Two charismatic conferences, one on the heels of the other, drew thousands of persons to Minneapolis last month. The Assemblies of God Council on Spiritual Life (August 14–18) followed the First International Lutheran Conference on the Holy Spirit (August 8–12). That the Lutheran “neo-Pentecostals” upstaged the “classic Pentecostals”—in the mass media, at least—didn’t appear to upset anyone. And many people attended both meetings.
Five thousand persons attended the Assemblies’ meeting. At the opening rally they heard a report from the Executive Presbytery that said in part, “The winds of the Spirit are blowing freely outside the normally recognized Pentecostal bodies. Thousands of persons have prayed for years that this could come to pass.” Apparently referring to the swelling charismatic tide in mainline Protestant churches as well as in the Roman Catholic Church, the Assemblies of God leaders declared that “the coming of the Holy Spirit upon so many in such a broad sweep of the church world is God’s way of counteracting the liberalism, secularism, humanism, and occultism that plague our present-day society.”
The unofficial Lutheran meeting, like most charismatic events these days, turned out to be an ecumenical affair that some traditional Lutherans probably found more Pentecostal than Lutheran in approach. Revival music, speaking and singing in tongues with outstretched arms, frequent prayerful “praise-the-Lord” and “hallelujah” exclamations, several prayer sessions for salvation, healing, and Holy Spirit baptism, and reports of “miracles” that followed charismatic renewal in other countries characterized the four-day conference. At one session, a bearded young man screamed in agony, and the audience prayed for his “deliverance from demons.” Later, he jumped up and down in apparent thanksgiving.
Nineteen workshops on various aspects of the charismatic movement were repeated six times. The Reverend A. Herbert Mjorud, whose call as an evangelist of the American Lutheran Church was terminated several years ago because he allegedly promoted speaking in tongues, led the most popular seminar, “Faith and Healing.” Mjorud along with other evangelists laid hands on those who came to the workshop for healing. He also led prayer for mass healings at the plenary sessions.
One Lutheran pastor from Tofte, Minnesota, reported that a year ago he was healed of a back ailment after Mjorud prayed for him. His leg, he told a Religious News Service reporter, grew two inches. In the conference’s mass healing services Mjorud prayed, “In the name of Jesus, we command every sickness and disease to go.”
The conference claimed a registration of some 8,000 persons, though it seemed that there were never more than 5,000 or 6,000 present at any one session. Hundreds of the registrants were reportedly Roman Catholics, and hundreds more were non-Lutheran Protestants and traditional Pentecostals. Five of the seven main speakers were non-Lutherans. No Lutheran denominational officials were on the program. The final service of holy communion was open to “all born-again believers.”
The organizing was done by a steering committee of sixteen Lutherans headed by the Reverend Norris L. Wogen, who recently resigned as pastor of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church (ALC), in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Wogen estimated that 1,000 Lutheran pastors in this country have “received the baptism of the Spirit”—400 in the American Lutheran Church, 400 in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, and 200 in the Lutheran Church in America. But many, he said, aren’t making themselves known to avoid becoming targets of criticism and suspicion among congregations and hierarchies. Because of this, and to avoid personality emphasis, names of other conference steering-members weren’t disclosed.
Leading Roman Catholic charismatic theologian Father Edward O’Connor of Notre Dame told conferees that the primary purpose of charismatic inspiration “seems to be to demonstrate to us in a convincing way that Jesus did not depart from us 2,000 years ago but still reigns among us with power.” O’Connor pleaded with charismatics to be obedient to their spiritual shepherds and urged pastors and other church authorities to remember that they have been “put in charge of souls with the mission of opening them up to the Spirit of God.”
Indonesian evangelist Mel Tari, another non-Lutheran, reported resurrections and other miracles performed since charismatic revival broke out on Timor Island in 1965. A Seattle, Washington, Episcopal rector, Dennis Bennett, told how this movement had awakened his once hopeless parish (it’s now the largest in his diocese). He also reported that singer Johnny Cash received Holy Spirit baptism at a recent Las Vegas appearance; however, Cash later denied the story. American Baptist minister Kenneth Pagard of Chula Vista, California, described the work of his charismatic congregation. And David du Plessis, founder of the World Pentecostal Council and co-chairman of the Roman Catholic-Pentecostal dialogue held recently in Zurich, Switzerland, told the applauding delegates that he heard a critic of the charismatic movement say, “Don’t worry. It’s just a passing whim. It will blow over.” “And it did,” observed du Plessis. “It blew all over.” Lutheran speakers at the conference were Mjorud and Hans Jacob Froen, a pastor from Oslo, Norway.
The conference charged no registration fee, but free-will offerings reportedly will meet the $18,000 expenses, which included several chartered planes that brought European Lutherans to Minneapolis.
Wogen and du Plessis urged charismatics to remain within their churches. But several conference workshops were led by formerly Lutheran pastors who had severed denominational ties. One of them emphasized the need to trust in God, and said his income had doubled since he left his denomination.
Wogen got the idea for the conference after attending a Catholic charismatic conference at Notre Dame (see June 23 issue, page 34). He said another Lutheran conference is planned for next summer, possibly again in Minneanolis.
Religion On The Rocks
Taking the church to the people, a popular idea, has been carried a step further by a Lutheran minister in New York City. With approval from the local synod of the Lutheran Church in America, Dale R. Lind now tends a bar on the upper east side of New York.
Lind, a Gettysburg Seminary graduate, received a church call to work with young adults whose lives are unaffected by the church. Claiming that Jesus went to the people, Lind got a job in a bar frequented by pimps and prostitutes. He now works in a bar that caters to young couples and singles.
Off hours he meets with customers seeking more help and teaches courses at New York Theological Seminary. Besides helping customers, Lind also has become unofficial chaplain to Manhattan bartenders.
Church officials told the New York Times they were pleased with Lind’s work and predicted that self-supporting ministries such as Lind’s (he earns $150 per week from the job and collects no salary from the church) may be the church of the future.
Wogen regards the charismatic upsurge as a prelude to Christ’s second coming. “I have an abiding conviction that I will not die until I have seen Christ,” he said. “And my hair’s pretty white, too.”
Southern Presbyterians: Bedrock Revision
Southern Presbyterians, who have looked to the 1647 Westminster Confession of Faith as denominational bedrock, are being asked to consider a new, poetic confession that some characterize as vague and weak. The draft confession took three years to write and is now under study by members of the Presbyterian Church U.S. If approved at intervening stages it will be presented for ratification at the church’s 1975 General Assembly.
The twenty-three-page document, written in a poetic style, is praised by supporters as a statement in plain English with the emphasis on clarity. Detractors call it obscure and say it embodies a form of “vague universalism” that seems more humanistic than Christian.
Newly elected church moderator Dr. L. Nelson Bell particularly dislikes the absence of explicit statements on the Virgin Birth and on biblical authority. The confession does not use the word “virgin,” preferring to say: “He came as a child,/born of woman as is every child,/yet born of God’s initiative as was no other child.” And “infallible” is not mentioned in the same breath as “Bible”; the statement says only that the Bible is the record of Israel’s experiences with God set in various literary forms that, as they were read and expounded, proved sufficient witnesses to Jesus Christ.
The draft was written by a ten-man committee headed by Dr. Albert C. Winn, president of Louisville Presbyterian Seminary. It is expected to undergo revision when reactions are received from church members. Questionnaires are due back December 15.
The draft is to come to the 1973 assembly for study and to the 1974 assembly for approval to present it to the presbyteries. If 75 per cent of the presbyteries approve, the 1975 assembly will take final action.
Conservatives in the denomination who are disturbed by what they consider liberal tendencies met in Weaverville, North Carolina, last month to plan a new church should the proposed merger with the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. be approved. Speakers included Westminster Seminary president Edmund P. Clowney and Greenville, Alabama, attorney W. Jack Williamson, a member of the steering committee planning the new church. The participants went ahead with their plans despite pleas from Bell that they stick to witnessing for Christ. Bell was a founder of the weekly Presbyterian Journal but broke with the magazine’s editorial board and other conservative groups when they announced plans last year for formation of a new church.
Plans call for the group to seek a “survival” clause if merger goes through, allowing opposed congregations to withdraw with their property. It was also suggested that where there is sufficient strength, entire presbyteries should be pulled out.
Fcc Petition-Pondering
Federal Communications Commission officials are examining two petitions by Christian broadcasting groups—one to get started, the other to hire theologically compatible employees.
In Washington, D. C., two groups combined forces to seek FCC approval of plans to purchase an AM station and convert it to full-time Christian broadcasting. The new organization, WCTN Broadcasting, is headed by MacArthur A. and Keith M. Jollay, the father-son pastoral team at Christ (Assemblies of God) Church in the capital, and Bruce Jackson, a Washington businessman and backer of Jesus Radio, which tried earlier to obtain a license. While the FCC ponders the application, backers are scouring the capital to raise funds. The younger Jollay says that no target date is set to begin broadcasting but that he hopes the station will be on the air this fall. If not, he says, the whole plan may fall through.
In Washington state the FCC was approached to allow a Christian station to examine religious as well as professional qualifications of prospective employees (see June 9 issue, page 4). King’s Garden Incorporated, operating two stations in Edmonds, Washington, wants the FCC to change its hiring rules and exempt religious organizations from 1968 Civil Rights Act requirements. King’s Garden appealed to the FCC to be consistent with new congressional statutes that allow such organizations to examine the religious qualifications without fear of Civil Rights Act reprisals.
The issue hit the FCC when Trygve Anderson, applicant for a post as news announcer, was asked if he and his wife were Christians and could give a testimony. Anderson refused to answer, maintaining the questions had nothing to do with his technical qualifications. Backing Anderson is the communication office of the United Church of Christ, which claims broadcasters are “public trustees” and cannot discriminate on religious grounds. The church has asked the FCC to deny the proposed rule change.
BARRIE DOYLE
The Sdbs And The Ncc
The 800 delegates and visitors to the annual Seventh Day Baptist General Conference held in Denver last month voted to remain in the National Council of Churches—at least for one more year. The small (5,331-member) denomination is a charter member of the NCC and is proud of its ecumenical record (see September 10, 1971, issue, page 46). But it will reconsider the matter next year.
Meanwhile, the conference ordered the Council on Ecumenical Affairs to analyze the pros and cons of NCC membership and report its findings to the denomination’s sixty-six congregations. Delegates debated for two hours what instructions to give those who will attend the NCC General Assembly next December. The ecumenical-affairs council wanted the SDB church to vote for NCC restructure, but opposition led to a compromise. The SDBs favor NCC government decentralization to promote inter-church cooperation.
Delegates declined to make a statement on Viet Nam and referred the question of gun control to committee. Denver orthopedic surgeon Edward J. Horsley is the new president.
