Protestant!Posting
Jun. 25th, 2025 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
highlyeccentricRecommendation: the first episode of the "Ill Concieved" podcast, which promises to be a podcast about natalism. Their first episode is Promise Keepers.
Note: I had a complex reaction to this content. The dominant one is actually a sort of relief in finding someone in 2025 of vaguely my demographic digging into this. I recognise Promise Keepers. I don't think I know anyone who went to a Promise Keepers rally (I'm not even sure if there WERE such rallies in Aus), but I definitely heard people talk about the Important Movement which Ill Concieved delightfully describe as "700,000 Dicks Out For Jesus".
However. I was a left-ish, liturgy-friendly Protestant growing up around charismatic and Pentecostal-leaning evangelicals. I dealt with this by Reading Up, particularly once I got academic library access and could search the keywords which my confirmation mentor had mentioned. Marion Maddox's "God Under Howard" is in my top five formative books, I reckon. I also read a fair bit of Karen Armstrong, which I realise is not the BEST one could read, but several points which were jarring to me in that episode come under the heading of "wait, Karen Armstrong can and does explain this, I'm open to other explanations but you're just saying it's Odd?".
Consequently, I ended up posting a mini-essay in skeets. I reproduce it here with corrected punctuation.
Recommendation: this.
Additional note: it’s a little weird to me, someone who dealt with growing up around charismatic evangelicals by researching as much on the history of both Pentecostalism and evangelical movements as I could get my teenage hands on, to hear @ junlper.beer repeatedly surprised about the multi-racial makeup of Promise Keepers. “Revival” style evangelical movements in the US have historic roots in African-American evangelical movements, and Pentecostalism in the US traces back to a Black revivalist preacher in early 20th c LA.
Pentecostalism didn’t get integrated into “mainline” evangelism until the 80s or so - many regarded them as indecorous, which no doubt had a lot to do with race. But folding Pentecostal practices and beliefs in with other charismatic evangelicals allowed the charismatic sectors of some of the major denominations to really strengthen their dominance over the evangelical cultural landscape.
Pentecostals in the early and mid 20th century, when they were a distinct group, also shared several traits which the @ illconceivedpodcast.com team noted in Promise Keepers:
- A very strong emphasis on personal purity -they shared that with some other charismatic Protestant movements, and it’s now pretty much the dominant mode of American evangelicalism;
- notable-for-the-context racial integration: William Seymour in LA in 1906 was a Black preacher whose Pentecostal revival movement drew in white and Latino families as well as Black parishoners;
- altar calls and calls for renewal with relatively little outward focus. Pentecostalism revives and sanctifies the self, and perhaps the believer’s family or local church: but despite well-publicised revivals and rallies, it does much less _missionary_ work than other evangelical movements, and notable Pentecostal missionary movements focused on existing evangelical communities. And they tended to be fairly apolitical compared to either mainline white evangelicals or the African-American Protestant churches.
The 80s changed things. @ illconceivedpodcast.com talked about Focus On The Family sort of sponsoring Promise Keepers, and FOF, as we know, was a major player in galvanising the evangelical right into a political block, particularly around issues like abortion, pornography, and sexuality.
The incorporation of Pentecostalism into previously-distinct evangelical charismatic movements came about for a whole HOST of reasons, much of it not at all to do with wider politics. But what the politically minded evangelical wing managed to do was galvanise a range of sub-streams of evangelical Protestantism which were concerned with _personal sanctification_, and make right-wing political activism relevant and even imperative to that goal. Once you’ve got Pentecostals buying the same books, calling in to the same radio shows, etc, as other “holiness” evangelicals and charismatic evangelicals, well. Enough of them start pursuing the same politics, and inviting speakers who don’t have exactly the same theology around the gifts of the Holy Spirit because they share common political/social goals, etc: the distinction breaks down.
I understood “Pentecostal” and “Charismatic” to be synonymous in the early 2000s. It seems like many people now consider “Evangelical” to be synonymous with both. I wouldn’t have been caught DEAD at an evangelical Anglican event even as an undergraduate, so I don’t know if the full speaking-in-tongues Pentecostal experience has entered into, say, Sydney Anglican standard evangelicalism here - but the “charismatic” style certainly had even c 2007.
Large-scale Evangelical publishing houses and music distribution imported a US-driven (very white, more white than the actual population of US charismatic evangelicals), theologically extremely vague charismatic cultural mish-mash into Aus.
We exported some back, mind: Hillsong.
And that brings me full circle on Pentecostalism: A Reflection. You may have heard of Hillsong. I’m sure @ illconceivedpodcast.com has heard of them. Hillsong and Planetshakers both advertise themselves as “global” churches which might lead you to think of them as effectively their own denomination, like Methodists or Presbyterians.
Incorrect. Both Hillsong (Sydney) and Planetshakers (Adelaide) are members of “Australian Christian Churches”, formerly known as Assemblies of God In Australia.
The AoGs are a Finished Work Pentecostal denomination with a global assembly.
The AoGs can be traced all the way back to William Seymour’s day, if you care to. Seymour came out of the Methodist “Holiness” tradition, African-American sub-denomination type. Finished Work Pentecostals basically don’t believe that any baptised believer can ever be fully sanctified, while Holiness Charismatics (Pentecostal or not) DO believe that.
Absolutely no one who adopts Hillsong worship materials knows or cares about that - neither the mainline evangelicals nor the “entire sanctification” Pentecostals. The mass dissemination of evangelical, charismatic-leaning Protestant cultural content has basically obliterated what were once high stakes theological arguments.
Not only has this imported INTO Aus US right-wing politics*, it has facilitated us exporting our worst and weirdest.
Summary two: some Protestants will do literally anything to avoid endorsing sacramentalism, including... whatever the fuck happened with Pentecostalism.
---
*Obligatory citation to Marion Maddox's "God Under Howard".
Note: I had a complex reaction to this content. The dominant one is actually a sort of relief in finding someone in 2025 of vaguely my demographic digging into this. I recognise Promise Keepers. I don't think I know anyone who went to a Promise Keepers rally (I'm not even sure if there WERE such rallies in Aus), but I definitely heard people talk about the Important Movement which Ill Concieved delightfully describe as "700,000 Dicks Out For Jesus".
However. I was a left-ish, liturgy-friendly Protestant growing up around charismatic and Pentecostal-leaning evangelicals. I dealt with this by Reading Up, particularly once I got academic library access and could search the keywords which my confirmation mentor had mentioned. Marion Maddox's "God Under Howard" is in my top five formative books, I reckon. I also read a fair bit of Karen Armstrong, which I realise is not the BEST one could read, but several points which were jarring to me in that episode come under the heading of "wait, Karen Armstrong can and does explain this, I'm open to other explanations but you're just saying it's Odd?".
Consequently, I ended up posting a mini-essay in skeets. I reproduce it here with corrected punctuation.
Recommendation: this.
Additional note: it’s a little weird to me, someone who dealt with growing up around charismatic evangelicals by researching as much on the history of both Pentecostalism and evangelical movements as I could get my teenage hands on, to hear @ junlper.beer repeatedly surprised about the multi-racial makeup of Promise Keepers. “Revival” style evangelical movements in the US have historic roots in African-American evangelical movements, and Pentecostalism in the US traces back to a Black revivalist preacher in early 20th c LA.
Pentecostalism didn’t get integrated into “mainline” evangelism until the 80s or so - many regarded them as indecorous, which no doubt had a lot to do with race. But folding Pentecostal practices and beliefs in with other charismatic evangelicals allowed the charismatic sectors of some of the major denominations to really strengthen their dominance over the evangelical cultural landscape.
Pentecostals in the early and mid 20th century, when they were a distinct group, also shared several traits which the @ illconceivedpodcast.com team noted in Promise Keepers:
- A very strong emphasis on personal purity -they shared that with some other charismatic Protestant movements, and it’s now pretty much the dominant mode of American evangelicalism;
- notable-for-the-context racial integration: William Seymour in LA in 1906 was a Black preacher whose Pentecostal revival movement drew in white and Latino families as well as Black parishoners;
- altar calls and calls for renewal with relatively little outward focus. Pentecostalism revives and sanctifies the self, and perhaps the believer’s family or local church: but despite well-publicised revivals and rallies, it does much less _missionary_ work than other evangelical movements, and notable Pentecostal missionary movements focused on existing evangelical communities. And they tended to be fairly apolitical compared to either mainline white evangelicals or the African-American Protestant churches.
The 80s changed things. @ illconceivedpodcast.com talked about Focus On The Family sort of sponsoring Promise Keepers, and FOF, as we know, was a major player in galvanising the evangelical right into a political block, particularly around issues like abortion, pornography, and sexuality.
The incorporation of Pentecostalism into previously-distinct evangelical charismatic movements came about for a whole HOST of reasons, much of it not at all to do with wider politics. But what the politically minded evangelical wing managed to do was galvanise a range of sub-streams of evangelical Protestantism which were concerned with _personal sanctification_, and make right-wing political activism relevant and even imperative to that goal. Once you’ve got Pentecostals buying the same books, calling in to the same radio shows, etc, as other “holiness” evangelicals and charismatic evangelicals, well. Enough of them start pursuing the same politics, and inviting speakers who don’t have exactly the same theology around the gifts of the Holy Spirit because they share common political/social goals, etc: the distinction breaks down.
I understood “Pentecostal” and “Charismatic” to be synonymous in the early 2000s. It seems like many people now consider “Evangelical” to be synonymous with both. I wouldn’t have been caught DEAD at an evangelical Anglican event even as an undergraduate, so I don’t know if the full speaking-in-tongues Pentecostal experience has entered into, say, Sydney Anglican standard evangelicalism here - but the “charismatic” style certainly had even c 2007.
Large-scale Evangelical publishing houses and music distribution imported a US-driven (very white, more white than the actual population of US charismatic evangelicals), theologically extremely vague charismatic cultural mish-mash into Aus.
We exported some back, mind: Hillsong.
And that brings me full circle on Pentecostalism: A Reflection. You may have heard of Hillsong. I’m sure @ illconceivedpodcast.com has heard of them. Hillsong and Planetshakers both advertise themselves as “global” churches which might lead you to think of them as effectively their own denomination, like Methodists or Presbyterians.
Incorrect. Both Hillsong (Sydney) and Planetshakers (Adelaide) are members of “Australian Christian Churches”, formerly known as Assemblies of God In Australia.
The AoGs are a Finished Work Pentecostal denomination with a global assembly.
The AoGs can be traced all the way back to William Seymour’s day, if you care to. Seymour came out of the Methodist “Holiness” tradition, African-American sub-denomination type. Finished Work Pentecostals basically don’t believe that any baptised believer can ever be fully sanctified, while Holiness Charismatics (Pentecostal or not) DO believe that.
Absolutely no one who adopts Hillsong worship materials knows or cares about that - neither the mainline evangelicals nor the “entire sanctification” Pentecostals. The mass dissemination of evangelical, charismatic-leaning Protestant cultural content has basically obliterated what were once high stakes theological arguments.
Not only has this imported INTO Aus US right-wing politics*, it has facilitated us exporting our worst and weirdest.
Summary two: some Protestants will do literally anything to avoid endorsing sacramentalism, including... whatever the fuck happened with Pentecostalism.
---
*Obligatory citation to Marion Maddox's "God Under Howard".
no subject
Date: 2025-06-25 12:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-25 02:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-25 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-06-25 10:01 pm (UTC)I am guessing she's American? I think there's a kneejerk assumption on the American progressive/left/etc. side that bad religious politics - especially bad Christian religious politics - is a white people problem because most of our worst bad religious opinions are rooted in segregation.
no subject
Date: 2025-06-26 01:22 am (UTC)