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Pentecostals, Israel, and the Prophetic Politics of Dominion
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2021
Abstract
This essay traces the evolution of a specific tradition of prophecy interpretation in U.S. pentecostal-charismatic circles, which I dub the “prophetic politics of dominion.” From the start, this strain of pentecostal-charismatic religiosity merged transnational sensibilities with dominion-style language but typically shied away from overt political organization. Building on Israel-themed symbols and ideas acquired from nineteenth-century evangelical prophecy interpretation, a small but influential group of white proto-pentecostals and early pentecostals embraced a distinctive set of eschatological teachings known as British Israelism and its attendant literal racial identification of Anglo-Saxons with Jews. Such emphases bolstered a conviction that spirit-empowered Christians would exert significant influence on global politics prior to the Second Coming of Jesus. In the ensuing decades, a vocal minority of notable pentecostals and their charismatic successors kept alive similar emphases even as they eschewed the highly racialized conceptions of pentecostal connections to the “Lost Tribes of Israel.” More comfortable employing Christian millennial tropes than engaging pragmatic politics, these figures, nevertheless, anticipated the rapid Christianization of society and their own ascendance to positions of spiritual and temporal power in preparation for Christ's return. All the while, Israel-centric symbols and identities remained central. The crystallization of this transnational, dominion-now tradition, with its unique Israel-centric emphases and millennial motifs, represented one of the most significant—and most misunderstood—contributions to evangelical politics by U.S. pentecostals and charismatics over the course of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
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- Copyright © 2021 by The Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture
Footnotes
This article benefited greatly from feedback I received from Art Remillard, various respondents at conferences, and anonymous reviewers.
References
Notes
1 Pentecostals emphasize a highly experiential, supernatural brand of Christianity, as can be seen in their call for all believers to be “baptized in the Holy Spirit” and “speak in tongues.” Like pentecostals, charismatics also stress the “spiritual gifts” mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12 but do not necessarily focus as much attention on tongues or view it as a necessary sign of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. See GWacker, rant, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Anderson, Allan, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hocken, Peter, “Charismatic Movement,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Burgess, Stanley M. and Ed Van der Maas, M. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2002), 477–519Google Scholar; and Burgess, Stanley M., “Charismatic Revival and Renewal,” in Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, ed. McClymond, Michael James, 2 vols. (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007), 1:99–102Google Scholar. On a practical note, throughout the article, I trace the development of a diverse pentecostal tradition that encompassed groups and individuals operating well outside of formal pentecostal denominations, and, for that reason, I do not capitalize the term pentecostal.
2 C. Peter Wagner, “The America of Tomorrow: How Shall We Pray?” November 11, 2012, https://web.archive.org/web/20131013183659/http://www.usrpn.org/articles/single/the_america_of_tomorrow_how_shall_we_pray.
3 Throughout the essay, I largely avoid the terms dominionism and dominionist, since they are often applied to groups who espouse a principled rejection of any form of political governance, including democracy, that might stand in the way of a divinely ordered society. Instead, I repeatedly reference pentecostal and charismatic believers’ “dominion-style” rhetoric and “dominion-oriented” sensibilities. To be sure, someone such as John Alexander Dowie did, in fact, call for a full-blown theocracy. Others in the tradition certainly anticipated widespread social transformation, spearheaded by a spiritual elite, prior to Christ's return. But whether or not adherents endorsed a total rejection of something like democracy often was not clear. For his part, Wagner thought a form of Christian dominion would be implemented through democratic channels. See, for example, Wagner, C. Peter, Dominion! How Kingdom Action Can Change the World (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 2008), 12–15Google Scholar.
4 Wagner, “The America of Tomorrow.”
5 My understanding of transnationalism is shaped by M. Kearney's differentiation between globalization and transnationalism. “Whereas global processes are largely decentered from specific national territories and take place in a global space,” Kearney explains, “transnational processes are anchored in and transcend one or more nation-states.” M. Kearney, “The Local and the Global: The Anthropology of Globalization and Transnationalism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24, no. 1 (October 1995): 548. Given the centrality of Israel in pentecostals’ and charismatics’ articulation of what I refer to as the “prophetic politics of dominion,” such distinctions are especially important when making sense of their discourse.
6 Wagner, “The America of Tomorrow.” Not everyone associated with the revival of apostolic and prophetic offices embraced the NAR terminology. As such, throughout the essay, I refer simply to the “apostolic and prophetic” movement among pentecostals and charismatics.
7 Wagner, “The America of Tomorrow.” In stressing the symbolic and ritual dimension of apostolic and prophetic leaders’ engagement with U.S. politics, I am not claiming that their actions had no influence on political outcomes, though these effects would have been relatively indirect given the way in which adherents bypassed more traditional methods of political action and organization.
8 To a certain extent, my use of the term prophetic politics builds on Donald Dayton's discussion of pentecostal eschatology. Quoting Paul Hanson, Dayton distinguishes between prophetic announcements that translate “into the terms of plain history, real politics and human instrumentality” and apocalyptic frameworks wherein “visionaries have largely ceased to translate into the terms of plain history, real politics, and human instrumentality due to a pessimistic view of reality.” For Dayton, the widespread emphasis on the premillennial rapture within early pentecostalism, which preserved “millennial hope . . . by placing the return of Christ before the millennium,” marked their eschatology as apocalyptic. Dayton, Donald W., Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Francis Asbury, 1987)Google Scholar, esp. 158–60. In stressing a strain of “prophetic politics,” I accentuate the contributions of pentecostals (and charismatics) who, in fact, held out hope for broad-based social change prior to Christ's return. The presence of these countercurrents right from the start reinforces David Daniels's observation that “North American Pentecostalism was constructed as a polycentric movement of myriad currents.” David D. Daniels, “North American Pentecostalism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism, ed. Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., and Amos Yong (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 73–74. In a departure from Dayton's schema, however, I also stress “prophetic politics” to accentuate adherents’ style of political engagement and their inclination to eschew pragmatic, incremental efforts tied to political mobilization and coalition building. Proponents’ millennial visions anticipated political change in the here and now, but, for the most part, they remained focused on grand symbolic displays and God's miraculous intervention. It is also important to note that the prophetic politics of dominion, at times, reinforced quite disparate visions of social and political transformation. Proponents often supported socially conservative positions, but, on occasion, they also promoted more progressive visions of social change. See, for example, Wacker, Grant, “Marching to Zion: Religion in a Modern Utopian Community,” Church History 54 (1985): 504–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a discussion of John Alexander Dowie's community in Zion, Illinois.
9 For his part, Wagner traced the origins of the apostolic and prophetic movements to largely discrete expressions of charismatic Christianity in Africa, China, and, eventually, the United States, which then blossomed into a worldwide movement. See Wagner, “The America of Tomorrow.” Wagner's assessment helpfully identified earlier groups who anticipated the type of nondenominational, apostle-led churches that he considered ideal. That assessment, however, also obscured key developments in U.S. pentecostal circles that foreshadowed his particular type of apostolic-style ministry.
10 John Nelson Darby, “The Rapture of the Saints and the Character of the Jewish Remnant,” in The Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, ed. William Kelly, vol. 4 (London: Morrish, 1871), 237–38. For further discussion of Darby and his role in the Brethren movement in nineteenth-century Britain, see Donald H. Akenson, Exporting the Rapture: John Nelson Darby and the Victorian Conquest of North-American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Ernest Sandeen discusses Darby's extensive travel in North America in Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), esp. 71–80. Though Darby clearly was a crucial figure in the rise of dispensational premillennialism, recent historians caution against easy overstatements regarding Darby's personal influence on developments in the United States. See, for example, B. M. Pietsch, Dispensational Modernism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 214–15n10.
11 Influential analyses of U.S. evangelicalism that address the growing popularity of premillennial dispensationalism include Sandeen, Roots of Fundamentalism; George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Paul Boyer, When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1992), esp. 80–112; Yaakov Ariel, On Behalf of Israel: American Fundamentalist Attitudes toward Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, 1865–1945 (Brooklyn: Carlson, 1991); and Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2014), esp. 16–46.
12 The tensions between early pentecostal eschatology and popular forms of dispensationalism are discussed in Dayton, Theological Roots, 145; and Peter Althouse, Spirit of the Last Days: Pentecostal Eschatology in Conversation with Jürgen Moltmann (London: T. and T. Clark, 2003), 22–25. Gerald Sheppard also emphasizes pentecostals’ gradual embrace of premillennial dispensationalism in “Pentecostals and the Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism: The Anatomy of an Uneasy Relationship,” Pneuma 6, no. 1 (1984): 5–33.
13 A handful of recent works focused on Christian Zionism helpfully draw attention to the influence of non-dispensational forms of prophecy interpretation on evangelical prophecy discourse in Britain and the United States. See David M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Robert O. Smith, More Desired than Our Owne Salvation: The Roots of Christian Zionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013); and Samuel Goldman, God's Country: Christian Zionism in America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018). Matthew Westbrook's analysis of specific strains of “renewalist” Christian Zionism represents the most thorough discussion to date of non-dispensational expressions of Christian Zionism in contemporary pentecostal-charismatic circles. See Matthew Westbrook, “The International Christian Embassy, Jerusalem and Renewalist Zionism: Emerging Jewish-Christian Ethnonationalism” (PhD diss., Drew University, 2014).
14 Donald Lewis identifies James Bicheno, a postmillennialist Baptist minister, as the first “major prophetic writer” to make “the physical restoration of the Jews to Palestine a clear and present concern—not something to be expected after the transformation of history by the Second Advent.” Such ideas would later circulate freely among historicist premillennialists. While thoroughgoing futurists such as Darby did not expect this restoration to occur prior to the rapture, and would not have described any pre-rapture Jewish return to Palestine as a fulfillment of prophecy, later futurists adjusted their message to a degree following the rise of the Zionist movement and subsequent events in the twentieth century. See David M. Lewis, The Origins of Christian Zionism: Lord Shaftesbury and Evangelical Support for a Jewish Homeland, 42–47 (quote on 44), 91–92; and Smith, More Desired than Our Owne Salvation, 154, 171–73. Also see note 23.
15 For further discussion of historicist premillennialism, and numerous ways in which it frequently countered widespread assumptions that premillennialism always equaled a “gloomy, pessimistic, reactionary, world-denying, and Manichean creed,” see Martin Spence, Heaven on Earth: Reimagining Time and Eternity in Nineteenth-Century British Evangelicalism (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2015), 29. It is also worth noting that William Miller, the best-known proponent of historicist methods of prophecy interpretation in the antebellum United States, denied any special role for Jews in the unfolding end-times drama. See Smith, More Desired than Our Owne Salvation, 148–51.
16 Edited by Isaac P. Labagh, a graduate of New Brunswick Seminary in New Jersey and pastor of Dutch Reformed and Episcopal churches, the American Millenarian was distributed between 1842 and 1844. See Roger Robins, “American Millenarian and Prophetic Review,” in Popular Religious Magazines of the United States, ed. Mark Fackler and Charles H. Lippy (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1995), 51.
17 J. L., “Christ Shall Appear the Second Time,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, October 1843, 77.
18 “War in Heaven,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, December 1843, 97–99 (quotation on 99). For additional details related to the millenarians’ prophetic timeline, see “The First Resurrection,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, January 1844, 113–17; “The Changing of the Living Saints at the First Resurrection,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, January 1844, 117–18; “The Ascension of the Saints to Meet the Lord in the Air,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, January 1844, 118–20; and “The Ascended Saints, Preserved from the Fiery Judgments, Exercise Power, with Christ, over Their Enemies,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, January 1844, 120–21. For a helpful overview of the teachings found within the American Millenarian, see Robins, “American Millenarian and Prophetic Review.”
19 See “The Signs, Times and Seasons, Preceding Christ's Second Coming,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, December 1843, 111–12; “The Restoration of the Jews to Their Own Land,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, January 1844, 109–12.
20 See Robins, “American Millenarian and Prophetic Review,” 47–50.
21 For further discussion of Darby's antipolitical stance, see Smith, More Desired than Our Owne Salvation, 158–61.
22 “The Restoration of the Jews to Their Own Land,” 122–23. Also see “Christ's Kingdom on Earth,” American Millenarian and Prophetic Review, August 1843, esp. 39–41.
23 See, for example, Robert O. Smith's discussion of William Blackstone's conscious modification of futurist prophecy to allow for more historicist-style affirmations of specific events in Palestine. Smith, More Desired than Our Owne Salvation, 163–68.
24 See Wacker, Heaven Below, 253.
25 See, for example, D. Wesley Myland, The Latter Rain Covenant and Pentecostal Power, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Evangel, 1911); and William H. Piper, “Tarry, Tarry for the Promise: Joel's Early and Latter Rain Prophecy Considered, the Entire Congregation the Spirit's Vehicle Today,” Latter Rain Evangel, December 1908, esp. 17. Also see Peter Hocken, The Challenges of the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Messianic Jewish Movements (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 4–5.
26 For further discussion of the origins and growth of British Israelism in Britain and the United States, see Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, rev. ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), esp. 4–11. Reginald Horsman also discusses the rising popularity of racial discourse in the nineteenth-century United States that focused on Anglo-Saxon superiority. Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).
27 Describing the typical pentecostal attitude toward politics, Wacker notes that the earliest pentecostals may not have hesitated to salute the American flag, but, for most, this patriotism reflected a generalized love of country and of the American land; it did not translate into an embrace of practical political mobilization or action. Wacker, Heaven Below, 219–23. For an example of strong antipolitical sentiment among early pentecostals, see Stanley Frodsham, “Politics from the Pentecostal Viewpoint,” Pentecostal Evangel, October 30, 1920, 3. As with early pentecostal proponents of British Israelism, the ministry of Aimee Semple McPherson points to a more complicated picture regarding early pentecostal engagement with politics. See Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
28 John Alexander Dowie, “The Coming of Elijah, the Restorer of All Thing,” Leaves of Healing, June 8, 1901, 214.
29 John Alexander Dowie, “Answers to Three Questions Concerning the Messiah,” Leaves of Healing, December 27, 1902, 308.
30 See, for example, John Alexander Dowie, “Elijah's Restoration Messages,” Leaves of Healing, February 21, 1903, 559.
31 See, for example, John Alexander Dowie, “Editorial Notes,” Leaves of Healing, March 28, 1903, 709.
32 Grant Wacker estimates that Dowie's worldwide following at the beginning of the twentieth century was between twenty-five thousand and fifty thousand. Wacker, “Marching to Zion,” 502. Edith Blumhofer describes the general contours of Dowie's ministry in “The Christian Catholic Apostolic Church and the Apostolic Faith: A Study in the 1906 Pentecostal Revival,” in Charismatic Experiences in History, ed. Cecil M. Robeck (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1985), 126–46. Also see Grant Wacker, Chris R. Armstrong, and Jay S. F. Blossom, “John Alexander Dowie: Harbinger of Pentecostal Power,” in Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders, ed. James R. Goff and Grant Wacker (Fayetteville, AR: University of Arkansas Press, 2002), 12–13.
33 John Alexander Dowie, “Streams of Life from Shiloh,” Leaves of Healing, June 7, 1902, 224.
34 John Alexander Dowie, “Streams of Life from Shiloh,” Leaves of Healing, June 28, 1902, 328–29; John Alexander Dowie, “Elijah's Restoration Message,” Leaves of Healing, May 30, 1903, 173. For further discussion of the racial ambivalence toward Jews evident in the writings of Dowie, see Joseph Williams, “The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism,” Church History 84, no. 1 (March 2015): 175–77.
35 It is important to note that, while Parham had extensive interaction with Dowie's community in Zion, he also was influenced strongly by Frank Sandford, another proto-pentecostal in Maine who espoused British Israelism and promoted a series of teachings and practices that were remarkably similar to Dowie's. For further discussion of Sandford's connections to British Israelism, see Williams, “The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism,” 172–74.
36 Although much of Parham's discussion mirrored major assumptions built into futurist dispensationalism, in line with a more historicist approach, Parham included extensive discussion of current events that fulfilled biblical prophecy. It also is worth noting that the rapture was not the centerpiece of Parham's eschatological scheme. Whereas most premillennial dispensationalists stressed the rapture as the key dividing line initiating the period of tribulation, Parham pointed instead to the ongoing return of Jews to Palestine. The climax of end-times prophecy fulfillment would begin “when the Jewish Congress [met] in Jerusalem and by proclamation announce themselves a restored nation.” Moreover, the number of individuals who would take part in the rapture would be “very few in number” (i.e., 144,000), and most of the spirit-baptized “Brides of Christ” would remain on earth until the Second Coming and receive divine protection. Charles Parham, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness, in The Sermons of Charles F. Parham, ed. Donald W. Dayton (1910; repr., New York: Garland Publishing, 1985), esp. 86–89, 90, 100, 102. For a helpful overview of Parham's teachings, including his eschatological views and connections to British Israelism, see Callahan, Leslie D., “Redeemed or Destroyed: Re-Evaluating the Social Dimensions of Bodily Destiny in the Thought of Charles Parham,” Pneuma 28, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 203–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Douglas Jacobsen, Thinking in the Spirit: Theologies of the Early Pentecostal Movement (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 18–50.
37 My use of the term imagined community draws on Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 6.
38 Parham, Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 106–7. Parham's divergence from Dowie reflected broader debates in British Israelite circles. He mimicked some of the earliest proponents of British Israelism, in particular the Scottish-born John Wilson, who put forward a definition of the Ten Tribes of Israel that did not focus strictly on Anglo-Saxons. See Barkun, Religion and the Racist Right, 6–11.
39 Parham, Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 86. One of Parham's mentors, Frank Sanford, also blunted the racist implications of British Israelism, at least to a degree, by suggesting that any citizen who identified with either the United States or Britain would be “grafted in” as part of the Anglo-Israel race. David W. Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 151–152n114.
40 Parham, Voice Crying in the Wilderness, 90, 107, 115, 118.
41 For examples of anti–Anglo-Israel commentary in early pentecostal books and periodicals, see Myland, Latter Rain Covenant, 80; N. P. Thomsen, “Anglo-Israelism, Under the Searchlight of God's Word,” Church of God Evangel, May 19, 1934, 3, 6–8; E. C. Clark, “The Fallacy of Anglo-Israelism,” Church of God Evangel, June 8, 1935, 3, 12, 15.
42 Somewhat ironically, given Dowie's embrace of British Israelism, his Zion community served as an early example of this racial mixing. The formal pentecostal denominations established beginning in the 1910s, however, typically divided along racial lines.
43 Christopher Richmann provides the most thorough discussion to date of British Israelism in pentecostal circles, addressing the perspectives of Bosworth, Lake, and Lindsay, among others. See Christopher J. Richmann, Living in Bible Times: F. F. Bosworth and the Pentecostal Pursuit of the Supernatural (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020), 174–93. Also see Kemp Pendleton Burpeau, God's Showman: A Historical Study of John G. Lake and South African/American Pentecostalism (Oslo, Norway: Refleks, 2004), 208–9, 219n42.
44 See, for example, Silk, Mark, “Notes on the Judeo-Christian Tradition in America,” American Quarterly 36, no. 1 (Spring 1984): 65–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Postwar America to Its Protestant Promise (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
45 For more on the New Order of the Latter Rain, see D. William Faupel, “The New Order of the Latter Rain: Restoration or Renewal?” in Winds from the North: Canadian Contributions to the Pentecostal Movement, ed. Peter Althouse and Michael Wilkinson (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2010), 239–63; R. M. Riss, “Latter Rain Movement,” in International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Ed M. Van der Maas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 830–33; Edith L. Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 203–11; R. G. Robins, Pentecostalism in America (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010), 79–80; and Holdcroft, L. Thomas, “The New Order of the Latter Rain,” Pneuma 2 (1980): 46–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 The New Order leader P. G. Hunt did, however, associate the revival with the “spirit of Elijah and of John [the Baptist].” See Percy Hunt, “A Pattern for Pentecost,” Sharon Star, October 1, 1949, 1.
47 George H. Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles (Springfield, MO: Bill Britton, 1951), 72; George R. Hawtin, “The End of the Age,” Sharon Star, January 1, 1951, 3.
48 Hawtin, “End of the Age,” January 1, 1951, 3. Like more mainstream premillennial dispensationalists, Hawtin acknowledged that Christ would eventually usher in an entirely new heaven and earth and make everything right. Even so, “before the coming of that glorious age there will come another age only slightly less glorious. . . . The time of this Kingdom is at hand.” George R. Hawtin, “End of the Age,” Sharon Star, October 1951, 1. Also see George R. Hawtin, “End of the Age,” Sharon Star, December 1951.
49 Christopher Richmann discusses Hawtin's British Israelism in “Prophecy and Politics: British-Israelism in American Pentecostalism,” Cyberjournal for Pentecostal-Charismatic Research, No. 22 (January 2013), http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj22/richmann.html.
50 The Jewish festival obtained its name from the temporary booths or “tabernacles” that were constructed during the celebration, which reminded Jews of the biblical story of their ancestors’ forty years of wandering the desert following the exodus from Egypt.
51 Christian theologians, of course, had long discerned deep spiritual meaning in the various Jewish festivals mentioned in Scripture, such as the Jewish Passover. Furthermore, evangelicals who embraced premillennial dispensationalism, with its literal hermeneutic, were often instructed to view the three Jewish festivals that occurred in the fall—the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles—as antitypes of God's yet-to-occur dealings with ethnic Israel in the last days.
52 Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles, 10, 14, 72, 102. Warnock defended his application of the Feast of Tabernacles to the present-day church based on his reading of Jesus's actions in John 7, when Jesus secretly visited the Feast of Tabernacles. According to Warnock, the fact that Jesus did so secretly foreshadowed his initial appearance within the manifest sons of God prior to his full, visible return.
53 While Warnock's work focused almost exclusively on the church and on “spiritual Israel,” he did not completely abandon the idea that God had plans to restore “natural Israel,” though he did not speculate on what this restoration might look like. See Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles, 12–13.
54 Warnock, The Feast of Tabernacles, 79.
55 Hebrews 11:1 (KJV).
56 New Order ideas and networks did spread, however, well beyond the shores of North America. See, for example, Mark Hutchinson, “The Latter Rain Movement and the Phenomenon of Global Return,” in Winds From the North, ed. Althouse and Wilkinson, 265–83.
57 Over the course of the twentieth century, pentecostal and charismatic groups were key drivers of a seismic shift in the composition of twentieth-century world Christianity. Between the years 1910 and 2010, Europe's share of the global Christian population shrank from 66.3 percent to 25.9 percent. By way of contrast, sub-Saharan Africa witnessed an explosive growth of Christianity during that same period: the region's share of the global Christian population in 1910 was only 1.4 percent. By 2010, the number stood at a remarkable 23.6 percent. While not as dramatic, the percentage of believers in Asia-Pacific and the Americas also rose from 4.5 percent to 13.1 percent, and from 27.1 percent to 36.8 percent, respectively. See Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2011).
58 The influx of immigrants from Latin America is especially notable. Indicative of Latinos’ sizable representation in pentecostal and charismatic ranks, a 2006–2007 survey found that two-thirds of all Latino Protestants identified with pentecostal or charismatic forms of religiosity. See Pew Hispanic Center, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Changing Faiths: Latinos and the Transformation of American Religion (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2007), 27–38; and Pew Research Center, The Shifting Religious Identity of Latinos in the United States (Washington, DC: Pew Research Center, 2014), 93–94.
59 C. Peter Wagner, Spiritual Power and Church Growth, rev. ed. (Altamonte Springs, FL: Strang Communications, 1986), 12, 29, 38–39. Wagner's intense interest in the rapid expansion of pentecostal-style religion around the globe first emerged during his tenure as an evangelical missionary in Bolivia from 1956–1971.
60 For examples of recent scholarship on evangelicalism and pentecostal-charismatic religiosity in the United States that is closely attuned to transnational flows, see David R. Swartz, Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), esp. 113–34; Daniel Ramírez, Migrating Faith: Pentecostalism in the United States and Mexico in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015); Melani McAlister, The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global History of American Evangelicals (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018); and Molly Worthen, Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), esp. 264.
61 For discussion of the interconnections between the Jesus People movement and pentecostal-style spirituality, see Larry Eskridge, God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. 77–87. For discussion of the close ties between the Jesus People movement and Messianic Judaism, see Daniel Juster and Peter Hocken, The Messianic Jewish Movement: An Introduction (Dallas: Toward Jerusalem Council II, 2004), 15–16; and Dan Cohn-Sherbok, Messianic Judaism (London: Cassell, 2000), 66–71. For a helpful overview of the history of Messianic Judaism, see Yaakov Ariel, “A Different Kind of Dialogue? Messianic Judaism and Jewish-Christian Relations,” Cross Currents 62, no. 3 (September 2012): 318–27.
62 See Michael Schiffman, Return of the Remnant: The Rebirth of Messianic Judaism (1992; repr., Baltimore: Lederer, 1996), 128–29. Also see Hocken, Challenges of the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Messianic Jewish Movements, 97; and Cohn-Sherbok, Messianic Judaism, 82–85.
63 “Editorial,” New Wine, May 1974, 3.
64 See S. David Moore, The Shepherding Movement: Controversy and Charismatic Ecclesiology (London: T. and T. Clark, 2003).
65 See, for example, Ern Baxter, “The Holy Spirit,” New Wine, May 1982, 13. Baxter also clarifies his mixed reaction to the midcentury New Order revivals in an interview conducted with Pastor Dewey Friedel shortly before Baxter's death in 1991. A transcript of the interview is available online at www.wordandspirit.co.uk/theology/life_on_wings.doc. The Philadelphia pastor John Poole, who, for a time, was closely aligned with the Fort Lauderdale Five, represented another direct link to the New Order revival. Poole's father, Fred C. Poole, was a significant figure in the midcentury movement. See Riss, Richard, “The Latter Rain Movement of 1948,” Pneuma 4, no. 1 (1982): 32–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
66 Ern Baxter, “Thy Kingdom Come,” Lecture, National Men's Shepherds Conference, Kansas City, MO, September 26, 1975. An audio recording of the sermon is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2H65nX8Ueok.
67 Ern Baxter, “The Charismatic Crisis,” New Wine, August 1979, 23.
68 R. J. Rushdoony, “What You Might Not Know about Tithing,” New Wine, October 1980, 21–25; R. J. Rushdoony, “Modern Morality: Tampering with God's Law,” New Wine, October 1981, 22–25; Rousas J. Rushdoony et al., Secular Humanism: Man Striving to Be God (Mobile, AL: New Wine, 1982). New Wine also published an interview with Rushdoony's son-in-law Gary North. Dick Leggatt, “An Economic Forecast for the Eighties: A Personal Interview with Gary North,” New Wine, December 1979, 9–13.
69 See David John Marley, Pat Robertson: An American Life (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007), 56–61.
70 See Moore, Shepherding Movement, esp. 42n44, 81n61.
71 Derek Prince, “Called to Jerusalem,” Charisma, June 1986, 56. Also see Linda Howard, “A New Beginning,” Charisma, April 1984, 38–43.
72 Indicative of the strength of Prince's attachment to Israel, in the late 1970s, he and his wife decided to spend half of each year in Israel. Derek Prince, “Update,” New Wine, June 1979, 11.
73 See, for example, the following message delivered by Prince in 1971: “Prophecy, God's Time Map,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0gf_S68Uvs. The diagram that Prince uses at the end of the teaching details his understanding of the twentieth-century parallels between Israel and the pentecostal-charismatic movement.
74 “Forum: God's Government,” New Wine, June 1974, 31.
75 See Derek Prince, Prophetic Destinies (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 1992), 21–28.
76 It is important to note that the leaders of Christian Growth Ministries had also acknowledged the importance of prophetic and apostolic ministry, though they did not accentuate these emphases to the same extent as their successors.
77 See, for example, Hamon, Bill, The Day of the Saints: Equipping Believers for Their Revolutionary Role in Ministry (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 2011), 138–39Google Scholar. Also see Hocken, Challenges of the Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Messianic Jewish Movements, 45–46.
78 In a personal letter written to one of his Christian critics, Wagner explained that his attraction to the movement took place quite apart from any knowledge of “the Latter Rain, Kingdom Now . . . Manifested Sons of God or any of those things.” Once he became “an advocate for contemporary apostles and prophets,” however, then the various connections to these previous groups and teachings “have been coming up” (though he also found fault with various excesses that he perceived in them). Orrel Steinkamp, “Spiritual Warfare Evangelism: How Did We Get Here?” Plumbline, December 2001, http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/orrel8.html. Once Wagner transitioned into the pentecostal-charismatic movement in the 1980s, however, it is clear that individuals such as Hamon exerted significant influence on his thinking and teachings. See Wagner's introduction to Bill Hamon, Apostles, Prophets and the Coming Moves of God: God's End-Time Plans for His Church and Planet Earth (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 1997), xxi–xxiii.
79 Reuven Doron, One New Man: (Cedar Rapids, IA: Embrace Israel Ministries, 1993), 100–7, quotation on 107. Doron worked closely with Francis Frangipane of River of Life Ministries in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. While Frangipane was connected to apostolic and prophetic networks, he was also careful to qualify his use of the term latter rain as applied to the present, noting that he rejected the language of the “manifest Sons of God.” See Francis Frangipane, “The Latter Rain—God Will Pour Out His Spirit on All Flesh,” September 18, 2006, https://www.elijahlist.com/mobile/display_word.html?ID=4498.
80 Don Finto, Your People Shall Be My People: How Israel, the Jews and the Christian Church Will Come Together in the Last Days (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2001), 157.
81 Ephesians 2:15; John 17:21. On the Ephesians verse, see Sid Roth, “Sid Roth Explores the ‘One New Man,’” February 14, 2006, http://sidroth.org/articles/sid-roth-investigates-one-new-man; on John 17:21, see Sid Roth, “Messianic Jewish Voices,” Charisma, April 1997, 56.
82 “Curt Landry with Benny Hinn ‘This is Your Day,’ Part 1,” December 26, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PInuGbJetSw.
83 C. Peter Wagner, “The America of Tomorrow.” While significant, Wagner's association of “one new man” language with dominion-style assumptions was not as direct as it was for some of his co-religionists, since his statement emphasized the growing connections between Jews and Gentiles that dated all the way back to the New Testament period. Given Wagner's longstanding connections to mainstream forms of evangelicalism, which predated his embrace of pentecostal-charismatic religiosity, this more traditional reference to “one new man” terminology is not surprising. See, for example, the paper produced by the Lausanne Theology and Education Group in 1977, of which Wagner was a part: “The Pasadena Consultation: Homogeneous Unit Principle,” May 31–June 2, 1977, https://www.lausanne.org/content/lop/lop-1.
84 In making their point, Eberle and Trench explicitly drew on the language of “one new man.” Harold R. Eberle and Martin Trench, Victorious Eschatology: A Partial Preterist View (Yakima, WA: Worldcast, 2007), 92–93, 127–28, 242–44, 261–62, 271–72. As it happens, one of the co-authors endorsed postmillennialism, the other historic premillennialism. They were also careful to clarify that they did not see modern-day Israel and Jewish restoration to the land of Israel as a fulfillment of prophecy. Also see Wagner, Dominion! 60–62.
85 “Chuck D. Pierce,” http://web.archive.org/web/20121212103048/http://gloryofzion.org/chuckpierce.php.
86 Johnny Enlow, The Seven Mountain Prophecy: Unveiling the Coming Elijah Revolution (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 2008), 24. Regarding Israel, for instance, Enlow indicated that “prayer for Jerusalem and in Jerusalem is a priority for those who feel called to intercede for the mountain of religion.” Enlow, The Seven Mountain Prophecy, 141.
87 Finto, Your People Shall Be My People, 173. For a similar approach, see Keith Intrater and Dan Juster, Israel, the Church, and the Last Days (Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image, 1990), esp. 242–46.
88 See “Don Finto and Lou Engle—Backstage at The Call Geneva,” April 3, 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv5gVXMU400.
89 Quoted in Enlow, Seven Mountain Prophecy, iii.
90 See, for example, Bruce Wilson, “Rick Perry's ‘The Response’ Boasted How Many Wagner Apostles? Let's Count,” September 16, 2011, http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/9/16/144354/102.
91 See John Milburn, “Brownback Discusses Ties to Evangelist Engle,” Boston.com, October 13, 2010, http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2010/10/13/brownback_discusses_ties_to_evangelist_engle/.
92 See “Our Beginnings,” https://www.houseofdavid.com/beginning.html.
94 See “RISE UP 2018—Intercessory Conference for our Nation,” November 5, 2018, https://lancewallnau.com/event/rise-up-18/.
95 For further discussion of the centrality of surprise in charismatic Christians’ designation of particular events as miraculous, see Jon Bialecki, A Diagram for Fire: Miracles and Variation in an American Charismatic Movement (Oakland: University of California Press, 2017), esp. 95–97, 119–21.
96 See, for example, C. Peter Wagner, “I Like Donald Trump,” June 10, 2016, https://www.charismanews.com/politics/opinion/57707-c-peter-wagner-i-like-donald-trump; Samuel Smith, “Christian Leaders Mark Start of Trump Term: ‘God Is Going to Sweep the Nation,’” January 20, 2017, https://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-leaders-mark-start-of-trump-term-god-is-going-to-sweep-the-nation-173238/; Cindy Jacobs, “Word of the Lord for 2017,” December 29, 2016, https://web.archive.org/web/20190720035714/https://www.generals.org/articles/single/word-of-the-lord-for-2017/; and “13 Cyrus Trump Bundle,” https://web.archive.org/web/20190712162910/https://store.jimbakkershow.com/product/13-cyrus-trump-bundle/.
97 Cindy Jacobs, “The Lord Gave Me Prophetic Strategy to End the Conflict in Venezuela,” June 26, 2019, https://www.charismanews.com/video/76932-cindy-jacobs-the-lord-gave-me-prophetic-strategy-to-end-the-conflict-in-venezuela.
98 Argentina in particular served as an especially significant hub within the world of apostolic and prophetic Christianity. See Wagner, C. Peter, Warfare Prayer: How to Seek God's Power and Protection in the Battle to Build His Kingdom (Ventura, CA: Regal, 1992), 13, 26Google Scholar; Dawson, John, Taking Our Cities for God: How to Break Spiritual Strongholds (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 1989), 18–21Google Scholar; and John Archer, “The Devil, Demons and Spiritual Warfare,” Charisma, February 1994, 56. Also see Ed Silvoso, “Personal Story,” https://web.archive.org/web/20140315234714/http://edsilvoso.com/publicity-kit/personal-story-2.
99 These observations coincide with sociologists Brad Christerson and Richard Flory's discussion of the approaches to social transformation within these same networks, which they describe as Independent Network Charismatic. Christerson, Brad and Flory, Richard, The Rise of Network Christianity: How Independent Leaders Are Changing the Religious Landscape (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 91–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
100 Quoted in Strang, Stephen E., God and Donald Trump (Lake Mary, FL: Frontline, 2017), 83Google Scholar.
101 Lance Wallnau, “RISE UP 2018—Intercessory Conference for our Nation,” November 5, 2018, https://lancewallnau.com/event/rise-up-18/.
102 All of these political activities and media efforts organized by the Christians United for Israel are described on the organization's website, “Christians United for Israel,” https://www.cufi.org/.
103 See, for instance, John Hagee, “No Man Knows the Day or the Hour, but It Is Up to Each of Us to Be Prepared,” July 1, 2017, https://www.jhm.org/Articles/2017-07-01-no-man-knows. As Matthew Sutton notes, many of premillennial dispensationalism's earliest boosters may have rejected political activity, but, by the 1930s in particular, more and more of the faithful actively engaged politics. See Sutton, American Apocalypse, 178–231.
104 The miracle-focused political discourse furthered by apostolic and prophetic types proved quite similar to trends in other charismatic groups, such as the Vineyard movement, despite significant differences between the two expressions of charismatic Christianity. See Bialecki, A Diagram for Fire, 174–75, 188, 190–97.
105 For further discussion of pentecostals’ and charismatics’ highly ritualized identification with Israel, and its contributions to the global spread of Christian Zionism, see Williams, “The Pentecostalization of Christian Zionism.”
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