blessing and its stream of successors. At the time of the Toronto thing a few members of my (then) church went out to receive, and then enthuse about, the hysterical laughter, convulsions, pseudo-drunkenness and animal noises that were far from moderate. It was even Bob Mumford’s returning from there to bless Holy Trinity Brompton with holy laughter and slayings in the Spirit that led finally to the Alpha Course “Holy Spirit Weekend.” And just a couple of weeks ago, a Charismatic friend of mine argued, very moderately, that sometimes hysterical laughter, convulsions and animal noises are the work of the Holy Spirit… but not around here, sadly.

I’ve been offered, more than once, videos of Bethel worship by good Evangelicals trying to get us to beef up our music group. Hopes of revival are usually couched in NAR terms of an end time triumph of signs and wonders. I’ve heard speakers at Men’s Breakfasts holding up Kenneth Copeland as a role model. And when, regularly, Hypercharismatic leaders are exposed as frauds and abusers, it appears that moderate Charismatics are slow to believe the charges, and quick to say that any offences were “abuse of the prophetic gift” rather than that the “prophetic gift” was in its entirety a fraudulent means of gaining power over innocents.

There are, it seems to me, a couple of different types of “hyper-” religion. To illustrate the first type, there is a thing called “Hypercalvinism,” in which the Reformed doctrines of election and predestination are stressed at the expense of everything else. No evangelism is sanctioned, because the Lord knows those who are his and will send them along to our Assembly with the painted out windows and the small legal notice that this hall is registered as a religious congregation. And so on.

But in reality, the Hypercalvinists are not Calvinist at all, because Calvin’s core principle was rational submission to the word of Scripture, and his views about predestination were carefully drawn from “the whole counsel of God,” and finely balanced against the reality, under God’s sovereignty, of our genuine choices. One may disagree with his conclusions, but a Calvinist working from the Calvinist principle of Sola Scriptura will be open to biblical persuasion on the matter. No Calvinist hankers after becoming a Hypercalvinist, nor feels inadequate about holding a more nuanced doctrine of election than they do.

On the other hand, the “Hypermuslims” we term “Islamists” are extreme for the simple reason that a theology drawn wholeheartedly from the Quran and the hadiths is inevitably extreme. Islam began as an extreme. They are called “fundamentalists” for that reason (whereas a Christian called a fundamentalist because they wholeheartedly embrace the principles of The Fundamentals will be a model citizen). Consequently a “moderate Muslim” is someone who, to a greater or lesser extent, ignores the original teachings of his religion to live peaceably, piously, and with regard to the laws of their land.

At an organised level, one can think in this respect of a sect like the Ahmadiyya, which, greatly influenced by Christianity in British India, developed a religion based on peace and love which, for the reason that it departs from historical Islam in these, is hated by the mainstream.

But as is often said, most British Muslims, in Sunni or Shia mosques, are not jihadists and are thoroughly decent citizens. However, on the other side these peaceful folk are, for the most part, unwilling to condemn the Islamists outright, nor to openly disown Antisemitism or Hamas, nor to fight to destroy the Pakistani rape gangs arising in their own community, instead justifying them. And the reason is, I think, that they know that they would be opposing a purer expression of Islam than they themselves practise. They are only “moderates” because they lack the zeal, or the opportunity, to be “Hypermuslims.”

So of which of the two types are the Hypercharismatics? The whole Charismatic theology is based on the belief that miraculous gifts are normal for today, and usually that, in some way, “healing is in the atonement.” So an unanswered prayer for a miracle (and most are unanswered) is a disappointing failure, as witnessed by attributing it to lack of faith, secret sin, secret inner healing, overconfidence(!) or any other damn thing rather than the fact that God does miracles rarely, and seldom through gifted individuals. But over there in Lakeland, it looks as though Todd Bentley is getting miracles all the time, so what’s wrong with my church?

Pentecostal theology began with the baptism with the Holy Spirit as a claimed “second blessing.” But even before Evangelical Charismatics tried to rehabilitate their theology by redefining this second blessing as “Being Filled,” revivalists discovered that the same ecstatic experience could be induced in meetings over and over again, and they misapplied Ephesians 5:18 to justify it. Even so, the sense of encountering God was never enough, and so manifestations became ever more extreme. It’s hard to remember now that nobody in the Evangelical Charismatic movement was promoting, or even aware of, slaying in the Spirit, laughter, and so on before the Toronto phenomenon (though the thoroughly heretical Shakers were doing them in the eighteenth century).

But these were welcomed because the theology taught them to “Go on being filled with the Spirit,” and the more of God the merrier, surely. What Christian in their right mind is going to want less of God? And so even when the whole hall in the Megachurch is rolling around shrieking, convulsing, and in every other way resembling a biblical description of Dionysian demonic possession, the preacher will still continue shouting “More, Lord, more” or “Oil, oil,” or “Shish kebab, Shish kebab” ad infinitum. And the whole thing will be repeated the following week.

Now, the moderate Charismatic emerging from an Alpha Course in Birmingham will have been taught to expect God to speak to them regularly in prayer, and that the purpose of communal worship is to encounter God as the Holy Spirit becomes uniquely present. Since God does not promise to speak during regular prayer (but who cares what Scripture teaches?), and your average Sunday service may end with a rousing song, but seldom with Holy Fire or angel feathers, then something is clearly wrong in Brum… yet those manifestations are what we sing about in songs that originate in places where (as YouTube will amply demonstrate) they happen every time.

Now, with such a theology of expecting to experience God’s presence physically on a regular basis (for good churches will be “moving in the gifts*”), and the belief that miracles, and prophecies, and clairvoyant “words of knowledge” are normal for today, to be moderate about these things can only be interpreted as lukewarmness. And since they are (supposedly) the normal Christian experience, but not ours, they are obviously happening somewhere else where there is more faith. That might be in inaccessible foreign lands, from which rumours trickle back through the Charismatic grapevine. Or it is more demonstrably happening just across the Atlantic where, although we must make allowances for the American tendency to be theologically untrained, to accumulate private jets, and to visit prostitutes from time to time, nevertheless the Full Gospel is being experienced as we have read in Christian paperbacks and been taught.

And so I conclude that, whereas the experience of a “moderate” Calvinist might be to be dissatisfied with themselves, but not with missing out on Hypercalvinism, the normal experience of the “moderate” Charismatic is one of ongoing disappointment that God is not manifesting his glory as fully as he ought in their particular place and time, but only amongst the Hypercharismatics, for all their grave-sucking foibles. In other words, “moderate Charismatic” does seem to be an oxymoron, for the natural outcome of the theology is to be a disappointed Hypercharismatic.