Should we not recognize that the celebration of the eucharist before it became the preserve of the ordained ministry was the legitimate and nat-ural function of the layman and that structural hierarchical ordination bottled up the Holy Spirit with the laying-on-of-hands of ministers (order) with all the succeeding wrangles of ‘apostolic succession’ and the loss of charisma?

doi:10.4324/9780203166505-122

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Should we not recognize that the celebration of the eucharist before it became the preserve of the ordained ministry was the legitimate and nat-ural function of the layman and that structural hierarchical ordination bottled up the Holy Spirit with the laying-on-of-hands of ministers (order) with all the succeeding wrangles of ‘apostolic succession’ and the loss of charisma?

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ABSTRACT

Davis writes of ‘people who confess the authority of the Holy Spirit, and who, in a sense, assert their baptismal power’. In this context, ‘empowerment’ is a term that has shifted in meaning, from an earlier stress on the inner dynamic of the Spirit and his gifts (as in the song ‘We are building a people of power’), to a more recent religious-rights concern for liberation, recognition and status, as in uses such as ‘the empowerment of women in the church’. Has the Charismatic Movement’s unquestioned insistence that all Christians are called to be Spirit-empowered led on to a quest for their empowerment in the later sense?