The Moravian Church, the Pentecostal Movement and the Methodist Episcopal Church - Coursework Example

Religious Restoration: A Controversy of the Ancient The Pentecostal Movement has a moderately brief history and tradition. As time progresses, the movement simultaneously assume dispositions that are suited to the period they are living in. Nowadays, there is a realization among the members of the movement that their attempts to renew their faith based on their early spiritual experiences of believing and Spirit Baptism has cost them a lot because they have apparently ignored other opportunities for reflection. Their spiritual leaders have been varied but intimate to the community of believers. The familiarity of the believers and the leaders with each other gives the impression of being a family as much as a spiritual movement. Pentecostals, alongside other religious movements, put emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit within the being of the believer. Historically, the Pentecostals have a comparatively young tradition. Its presence has been felt at the beginning of the twentieth century. Generally, the early Pentecostals inhabit the downcast part of a settlement, in countryside village and various poor remote areas of the planet. Since their existence, the Pentecostals have persisted to expand as a stream of spirituality within the backdrop of Christianity.1 As a fellowship, church, religious group, movement and denomination, the Pentecostals center much of their actions within the reverence setting of the church. For the Pentecostals, spirituality is not a mere devotional element but rather an entity that is frequently defined within the framework of service in a place of worship. The Pentecostals “love to have church” because they strongly believe that the work of the Spirit coupled with an ardent demonstration of dedication in worship service is more valuable than the Spirit’s work on the personal level within each believer.2 Moreover, spirituality for the Pentecostals focuses on a recurrent pursuit to recapture an individual’s original reception of the Spirit. This rather regressive move of the Spirit creates a two-way consciousness that proves to be useful at times but at other times may be a form of denial. Specifically, Pentecostals who have a diverse heritage from various generations perceive the Spirit in the past tense more than in the progression of time to the future hence abandoning the value of the present. The Pentecostals may have a sentiment that the worship was healthier in the days of the early restoration of the movement. Likewise, they may hold the belief that people were more passionate in their worship and there were more miracles during the earlier period. All religious movements are stirred with the divine hands of the Spirit of God which sends believers from diverse faiths on a remarkable journey. The birth of spirituality is such an amazing phenomenon because it also gives dawn to a lifetime commitment with God. The beginning of an individual’s spiritual passage is like the headwaters of a stream: “The headwaters are the source. At the swirl of these beginning headwaters, the new believer first tastes of the spiritual waters that fill, carry, and guide one on this remarkable pilgrimage”.3 For the Pentecostals, the first experience of the Baptism of the Spirit is a headwater occurrence. Believers stand as witnesses of these initial experiences as first believing which they remember as the cleansing power of God or narrating to others about first coming into consciousness of the work of the Spirit. These religious experiences are not only significant because of their order but also in their energy to breathe life into the flow of God’s Spirit upon the believers’ existence. Furthermore, these believers could testify to the redemptive experiences of God’s grace during moments of great crisis.4 At times of catastrophe, the Spirit of God builds a wall of mercy through the Spirit that prevents the calamity of the world and shores up one through the consequences of a tragedy. Various renewal movements under the pretext of the Pentecostal movement, particularly the Methodists, Moravians and the Salvation Army, will be explored in this paper in order to identify the finer points of the beliefs and practices of the Pentecostal movement as advocated and opposed by its leaders. The concluding part of the paper will be committed on the possible implications and effects of such religious tradition to the psychological well-being of the believer. The Methodist In 1932, the representatives of the Methodist Episcopal Church, held a consensus which rests on the objective of halting any secularizing activity that will de-sanctify Sunday as a day of worship. They have fiery argued that the founding of the nation, particularly the American nation, is forged alongside the ecclesiastical tradition of the Lord’s Day. The appeal was not made exclusively based on the scriptural law and gospel but on the fact that the Lord’s Day was recognized as one of the earliest institutions erected on the American soil thus the inclusion in the second article of the Federal Constitution of the code acknowledging the observance of Sunday as a holy day and not a holiday. The Methodists were determined to wrestle against legislative attempts to malign the importance of Sunday which is shown in this passage, “to make the Lords Day a holiday instead of a holy day. The church will not stand by and see the walls of the Lords Day broken down. ” 5 On matters of worship, the Methodists have an affinity to put together programs and customs common to the denomination and the policies and regulations of the civil government because of the belief that there originally existed an organic relationship between the church and the nation that can be mapped out to the foundation of both institutions. The Methodists, who prior to 1784 subsisted as a religious society under the secluded auspices of authority of the Church of England, adopted the ideals of autonomy of the conscience and emancipation of religious expressions which are by then popular in colonial America. When the American nation finally achieved its independence, the Methodist denomination continued their advocacy for the value of freedom for the purposes of propagating the scriptural holiness all over the land, for rebuilding the nation and for offering opportunities for worship in various liturgical approaches. During the early period of its inception, the Methodists routinely stress on the significance of the rise and development of a nation to the holy movement because it is a sign of God’s labor among virtuous people.6 This rather prophetic sympathy has been preserved as a distinguishing feature of Methodism alongside with the compassion towards patriotism and nationalism. However, this dual characteristic of the Methodists is sometimes confused with one and the other, simultaneously seeking to be faithful to God and important to the American populace. Nevertheless, the United Methodist Church is a Protestant denomination which aims to establish followers of Christ through outreach, evangelism and through espousing holiness via the practice of sanctification. They strongly adhere to the image of the Holy Spirit as the channel wherein believers could bring honor and reverence to God and as a guideline to which followers could emulate the life of Jesus Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit is shown in the denomination’s logo as the flame which is also perceived by the believers as a spiritual gift. The Methodists, just like other religious societies, are moved by the divine and the unseen. The Moravians The eighteenth century leader and theologian of the Moravian Church, Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, had led the way to both ecumenical relationships and ecumenical experiments. He also investigated on the relationships within the Roman Catholic Church and was profoundly persuaded by its spiritual tradition. Consequently, the theology that he was able to formulate was founded on the institution of faith as the “heart relationship with the Savior” which is for him was an insightful response and on the groundwork of the belief that the Savior is represented by Christ’s wounded being and abandonment of power. Zinzendorf took most critically the documents of the Christian scriptures that illustrate Christ as the driving force of creation hence setting up a connection between creation and salvation or the principle that the Creator is also a Savior who desires to save every soul through loving and completing it.7 The Renewed Moravian religious society in the eighteenth century with which Zinzendorf was intimately affiliated and which became the domain for his personal well-built profession resulted in the “rediscovery of the worldwide missionary calling of the church”8 which carried out mission attempts in five continents, from Africa to Greenland, from the West Indies to Russia. Zinzendorf’s ecumenical endeavors have to be perceived in connection to the mission performed. The devotion to follow the living Christ into the world was the expression of the mission. The strength of the commitment felt influenced the Moravian Church to choose its leader not from a roster of qualified individuals but to reverently recognized Christ as its Chief Elder beginning in 1741.9 For Zinzendorf, life, religious community and mission are the spheres where theology is explored and verified. Genuine religious community or church is supported by a communal experience of the same Savior who discloses and guides in ways suitable to individuality, conventions and way of life. Therefore, it clinches both a collective general sentiment which is the knowledge of the Savior in its multiplicity of expression. However, Zinzendorf disputed against uniformity which he assumed was contradicting the original nature of human existence. The word “Gemeine” which is used by Luther for “church” in his version of the Bible was the foremost word used for this organization, or church; the root word of “Gemeine” is “gemein” which means “common”. In Moravian vernacular “Germaine” identifies the church in numerous dimensions: “the universal and invisible church, the international Moravian Church, a congregation or all those communities—local, national, international or universal” that were represented by the connection with the Savior. On the other hand, Zinzendorf used the English word “religion” for denominations or Christian traditions. The Gemeinen throughout the world were formed by their existence in relationship with Christ and neither by their creation of faith and order nor by their category of religious experience or adaptation.10 The common church is comprised of individuals from all religions who carve up the heart connection with the Savior. The interrelationship or agreement of the Christian institutions, therefore, is not to be established in trying to achieve a common consensus on matters of faith and order but in the acknowledgment of the common reality, which is the existence of a sole Savior and Creator. An affinity is apparent between Zinzendorf and the customs of the Ancient Moravian Church, which characterized the single fundamental as relationship with God, the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, reacted in devotion, love and hope. Zinzendorf articulated more of an imperative heart relationship with the Savior as evident in the initiation of a relationship with the holistic being of the Godhead.11 Moreover, Zinzendorf’s reception of Jesus as both a Savior and Creator and his belief of the link between creation and salvation, testify to the reality that all the world’s religious traditions can be recognized as connected in an initial truth that is always relatively constructed. The Salvation Army Armed with energy and courage of profound conviction, William Booth had proclaimed himself master of the Christian Mission. An effort by a number of fearful individuals to manipulate the expanding organization of this Society and to launch a distressing and indecisive committee which would have controlled the harness of the government, had been thwarted by the might of the man who had called in into existence. He removed all these intrusive people and assumed the absolute powers of an autocrat, to the dismay of the anxious and to the grand fulfillment of the courageous.12 Yet, despite of the loneliness in his heart, antagonism from the world, disapproval from wealthy affiliates and the great burden of finance, he struggled with all his might in order to establish the Mission on a stable and eternal foundation. A time came when William Booth confronted a period in his life that marked his firm qualities, strength, cleanliness and depth of his native character. His entire future then was laid in the mercy of the work which he upheld in his hands. Yet still, he determined that this Mission should wrestle its way out of insignificance and arrive at the sense of right and wrong of mankind. He became more strong willed and noble in these new Mission than when he resolved himself to make the Mission a means of arousing the Church to the expectation of a spiritual triumph. The fulfillment of the Mission was extremely difficult because everything was against him and the number of his faithful followers was hardly any.13 However, a revolution in the mechanism of the Mission provided a bright momentum for Booth’s work in London and the provinces. It became from that moment the Salvation Army. People from across genders, age and social status lay down their lives to the motivation of William Booth, followed him wherever he commanded them to go, did whatever he proposed them to do and go through with all the sufferings without protest and criticism. The objective of the humble mission is expressed in praiseworthy conciseness in this passage: “The object and work of this Mission is to seek the conversion of the neglected crowds of people who are living without God and without hope, and to gather those so converted into Christian fellowship, in order that they may be instructed in Scriptural truth, trained in habits of holiness and usefulness, and watched over and cared for in their religious course.”14 The faith of William Booth and his powerful conviction impressed upon the Christian Mission. None who decided to follow his path hesitate for a single moment that human life had been an operation of special creation, which man in his beginnings was guiltless and perfect, that Satan had deceitfully captured the human race into insubordination to God, and that every young person born into the complexities of human existence was in result of the original mistake, accountable to become a sinner entirely led astray, and to arrive under the rage of the Creator. It was a faith which encouraged remarkable heroism and a deep loving compassion.15 Meanwhile, the transformation of the Christian Mission into the Salvation Army had generated controversies. Yet, in the early seventies it was believed that the process of conversion is not a sign of a looming end but a promising beginning. And in reality, at the outset, the Christian Mission had most of the primary characteristics of the Salvation Army, that is it did not deride any method for arousing the conscience of the human race, and that while it was in boring seriousness it was able to convey its worry for the souls of men in a fortitude of grand joyfulness and all-embracing absurdity.16 Conclusion The emerging belief that original and pristine Christianity should be restored in its magnificent form is the work of the Restorationist movement. Different religious organizations such as the Methodists, the Moravians, the Salvation Army and the Pentecostal movement propagate the insight that the restoration of Christianity has been an extremely significant movement because of the blemishes in the Christian faith and traditions that were introduced by the Catholic Orthodox and Protestant Christians. Moreover, the Restorationists believe that the Christianity did not remain unadulterated hence it is important to revive the fundamental building block of true Christianity. The Pentecostal Movement can be classified as Restorationists because of their belief that spirituality is not merely a show of exuberant faith but an entity that needs feeding and guidance through worship services. Likewise, the Methodists are Restorationists because they fought for the original relationship of the church and the state; they advocated the amalgamation of the church and the state and not the separation of it. Moreover, the Methodists contested that the Sunday should be revered as a Holy Day and not a holiday because the holy scriptures say so. On the other hand, the Moravians who were led by Zinzendorf believe that the original nature of Christianity is not uniformity but diversity. Lastly, the Salvation Army adheres to the principle that conversion is not a sign of imminent ending but a sign of a fresh beginning. Bibliography 19, R. (1932). The Lords Day. Daily Christian Advocate 22. Begbie, H. (1920). The Life of General William Booth: The Founder of the Salvation Army. New York: MacMillan. Boone, R. (1996). Community and Worship: The Key Components of Pentecostal Christian Formation. Journal of Pentecostal . Booth, E. (1919). The War Romance of the Salvation Army. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincot Company. Foster, R. (1978). Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth. New York: Harper & Row. Freeman, A. (1999). Count Nicholas Ludwig Von Zinzendorf: An Ecumenical Pioneer . Journal of Ecumenical Studies . Hamilton, J. T. and Hamilton, K. (1983). History of the Moravian Church: The Renewed Unitas Fratrum, 1722-1957. McMahan, O. (2002). A Living Steam: Spiritual Direction within the Pentecostal/Charismatic Tradition . Journal of Psychology and Theology . Podmore, C. (1998). The Moravian Church in England, 1728-1760. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Tucker, K. B. (2000). American Methodist Worship. New York: Oxford University Press. Read More