In the charismatic chuch I grew up in - I suppose there was a lot of emphasis on:

1. the weird "supernatural" stuff - from speaking in tounges, words of knowledge, also weirder stuff- falling over, laughing, animal noises, one guy used to squalk like a chicken every week and run around running into the walls. At the time they were into the Totonto blessing stuff now they're into the Todd Bentley stuff.

2. Contemporary music - guitars and stuff like pop music. We even sang some adapted pop songs - they changed the words to make them into church songs. Very emotionally hyped up worship services, and dancing with flags and things.

3. I experienced it as very legalistic but not like you guys are describing for pentecostalism - there was no problem with women wearing trousers for example. I think it was more spiritual paranoia than legalism - things like watching certain films, yoga, meditation, some childrens story books etc might cause you to influenced by the devil. (Its hard to work out how much of this was the chuch and how much was just my mum tho.) Also very legalistic about sex and that sort of thing tho.

4. Not so much authoritarian as very hierarchial - very much based on how 'respectable' you were (read: well off, married with kids (especially for women), not having problems, not disabled etc). People who didnt fit in or had problems were quite ostracised there.

5. Fundamentalist and literalist in their interpretaion of the bible.

6. Heavy emphasis on church being your social life - home groups and so on.

7. Emphasis on faith healing


So I guess (but I havent really got any experience of pentecostalism to compare it to just what people are describing here)


(1) Socio-economic,
not sure

(2) the degree to which they pursue the Gifts of the Spirit, I would say the TYPE of gifts of the spirit they pursue (whether they limit themselves to tounges and words of knowledge or add in lots of extra weirdness)

(3) the degree to which the place emphasis on certain rules, spoken or unspoken, not sure maybe the rules are imposed in different ways- more obviously spoken and clearer in pentecostal churches and more unspoken, subtle social "punishments" in charismatic?

(4) the TYPE of rules imposed. Yes.




Question - Do pentecostals also do the whole spiritual warfare stuff? And also do they get worried about demons in stuff like harry potter and yoga?

Last Edited By: holly Oct 30 08 1:11 PM. Edited 1 times.