ABSTRACT
The third edition of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church spares less than half a column for the ‘Charismatic Renewal Movement’, perhaps partly because it identifies it as ‘A loosely-structured predominantly lay movement’. In the Roman Catholic Church, in particular, ‘by c. 1980 it had become one of the main lay movements’, and was represented as such at the 1987 Rome Synod of Bishops on the laity.1 In The Church is Charismatic (1981), a World Council of Churches report on the movement and member churches’ experience of it, the leading Catholic charismatic exponent Peter Hocken lists ‘lay initiative’ second in itemizing the distinctive praxis of the renewal.
