Pentecostals and science

A Pentecostal perspective on God and the physical sciences

Mathew Clark – September 2022

My childhood and teenage years were dominated by a love for the physical world around me and the things (laws?) that made it all work. It was not so much the biological realm that intrigued me, but the physical mechanics of the world. I was always fascinated by geography, geomorphology, meteorology and astrophysics. I love every aspect of aviation science, and until receiving a clear calling from God in my teens, I intended to become an aviator and follow a degree in aviation engineering, which was a large part of South African arms development during the Cold War.

I was an avid reader, interested primarily in science, warfare, aviation and most especially hard science fiction – whose social justice bent of the 60’s and 70’s was a pet hatred of mine, distracting as it did from hard science.

From Werner von Braun, Arthur Clark and scores of other great names of the 1950s I learned of space shuttles, moon rockets and space elevators. Until today I voraciously devour hard science fiction, especially scientifically erudite military and space opera works, blessing the good Lord for the file format called epub. Not wishing to enter seminary directly after school, I divided my time between mandatory national service in the army and training on IBM machines as a computer programmer.  IT design and programming skills have stood me in good stead over the years.

I found the Pentecostal ministry and churches were not places where I would easily find soulmates in these areas. Indeed, until today I scarcely ever meet a colleague or church member who has the slightest interest in any of this, and have I rarely disclosed that reading theology is for me nowhere near as exciting as reading science. That there was a need for Pentecostals to up their game in this regard was affirmed when I did not encounter, nor could persuade to attend, a single Pentecostal scholar at the free workshops, arranged by David Wilkinson of St John’s College and physicist Tom McLeish at Durham University, on the Christianity-Science debate in the mid 2010’s. I attended 6 in all, and shortly before retirement had to turn down an invitation to represent Pentecostals at a similar series one of the Oxford Colleges was launching in emulation of Durham.

That somewhat rambling introduction hopefully might explain the reasoning set out below. Social interaction in the UK during the decade I spent there until 2018 inevitably fell into the science-religion “contention” once it became known I was a happy-clappy type Christian. In that nation and time, to be considered intelligent demanded an atheistic mind-set, only the mentally challenged could possibly tolerate the concept of the existence of a God, or so the secular evangelism of the neo-atheists such as Dawkins and Hitchens assured a secularised culture. However, it was never a burning issue in Africa, and I felt it necessary to get a feel for it and investigate the various responses to its challenges in the UK setting.

1. Pentecostal debate partners and adversaries on matters of “science”

1.1. Modernism and fundamentalism

Christian fundamentalism in the West proceeded primarily as a response to the very confident liberal, secular, critical and sceptical approaches to reality propounded by modernism.  From the Christian, especially evangelical perspective modernism inspired a number of attacks on Christian world-view, dogma, popular belief, lifestyle and ethics. In what is today recognised as a rather presumptuous triumphalism, it proclaimed the end of dependence upon God, religious texts, religious ritual and any acceptance of supernatural intervention in human history and personal lives. These were disposed of as part of humanity’s childhood, props and metaphors assisting or retarding the development of a liberated and autonomous human species.

The Christian response of fundamentalism was understandably but perhaps unfortunately conducted within parameters set by modernism – reason and debate based upon an objective understanding of the material world and processes of interacting with it. Apologetics became the preferred Christian response, using rational and logical debate to propound and refute concepts, assertions and motives. Much of this revolved around the nature of the Christian Scriptures, ranging from the very Protestant insistence on the reliability of the text over any other authority, to an almost mystical understanding of the text as quasi-divine in itself. Among the issues to emerge was the notion (often ill-defined) of the inerrancy of the Christian texts, adherence to which became something of a shibboleth within the Western evangelical world.

While the debate raged around the issue of biological evolution and the many public spectacles and absurdities evoked by this conflict, there were deeper Christian thinkers to whom it became clear that the philosophical issue underlying this was one of conflicting world-views  – on the one hand a secular humanism (with positivist and materialist presuppositions), and on the other a “Biblical” world-view related to or identical to the Judaeo-Christian worldview. Francis Schaeffer was probably the proponent-in-chief of the world-view debate, with apologists such as Josh McDowell contributing their perspective from a committed Western evangelical position. While the world-view approach remains relevant still, within the context of fundamentalism it perpetuated a modernist approach to the debate: rational, logical, objective and “evidence” based.

Pentecostals remained largely outside this debate, firstly because they were never really invited into it, and secondly because while they attended to adopt a fundamentalist position in their own articulation of doctrinal belief, in practice these creeds played little significant part in the popular articulation and practice of Pentecostal Christianity – they tended to deal with any urgent doctrinal matters based on exegesis and “discernment”.

1. 2 Superstition

Pentecostalism has related to superstition in a number of contexts:

1.2.1 Pentecostalism appears to be the cultural heir of the radical Reformers in that they offered an alternative to both the structures of the state-church (both components being primarily feudal ) and an alternative to the mystical thinking of Western Christianity which in modern terms equated to superstition – culturally sanctioned superstition indeed but  all the same, superstition. From the mystical power of the sacramental elements to the sacred powers of the clergy, to the relics, fragments, legends and so many other phenomena, a pre-modern understanding permeated church and society.

Where the Renaissance had promoted the autonomy of human reason, the effect of Protestantism and more especially those elements that broke from the state-church consensus, was to base the sober evaluation of both material and non-material reality upon an autonomous text. Its acknowledgement to Renaissance thinking was that the scrutiny and interpretation of this text could be literally pursued by the application of individual and collective human reason: there is a perspicuity to Scripture. These notions subverted the role and privileges of the political state as well as the very essence and necessity for a specialised clergy. It was redeemed from unbridled individualism by a communal acceptance of a single agreed text.

Francis Schaeffer pointed out the peril for Pentecostals of departing from, subverting or neglecting the strong textual basis for their understanding of spiritual phenomena and operation among believers. It was a point stressed by a number of Pentecostal scholars in the heyday of the search for a Pentecostal hermeneutic – if we lose our foundation of a sober understanding of the text, “we are lost.” To walk in the power of the Spirit demanded an objective anchor, and for modernity the firmest anchor was a reason-based approach to authoritative texts.

Sociologists and anthropologists have long noted the upward social mobility offered by Pentecostalism. In Latin America nations such as but not exclusively Chile, Venezuela and Brazil all boast a significant if not majority proportion of their population as middle class, compared to as recently as the 1960’s. This growth parallels the abandonment by millions of the majority Catholic religion for Evangelical and especially Pentecostal alternatives. “Liberation theology opted for the poor, the poor opted for Pentecostalism.” The effect is similar to the radical options offered by radical Protestantism: a supplanting of the prerogatives of feudal and spiritual lords for the progress of the individual and family into a more modern understanding of reality and society.

1.2.2. African and Asian spiritualities and superstition were subverted by Pentecostal Christianity by two major understandings and experiences. Firstly, that in their world of fickle and unpredictable spirits, where the common man needed the wisdom and aid of mediators such a shamans and priests to navigate such a minefield, the Jesus Christ proclaimed by Pentecostals was ever unchanging, reliable and faithful, “the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.” To know and experience this as a personal reality banished superstitious fears and facilitated the rational progress of individuals and communities.

Secondly, Jesus Christ was demonstrated, especially through healing and exorcism, to be a vanquisher of all inimical spiritual powers, both real and imagined, and that daily life and choices could proceed without reference to them in any way. “Jesus is Lord” has been to millions the most liberating understanding and experience, and has facilitated the effective modernisation of their lives and circumstances. Inevitably, as this form of Christianity made inroads into the wider population, whole societies came to benefit from widespread modernisation.

In such a setting it comes as no surprise that the typical Western issues of Initial Evidence and glossolalia, as well as resistance to “evolution”, gained no traction. Indeed, growing up among Afrikaans churches and Indian and Zulu converts, I first discovered that there even were such debates only in my late teens, primarily because of English charismatics who desired the Blessing but not the “stigma”, and sceptical school teachers who maintained belief in God was backward thinking. For most of us, the existence and working of non-material powers and forces was engrained in life experiences and therefore denying their existence seemed contrary to all evidence.

1.2.3 The emergence of the “Great Man of God” paradigm in Pentecostal churches and communities has in many ways retarded the efficacy of Pentecostalism as a subversion of superstition. In previously animistic tribal settings or in the folk-religions of the major Asian religions, the reality of inimical spirits, curses and blessings, witches and wizards and their spells, and the “redemptive” need for a shaman was a coherent part of an entire worldview. Converts to Christianity abandoned this worldview for the Judaeo-Christian, which is fundamentally different in virtually every aspect. The emergence in the West of New Thought (explained very simply in an unexpected source, Sinclair Lewis’ Elmer Gantry) and its refinement for Pentecostal Christianity by EW Kenyon with his notion of a new “super-race”, became mainstream in Pentecostalism from the 1970’s. Firstly in the West and then in the burgeoning urban centres of the developing world, its alternative world view of spirits and spirituality, coupled with the mega-churches’ unhealthy obsession with “leadership”, eventuated in the emergence of the Great Man of God syndrome. In this paradigm the world-view of animism and pagan religions remains largely untouched for Christian converts, and the crucial requirement of powerful Christian gurus and shamans to put the spiritual powers and their champions in their place, became evident.

This is far too well-known a phenomenon to demand much space in this paper. While the proclamation of these demagogues might still promote some external elements of modernity, in the main its nett effect is to enable a superstitious world-view and the need for every believer to be submitted to a Great Man who can redeem them and continuously banish the effects of inimical powers in their lives. In such a setting spirit entities and powers are granted a massively crucial role, whereas in text-based Christian conversion and discipling they are relegated to a minor consideration. The greatest impact of the Great Man of God syndrome has been an emasculation of Pentecostalism as a subversion of superstition.

1. 3 Postmodernism

Postmodernism has always been a tempting paradigm for Pentecostals. Here was a popular and academically respected philosophical position that offered a critique of modernism and also opened the door to acceptance of spiritual entities and powers i e non-material reality.

The price of course is today well-recognised. Postmodernism was also relativism. Pentecostal spirituality seemed to find space to spread its wings, but so did every other spirituality, even one’s own individual preference – a sort of a pick-and-mix of available material from which one could construct one’s own unique spiritual world.

It’s most obvious affect upon Pentecostalism has been in the area of lyrics, music paradigm and even sermon presentation. What Schaeffer termed “connotation words” and the emotional effects they engender in singers and audience, replaced the requirement for a consistent narrative that could be logically scrutinised. The narcissism of the Boomer and later generations led to the domination of “I” and “me” words, and the actual act of worship or audience became defined far more by the subjective feelings of participants than by objective and authoritative demands.

The effect has been to relativize the great narratives of salvation history, to embrace rather than subvert popular culture, and to produce a populist product that attracts because it appeals to the self without sacrificial demands upon values, lifestyle and cultural expression. While embracing every possible benefit of modernity it evades any objective application of human science, technology and development other than what benefits the user. If anything, contemporary popular religion has facilitated the probable emergence of the typical science fiction bogeyman: a dystopian technocracy where physical science and objective philosophy has no meaning or value for Everyman and is maintained by a minority group of experts and elites.

1. 4 “Social Justice” science

A woman nominated expressly for being a women to candidacy of the US Supreme Court, was asked at the confirmation hearing how she would define a woman. Her answer was a typical response to what has become the most awkward question of our age – “Don’t ask me, I am not a biologist!” Not the safest of answers, for biologists no longer have the slightest authority for defining the human sexes, since the state-enforced edict of the day is that a biological man may validly declare himself a woman and none dare say him nay. Indeed, the notion of binary sexes has become “harmful” and it is hate-speech when asserted as authoritative. As in the world of Orwell’s 1984 where “2 plus 2 = 5 if we say so”, I am a woman or a man, despite my biological constitution, if I say so – and the state will penalise all who disagree.

The effect upon the so-called STEM disciplines in academia may be seen as funny if it were not so tragic. Indeed, the term “woman” is becoming all but censored completely, even in medical texts… This is postmodernism taken to its logical conclusion. Even the use of the terms male and female in technology is being targeted as hateful, which is going to make shopping for your video cables a dicey business! With virtually every value of modernity now being labelled a mark of “Whiteness”, the intersectional hierarchy has become the new shibboleth, and science may not extend its enquiry into fields considered non-virtuous, since it may come to conclusions which are harmful and hurtful…

This social justice science is of course no longer Western science at all, not by any rational measure. Not only Christianity and Pentecostalism are now forced to stand aghast on the side-lines, but the rules have so changed that the field of science is coming to resemble the Cultural Revolution in China: those who dissent from the ideological dogma of the day will be shamed, excluded and cancelled. Who would ever have thought Pentecostals and modernist neo-atheists would become partners in critically spectating at what can only be seen as one of the final steps in the West as a cultural entity.

Social justice science is a development from post-modernism, both of which raise the notion of the absolute subjectivity of all scientific endeavour, and also reflective of the effect of Eastern categories of thinking in Western culture since the 1960’s, where material reality is malleable to individual human perception and application of the mind. This could be the topic of a comprehensive post on its own.

2. The scientific method

Before reaching the final aim of this paper, allow a short word on the so-called “scientific method.” The utilisation of this method has been viewed by modernists as one of the identifying marks of serious science, and its hostility toward religion often includes accusations that theists and non-materialists neglect it completely.

In times prior to the Renaissance and Reformation, the basic response to any authoritative assertion was usually not “Is it true?” but “Who said it?” The authority of the assertion lay in its author, not its reliability or cogency.  Few would contradict the local Lord or his feudal contemporaries, or maintain a position in opposition to the Pope and Councils – remember Galileo? Replacing this notion with a more modern approach was long and costly, and sadly this primitive past is now being resurrected in the new social-justice approach to science.

However, while specifically the product of the objective sciences of the West and often practised based on presuppositions of materialism and positivism, the scientific method can be owned by no one individual or social component. In many ways it is simply a human manner of reasoning all -things-being equal i e if outside (cultural) forces do not constrain it. The Stone Age hunter in his analysis and predictions when planning and executing a successful hunt may very well have utilised the method: Observe the phenomenon, analyse the phenomenon, formulate a hypothesis to explain the phenomenon, and then test the hypothesis against its context and a milieu of critical responses, then demonstrate its reliability in a practical setting.

The arrogance of many of the conditioned responses I encountered in my years in the UK was based primarily on the conviction that the scientific method was the sole property of those who held a certain world-view and assumed a certain set of presuppositions. For that reason it was never difficult to challenge laymen who had no real grounding in any of the sciences and whose authority was very much founded on “Scientists say.” Challenging practising scientists was not as easy, but much more satisfying. Indeed I very rarely encountered a physical scientist who was at all doctrinaire in their evaluation of science and religion – which means the “conflict model” of interaction between science and religion, may not be as appropriate as popular culture might present it.

3. My personal Pentecostal response to the science-religion debate

I joined a fellow customer in a two-mile walk through Worcester from our service garage to downtown. He asked me what I did, I told him, he responded that he was an atheist, I told him I was not, by the time we crossed the river Severn there were tears in his eyes. I simply told him that as a lover of science I unashamedly remained your typical Doubting Thomas, but that since I was 9 years old I had been surrounded by evidence of a powerful transforming God – people from basic alcohol-steeped workers in a Durban suburb, to theological students who had been addicts and convicts, folks who had been “crippled, broken ruined” but whose lives, homes and lifestyles had been redeemed by Jesus Christ. From diseased tribal folk to Hindus and Buddhists who had been healed and exorcised from ancient spirits and demonic hold. As a scholar testing the hypothesis of the New Testament that Jesus is both God and Lord, I was surrounded by a vast cloud of empirical evidence that these things were real. And I accepted that when I spoke of them, the hearers would be stirred in their hearts since as Peter asserted “we are witnesses to these things and so too is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”

I could end this blog post just there. The answer to the scepticism of the world is not so much knowledge and reason but witness. I was baptised with the Holy Spirit as a high-school teen. On my return to school the next week I spoke again to my circle of friends of the need to turn to Jesus Christ. The difference was amazing: where but a week ago they had mocked, they now sat with dewy eyes and sober hearts. A Spirit-filled witness demonstrates a power from God that in itself is testimony of the powerful working of a living God.

Paul’s argument with the Corinthians over the contrast between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God, of human oratory and divinely inspired proclamation, encapsulates something of this truth. Pentecostals who still live their heritage have been followed consistently by this response from their secular milieu: There is something different about you. There is something in the way you speak…  In South Africa in the 1960’s and 70’s how often did I hear an acquaintance say: we hear your ministers on radio, somehow they seem so different to the others. For most of my life I have embraced a paradigm which understands that if I work for an employer, take a class at school or college, preach a sermon or convene the singing at a church gathering, that because of the working in God in my life not one of those situations or groups will remain unchanged by the immediate powerful working of God. The true witness to God is his transformation of people and events, demonstrating “the power of God unto salvation.”

After a truly enjoyable day sitting in class at a Durham conference with a large group of Christian leaders, scholars and teachers, and listening to a number of quantum physicists and mathematicians try to explain to us their field (successfully? Nah, not so much!) we all joined for a social meal and late night drinks. I joined the group of very evangelical scientists who hosted these gatherings, in informal discussion with a very secular French lady who had been one of the day’s speakers. We were speaking of our rational and academically credible reasons for belief and trust in God, and she was suitably impressed. But when we spoke of the work of God in our own personal brokenness, her heart seemed to melt within her. Herein lies another truth for Pentecostals: although we can often simply witness to the power of Jesus, there are circles in which we first need to earn the respect of our audience by our knowledge and competence in the science of the world. Without that we would have gained no hearing from the visiting speakers, but with that we were able to introduce the vital existential encounter that worked effectively in their hearts.

I believe we need to congregate to take counsel of one another on our Pentecostal relationship to fundamentalisms of all kinds, to modernism not confused with modernity, to post-modernism with all its vulnerabilities, to the new “woke” Orwellianism, to Christian apologetics and to the hypotheses for comprehending the world that are what world-views really are.

But I will be neither the first nor the last to assert that for all that we have as Pentecostals, for all our knowledge and qualification, it is not by our wisdom and power that the infidel can turn from emptiness to hope and light and meaning. But by the witness of God in their hearts, confirming our words. I have spoken to many sceptical academic and professional gatherings over many years and not once found this to be a mistaken assumption.

I was young and now am old, but this is a truth that has not changed since I was a child.

Now it’s the established religion – a predictable “intellectual” pathway

Often a major paradigm change will create a new movement, initially radical and subversive but eventually morphing fully into the new establishment. Depending on its ideological feeders, the new consensus becomes more or less totalitarian – although “more totalitarian” tends to be the default. In this mature phase the new paradigm will display all the characteristics of an orthodox religion attempting to marginalise or silence dissenting views. It becomes the new orthodoxy versus the new heresies and heretics.

 

The mediaeval model:

The Roman Church in mediaeval Europe provides a broad template illustrating the process and dynamics of the mature system:

 

From radically subversive to the new orthodoxy:

The radical Christianity of the first three centuries was persecuted, the target of genocide at the hands of the pagan Roman powers until the Edict of Milan. Then in the early fourth century it was granted equivalent legitimacy to the other religions in the empire. By the end of that century it was declared by Theodosius to be the only legitimate religion in the empire, and the path was clear for it to mature to a totalitarian system.

 

“Heretics” as a despised and demonised class:

While the earliest church had to deal with dissenters, these were at most confronted, refuted and at worst excluded. The great Councils of the fourth and fifth centuries provided parameters for declaring a vast number of groups and viewpoints heretical: Arians, Monophysites, Nestorians, Copts and Assyrians all being combined into this group. Where Rome held sway, they were subjected to exclusion and exile – and in some cases even to death. As the hold of Rome intensified over the Western church and morphed into the Holy Roman Empire, a broad consensus of rulers, churchmen and intellectuals emerged that formulated and policed the parameters of orthodoxy. The church could eventually call upon the secular powers, in the form of the military, to hunt down the heretics and exterminate them. Intensive “crusades” were launched against some who were ensconced in Alpine valleys. The established consensus made it clear – even the mildest dissent will not be tolerated.

 

Intensification of conflict with heretics, and the descent into support for the irrational

Dealing with heretics became a massive and expensive endeavour. It could be retroactive, as in the exhuming of the bones of Wycliffe to be burnt for his subversion of the claims of the church. It could be despicably treacherous, as in the waiving of the safe-passage offered Jan Hus, and his subsequent execution in Konstanz. An entire organ of the church-state alliance was called into being – the Inquisition – to “smell out” and eradicate dissenters. Friends, neighbours and families operated as spies, reporting even the slightest suspicion of dissenting sympathies. An accusation of for instance having once read the wrong text could lead to a person’s torture and death, without recourse or mitigation. Indeed, at times these close acquaintances would function as the executioners, as in the infamous Bartholomew Night massacre in post-Reformation France.

The problems for the orthodox consensus intensified when the established church and associated powers adopted philosophical and scientific positions that were no longer rationally viable. The elevation of Aristotle’s cosmology to dogma created a hiatus between the new class of scientists and adventurers and a church which had departed from any position that could be defended by reasoned argument. A full-scale ideological war was now waged, in which the church became alienated from and subverted by an entire class of thinkers and Christian practitioners. The totalitarian consensus was unravelling.

The eventual secession of the Protestant churches and nations was facilitated by the obvious irrationality and arrogance of the Roman establishment – and by new technology such as the printing-press, which provided a channel for communication and subversion to the heretics. The Inquisition continued to rage, but the paradigm had changed again and it was too late for much of Europe. South Europe and the new possessions those countries held in the New World were condemned to pre-modern feudalistic forms of rule and culture until well into the 20^th century – while the Protestant North enjoyed the hard-won fruits (with many set-backs along the way) of the modernising programme.

 

The model repeated

This model of progression from radical subversion via established consensus to brutal totalitarian intolerance can be detected in similar and even identical form in the many new “orthodoxies” arising since then. While less brutal than the Roman repression, the established Protestant churches of Northern Europe also marginalised and excluded dissenters – many of whom emigrated to North America and created there a nation which forbade the emergence of any church-state consensus. One of the greatest works of pious literature was written by an English dissenter imprisoned for the crime of “preaching” while not holding credentials from the established English church – The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan.

The French revolution demonstrated many of the traits of the mediaeval totalitarian consensus, as did the Marxist Soviet and German National-socialist states. These can even be detected in the Zulu Empire under Chaka and Dingaan.

Today the new orthodoxy consists of what was radical subversive in the 1960’s. The erstwhile anti-establishment protestors have now become the patrons and guardians of a stifling new consensus. The academic, political, journalistic and entertainment blocs have underwritten the consensus and employ many of the strategies and tools of the mediaeval church-state alliance to enforce it. They now police the parameters of orthodoxy as implacably as any previous Inquisition.

 

The new heretics and their marginalisation

The new heretics include every person who does not whole-heartedly embrace the new consensus which has crystallised most noticeably since the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the USA (see my earlier posting on this.) The consensus, tagged “the liberal Left”, Cultural Marxism, post-modernism, and a number of other more or less credible identifiers, has responded with hysteria and desperate activism against this new challenge to their hitherto unchallenged dominance in the market-place of ideas. Its response has become brutal, and in some Western nations has even begun to forge or harness a new Inquisition to police its privileges.

The tools used today to marginalise or eliminate even the slightest whiff of dissent are very similar to witch-smelling in the Zulu Empire. The King or his shaman would arbitrarily identify a person as a witch or wizard, and that person’s peers would immediately turn on them, stabbing and clubbing them to death – thereby conveniently signalling to the powerful their own orthodoxy. To ensure the elimination of any and every threat, the simplest accusation of non-orthodoxy would lead at best to exclusion, at worst to immediate death. The French Reign of Terror, the Soviets and the Nazis developed this into an art-form of co-option, using the heretic’s own peers to terminate their tainted influence. And here in the UK the ultimate harnessing of state and “orthodox” power has occurred: a simple accusation of “hate speech” against a person who has “offended” a beneficiary of the consensus (usually described as a “vulnerable victim”) will be mercilessly prosecuted by the Prosecuting Authority, with the powers of the police and the judiciary employed to exclude and silence these new “criminals.” This without any attempt to establish actual guilt or even what the parameters of guilt are. Since the scope of hate-speech is being extended daily by the hysterical consensus, the new heretics can include even many of the radical heroes of the 1960’s and 70’s, such as those venerable architects of the consensus itself: Germaine Greer and Camille Paglia.

The intellectual world is suffering an epidemic of witch-smelling. Once an academic, lecturer, commentator or activist is accused of racism or sexism or any one of a dozen new “phobias”, to avoid contamination their own peers will hastily and publicly desert them, or turn on them and rend them to signal their own virtue and harmless conformity. While the printing press offered the major tool of subversion in the mediaeval era, today it is the so-called alt-right media and the great engines of social media – Facebook, Google, Youtube and Twitter. As the owners of these engines signal their own virtuous compliance to the consensus, the algorithms are being tweaked to exclude even the slightest deviance from the ideology of the new order, labelling this blatant censorship as justified since they are acting against “hate speech.” The new dissenting media are targeted as “preachers of hate” and those who support them, even just with online advertising, are identified, boycotted and publicly “shamed.”

 

How will it end?

The totalitarian mediaeval church lost all credibility when it took a dogmatic stand against the rationally-validated evidence of science: Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, each clearly vindicated by empirical observation. The Soviet Union collapsed when it became clear that it was unable to generate wealth on the scale of its capitalist competitors – its ideologies devoid of any rational coherence or earthly good. Systems that required walls to prevent their own citizens from escaping the totalitarian brutality of the ruling consensus discovered that electro-magnetic waves could not be so easily excluded – while the last great Asian systems of intolerance in Iran and mainland China appear susceptible to the internet, which they are understandably desperately attempting to censor – with the craven complicity of some great Western social media giants such as Google.

Perhaps the new consensus will not be facilitated so much by the subversion of the Trump supporters and the Brexiteers but by the sheer irrationality of its own champions and tenets. This has already become clear when it ruthlessly polices the public spaces it controls to ensure that contrary arguments are cut off before being uttered. The stark contrast between the young articulate voices that offer researched and reasoned objections to the overreaching claims of the consensus – the Shapiros, Southerns, Murrays and Lahrens of the social media – and the frantic screaming sloganeers and their vicious physical attacks against all who articulate an alternative narrative, effectively enacting a hecklers’ veto shamefully supported by University and public authorities – this contrast cannot for ever escape the notice and derision of rational thinkers and those who are open to entertaining and discussing fresh insights. The young dissenters find resonance and motivation in an older and sometimes newer group of subverters – the Coulters, Paglias and Petersons whose rational beings experience every irrational utterance of the new consensus as an insult to their very considerable intelligence. Even the Court Jesters, the disruptors and provocateurs such Milo Yannapoulis play their role, subjecting the consensus to what it hates and fears most: ridicule. Who better than a gay Jew with a preference for Black lovers to demonstrate the absolute absurdity of the epithets, slogans, and tags thrown his way by the hysterical storm-troopers of the new orthodoxy: “Milo is a racist and anti-Semitic homophobe….” You couldn’t make it up.

But the prime, the ultimate subversion of the totalitarian consensus must surely lie in their replacement of the long-established objective ontology of the Western (modern) scientific world for the subjective ontology of personal identity. When the regulations of sober seats of learning such as Oxford and Cambridge, and the laws of many Western nations, are being adjusted to delegitimise and criminalise any who dissent from the right of an individual to assert their own subjective identity (sexual or otherwise) despite the hard empirical evidence of biology or simple rational cogency – then the end must surely be near. Surely the nations roar and the people imagine a vain thing! Who will be the Copernicus, Kepler or Galileo to provide the rock upon which the present absurdity must surely falter and sink?

The final days of the Boomers – a crisis in leadership?

(I am at last emerging from a long period of health challenges, none totally debilitating but all rather energy-sapping. And I find time again to think and write!)

The long-serving President of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa, Dr Isak Burger, has just retired at the age of 65 yrs. His replacement, elected by the National Conference in September 2016, is Pastor George Mahlobo, who is himself over 60 yrs old and has been the General Secretary of the denomination since 1996. Isak Burger became President of the church in 1988, in the place of Dr F P Moller who had held that office since 1965. Mahlobo’s election presents the movement with its first non-PhD president in 51 years – but is noteworthy not for that, but for his age.

On receiving the news of Isak’s replacement (he and I had served as College lecturers together in the 1980’s) I browsed the newsletters and web-site of the church and discovered that almost every current national leader of the church (Office Bearers, Trustees, and Departmental Directors) was of the same generation: Baby Boomers. Between 1988 and 1991, the conference-elected or appointed leadership of the church as represented by these categories had come to consist (with a single exception) of then-40-something Baby Boomers with high formal theological qualifications (PhD’s). All of us had in our younger days been encouraged to gradually develop our skills and input into the national church under the enlightened and confident presidency of Moller – who had the confidence to delegate and entrust significant aspects of development to those who showed potential. However, it appears that we have not ourselves been as successful in facilitating individuals in the next generation to develop as we were encouraged and permitted to do – or we have adopted social filters that preclude identifying or recognising anything or anyone who does not fit the cookie-cutter mold for “leadership” brashly and unrelentingly mouthed by the Church Leadership brigade for the last 25 years.

The challenge for that particular church (which, although in Africa has a large modernised Western component) seems: where can they find leaders who are younger and not in this category of due-for-retirement Boomers, who can demonstrate obvious and recognisable potential and ability? The UK church may be in similar straits. Even wider secular society is experiencing these dynamics: it is Boomer faces and issues that dominate politics on both sides of the Atlantic: Trump, Clinton, Sanders, Corbyn, Merkel, May… indeed, it is retro that lives, as the late-Gen-X clones Obama, Cameron, Osborne, Milliband and Clegg retire from public focus leaving no memorable legacy. Even the normally apathetic young on both continents have been revitalised and motivated by the rhetoric and ideals of the aged – back we go, to the Big Visions of the Right and Left, long live the 1970’s!

Analytically, the problem can be depicted as:

1. The post-Boomer generation is Gen X, who have never really been suspected of being generationally or culturally suited for responsible leadership. Not a natural breeding-ground for dynamic leaders.
2. The following generation is the Millennials (now 18-40 yrs old in most Western nations) who are not particularly respectful or desirous of leadership. Not out of rebellion, but because they prefer informal and relational dynamics to organisations shaped by strong personalities. This may be why they are absent in their millions from the leadership-oriented churches and political parties of the West – they don’t argue, they just don’t buy into personality-led structures, they stay away.
3. A pre-occupation with “leadership” that has dominated Western churches for the last two decades (at least), seems to have failed in attracting or developing strong leadership, except a few so-called entrepreneurial or “apostolic” models. This can be detected in the South African church, where the so-called new leadership-savvy ministers are rarely the ministers of those local Christian communities where sinners are finding Jesus as Saviour. In view of the lack of formal statistics in the UK Pentecostal churches it will demand some major empirical studies to determine whether the last 25 years of emphasis on leadership has significantly (or even slightly) increased the rate of conversion of sinners here, where the growth rate of Pentecostalism outside of the immigrant communities is probably less than 1% p.a. The North American church is not dissimilar.
4. When the previous General Superintendent of a UK Pentecostal church admitted to its College faculty in 2014 that he could not identify a single minister in his church that was capable of fulfilling the role of Director of Training for the movement, this was an astonishing admission of failure of a leadership model that had proposed to “Build bigger people.” The new leadership paradigms have produced or promoted some entrepreneurial leaders, and some leaders who confidently claim “apostolic” status – but neither class of leader has demonstrated the ability to train, encourage and equip their replacements or competition. This is evident in the crises of transition that have shaken so many personality-led movements as the Boomer generation departs. Most “savvy” leaders have preferred to surround themselves with good “team people” rather than with those more irritating souls who could press, challenge and perhaps even threaten their personal security, comfort-zone and abilities. This tendency is not conducive to developing a new generation of capable people.
5. At seminaries we have noticed for at least the last 20 years how few of the students who enter or exit our doors seem to demonstrate the ability to function as confidently and effectively as the then 30-or-40-something Boomers did a generation ago. Most seem complacent about at most finding a niche in the team of some entrepreneurial leader, while those braver souls who choose to attempt church planting on their own initiative are only more or less successful, with few drawing attention to themselves as dynamic and effective agents of the gospel – and few enjoying any corporate support unless being prepared to submit to some form of intrusive oversight.
6. Where a more traditional type of Christian leader has emerged has been in those contexts (not exclusively but mainly in the Global South) where converts are being won among people who are significantly less enabled, developed, modernised or socially mobile than the ministers themselves. In these contexts the leader is compelled to facilitate modernisation and social enablement as a crucial part of discipling the converts. The models being employed in the West, especially the Great Man of God model, can have precisely the opposite effect: upward mobility and modernisation can in fact be subverted by an insistence on submission to leaders (entrepreneurial or apostolic) who may be significantly less socially developed than their team or church members (relatively few of whom came to conversion under that leadership anyway.)
7. The educational systems of the West have adopted a cotton-wool approach to pupils and students which attempts to accompany them pastorally in every aspect of their lives, and apologises and changes its ways when the more disciplined demands of study (such as home-work, memorising and intensive research) threaten the emotional and psychological well-being of the young. This nanny-ing approach was never going to encourage the production of strong, confident and professional leadership – especially not of the sacrificial and persevering kind.

The crisis:

In essence, the next generation of Western Pentecostals, after a generation of emphasis on leadership, is ironically faced with a crisis of leadership. How to “lead” (actually, to win) the Millennials, how to promote the social, economic and educational good of the new converts – indeed, how to win converts! How to convince the wider membership of potential and ability, how to demonstrate the traits of a strong leader, perhaps as summed up in Kipling’s poem If… (Then you are a man, my son!) How to model a clear sense of direction, how to exemplify wisdom, how to develop one’s intellect, how to be a humble servant of both God and men – and crucially, how to identify and enable the next generation of leaders, once your course is run…

Time to strategise? To take time out from the weary and ineffectual shibboleths of the leadership gurus? Time to rediscover the power of God and the potential that is resident in even the most unlikely? Time for the humble servant heart, dedicated to the development of the people, to come to the fore again?

An open paper for the leaders and ministers of the Elim Pentecostal Church

In 2015 the Elim Pentecostal Church (EFGA) celebrates its centenary. This paper suggests that after 100 years it might perhaps be a good time to review the structural and governance paradigm of the movement – in the light of the social development of the wider UK population and the upward mobility of the church’s own membership. Submitted with humility and prayer, and some initial trepidation!

Click here:  Elim 2015 – An opportunity for structural modification

Israel, Gaza, Arab Spring, women bishops and freedom

Israel, Gaza, Arab Spring, women bishops and freedom

Let me trespass on political soil – and hopefully not lose too many friends…

More than 20 years ago, in a Time essay conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer asked “By whose values do we critique Israel’s conduct – those of the liberal democracies of the West, or those of her neighbours?” At the time I was still living in pre-liberation South Africa, and on reading this wondered if the same question might not be asked of my own country. From the wider perspective, both Israel and apartheid South Africa have been shining beacons of tolerance and liberty compared to most of their immediate neighbours – while pursuing practices and policies that have drawn exclamations of outrage from the Western liberal establishment.

It has to be acknowledged – and this is certainly not an apologetic for apartheid – that the record of most Middle Eastern states and of post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa with regard to human rights and democracy has been abysmal. Millions have died of wars, genocide, starvation and disease – and their grandiosely brutal dictators have strutted across the world’s stage, often feted by the media and rulers of the liberal West while their people suffered. The record of such has certainly been worse by orders of magnitude than anything ever seen in modern Israel or apartheid South Africa.

One of the immediate results of the Arab Spring, following a similar trend in newly democratic Iraq, has been the intensified marginalisation and persecution of Christian minorities. While not exactly enjoying spectacular freedom under the old authoritarian regimes, under the new (often Islamist-dominated) democratic regimes those who follow the historical Christian churches in the Middle East are now even more vulnerable to the dislike of their rulers and neighbours. Foretelling the demise of historical expressions of the church in this region, in a typically supercilious BBC manner a presenter on the “Sunday” programme recently remarked to an Iraqi churchman: “Sadly soon the only representatives of Christianity in the Middle East will be the American right-wing conservative evangelical and charismatic groups…” (Wake up and smell the coffee – these despised groups are the evident heirs of the next generation of Christianity! And for heaven sake may the BBC and other Western media please stop equating “conservative evangelical” with “right wing” – and an awful lot of these groups are anything but American)

Where do women bishops stand in this mix? It was significant that this hoped-for amendment to C of E polity was resisted by the laity, and primarily by those of Catholic tendencies (can a woman guarantee sacramental assurance?) and of Bible-believing charismatic-evangelical persuasion (should a woman teach and lead?) Here we have an unlikely conservative alliance where the modernising charismatic-evangelical wing finds common cause with the very pre-modern Catholic wing. One feels that the evangelicals should never have been there – their equally Bible-believing revivalist and Pentecostal peers have long found little problem with reconciling the text of Scripture with the evidence of Spirit-filled women who demonstrate a clear vocation in Christian ministry at every level.

The issue of modernisation of cultures

Underlying all of these scenarios is the juxtaposition of pre-modern and modern thinking and cultures, and the question of what promotes or hinders the progression from the former to the latter.

Israelis, with their historical roots in European Jewry, represent the ultimate modernised culture and society in the Middle East. Their approach to the problems of agriculture in the desert, and to their surrounding sea of enemies, clearly illustrates this. White Africans similarly represented in Southern Africa the modernising and modernised cultures of their European roots. Modern Israel and the previously White Southern African nations have been surrounded by cultures and societies in which the majority of people were and still are primarily pre-modern in world-view and cultural practice. When the privilege of modern democratic elections has been offered to such societies, too often the outcome has been at best a hybrid of cultures but more likely the affirmation of pre-modern attitudes and practices. And while the modern, middle-class, professional, merchant and artisan elements of Arab society launched the Arab Spring, ironically the democratic harvest they achieved has been new governments that reflect the pre-modern majority in their countries.

The established churches of Europe, no matter how liberal and modernised their clergy may be as individuals, reflect too in their structures a conservative pre-modern feudal value-system. So do the historical churches of the Middle East. As such their social influence is less likely to encourage or promote modernisation. On the other hand, anthropological and sociological researchers argue that the Pentecostal-charismatic groups are a major modernising influence in the societies of the Global South where they are fastest-growing. That it is the charismatic and evangelical Anglican laity that would object to ordination of women bishops seems a sad anomaly within this trend.

Resistance to modernisation

I have as little interest in championing Israel as I do in providing an apologetic for apartheid. But I cannot help but wonder what the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians might have been if their cultures had enjoyed equal modernisation in 1948. It is too often the antipathy between religious and ethnic groups that provides one or both parties with excellent political reasons for resisting with all their might the modernisation of their population. If Egypt were composed of a majority as modernised as those who first took to the Square, would the Brotherhood now be in power? Were the population of Gaza as modernised as the Christian population of Lebanon or the secular population of Turkey, would there be rockets fired and massive walls erected – and could Hamas hope to cling to power? And only with extreme difficulty (but great necessity) do the pre-modern Iranian mullahs keep the lid on the modernised sections of their own people.

Similar scenarios play themselves out in Africa. Faced with the real possibility of his African nation developing an educated and modernised middle-class that would oust him, Mugabe simply had to destroy their social and economic basis: urban businesses, middle-class housing, and the commercial farms and mines. Despite the economic ruin he has foisted on his nation, 50% of the people will still vote for him – the least modernised 50%, the subsistence farmers of the rural regions. And the majority of Black folk in neighbouring South Africa believe fervently that the ruin of Zimbabwe was orchestrated from abroad by White imperialists! This is the same majority that continue to support their own massively corrupt and manifestly incompetent ANC government – a government that has no intention of improving state education, since an upwardly-mobile educated class would never provide such unconditional support.

(In passing: I am well aware of the argument that Israelis and White Africans themselves have had a stake in resisting the modernisation of their surrounding cultures. Speaking for myself, for my fellow White Africans and for the Israelis I have met, this argument verges on the ridiculous – who among us would imagine that a thoroughly modernised Middle East and Southern African sub-continent could be anything other than a most desirable outcome? We would give our eye-teeth for that – to see our respective regions flourishing culturally and materially in an informed and open environment.)

The Pentecostal-charismatic movement

It would certainly be radical to imagine that the conservative established churches of the European nations might eventually be replaced in their social influence by the modernising Pentecostal groups. Yet in the Global South it is probably the fact that the greatest public Christian influence is wielded by these groups rather than by the historical churches that contributes to the modernisation of cultures. Indeed, in Latin America the modernising influence is clearly evident, of both the Pentecostal groups and the secular movement as they replace the entrenched feudalism of the Roman Catholic Church.

Yet sadly these Pentecostal groups might be nurturing within themselves an antidote to this positive trend. The autonomy of Spirit-filled individuals who can search the Scriptures for themselves is slowly being subverted by new guru cults of authoritarian church leadership. The modern question “Is it true?” is being replaced by the mediaeval question “Who said it?” The open and dynamic freedom of the Spirit of the liberating Jesus, operating within the precise parameters of the Scriptures, is gradually being replaced by new superstitions that acknowledge occult forces and rituals, that replace free liturgical expressions with mechanistic rituals, and that resist accumulating knowledge and insights that might benefit the people and the not the leaders.

How sad it would be if a most promising modernising movement, significantly present in almost every region on earth, were to be subverted from within to become just one more ritualistic religion, anti-intellectual culture, and pedlar of superstitious nonsense? The notion of a fundamentalistic Pentecostal Taliban is not as far-fetched as we might imagine. Pray God this may never happen, let us educate the next Pentecostal generation in modern ways and expressions that reflect the freedom offered by the liberating Christ.