An ebullient David du Plessis described a recent conversation with World Council of Churches head Philip Potter, who had asked the 75-year-old “Mr. Pentecost” whether the charismatic movement today is the real ecumenical movement. Rarely given to understatement, du Plessis says he responded, “My dear Philip, we [charismatics] are so far ahead of you, we can’t even see if you’re still coming.”
Indeed, the charismatic movement in recent years has been a ecumenism. Tongues-speaking, renewal-minded believers have come together in worship groups and national meetings irrespective of church background—Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, and traditional Protestant.
But even du Plessis, often the subject of controversy, would admit to divisions within the charismatic movement itself, and to being a part of them. In 1962 the Assemblies of God disfellowshiped du Plessis for “hobnobbing” with the World Council of Churches and Roman Catholics; only last January did the denomination’s executive presbytery vote to restore his ministerial credentials. Du Plessis, along with such charismatic figures as Christian Broadcasting Network president Pat Robertson and Demos Shakarian of the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, has been among the critics of charismatic Bible teachers Bob Mumford, Ern Baxter, Charles Simpson, Don Basham, and Derek Prince, of the discipleship/submission movement.
The movement emphasizes Christian growth and behavioral change through the teachings of a God-commissioned elder, who has authority over the spiritual and personal growth of his “disciples.” Critics have alleged the elders take unscriptural control of others’ lives, even to the point of usurping Christ’s authority. (See facing page.)
Also, there have been conflicts between two primary groupings of charismatics: the classical Pentecostals and the neocharismatics (also called modern charismatics). Classical Pentecostals belong to denominations, such as the Assemblies and the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), holding that speaking in tongues is the sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. The modern charismatics come from the more traditional denominations and the Roman Catholic Church and generally hold that the supernatural gifts are normal in the church today, but usually reject that tongues, speaking or other supernatural gifts are the signs of Spirit baptism or any higher level of Christian experience.
Classical Pentecostals have criticized the moderns as emphasizing the experiential and fellowship with other charismatics more than sound doctrine—for example, watering down such central doctrines as baptism in the Holy Spirit, they say. In turn, some modern charismatics criticize classical Pentecostals as separating themselves from the Christian community and for encouraging charismatics to leave the traditional denominations to join them.
The so-called faith confessionalists charismatic teachers identified most often as the “Tulsa, Oklahoma” group have been criticized as preaching materialism and for laying guilt trips on followers, who get the idea that unanswered prayers for healing or material goods are due entirely to their own lack of faith.
Aware of the differences separating charismatics—particularly the leaders—a loosely-knit group of ecumenically minded charismatics organized a recent “summit” meeting in Dallas, Texas. The John 17:21 (“That they all may be one …”) International Fellowship invited 1,000 charismatic pastors and leaders, who would represent many of the factions within the movement (450 showed up). President Ronald C. Haus, who runs the John 17:21 Fellowship activities out of his pastor’s office at the charismatic Church on the Hill in Vallejo, California, opened the three-day meeting saying, Haus “We are here to admit the scandal of our division.”
The conference theme was reconciliation, and participants attended small group workshops and heard plenary addresses from notables that included Ralph Martin, former director of the Brussells, Belgium, office entrusted with monitoring the Catholic Charismatic Renewal worldwide; Argentine renewal leader Juan Carlos Ortiz; and writer/speaker Larry Christenson.
(Ortiz, the brother-in-law of well-known evangelist Luis Palau, is generally credited with popularizing the teachings of discipleship and shepherding, partly through his book, Call to Discipleship. He arrived in the United States from Argentina in 1977, and now lives in Cupertino, California. In an interview, Ortiz said the purpose behind his many speaking appearances is “to disturb the ministers, if possible, even to confuse them so they have to rethink everything all over again … I speak on the mobilization of every single believer in the church to discipleship.”)
There were signs, at least outwardly, of the intended reconciliation. Du Plessis and Mumford, at odds for years, shared the same speaker’s platform, and indicated their desire for mutual forgiveness and future fellowship. Episcopalian Dennis Bennett of Seattle came away from Dallas “with many questions answered,” said Haus. (Bennett was on the program of the Twelfth Pentecostal World Conference last October in Vancouver—the first such inclusion of a neocharismatic at this world gathering of denominational Pentecostalists.)
Shepherding/discipling leader Charles Simpson 9 said he detected a sense of “genuine love” between the participants. In an interview. Simpson said his New Covenant movement has been misrepresented by the Christian and secular news media in the past. Perhaps to correct alleged misunderstandings and to dispel accusations that the discipleship movement stands aloof from other charismatics, Simpson has been spending an increasing amount of time at ecumenical dialogues: “We’re trying to make a statement to the rest of the [charismatic] leaders about our interest in Christian unity.”
Haus of John 17:21 called the meeting a “never-before” experience because of the diverse grouping there. His organization, of which du Plessis is honorary chairman, plans future “summit convocations” of charismatic and Christian leaders: the goal is church unity. Visible unity of Christians is the best way to fulfill Christ’s mandate for world evangelization, said Haus. (The John 17:21 executive committee includes pastors Des Evans of Fort Worth, Texas, and Ron McConnell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and former Spanish PTL Club host Elmer Bueno. A larger, 20-member central committee includes South Korean superchurch pastor Yonggi Cho and Filipino evangelist Greg Tingson.)
Observers agreed that reconciliation requires more than a three-day meeting. And the differences that remain within the charismatic movement were reflected by those who did not attend the Dallas meeting—either because they didn’t want to, were not invited, or said they had other engagements.
Several key figures did not attend, making a full airing of differences impossible. Top level officials of the 30,000-member Full Gospel Business Men’s group, which recently moved into a new $5 million headquarters in Costa Mesa, California, said they didn’t know about the meeting. None of the charismatic television personalities attended—Robertson, Jim Bakker, Jimmy Swaggart, or Paul Crouch; neither did Kenneth Copeland of Forth Worth or Kenneth Hagin, Sr., of Tulsa—the best-known faith healing evangelists from the “faith confession” camp.
Hagin and Copeland are leaders in the year-old International Convention of Faith Churches and Ministers, which is based in Tulsa with 200 individual and church members.
The Secret Summit Reconstructed
Correspondent Peter Brock provided most of the research for this background study of the decade-old discipleship/shepherding controversy among charismatics.
In August 1975, a prominent group of troubled Pentecostal-charismatic leaders gathered in a basement meeting room of a Minneapolis hotel. During this weekend assembly—billed confidentially as a “council of wise brethren”—the group agreed first that the meeting should be kept selective, and for the time being, secret. A second consensus was reached soon after, when the 30 invited participants barred cassette tape recorders and all uninvited spectators, who wound up clustering in outside hallways.
The cause for caution? At issue between these Protestant, Roman Catholic, and nondenominational leaders was the controversial doctrine of “discipleship/submission” being taught by Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area Bible teachers Bob Mumford, Derek Prince, Charles Simpson, Don Basham, and Ern Baxter.
The majority at the Minneapolis meeting wanted to challenge, or have clarified, whether these teachers were promoting “extra-local submission”—a move to build a chain of command linking many sympathetic local groups around the country to themselves. They feared these instructors were founding a new denomination, and suspected them of heretical teachings of ecclesiastical subordination.
Mumford and ecumenical Pentecostal David du Plessis and five others had met a month earlier, when they laid plans for Minneapolis. However, Mumford was contacted prior to that time by Christian Broadcasting Network president Pat Robertson. Robertson’s CBN had aired numerous “Teach In” telecasts, primarily featuring Mumford, Prince, and Simpson, who there advocated a softer discipleship/submission theme than was carried in their magazine, New Wine.
In a lengthy letter to Mumford, dated June 28, 1975, an anxious Robertson complained the teaching resulted in “unnatural and unscriptural domination of one man by another.” Robertson attached an affidavit by two former discipleship adherents that “point[s] directly to you as the fountainhead of what seems to be another charismatic heresy.…”
Derek Prince responded to Robertson several days later by inviting the 700 Club talk show host to the discussion of “shepherdship” teachings at Minneapolis. Besides Robertson and the discipleship teachers, participants at the closed meeting included: Episcopalians Dennis Bennett and Bob Hawn; attorney Brick Bradford, Doug Brewer, and Bob Whitaker from the Presbyterian Charismatic Communion; Harold Bredeson of British Columbia; Logos Journal publisher Daniel Malachuk and then executive editor Jamie Buckingham; Lutheran author Larry Christenson and Lutheran leaders Rod Lensch and Don Pftenhauer; New Covenant consulting editor Ralph Martin and fellow Catholics Steve Clark, Paul DeCelles, and Bruce Yocum; conference speaker Gerald Derstine; former Assemblies of God pastor from Argentina, Juan Carlos Ortiz; and Tom Ashcraft, Bob Ashcroft, and Don Locke from the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International.
During the Minneapolis meeting, some doctrinal “excesses” were apparently “confessed” by Mumford’s group. But these may have represented a concession to the opposing majority in attendance: one of the Fort Lauderdale leaders later reflected, “… It was the worst meeting I ever attended in my life. It was a disillusionment.” A Logos Journal report said opposition had moderated on both sides in Mineapolis, and that “some objectives and points of evaluation” had been established.
Soon after, still in 1975, FGBMFI forbade the propagation of Mumford-brand discipleship/submission and revoked the charter of a West Texas FGBMFI chapter for continued shepherdship teachings. At the Kansas City Shepherds Conference that same year, Mumford told a sympathetic audience of 4,500 persons that he believed discipleship teachings would withstand the imminent “shaking” of all nations.
“It was not our design, consciously or unconsciously …, to start or form a new denomination,” said Mumford. “I understand the historical implications of what we are doing. It is not a denomination that anybody desires.”
Between 1968 and 1970, Mumford, Prince, Simpson, Basham, and Ern Baxter grouped into the Holy Spirit Teaching Mission, and developed continuing, active roles as convention speakers and authors. They have varied backgrounds. Mumford graduated from Reformed Episcopal Seminary in Philadelphia; Prince capped his education at Eton College and Cambridge. They and seminary-trained Basham (Disciples of Christ) and Simpson (Southern Baptist), along with former Canadian pastor Baxter, later changed the name of their organization to Christian Growth Ministries.
The five men all attended the Dallas meeting (described in facing article). In an interview afterwards, Simpson said the group has no “organized unity.”
“At this point, we’re just Derek, Bob, Don, Ern, and Charles; we struggle with this whole thing of what we are, even among ourselves. I know it’s easier to have some kind of a label [for us] as a point of reference, and maybe we will have at some time in the future, but as of yet there isn’t.”
They do, however, comprise the board of Christian Growth Ministries, the corporation formed to produce their 100,000-circulation, monthly magazine, New Wine. The magazine and CGM headquarters moved from Fort Lauderdale to Mobile, Alabama, in December, when Simpson, who pastors the 800-member Gulf Coast Covenant Church in Mobile, became CGM chairman. He succeeded Prince, who wanted to give increased time to Hebrew study in Jerusalem. Simpson estimates that several hundred local churches identify with New Wine-style discipleship.
Simpson blamed the controversy surrounding discipleship/submission on news media misrepresentations and the early shepherding conferences, in which New Wine leaders no longer participate.
John Jacobs, ICFCM administrative assistant, said his office didn’t know about the meeting. (Haus said Hagin and Copeland were themselves invited but chose not to attend.) Members of ICFCM do practice faith healing and tongues speaking but prefer to be identified as persons who “teach all of the Bible,” said Jacobs. They teach that Christians are entitled to all the “blessings of Abraham”—health, wealth, and wisdom—according to the promises in Deuteronomy 28 and Galatians 3. Those who don’t receive are either ignorant [of the blessings] or “are moved by what [they] see rather than what the Bible says,” said Jacobs. “It’s God’s will that you be the head, not the tail.”
(Many of those not represented in Dallas are behind a larger-scale gathering planned for the nation’s capital. Pastor John Gimenez of Virginia Beach, Virginia, is organizing an April 28–29 “Washington for Jesus” rally as a call to national repentance and prayer. Lending their support are charismatic leaders Robertson, Bakker, Shakarian, Daniel Malachuk of Logos International, and C. M. Ward of the Assemblies of God. They advertise a gathering of one million for an outdoor prayer service at the Washington monument, personal contacts with all U.S. congressmen, and a 100,000-person march down Constitution Avenue.)
Differences remained, even among those who attended the Dallas meeting. Despite expressing a willingness to forgive Mumford’s group, du Plessis said he still opposes its style of discipling, which he calls “sheepstealing”: “They are not discipling sinners to Christ; they’re discipling members of other churches to themselves.”
Doctrinal differences—either real, or the result of misunderstandings—may be an inescapable by-product of a movement as large and as diverse as the charismatics’. For example, participant Richard Williams from Addison, Illinois, said after the Dallas meeting that “no man is a law unto himself” in the discipleship movement. But pastor Robert Schmidgall of nearby Naperville, Illinois, said that while the Fort Lauderdale teachers may not, in fact, be teaching authoritarian principles (for example, getting approval from one’s elder before buying a car) “that idea still is getting around.” Williams said he agreed with speaker Ralph Martin’s comment that workable unity will come only when there is “obedience to objective truth.”
Ecumenism
Black Methodist Bodies Have Another go at Union
Three black Methodist denominations in the early 1960s sought a merger that never materialized. But ecumenists have learned a lesson from earlier ecumenical ventures, said John H. Satterwhite, executive secretary of the Center for Black Church Union in Washington, D.C.: “We thought we could unite churches from the top down; now we realize we have to do it from the bottom up.”
With this in mind, the same Methodist bodies—the Christian Methodist Episcopal, African Methodist Episcopal, and African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches—are seeking merger again, but with an appeal to the grassroots. The Center for Black Church Union is conducting a series of conferences nationwide that are intended to win support for merger from local church members and conference delegates prior to their denominations’ summer voting conferences.
(A 1978 CME Church general conference already has voted to unite with the AMEZ Church. Before this year is out, proposals for union will come up at the AMEZ general conferences in May and the AME meetings in June.)
Satterwhite, an AMEZ minister and official of the World Methodist Council, would like an organic union of black churches as soon as possible. Some black church leaders, however, favor taking union in stages. An even smaller number prefers joining together on specific projects for now, such as uniting publishing efforts or seminaries. But Satterwhite fears that a uniting of service agencies without denominational merger will prove a “slowing down process” that may never lead to organic ecumenism.
The latest workshop on merger occurred in Washington, D.C. (Future workshops are slated for Kansas City, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Norfolk, Virginia.) The Washington seminars rotated to a different congregation every night (as is the custom), and black United Methodist and United Presbyterian bodies joined the three black Methodist bodies in an unusual ecumenical thrust. Black Methodists for Church Renewal, the black caucus within United Methodism, has shown interest in the merger workshops, said Satterwhite.
“It would not surprise me if some congregations within the United Methodist Church attempted to join a united black church,” Satterwhite added. However, he said the center does not encourage single congregations joining, preferring to unite groups by denomination.
Two other small black denominations (which refused to join Richard Allen’s founding AME Church in 1816) also have sent bishops to participate. The African Union Methodist Protestant Church and the Union American Methodist Episcopal Church enroll only a few thousand members each, while the AME has 1.3 million, the AMEZ, 1 million, and the CME, about 500,000.
James Cone, black theologian from Union Seminary (N.Y.) and a speaker at the workshops, said there is a greater possibility for unity when ecumenism is related to the “political struggle.” He referred to the success of the civil rights movement in rallying together Baptists, Methodists, Pentecostals, and others.
Black churches in the past legitimately avoided union with white denominations because of racism, asserted Cone. “But we must also consider why we haven’t gotten together ourselves—both as denominational families and as a whole.”
JAMES S. TINNEY
Church-and-State Issues
Court Rules that HEW’s Compliance Forms Don’t
Grove City (Pa.) College students and staff held a thanksgiving chapel service and an ice cream sundae party following their school’s courtroom victory over the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Many other private colleges besides this Christian liberal arts school may have celebrated vicariously the March 10 ruling in Pittsburgh as a significant triumph over government regulation and intervention.
Specifically, U.S. Federal District Court Judge Paul A. Simmons threw out as “faulty” HEW’s compliance form 639A, which is an assurance of compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. When signed, the forms show that a school does not practice discrimination on the basis of sex, race, or religion.
For nearly three years, Grove City has refused to sign the compliance forms. College president Charles MacKenzie, who said the college voluntarily practiced nondiscriminatory policies, opposed completing the form as opening the door to all kinds of government bureaucratic intervention. The department had no right to intervene, he said, since the school receives no federal funds.
In court, HEW has argued that Grove City and other private colleges are indeed recipients of federal assistance—and thereby subject to HEW jurisdiction—when students receive federally funded Basic Educational Opportunity Grants, and loans through the Guaranteed Student Loan program. The college said the grants and loans were transactions between the student and a lending institution, not between the school and the government. HEW has pressed for a cutoff of the grants and loans to students at non-complying schools, such as Grove City, to apply pressure for compliance. But barring a successful appeal of the ruling, HEW will no longer be allowed to do so.
Judge Simmons said the compliance forms cannot be used—at least in their present form—under any circumstances. The basis for his decision: some sections of the regulations that were drawn to execute the compliance form touch on sex discrimination in the employment policies of an institution—a matter not contemplated by Congress in its drafting of Title IX.
If the form is rewritten to refer to sex discrimination in terms of student programs, the compliance form could then be applicable. In that event, the judge ruled, HEWcould withdraw students’ BEOG funds, which he said do, in fact, constitute federal assistance to a college. However, he said, the federal agency has no control over Guaranteed Student Loan monies; he said the GSL program is specifically exempt from HEW jurisdiction under the guidelines set by Congress.
Significantly, Simmons ruled that HEW had violated Fifth Amendment rights in not giving legal notice and a proper hearing to all the students who were adversely affected by the proposed cutoff of funds. Simmons did not speak to the First Amendment separation of church and state—another issue raised by Grove City and other private Christian colleges.
Following Simmons’s decision, which for the time being ended the school’s three-year legal wranglings, MacKenzie exulted in this “landmark” in the school’s “battle for freedom.” His and other private schools, at least for the time being, won’t have to worry about present and potential students leaving when their grants and loans are lost due to a school’s resistance to HEW paperwork. The federal agency was considering an appeal, but one Grove City lawyer said Simmons’s decision at least “will slow them [HEW] down a little bit.”
North American Scene
A TV watchdog group has linked the brutal murder of a Wichita Falls, Texas, girl to CBS-TV’s February 13 airing of the movie Exorcist II. For that reason, the National Federation for Decency has called for a boycott of CBS programs during July—the month when national ratings are taken. The mother of four-year-old Khonji Wilson was charged with murdering her daughter—found stabbed, with her heart cut from her body. Neighbors said the mother and daughter together had watched the movie, which had a similar scene in which a girl’s heart was cut out to get rid of a demon. Founded two years ago by United Methodist pastor Donald Wildmon, the influential NFD now has 10,000 members.
Episcopalians recently established a church structure for ministry to the cities. At a meeting in Indianapolis, 500 Episcopalians, representing 42 dioceses and several existing urban groups, formed the Episcopal Urban Caucus. A 16-member EUC governing board was created to pursue programs for parish revitalization, economic and social justice, and energy conservation by churches and individuals.
Southern Baptist churches showed nearly a 10 percent increase in baptisms in final statistics for 1979, with a total last year of 368,738. The gain ends a three-year decline in baptisms in the denomination. Baptist officials also report that giving topped $2 billion for the first time last year.
A three-year-old, $8.6 million hymn-pirating suit ended recently in an out-of-court settlement. A Los Angeles-based religious music publisher, F.E.L. Publications, accused the U.S. National Conference of Catholic Bishops of complicity in “pirating” the firm’s hymns (the best known, perhaps, “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love”) for use in 15 dioceses. The settlement calls only for the conference to notify all U.S. dioceses that it is illegal and immoral to use copyrighted material without written permission from the copyright owner.
Charitable organizations gained added legal protections through a recent Supreme Court ruling. By an 8-to-l majority, the high court struck down a Schaumburg, Illinois, ordinance requiring that any groups soliciting funds door-to-door must prove to town officials that at least 75 percent of the money raised goes to charity. The justices cited past high court decisions upholding the right to solicit as guaranteed by First Amendment freedom of speech and religion clauses.
Shades of Huxley? California businessman Robert K. Graham announced he has created a sperm bank for Nobel prizewinning scientists, and that so far three East Coast women have been successfully inseminated. The Los Angeles Times interviewed 11 Nobel winners, and reported that only one—Stanford University’s William B. Shockley, winner of the 1956 Nobel Prize in physics—had actually donated to the bank. Graham, 74, a self-made tycoon who pioneered the manufacture of plastic spectacle lenses, denied any intention of creating a master race: “We are thinking in terms of a few more creative, intelligent people who otherwise might not be born.”
Deaths
Theodore F. Adams, 81, Southern Baptist and former president (1955 to 1960) of the Baptist World Alliance; he was chairing a long-range planning committee responsible for a BWA plan of action through the year 2005, which includes a five-year evangelistic thrust, 1995 to 2000, commemorating the 2000th anniversary of Christ’s birth; February 27, in Richmond, Virginia, after an apparent stroke.
