Expecting the End: Millennialism in Social and Historical Context

Chapter Eleven

193 Forty Years of Millenarian Thought in the Charismatic Movement Smail’s Lament In a paper exploring the subject of charismatic theology, published in 1995, renowned Anglican renewalist Tom Smail expressed disenchantment at the lack of the felt need among advocates of the charismatic movement to construct a coherent and meaningful theology.1 The stress on the experience of God rather than thinking about God by leading renewal theologians and churchmen alike had tended to play down the importance of stringent theological constructs. For charismatics, explained Smail succinctly , God is not an intellectual hypothesis to be discussed, but a living personal agent to be encountered. Regrettably, however, when that happens , continued Smail, either individually for people or corporately for churches, the conclusion can easily be reached that they have neither need nor time for a complicated theology and all the awkward questions it subsequently raises.2 Smail’s account of the paucity of charismatic theology was not merely with reference to the basic tenets of the faith: the atonement, the Trinity, the virgin birth, and so on. Rather, it engaged with issues stemming from Stephen J. Hunt Chapter Eleven 194 Forty Years of Millenarian Thought in the Charismatic Movement renewal itself, from the charismata, signs and wonders, healing and prophecy, and the preoccupation which charismatics displayed at that time with the so-called power evangelism associated with the late healing evangelist John Wimber. While Smail’s paper was a significant and timely contribution , there were, nonetheless, elements conspicuously missing from his appraisal that might be expected in the context of charismatic theology. In particular, he had next to nothing to say of the theology of the last days and the inherent hope in the coming kingdom of God, which in fact has rarely been absent from the charismatic worldview. Perhaps Smail was shrewd in not attempting to explore the complex and varied regions of eschatological thought among charismatics. However, it is unlikely that his wish to refrain from opening this particular theological can of worms would have been out of the fear of majoring on a theological minor, since the theme of the millennium has proved to be central to Christian dogma and experience for over two thousand years. Rather, Smail’s reluctance was probably from viewing the subject as too wide, too intricate, and perhaps too controversial for a relatively short paper. Millenarian thought in the charismatic movement is a topic of not inconsiderable importance since, in many respects, millenarianism, renewal, and revival have historically walked hand in hand. Indeed, the annals of the Christian church relate how periodic perceived fresh “moves” of God and the outpouring of his Spirit were interpreted as breathing new and intoxicating oxygen into the millenarian hope—a hope that has given direction and purpose to his people ever since the first Pentecost experience in the upper room as related in the book of Acts. In point of fact, an analytical sweep of four decades of the charismatic movement shows that, to some extent at least, it was born and developed with millenarian aspirations. These were aspirations that punctuated charismatic dogma and praxis, albeit carried through with different levels of intensity and presented in different guises. In short, the millenarian content and symbols of the promise of Christ’s return and the kingdom of God has changed over this time, and so much is telling by way of how the related eschatology has been constructed. Here the sociology of ideas has something to offer, since millenarianism and all that it entails is not merely a theological construct referring to a literal or metaphorical period of a thousand years of Christ’s dominion, but a phenomenon that transverses different cultures, religious traditions, and time and place. Often inspired by the more esoteric dimensions of the books of Daniel and Revelation in particular, the idea has furnished the ideology of small cults and large-scale social movements alike3 with the dream of a divine new order that brings, in the words of Talmon, an “. . . imminent, total, ultimate, this-worldly salvation.”4 Stephen J. Hunt 195 As few as they are, sociological accounts of millenarianism in its various forms point to its construction as an essentially cultural event, one forged by the interplay of social conditions, ideal interests, and the influx of relevant ideas into unique situations. This is, of course, a variation of Max Weber’s much-vaunted formula for the possibility of dynamic...