What Kind of Spirit Are We Really Of? A Pentecostal Approach to Interfaith Forgiveness and Interreligious Reconciliation
Jesus’ statement to his disciples in the context of the Samaritans and their religious otherness about the kind of Spirit Christians are to imbibe and display surely suggests the Holy Spirit is actively involved in interreligious relationships. Where the Spirit is truly present, Pentecostals will present an attitude affirming Christlike values of acceptance and appreciation even where debate and disagreement honestly exist as well. In other words, Jesus explicitly identifies the source of harmonious interreligious relations as the Holy Spirit. If Pentecostals truly desire to show forth the fullness of the Spirit in all areas, an offer of interfaith friendliness should be included.5
The destructive fire of sectarian strife is a forbidden fire.
Taking Divine Healing and Deliverance a Few Steps Farther
Divine healing for the body and deliverance from the oppressive demonic realm are important, intrinsic values of the Pentecostal faith. I myself have experienced what I can only describe as miraculous physical healing and spiritual deliverance. Lately, I have learned that divine healing and deliverance are not less than but more than individual and physical or even spiritual. They can and ought to be emotional and mental as well as institutional. More specifically, I have come to believe God wills to heal interreligious pain and deliver the religions from roadblocks to wellness and wholeness in their reciprocal relationships. This welds well with Latino Pentecostal theologian Juan Sepuœlveda’s description of the Pentecostal community of faith as a place of “enormous curative or healing efficacy.”6 The context clearly suggests he perceives this “curative or healing” power to extend beyond the physical to emotional and social realms. I infer it includes relations among the world religions as well.
We must not avoid the hard, honest work of admitting mistakes and making things right.
Category: Ministry, Spring 2009