May the peace of the Lord be with you.
I congratulate you on an excellent website. Your articles about the different Protestant and schismatic religions have clarified many concerns, as has the section on religious sects that call themselves Christian Churches. Regarding this last point (the sects), I would be grateful if you could send me some information about the origins and doctrines of the different Pentecostal Churches, because my sister has recently begun attending one of them, and I am somewhat afraid, since people say they are quite fundamentalist and anti-Catholic.
Please continue with this great work, and may the Lord always bless you.
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Dear friend:
I am sending you what the Great Rialp Encyclopedia says: PENTECOSTALS
The Pentecostal movements are very numerous and give themselves different names according to the different regions: “Assemblies of God,” “Apostolic Church,” “Church of God,” “Evangelical Awakening Churches,” “Elim,” “the Latter Rain,” “Evangelical Christians,” etc. Their common name, P., highlights their basic idea: insistence on the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” given to those who have received water baptism and which grants the charisms necessary for witness.
1. Origin. The P. do not claim any founder for themselves. They are “awakening movements” that arose at the beginning of the twentieth century in Wales (United Kingdom) with the miner Evan Roberts (1904), in Los Angeles (California, U.S.A.) with the black preacher W.-J. Seymour (1906), in Scandinavia with Pastor Barrat (1906), etc., and whose currents later converged. These movements are in the line of the revivals that Protestant communities have known in all times and that on various occasions sought to be a return to their primitive spirit. But the emphasis placed on the action of the Spirit has given the various P. movements their particular appearance.
2. Doctrines. In common with all Christians, the P. believe in the Trinity of the divine Persons; in the divinity of Jesus Christ, the only Savior, dead and risen for our salvation; in original sin; in the eternal punishment of those who are not inscribed in the Book of Life; in Redemption by the blood of Christ; they await the second coming of the Lord; living according to the Gospel requires purity of life. In common with Protestants, the P. consider the Bible (see) to be the only infallible rule of faith and conduct; they celebrate the holy Supper (communion under both kinds), which for them is a simple memorial (see EUCHARIST II).
In common with Baptists (see), they baptize by immersion those who are repentant and those who have received Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; they baptize only adults, the only ones capable of personal conversion. They see baptism not as a cause of salvation but as a sign of the response to God’s call; they administer baptism to those who have already received it in other communities under a form different from immersion, and to those who received it as children. Particular emphases: the “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” “divine healing,” the millenarian conception of the imminent coming of Christ (see MILLENARIANISM). “As far as salvation by justification by faith is concerned, we are Lutherans. By water baptism, we are Baptists. As for sanctification, we are Methodists (see). By the aggressiveness of evangelization, we are with the Salvation Army (see). But as far as the baptism of the Holy Spirit is concerned, we are Pentecostals” (Pastor Barratt). In many respects they depend on pietism (see).
3. The baptism of the Holy Spirit. According to them, it is not ordered directly to sanctification but to witness; it provides the charisms necessary for the exercise of an apostolic ministry; it is granted to the Christian who asks for it, either in assemblies or individually. For the “Assemblies of God,” “speaking in tongues” is the initial sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. For other tendencies, it is an important sign, but not necessarily the first one.
Speaking in tongues, says M. Douglas Scott, “is a sign which proves that God’s will and ours are united to such a degree that we can speak according to what the Holy Spirit makes us speak, in complete harmony with his thought. It is a sign for unbelievers, to show them that the Gospel is the message of God preached by the Holy Spirit who comes from heaven. It is also a gift given by God for the edification of his Church… All who possess it bear witness to this truth. When they glorify their Lord and Savior in a language… and when they utter certain mysteries in the Spirit, there is such personal edification that one would wish not a single day to pass without this grace being granted.”
Generally it is an emission of unintelligible sounds that can only be explained by the one who possesses the charism of interpretation. We have attended sessions, in which the Holy Spirit was called upon to descend, led by M. Douglas Scott, who spoke in tongues and interpreted his own glossolalia, giving it a meaning similar to something he himself had said shortly before; it was certainly difficult to attribute all this to the Holy Spirit, as well as the phenomena caused by the songs, murmurs, and invocations of an assembly in a trance.
4. Divine healing. Basing themselves on the Lord’s words to his disciples, “you will lay hands on the sick and they will recover,” the P. hold that the ministry of “divine healing” is still valid today, that “the time of miracles has not passed.” They invite the sick, especially those considered incurable, to present themselves to receive the laying on of hands, while the assembly prays for their healing. They affirm that the sick who ask in faith for their healing are heard, and they cite innumerable cases of healings – scientifically unverifiable, moreover – obtained in their assemblies. It is true that they evangelize before healing, but their propaganda widely uses the attraction of healing to fill their halls: “The only means of recruitment to fill the Evangelization Halls is Divine Healing, which constitutes the attraction par excellence for the common people” (Pastor Nicolle).
5. Organization. The P. communities have no organization. “We have only pastors, they say. Our pastors are chosen locally, after the proofs they have given of their aptitude to fulfill this function. Each local church is free in its internal affairs under the direction of the pastor.” Each national Movement is autonomous and has full financial and spiritual independence. Spiritual communion and fraternal collaboration among the local Assemblies are maintained by means of regional “Conventions” (every six months), national ones (annually), and world ones (every three years). A secretary appointed by the world Convention and a liaison organ published in the United States, Pentecost, ensure relations among the various national movements. The role of the Conventions is not to direct, nor to give laws. Their conclusions are suggestions. In addition, they also play a practical role, for example, in the distribution of the missionaries sent to all regions.
The universal Church is considered as the Body of Christ, as his immortal bride, as the ideal and real Christian society at once. It is formed by all true believers, known only to God. The local churches or assemblies are intended to form these true believers, faithful to Scripture and to the primitive faith. The work of evangelizers and missionaries is to promote these assemblies and to maintain among them and among their members spiritual unity and fraternal love. The obedience to pastors that God wills is disciplinary in order; doctrinal submission is reserved to the word of God contained in the Bible.
6. Worship and practices. The P. practice the following rites: Baptism, always given by immersion to those who have believed and who knowingly undertake the commitment to conform their life to the truth of the Gospel.
The Holy Supper, communion with bread and wine distributed to all faithful members of the community during a meeting in which evangelization (biblical readings, commentaries, exhortations), testimonies, and songs occupy the most important place. Baskets of bread and cups of wine pass from row to row after the pastor has read some text concerning the Lord’s Last Supper; the faithful eat and drink, each when his turn comes, while the assembly sings.
The anointing with oil, for the healing of sick Christians, who appeal to fraternal communion, to the intercession of the Church, and to the prayer of faith. The laying on of hands for the healing of the sick, in public meetings; and also, within the community, for the reception of the Holy Spirit, with all the signs, graces, and gifts that he confers.
With regard to lifestyle, “convinced that the Kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14:17), the Assemblies of God prescribe neither abstention from foods nor diet, but the single evangelical rule: sobriety in all things” (taken from the Yearbook of the Assemblies of God in France).
7. Diffusion. It has been very rapid. Born several decades after the Adventists (see), the Jehovah’s Witnesses (see), the Mormons (see), etc., it has surpassed them all in number. Its progress has been particularly noticeable in some dechristianized or poorly evangelized regions, such as, for example, Lutheran Scandinavia or Latin America. Although the P. refuse to compile statistics, the number of their faithful may be estimated at approximately eight million.
In Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark), where it was introduced in 1907 by the former Baptist pastor Lewi Pethrus, it has won about 200,000 adherents among Lutherans, Salvationists (see SALVATION, SECTS OF), and Baptists, gradually absorbing a good part of the Baptist numbers. In the United States, the various denominations of the P. movements increased by 107% between 1926 and 1943 (whereas Calvinists increased, for example, by 8%). In 1958 they numbered two million members, while ten years later they were three million (counting those in Canada).
In Latin America the progress is most spectacular. Between 1948 and 1958 the P. registered the following increase: in Brazil, from 105,000 to 600,000 members; in Chile, from 100,000 to 300,000; in Mexico, from 50,000 to 100,000. At present they number approximately three million throughout the continent. In Africa, they are estimated at one million.
In India and Ceylon, 100,000; in Australia, 50,000. In Europe: 100,000 in England, 80,000 in Italy, 60,000 in Romania, 40,000 in France, 20,000 in Germany. In Russia and in the other countries beyond the Iron Curtain, the movement began in 1920; it developed clandestinely, favored by its absence of places of worship and by the lack of visible organization. A statistic published in the magazine Pentecost in 1958 estimated its adherents at 600,000. Another, from the French magazine Vie et Lumière, in 1966, estimated them at 500,000. It is from this magazine that we have taken the figures given for the other countries. Needless to say, they have no scientific value.
In general, the P. devote themselves to popular and poor milieus, which the other communities reach with greater difficulty. For about 15 years, a movement of evangelization by Pentecostals has been developing with some success among Gypsies and Roma. It was created by a French pastor, M. Le Cossec, and has its international center in “Les Choux,” a village in the department of Loiret. It publishes an illustrated quarterly review, Vie et Lumière. It has created a “Bible Institute,” established at the international center, for the training of Roma candidates for the apostolic ministry. According to reports, about 10,000 Gypsies have received Pentecostal baptism. The majority are French, but there are communities in the Scandinavian countries, in the United States, in Poland, in Romania, in Germany, in India, in Chile, in Switzerland, in Belgium, in Italy, in Holland, etc. Evangelization is carried out above all through frequent caravan gatherings for the “Conventions,” which generally last several days.
8. Relations with the ecumenical movement. Like all Protestant groups of a fundamentalist type (see FUNDAMENTALISM), the P. distrust the ecumenical movement, considered as a human enterprise of mutual concessions to the detriment of truth (see ECUMENISM). The unity sought by authentic Christians cannot be an exterior, visible, institutional unity, but only the unity that comes from the Spirit, through whom the baptized have found Christ and live from him. One cannot mix, they say, the “converted” and the “unconverted”: “Christian unity can exist only through the separation of the faithful from everything that improperly bears the name of Church. Fusion, as it is advocated today, can only be confusion. Only objects of the same nature can be united. Now, between the unregenerate man and the one who is a child of God, there is more than a difference: there is a radical opposition. True unity is that of the vine and the branches, which has nothing in common with fictitious unions that subsist only through compromises made at the expense of truth.”
Nevertheless, Pastor David J. Duplessis (U.S.A.), who performs a liaison function among the different branches of the P., has participated in various ecumenical conferences (the Evanston Assembly in 1954, the New Delhi Assembly in 1961, etc.) and was an observer at the Second Vatican Council. It seems that he considers his mission to be a witness of the Spirit of Pentecost before the other Christian communities.
Protestants, and especially Baptists (see), increasingly tend not to consider these Pentecostal movements as a sect but as an authentically Protestant movement that stimulates the Christian confessions toward a renewal of fervor and of faith in the action of the Holy Spirit.
BIBL.: K. ALGERMISSEN, Catholic Church and Christian Confessions, Madrid 1964, 1275-1280 (with bibl.); H.-C. CHERY, Les mouvements de Pentecôte, in L’Offensive des sectes, 3rd ed. Paris 1959; L. RUMBLE, Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal Churches, Saint Paul (Minnesota) n. d.; E. T. CLARCK, Perfectionist or subjective and Charismatic or Pentecostal Sects, in The Small Sects in America, 2nd ed. Nashville (Tenn.) 1959 (Protestant author); R. MATZERATH, Pentecostal Churches, in New Catholic Encyclopedia, 11, New York 1967, 111 ff. HENRI-CHARLES CHERY. Courtesy of Editorial Rialp. Great Rialp Encyclopedia, 1991
Author: Miguel Ángel Fuentes
Source: Great Rialp Encyclopedia
