of the prophecy of Joel 2.28–9. As one of the defining marks of the new covenant, Pentecost was the democratization of endowment with or by the Spirit of God, according to Acts 2.17–18. Not only men but women too; not merely priests, prophets, kings and judges, but youngsters and senior citizens also, and even slaves, male and female alike – ‘all flesh’ will receive the Spirit in the new order. Peter’s emphasis falls more on universality than on social equality. Pentecost is thus the charter for the parity of all God’s people, in

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-121

Chapter

of the prophecy of Joel 2.28–9. As one of the defining marks of the new covenant, Pentecost was the democratization of endowment with or by the Spirit of God, according to Acts 2.17–18. Not only men but women too; not merely priests, prophets, kings and judges, but youngsters and senior citizens also, and even slaves, male and female alike – ‘all flesh’ will receive the Spirit in the new order. Peter’s emphasis falls more on universality than on social equality. Pentecost is thus the charter for the parity of all God’s people, in

Chapter

of the prophecy of Joel 2.28–9. As one of the defining marks of the new covenant, Pentecost was the democratization of endowment with or by the Spirit of God, according to Acts 2.17–18. Not only men but women too; not merely priests, prophets, kings and judges, but youngsters and senior citizens also, and even slaves, male and female alike – ‘all flesh’ will receive the Spirit in the new order. Peter’s emphasis falls more on universality than on social equality. Pentecost is thus the charter for the parity of all God’s people, in

ABSTRACT

There ensues, in the fourth place, an enhanced sense of the whole Christian community as the body animated as one by life in the Spirit. What is in view here is not the spawning of new expressions of communal living which the movement has fostered – from the Church of the Redeemer, Houston, Texas, to the Mother of God Community in Gaithersburg, Maryland – but what was highlighted in a booklet from the Methodist Church in Britain in 1973, which compared ‘the Body Ministry of the Methodist Society’ with that of charismatic Bible-study-and-prayer groups. In the latter ‘the Spirit is making a reality’ what Methodists had been trying to promote for decades. The report cites F.D. Bruner’s dictum, ‘Pentecostalism is Primitive Methodism’s extended incarnation.’8 Hocken again says it in a nutshell:

More than in classical Pentecostalism and previous Protestant revivals, Charismatic Renewal is developing an awareness that the outpouring of God’s Spirit is for the sake of the body of Christ and leads to a renewed sense of what it is for the church, both local and universal, to be Christ’s body.9