Antipas Harris introduces his new book, the serious challenge behind it, and his invitation to join him in proclaiming anew that Jesus is Good News for everyone.

Without doubt, we are living through troubled times. The world is engulfed in noxious uncertainties: contentious politics, racial unrest, hate groups and global warming, to name a few. Now, amidst the devastation of coronavirus, or COVID-19, many people are turning to – or back to – faith. Amid the constant resurgence of blatant racism, as exemplified in the recent murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, reminds us that we are really battling two pandemics, simultaneously. People are looking for answers, seeking the “peace that passes all understanding,” and a new and better normal. As president of a divinity school, my primary aim is ensuring that current and future ministers are prepared to bear witness more effectively for such a time as this. To that end, seminarians and faith leaders alike will discover refreshing new strategies for overcoming obstacles and deepening faith in my forthcoming book, Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion?

Americans searched for God with renewed interest in the last decade, and it seems that COVID-19 has only intensified this quest. Spiritual fulfillment, after all, is an important dimension of the human psyche. While many people will continue to look to the Bible and their Christian faith for guidance, others question the relevance of the Bible for contemporary times. In any case, people in general are scouring America’s spiritual landscape, hoping to find a faith that is real, one that heals and unifies. I explore this faith anew in Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion?

Let me share an experience I had a few years ago while teaching a graduate course on leadership. A 22-year-old student interrupted my lecture with a question: “What do you say to people who are leaving the church and arguing that Christianity is the white man’s religion?” I was taken aback by the question. First, it was unrelated to the topic. Second, I wondered who in the world would argue such a thing. I knew that this had been a common question back during the Jim Crow era, and I almost brushed it off. However, the discussion that ensued opened a world of discovery. Apparently, my ethnically diverse class of millennials was more attuned to the relevance of the question than I.

Unable to shake the discussion from my thoughts, I embarked on a journey of research and found that many Christians are unaware that much pondering about faith exists outside the church. How relevant is the Bible for understanding today’s complex issues? What does the Bible offer to a nation of multi-ethnic, multicultural, multi-generational individuals? The answers to these and similar questions led me to write Is Christianity the White Man’s Religion?

This excerpt from Led by the Spirit is the Preface and Introduction. Missionary-scholar Dave Johnson has brought together a chronicle of over 300 Pentecostal missionaries serving in the Philippines from 1926 through the first decade of the new Millennium.

Preface

Like many other books, this volume was written to fulfill a perceived need. While serving as country moderator in the Philippines for the Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM) from 2002 through 2003, I sometimes asked myself how my predecessors might have handled similar situations to those I was facing. Then, looking around at the churches and institutions that former missionaries had built and passed on, I found myself asking who these missionaries were. I had few answers to my questions. My wife, Debbie, and I both began to sense that God was directing us to do something about it. The book you hold in your hands is the result.

My intent here is to describe what God has done through the United States (U.S.) Assemblies of God missionaries who served or are serving in the Philippines, with the understanding that God accomplishes His purposes through flawed people. The philosophy used in writing this book is to present an accurate, comprehensive, and balanced account of the work of the Assemblies of God Missionary Fellowship in the Philippines that neither lionizes nor libels those involved in order that God is revealed as the Hero of the story.

The limitations are numerous. The personnel and policies from the AGWM home office in Springfield, Missouri, will only be included as they relate to the work in the field. The activities of the missionaries while home for itineration or other reasons are beyond the scope entirely. The relationship between the missionaries and the Philippines General Council of the Assemblies of God (PGCAG) was and remains symbiotic and, therefore, has some overlap. Since the history of the PGCAG is not the focus of this story, its history will only be recorded in places where it intersects with that of the U.S. missionaries. The rest of their story will have to be told elsewhere. Also not included here is the work done by Assemblies of God missionaries from other countries.

Additionally, a number of international ministries such as the Asia Pacific Theological Seminary (APTS) are all based in the Philippines. Since the focus of the book is limited to the Philippines, the activities that missionaries assigned to these ministries engaged in outside of the country are beyond the scope of this book. The valued work of missionary associates is not included mostly because of space limitations but also because of lack of research materials available.

Author’s Introduction for excerpt from The Supernatural Thread in Methodism: Signs and Wonders Among Methodists Then and Now

Baptism in the Holy Spirit for power and manifestations of the power of God in healing, deliverance from demons, angelic encounters, falling over, crying out, shouting, jumping, dancing, laughing, trances, dreams, visions, and other such behaviors are often associated with Pentecostalism. And although most Pentecostals can trace their spiritual lineage back to the Methodists, most Pentecostals and most Methodists of all kinds are not aware that all of these experiences and more were widely observed among the first Methodists. When Methodists today comment on such experiences and say, “That’s not Methodist, that’s Pentecostal,” what they don’t realize is that those experiences were Methodist 150 years before there were any Pentecostals!

Frank H. Billman, The Supernatural Thread in Methodism: Signs and Wonders Among Methodists Then and Now (Creation House, 2013).

In August 2017, I was privileged to speak at a summer conference in Estonia on the shores of the Baltic Sea. About 200 people had gathered from multiple countries to be part of this gathering. At the close of the conference we provided the people with a “fire tunnel” where the leaders of the conference formed two lines facing each other and the participants slowly walked through this “tunnel” as the leaders lightly laid hands on them and prayed for them in their native language or in tongues. Numbers of people needed help to stand and walk through the tunnel because the power of God was so strong upon them. A teenaged boy came through and part way through the line he fell to the ground, broke out in loud holy laughter and began rolling. The leaders on the one side of the tunnel had to jump over him as he rolled out of the tunnel.

This was not a Pentecostal conference, it was a United Methodist conference. A United Methodist District Superintendent called the conference. The leaders were Methodists from the US, the UK and Estonia. And the teen who fell and rolled was a United Methodist pastor’s son. I had witnessed my first Methodist Holy Roller! A United Methodist man from Finland happened to be standing at the end of the tunnel when the “Holy Roller” went by. He turned to me and others and said, “What is this? I have never seen anything like this! What is this?” And we explained that this was the power of God moving like he did among the early Methodists.

That man went back to Finland and told people about what he experienced at the Methodist conference in Estonia. In June of this year the United Methodist annual conference of Finland hosted a Life in the Spirit Seminar from Aldersgate Renewal Ministries. The Supernatural Thread continues to be found among the Methodists!

Frank Billman
July 2018

A Pentecostal Season: The Methodists in England and America, Part 1
(Summer 2018)

A Pentecostal Season: The Methodists in England and America, Part 2
(Fall 2018)

See also:

Experiencing Life in the Spirit: an interview with Frank Billman

God continues to give dreams and visions to his people.

Introduction

This chapter is from Dreams & Visions: Divine Interventions in Human Experience by John P. Lathrop.

The Bible has been around for a very long time; it has stood the test of time and been widely distributed. The Bible is available in many different English translations and has been translated into numerous foreign languages as well. It is probably both the most loved and most hated book of all time. Its detractors claim that it is full of errors and contradictions, or that it is irrelevant. On the other hand, devout Christians believe that it is the Word of God. The doctrinal statements of many Christian denominations contain a statement to the effect that the Bible is the only reliable guide for faith and practice.

I believe that the Bible is the Word of God and that it was given to instruct and guide us. However, it must be admitted that it is not always an easy book to understand. There are a number of reasons for this. First, there is the matter of time. The Bible was written over the course of many centuries, in times that are very distant from our own.¹ This distance can create difficulties for us as we seek to understand what the biblical text is saying. Second, the biblical books of both testaments are set in cultures that are very different from our Western 21^st-century culture. The cultures of the Bible sometimes have different thoughts than ours.² As a result, some of the cultural practices and understandings are foreign to us. Third, there are some things in the Bible that just are difficult to understand. For example, the apostle Peter said that some of the things the apostle Paul wrote about in his letters were difficult to understand (2 Pet. 3:15-16). If one inspired writer thinks that another inspired writer is difficult to understand, then you can be sure that it is true! Fourth, we should expect to find the Bible difficult to understand at times, because the Bible comes from a God whose ways and thoughts are higher than ours (Isa. 55:9). We are finite beings trying to understand an infinite God; the creation trying to understand the Creator. Lastly, there are some things in the Bible that we do not understand because we have not had any personal experience with them. People in the Bible experienced them, but many of us have not, especially those of us in the West.

Writing about the empowering ministry of the Holy Spirit, Gordon Fee says that some people conclude that this dimension of the Holy Spirit’s work does not exist today because they are exegeting their own experience, rather than the biblical text.³ They use their own experience as a grid in interpreting the Bible, and their experience becomes the norm of what God does and does not do today.⁴ This is certainly not the way that we are supposed to interpret the Bible, but the sad truth is that we can all be guilty of this from time to time. This is a potential problem, and all believers should be on their guard in an effort to keep from falling into this error. When Christians fall into this trap, they violate the evangelical tenet that the Bible is our only rule for faith and practice. In his book Gift & Giver: The Holy Spirit for Today, Craig Keener says that he has rarely witnessed miracles like those of Elijah, Elisha, or like the ones that we find in the gospels or the book of Acts; thus, based on his experience, he might conclude that such miracles do not happen today.⁵ However, he goes on to say that it is his desire to see what the Scripture teaches and to attempt to bring his experience, and that of the church, more in line with the biblical norm.⁶ This should be our desire as well.

Amos Yong explores the impact of Pentecostalism on Christianity. This lecture was given on February 11, 2015 as part of the annual Murray W. Downey Lectureship at Ambrose University.

Please advance the timer to 25:15 when the introductions begin.

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The Coming Global Christianity: Watch Part 2 and Part 3 of this series.

Further reading: Read Jenny-Lyn Harrison’s summary and reflection of Amos Yong’s 2015 Downey Lectureship.

Here is a video about the book Creative Ways to Build Christian Community. In this film you will meet the founders of the House of Prisca and Aquila publishing line, the editors, and some of the contributors. I was one of the co-editors so I make a brief appearance in the film.

Evan B. Howard, The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2008), 496 pages, ISBN 9781587430381.

Evan Howard has constructed a college or seminary textbook on spirituality that is thorough in its approach, wide in its scope, and deep in its content. The format that he employed benefits the reader by opening each chapter with effective introductions, outlines, and stated objectives. These are wrapped up by summary statements, study questions, and in-depth suggestions for further reading. Howard provides an application on “Practicing Christian Spirituality” that is well suited to engage the reader experientially. Sidebars and character profiles interspersed throughout help illustrate how theories of spirituality have been lived out. On a lighter note, Howard has inserted appropriate cartoons to tease the truth out of the quirkiness of the churched culture, which is a welcomed comic-relief approach to include in a college textbook. Finally, the book concludes with a glossary of the religious terms utilized by the textbook.

The strength of Howard’s textbook rests on his commitment to explain the systems of thought, theology, psychology, and sociology in the history of Christian spirituality. Not presuming on his reader’s knowledge, he has been careful to explain each step and process. For example, when discussing the concept of prayer as a dialogue with God, he first explains theories of human communication. However helpful this may be to the new learner, it becomes tedious to one who is familiar with the theories. Herein lies the tension, how can any author present the mysteries of the spirit via the means of an academic text? How much can anyone learn about spirituality from a textbook?

The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality is well suited for upperclassmen or for seminarians who have not yet laid a foundation of Christian spirituality. Howard’s textbook has the potential to augment the guidance of a spiritual mentor or director who is active in spiritual discipleship.

Reviewed by John R. Miller

Publisher’s page: http://www.bakerpublishinggroup.com/books/the-brazos-introduction-to-christian-spirituality/227930

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical, & Contemporary Perspectives (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 372 pages.

In a world where wars are waged over disagreements between world religions, widespread ignorance and indifference regarding theology of religions is an astounding and inexcusable reality. In this book Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen takes a bold step towards correcting this sad situation. Kärkkäinen, professor of systematic theology at Fuller Theological Seminary and a prolific author, is noted for insightful surveys and summaries of complex theological subjects (e.g., see his Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective, Baker, 2002). His own Evangelical and Pentecostal background bring added depth and dimension to his writing which Pneuma Review readers will appreciate as well. In An Introduction to Theology of Religions he makes a tremendous amount of material more readily accessible and intelligible for readers. Key characters and concepts are introduced and investigated objectively. An extensive table of contents, detailed outline, full bibliography, and thorough author/subject indexes are helpful aids for readability and research. Anyone, whether pastor or teacher, student or scholar, interested in gaining a good working knowledge of one of the most challenging but stimulating fields of study among the theological disciplines will assuredly benefit from a reading of this book. It may be particularly well-adaptable as a college or seminary textbook.

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen begins with an introduction explicating the nature and needs of the newly developing discipline of theology of religions, and adds practical advice on how to use this book. Then he tackles, as the subtitle suggests, biblical, historical, and contemporary perspectives on theology of religions, closing with a brief epilogue. Noting that the rising challenge of religious pluralism now necessitates addressing theology of religions, Kärkkäinen distinguishes comparative religions, the study of world religions themselves, from Christian theology of religions, thinking theologically about “the meaning and value of other religions” and “the relationship of Christianity to other religions”. He also introduces the discipline’s search for paradigms, identifying the one he adopts (ecclesiocentrism, Christocentrism, theocentrism, realitycentrism¹), and its parameters, identifying the prevalent typology (exclusivism, pluralism, inclusivism). On opposite poles, exclusivism argues that no salvation exists outside Jesus Christ while pluralism insists that different religions are more or less equally valid paths to God/salvation. Inclusivism, more of a middle position, affirms that salvation is available only by and because of Jesus Christ but neither is Christ necessarily restricted to the Christian religion per se.

In the biblical perspective Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen observes that though a thoroughgoing theology of religions is not found in Scripture some important “leads” do exist. Significantly, an ongoing dialectical tension between universalist (God’s love for the world’s religions) and particularist (God’s judgment on the world’s religions) tendencies is evident. History shows “limited openness to other religions” among some early Church Fathers, but an increasing insistence over time on “no salvation outside the Church.” Occasional positive attitudes toward other religions are discernible after the early Church period. The Enlightenment Age definitely changed the direction more toward relativity of religions. But many missionaries and other thinkers in personal contact with non-Christian religions adopted a “fulfillment theory” of religions, arguing that Christianity completes and crowns what was anticipated in embryonic form in other religious faiths.

Christopher Partridge, General Editor, Introduction to World Religions, (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2005), 495 pages.

Here is a great introductory overview of the major religions of the world that will be an invaluable resource for scholars, clergy, interested laity, and just about anyone seeking accessible, understandable information regarding the rich religious diversity of humanity. An update of an earlier standard, Introduction to World Religions is lavishly illustrated, well organized, and has helpful charts and graphs depicting important chronological and geographical development or liturgical practices. Sidebar quotes accompanying text discussions are often unusually poignant. A particular strength of this book is that it contains not only expert analyses but also lay testimonies about experiences of devotees. This feature helps readers move beyond the laboratory analyses of academic or intellectual observation to empatheticaly experience an insider’s view of each faith. A wide range of scholarly contributors nonetheless also skillfully relate their subjects. The editorial staff is to be especially commended for an excellent job assuring that the unevenness that can often occur with works of multiple authorships just does not happen. Accordingly, though this book is broad, it is certainly not shallow. Yet it has been kept to a manageable size and has a readable style. For computer buffs a nicely done compact disc is included that makes cruising the contents even easier.

The book begins with a brief discussion of what religion in general really is, and how its contemporary study as a genre has been influenced by the insights of the social sciences. Ancient and indigenous religions are then presented before going on to discuss Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the religions of East Asia, and Bahá’í Faith. Each faith is respectfully allowed to speak for itself and stand on its own. A generally similar format is applied to each faith, moving from a historical overview to sacred writings, beliefs, rituals and festivals, familial and societal life, and each religion’s status and state in the modern world. Enough flexibility is built into the work, however, to allow today’s world in relation to currents and concerns of postmodernism, globalization, new religious movements, politics and terrorism, and more. A “Rapid Fact Finder” in the back of the book and a thorough index serve well to define key concepts and locate their discussion within the text body.

An important note is needed. Introduction to World Religions is not a book on theology of religions. It does an exceptional job helping us make sense of the make up of so many religions. It does not help us at all to make sense of their meaning from the perspectives of our own respective traditions. For one thing, that is obviously quite outside the purpose of the present book, which is dedicated primarily to overviewing the facts of the faiths. For another, theology of religions, or making sense of other religions in light of one’s own religion, is an extensive process well beyond its scope. A quick look at some of the major ways in which the religions relate to one another, however, would have been helpful. For readers who are devotees of a particular discipline this study is not merely an academic or intellectual exercise but impinges upon personal spirituality in possibly intense ways. An attack of ambiguity or uncertainty is perhaps an understandable and not uncommon occurrence when reading a book in which radically different world views are set side by side. What are we to think of each other, or to feel toward each other? How are we to act with one another? General editor Christopher Partridge has done some good work on theology of religions (e.g., “A Hermeneutic of Hopefulness: A Christian Personalist Response to the Inclusivism of Clark Pinnock”, pp. 184-219, in Tony Gray & Christopher Sinkinson, Reconstructing Theology: A Critical Assessment of the Theology of Clark Pinnock, Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster, 2000), as have several other contributors. Might not these resources have been mined? Interreligious relations should be addressed responsibly in a work bringing so many starkly contrasting conceptions of ultimate reality before us. Frustration about this missing factor is actually aggravated by maximally effective analyses of religion and the religions in relations with a myriad of other fields—cultural, economical, philosophical, political, technological–everything except each another. To work in a few pages or even paragraphs on theological reflections on and responses to the reality of religious pluralism seems pertinent also. Nevertheless, this work does indeed move toward mutual understanding and that too is a major first step forward.

Postmodernism, The Church, and The Future
A Pneuma Review discussion about how the church should respond to postmodernism

How should the church respond to postmodernism?

With great anticipation and some caution, I am pleased to announce the beginning of our discussion on Postmodernism, the Church, and the Future. As North American culture has become increasingly postmodern, some church leaders have perceived this shift to be a threat and others an opportunity. Church leaders need to know what they are facing. They need to hear from today’s theologians and practitioners to gain a well-rounded perspective.

May God give us the grace to humbly hear His voice calling us forward.

The Pneuma Review editorial committee is working to put together a diverse panel to discuss how the church should respond to the challenge of postmodernism.

We want your feedback. I invite you to leave comments and respond to these articles.