Video5 notes – Weeks 9 and 10
It’s eight o’clock in the morning in Seoul, Korea and I’m between crowd at the first and second services in the Yoido Full Gospel Church.
This is Protestantism at the beginning of the 21st century.
In the fifth part of my History of Christianity, I’m tracing the growth of an exuberant expression of faith that has spread across the globe. .
Evangelical Protestantism. Today, it is associated with full-blooded emotion and, by some, with conservative politics.
But the whole story is not what you might expect.
In my previous programme, I showed how the Protestant faith broke away from medieval Catholicism to build a Protestant homeland in Europe. Now I’ll follow the events that led it to burst its boundaries. America, Africa, even Asia.
Protestantism was born out of a religious revolution in the 16th century – the Reformation. For a hundred years it made great strides across Europe with an explosion of new Protestant churches –Lutherans, Calvinists, Anabaptists, Anglicans.
The response of the Catholic Church culminated in the Thirty Years War. That left Protestantism severely bruised. And by the end of the 17th century, it was largely confined to northern Europe. It looked as though the Reformation had been stopped in its tracks.
And yet from 1700 the story of Protestantism has been one of relentless expansion. So what happened?
What’s the power of Protestantism that’s made it circle the world?
This is Herrnhut on the far eastern border of Germany.
The Protestant explosion might never have happened without a small group of Christians who settled here in 1722. And these are their gravestones, the Moravian Brethren. They had been persecuted by Catholics in their homeland – the modern day Czech Republic.
So they fled 255 miles west to safe Protestant Saxony. Once here a Lutheran nobleman, Count Zinzendorf, headstrong, charismatic, rich, offered them his land and leadership for a new community.
Zinzendorf loved his Lutheran roots but he was seeking something more.
What made his new Moravian community stand out from other Protestants was its intensely personal, emotional relationship with God. It was a re-discovery of the historical heart of the Christian faith –eternal salvation through a personal experience of Jesus Christ. There is still a strong Moravian community here.
I joined them on one of their big days – the Advent service. In their new home, the Moravians worshipped several times a day, every day. And they sang, sometimes for days on end.
The Protestant Reformation had certainly told human beings that they stood alone before God’s judgement But the Moravians were saying they could stand in a direct emotional relationship with God. Less of the head, more of the heart. It was an idea that would revolutionise Protestantism.
And there was another innovation of the Moravians which breathed new life into Protestantism. In Germany today, they’re famous for their Christmas stars. But in the 18th century, they pioneered something far more significant.
Christianity had always been a missionary faith. But that job was normally carried out by professional clergy.
Ordinary Moravians took the unprecedented step of conducting missionary work themselves. And they weren’t just interested in taking the message out to Europe. In fact the very first Moravian missionary headed straight for the new world.
I looked through the Moravian archives with its director, Dr Rudiger Kroger.
Dr. Kroger –“We have here the diary of the first missionary, Leonard Dober, who went to St Thomas in 1732.
M – St Thiomas – In the West Indies?
K – It’s in the West Indies in the Caribbean, yes. For example we have in this diary an entry from early January 1733 that reads he went to the plantation to establish his profession as a potter but the work was not very successful because of the bad condition of the clay. But they were using the time to speak to the slaves.
That is what the Moravians were looking for, a possibility to talk with the people about their religious feelings.
M – I think it’s extraordinary that this humble, working man crosses the seas to share his faith with other humble, working people. What is it about the Moravians which impels them to do this?
K -The Moravians have the duty for everyone to talk about the faith, to talk about the gospel and to help people learning being free to practise their faith. And you don’t need being a pastor, it’s a new way of seeing… living together in Christianity.
M- The Moravian archives are bursting with stories like Leonard Dober’s. Immortalised in paintings, these pioneering missionaries spread the good news of Christianity as far as Africa and Greenland.
It’s why they are called Evangelical from the Greek word "evangelion" meaning "Good News."
Evangelical Christianity was on the march.
But it wasn’t quite the finished product. That would happen in England. The Moravians had the gift of turning people’s emotions into faith. They helped change the life of one young Englishman –an Anglican priest who then seized the future of Protestantism. His name was John Wesley.
Bristol in the West of England is one of the founding centres of a denomination which helped turn the Moravian dream into reality -Methodism.
Its founder, John Wesley, started out as an Anglican clergyman but one who appreciated the intense richness of Catholicism. Wesley met the Moravians in 1735 on board ship. He’d set sail from England with his brother Charles to take up a new job in America. The brothers were already out of step with the established Church of England because they were High Churchmen who emphasised the Catholic side of Anglicanism. At university in Oxford they had been one of a group of students who formed a Holy Club which brought a sort of Counter-Reformation Catholic Intensity to low-temperature English Protestantism – they fasted, they went to communion as often as possible, they worked to help the poor. It was a very methodical way of trying to achieve holiness and early on someone, without apparently any friendly intent, called them Methodists.
The Methodists were not yet a new denomination. But the Wesley’s chance meeting with the Moravians would take them a step closer, especially as the brothers were heading for personal crisis in America.
They fell out with local colonists. John had a disastrous love affair. They sailed home defeated and depressed.
But back in England they kept in touch with the Moravians.
One night in 1738 in London, John attended Anglican Evensong and then a Moravian prayer meeting. It was a powerful combination that would change both him and Protestantism. Something new happened to John Wesley that night. In a phrase now famous, he felt his heart strangely warmed.
While the solemn music of evensong was still ringing in his memory, he listened to Martin Luther’s restatement of Paul’s message to the Romans. "We’re saved by faith alone." The Reformation came alive for him.
A new fire, a new urgency came in his religion and it burst through the hymns of the Moravians to create a new message for his generation. For both Wesley brothers what mattered in their faith now was a direct relationship with God. They wanted to spread this message of salvation just as the Moravians had done.
But the Wesleys also brought a new element to Protestantism that helped it reach out to millions more around the world. They saw that society was being transformed around them and they hurried to bring frightened and bewildered folk the Gospel good news in the middle of huge social change. In the 18th century industrialisation displaced millions from the countryside to new population centres such as the modern day outskirts of Bristol. But the Church of England had no buildings here.
For a rather prissy parson, John Wesley found a surprising solution. An old friend from Oxford, George Whitefield, had taken to preaching in the open air. John decided to give it a go at Hanham Mount, then close to a large mining community.
According to local Methodist Colin Cradock it was a risky choice of venue.
Cradock – “Cock Road which is close by here was a notorious area for lawlessness and so on and then there were the miners themselves, who in 18th century society they must have been the real lowest of the artisans, I imagine.
M – So the sort of place your mother tells you not to go?
C – “Well, it was, definitely, I don’t think anybody of any respectability would come out here and for Wesley to do it was just absolutely astounding.
M – And the effect he had on people?
C – He had a dramatic effect on them. The miners wept – these black sooty faces had white lines down them.
Amazing.
For the first time, someone cared enough to come looking for the miners, to save their souls. It’s often forgotten that a concern for social justice is part of the original DNA of Evangelical Christianity.
The Methodists went on to build their own chapels that were quite separate from the Church of England.
This was their first – John Wesley’s own headquarters in Bristol, his ‘New Room’. And it wasn’t just the words of John Wesley that moved people. It was also the magnificent hymns of his brother Charles.
Strange. It’s so cool and classical and ordered. Yet in 1739 it would have been deafening in services here with shouts of joy and repentance, and the roar of Charles’s new hymns about Christ’s blood and sacrificial death.
“This is my desire… “
Maybe that initial intensity has cooled for many Methodists today.
“to honour you…
But you can still get a glimpse of the fervour of those early meetings all over the modern evangelical world.
“ Lord, I give you my heart,”
“ I give you my soul
“ I live for you alone
“ Every breath that I take
“ Every moment I’m awake… “
By 1800, around half a million people in Britain attended Methodist worship –
that’s over 5% of the population, grown from nothing, in 60 years.
Heartfelt Protestant religion was hugely popular in Wales and spread among Scottish and Irish Presbyterians too. It was an Evangelical Revival. The Evangelical message reached all levels of society.
Like the Moravians in Germany the Evangelicals discovered an intensely personal Reformation.
They reached into their bibles to meet Christ, but they also reached into the depths of their own souls to make that meeting complete. And they hungered to get others to do the same.
Up till now the Catholic Church had set the pace for Western Christian missionary work. But that was about to change with a religious revival across the Atlantic. In the New World, Protestantism would triumph. In America, there’s a bewildering range of Protestant denominations – Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist,
Unitarian, Episcopalian, 7th Day Adventist, you name it. Does that mean Protestants constantly flounce off and start something new? Well, they do, but that’s also really the key to the exuberance of American religion.
The first shoots of American diversity lie in an outburst of heartfelt religion in New England in the 1730s.
At the start of the revival was a brilliant scholar, a Congregational minister in Northampton, Massachusetts.
His name was Jonathan Edwards. Edwards insisted that we must worship God with the whole person, mind and emotion. And from the greatest philosopher to the smallest child we must love God in simplicity.
He once said in a sermon, "If ever you arrive at heaven, faith and love must be the wings which must carry you there". It was Edwards’s congregation which first experienced revival in America. But there was more to come – the rousing spirit which Europe was now experiencing .
It was brought by an Evangelical Englishman Edwards invited to address his congregation. George Whitefield – the same man who inspired John Wesley to preach outdoors. He’s buried in the Old South Church in Newburyport. And that’s where I met an American Church historian who believes that Edwards got more than he bargained for.
Kenneth Minkema – “While Edwards welcomed the message, he didn’t really like Whitefield’s manner of delivery. Whitefield of course brought this new style of preaching that was dramatic, it was extemporaneous, that is he didn’t use any manuscripts. He would rely on inspiration, moving back and forth, using gesture, enacting scenes from the bible. It’s said that people would faint when he pronounced the word Mesopotamia.
McCulloch – It sounds to me as though Whitefield would be a welcome visitor for Edwards but not necessarily a welcome colleague.
Minkema -Tell me about it. After Whitefield leaves his congregation is a wreck. So Edwards tries to separate the physical from the spiritual. And he says to his congregation what were you more impressed by, were you more impressed by the eloquence of the preacher and what was more lasting for you?
Was it the message of the new birth and did it have any difference in your heart?
The reality is that the revival unfolding in New England needed a bit of what both men had to offer.
The intellect and considered argument of Edwards balanced the crowds’ emotional response to Whitefield’s challenges.
Well, this is the grave of George Whitefield. It actually feels remarkably like the shrine of a Catholic saint until you realise that he is actually sharing the basement of this church with the church heating system.
He was an extraordinary preacher. In the open air his voice could carry so that ten thousand or more people could hear him. And he came to this country to a movement which is already springing up in all sorts of churches – the movement we collectively call the ‘Great Awakening’.
In the 18th century, emotional preachers like Whitefield stirred passions as never before. He demanded that people made choices. Protestant Churches like the Presbyterians and Baptists were turned into missionary power houses.
MAN: Thank you Joe, all right we’re on our way. Now a little bit about Boston, this was the birthplace of the American Revolution – our struggle for freedom from British rule.
Evangelical Protestantism now swept through much of America. Here in Boston you can always tell you’re on land… And it did so for very special, very American reasons. Here we go into the Charles River!
In the 1760s a group of Boston citizens who called themselves the "Sons of Liberty" began rioting in the streets to protest British rule and British taxes.
The spread of Evangelicalism was an accidental side effect of the American Revolution, sparked by a famous incident here in Boston. In the course of the next few hours we took 342 chests of tea… ..threw it in the harbour.
King said we had to pay the tax when it hits the dock, he didn’t say anything about when it hits the water.
In 1773 the Boston Tea Party launched a series of clashes that led to American independence from Britain.
To the consternation of many Christians, the founding fathers decided to separate church from state in their new Republic’s Federal constitution. In time, the privileges of established churches in individual states also ended. After centuries as an official religion tied to the state, Christianity was cut free. All the gains of Evangelical Protestantism might seem to have been at risk.
The separation of church and state was an historic moment for the Christian faith. Since the 4th century, mainstream western Christianity had been an arm of government. Now it stood alone. You might think that this would be devastating for churches – in fact it was quite the opposite.
The historic decision to separate church and state had a wholly unexpected effect on the future of Protestantism. It let people choose. You can see the results of that decision in the huge number of denominations that still sprout and flourish right across the United States.
In exchange for breaking all federal ties with the church, the Founding Fathers gave Americans religious liberty. And that meant the freedom to choose any Christianity – no matter how emotional.
It unleashed another Evangelical revival – a second Great Awakening, this time on America’s western frontier.
In 1800, Kentucky was in the Wild West. It’s not surprising that some of the wilder manifestations of modern Evangelical Christianity found a home here. An annual gathering marks the events.
Remember, this was a frontier. All sorts of people were chancing their luck. Many of them came from Britain. That was really important for what happened here, because among them were Scottish Protestants whose people had already moved once, to settle in Ulster in Ireland.
Frontier Ulster had the same sense of danger, excitement, limitless potential, as the Wild West frontier in Hollywood movies. It was actually in Ulster that Protestants first gathered in huge numbers for open-air holy communion services. And when they came to North America they brought that memory with them.
It was on this new frontier that the idea of open-air revival gained a new lease of life.
Frank Jarboe “This particular communion there was a service late in the weekend and during this sermon one woman spoke out, cried out, seeking assurance of her salvation, which of course that disrupted the service. And at the end of the sermon the organising ministers left the church but the congregation stayed inside, they seemed to be waiting, if you will, for what God was going to do next.
M -This must have been quite troubling for the ministers?
J Oh, absolutely. I’ve read that they held a small conference outside the building to decide what they should do and their decision was, and I think a very wise one, is they would not interrupt what was happening inside.
I believe they may have gone back in and joined and that’s when they saw God’s spirit fall
People were falling out – slain in the spirit would be a term that we would call it in modern times.
M – It sounds as if people are trying to find ways of expressing what they feel beyond what they can normally do in church?
J -Oh, absolutely. You had the running exercise where people would be so enthralled with what they felt God doing in them that they would literally run, I don’t know circles, run around the camp. I’m not sure
But then you had the barking exercise, you had a laughing exercise, when the power of God comes upon you, it has to come out in some way or you feel like you may burst.
“God so loved the world, yea the ungodly world which had no fault or desire… Praise the lord! Praise the lord!
Hallelujah!
The emotion raced across the new Republic.
The white-hot religion of the second Great Awakening lasted almost 50 years. And it helped create something new. Congregations that up until now had remained offshoots of European churches had fresh choices – you might almost say, consumer choices.
Christianity was marketed with all the flair and swashbuckling enterprise that the United States showed in its commerce and industry. Frontier Protestantism had become not only ‘popular’ but distinctly ‘American’.
PART 10
The energy of the revivals led to new identities for Christianity. From 7th Day Adventists, and Millerites, to Mormons, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, they saw America at the center of God’s purposes. It’s easy to stress the emotional side of American evangelicalism. But we need to remember that many of them were also socially radical. Like Methodists, American evangelicals offered marginal groups fresh hope.
“This little light of mine
“I’m going to let it shine
“Oh, this little light of mine
“I’m going to let it shine
“This little heart of mine… “
The message entranced African Americans, most of whom were still enslaved. Evangelicalism offers a choice, to turn to Jesus. These people had never had a choice in their whole lives. They went on to found their own churches.
Belle Mead Plantation near Nashville couldn’t have functioned without slaves. On its gracious lawns, I talked about the importance of evangelical revival for African Americans with scholar Denis Dickerson.
Dickerson -In these camp meeting venues, persons high and low, black and white, rich and poor were invited to hear the gospel and many of the scriptures that were preached obviously were heard by African Americans as ensuring their equality. "For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." "God hath made of one blood all people to dwell upon the earth."
M –“But many slave owners were evangelical Protestants and many evangelical Protestants justified slavery in reference to the Bible. Were they just being stupid and selfish?
D – The slaves knew that the Bible had competing themes. Those who wanted to justify slavery often had to appeal to those many, many instances n the scriptures, particularly in the Old Testament, sometimes in the New Testament, that there was hierarchy, there were servants, there were slaves, that seemingly were sanctioned by religious authorities. The slaves themselves however developed their own interpretation.
They could easily cite that same God who had liberated the Hebrews and had brought them through an Exodus experience would also do the same for them in the United States.
There was another important and unexpected reason why Bible-believing African Americans accepted the religion of their oppressors. Some white evangelicals came to see slavery as evil and anti-Christian and they campaigned alongside the enslaved for abolition.
By the mid-19th century, the most dynamic and expansionist society in the world was a Protestant great power, the United States. I think that we should forget old cliches about a Protestant work ethic, contrasting somehow with Catholicism. We’re looking here at a huge historical coincidence.
Circumstances converged to make the world’s leading industrial nation Protestant. And so its brand of Protestant culture also became a world-conquering force.
Even non-Christian Japanese hurried to copy American capitalism
In fact you could say mission had been thrust upon Protestants now by a dramatic turn of events in the heartland of Catholicism in Europe.
From 1789, the French Revolution signalled the end of the old world. The French monarchy collapsed, the Roman Catholic church was tottering – surely these were the signs of the end of the world.
Now was the time for Protestants to proclaim the truth before it was too late. So, just at the moment when Catholic missions were faltering, Protestants set out to conquer the world.
Ghana -Africa was not only a long way from the Protestant heartlands of America and Europe. It was also culturally very distant. Counter-Reformation Catholicism had tried and failed to make serious in-roads here.
And on the West African coast the reason is still plain to see. This is one of the many forts where captured Africans were held before being shipped to the New World as slaves.
Not surprising then that few West Africans listened to any talk of Christianity from Europeans. For three-and-a-half centuries the slave trade had poisoned relations between Europe and Africa.
Now the campaign for its abolition proved vital for the success of African Protestantism.
This is the Anglican Cathedral, in the Ghanaian capital, Accra. Christianity here descends from Africans who, freed from slavery, returned to Africa
They were mostly fervent evangelicals, impatient to help their fellow Africans choose salvation. And this gave a new idea to the British Anglican Church Missionary Society, the CMS – self-governing churches overseas.
The society began looking to these new West African settlements for local leadership And they found one outstanding candidate. A young man who’d been rescued from slavers and who’d settled in Sierra Leone.
His name was Ajayi but he took two English names, in fact the names of a committee member of the CMS, Samuel Crowther. So Samuel Ajayi Crowther, came to England, trained for the ministry and was ordained an Anglican priest.
“I wanted to give God a mighty clap offering.: Again, a mighty clap offering!”
Crowther set about sowing the seeds of African Anglicanism, with a distinctly evangelical flavour. He saw that to succeed, Protestantism would have to adapt to African culture. He translated the Bible into his native Yoruba language. And was successful enough to be given the post of Bishop of Western Africa.
But Crowther’s initiatives were ahead of the times, and his impact was limited. He wanted authority over both black and white missionaries in West Africa but his English white superiors had a problem.
Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, a Ghanaian church historian, told me what it was.
M – As a boy I collected stamps and I have vivid memories of the stamp commemorating Bishop Crowther and I saw it as a great success story that there should be a bishop from West Africa.
But was it such a success story?
K – Yes, and no. For an African with a slave past to rise to the level that Crowther did, was by itself an achievement but he was betrayed because they wanted to put an African at the forefront of the missionary work but I think when it came to the point when they then had to hand the destiny of the church into African
M -So they wanted their cake and eat it?
K – You may well put it that way.
White European missionaries did try to evangelise this vast continent. The most famous attempt was that of David Livingston in Southern and Central Africa. But his was actually an heroic failure.
He made only one recorded convert, who later fell out with him and formed his own Church.
This was the same lesson that Crowther had taught the Church. Christianity could take root in Africa but only if it was led by African missionaries. And eventually, it was.
What was happening quietly through the 19th century was that Africans themselves were doing mission in ways that Europeans hardly noticed. So young men would travel, they’d go to services in new places, they’d learn new hymns and they’d bring them home. Market women would sell Christianity using their sales skills
Teachers would be taught by the missionaries and when the missionaries moved on they’d go on teaching.
They’d be able to tell Africa about Christianity in African terms.
At the start of the 20th century, perhaps 10% of Africans were Christian. Today, it may be half the continent. Astonishing. How has it happened?
One curious catalyst was the outbreak of World War I in 1914. Many European missionaries left. And the ghastliness of the war didn’t say much for the Christianity of Europe.
Two good reasons for Africans to take control. One of the greatest pioneering African missionaries
You have to picture Harris striding through the villages of the Ivory Coast and here in Ghana. He’s dressed in a simple white robe, he’s carrying a six-foot cross and holding a gourd of water.
With him are his team of two or three women, who are singing, playing the calabash to
But his converts didn’t want to join the established European churches because their services just didn’t celebrate God in the way Africans wanted. Worse still, European-run Churches condemned African practices like polygamy. So Harris’ followers chose to form their own network of churches
The Church of the Twelve Apostles is one descendant.
This is a Friday service for healing. The congregation is mainly made up of women market traders. They’ve taken the day off, leaving the men to work on while they worship.This seems a million miles from the churches I know back in Oxford. But that’s the great strength of Christianity, its ability to
Behind this very African experience I can see features which all communities value. In Western Europe
And it’s about healing. All around you, the power of God is pushing out of a community which is dressed up to be like you, to be with you in your time of trouble. In your everyday boredoms, your frustrations, you bring them here, you dump them and you dance on them.
Theresa Appah “You know, in Africa or in Ghana we believe that every sickness it’s caused by, it’s a curse, or it’s caused by the devil. So we believe that once the problem is spiritual it should be solved spiritually.
M – And when the music happens that’s part of the healing?
A – The music invokes the spirit, the holy spirit to come upon the leaders, the healers, and when the music is going on some are even healed. When the music is going on and we hear people shouting they are getting healed, though they are not touched, but they are getting healed by the music.
And that is why people come to us, we are always the last to be approached, the last to be approached and the first to solve the problems.
Local leaders across the continent led a quite breathtaking growth in this new African Christianity.
From the nine million Christians in Africa in 1900, there are now more than 380 million. And half of those are Protestant. It marks the biggest ever shift in the centre of gravity of Christianity. 2,000 years ago, it was in
The key to Protestant expansion has been the willingness to change. This direct, heartfelt encounter with God started with the Moravians. It was boosted by Methodism and evangelical revival. The message swept across America in the Great Awakenings. And it spread across Africa. And with each new setting came new Protestant churches.
By the 20th century, they even challenged the historic ascendancy of Roman Catholicism in Latin America. It’s taken the number of Christian denominations worldwide to more than 30,000. But now it’s expanding even further and it may be that Protestantism is moving too far away from the teachings of Jesus.
Today, South Korea is a prosperous nation with a thriving economy. It’s hard to imagine that only 60 years ago this was a traumatised and impoverished country reeling from the effects of Japanese occupation.
Throughout the Japanese occupation the churches were prominent in the struggle for freedom. It meant that Christianity was identified with national suffering and national pride. After liberation it became involved in another struggle, rebuilding a shattered Korea.
Here, it produced one of the most dramatic success stories in modern Christian history, Korean Pentecostalism. The Yoido Full Gospel Church started with five Koreans meeting in a tent. Now it has over three quarters
The hymns might be in Korean but the tunes are straight out of the Evangelical Revivals. In fact, Pentecostalism has built on a 19th century American tradition. It was called the Holiness Movement. It harked back to the revivals of Wesley’s Methodism. At its heart is the emotional side of faith, the direct, personal choice for God.
What’s new is that Pentecostals have found God in a way with little precedent in Christian history. They’ve met the Holy Spirit, who’s often seemed the Cinderella of the Trinity. The Bible says that 50 days after the death of Jesus the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles at the Jewish feast of Pentecost.
It was a life-changing experience. The disciples are said to have spoken in tongues an unknown but sacred language which all present could understand. They were filled with such energy, they chose to spread the message of Jesus to the world. Pentecostals believe present-day Christians can also receive those
And that’s what you’re seeing here today. But there’s another aspect to the success of Korean Pentecostalism which is far more controversial. It’s the promise of good fortune and prosperity for believers. That’s been christened, by those who mistrust it, the "prosperity gospel". It came out of the inter-war years in America. Capitalism in the service of Jesus.
That’s certainly what I heard from a Korean Presbyterian theologian, Professor Sang Keun Kim.
K -It is simple. If you go to church and give offering, you will be blessed. Your economic success is guaranteed.
M – So this really is prosperity?
K – That’s right.
M – Can you see problems in the Bible with this message?
K – Yes. It is very hard to a rich man…to get into heaven. You know, from that passage, I think, sooner or later you are not able to see any Koreans in heaven! Because prosperity gospel had a positive contribution during the 1970s and ’80s. It provided a new sort of hope. But nowadays ordinary Koreans or society think that Korean Protestants are a little bit selfish to ask more offerings, bigger churches, bigger buildings. People think that that is not the basic tenet of the religion.
The Yoido style of Pentecostalism has all the glitz of a Hollywood musical from the 1950s. I was intrigued to meet the man behind the phenomenon. Pastor David Yonggi Cho is now retired but I asked him about his memories of those early years when he first began spreading the gospel message in Korea.
C – When I went to preach gospel to the poor people their suffering was enormous and many of them said we don’t need any religion. If you have such a wonderful heaven, why don’t you give up part of a heaven right now here, we need a real God who helps us. So I really prayed to God and I found out that in the redemption
M -Does this mean that salvation will always lead to worldly success and wealth?
C – When they are saying that they stop smoking, they stopped drinking, they began to save money, they stopped gambling, they don’t waste their money, naturally by doing that kind of life they are becoming wealthy.
The Yoido congregation is one of the most spectacular faces of evangelical Protestantism in the 21st century
So it was interesting that I heard quite a sober tone in Pastor Cho’s reflections on his lifetime of success.
But not actually a rejection of the link between worldly success and salvation.
Korean Pentecostals are doing what Christians have always done, reflect on a host of voices within the Bible and make their own choices. Is it fair to accuse them of throwing away core values?
On the question of wealth they’d be entitled to point out that the New Testament is ambiguous.
Do you reject riches or work hard and use them well? Jesus and the Apostle Paul give you different answers and Pentecostals may well be a pointer to the Christian future.
At the moment, they look and sound like evangelical Protestants, but I wonder if that’s where they’ll stay.
This is a religion blown by the Holy Spirit, and you never know where that will end up.
The Spirit doesn’t hide in the pages of a book, even when the book is the Bible.
Protestantism has come a long way since the first Moravian missionaries were inspired to go out into the world and tell others about their faith. Protestantism succeeded because it gave a new identity to people facing new situations. In the process it changed as much as its converts
But a strange thing’s happened. The Protestant faith now faces its greatest challenge ever, not from some distant culture but from the Protestant homeland, Europe. Today, the mood in Europe seems full of religious indifference. Not even hostility, just indifference.
In my final episode I want to examine what this will mean for the Christian faith. Why does Christianity, of all major world religions, question itself in the peculiar fashion of Western Europe? Should God be worried?