ABSTRACT
The Bible and Lay People study began with open-ended interviews of 26 people from a range of Anglican churches in central England. These helped to identify the kinds of issues that might be important for lay people and how they might interpret and speak of scripture. One of these interviews stands out in my mind because it represented views that were radically different from the majority. The interviewee was a female nurse from a broad-church congregation. During the interview it became clear that she had been strongly influenced by the Charismatic Movement, and that she brought her faith into the realm of her work by praying (in secret) for her patients to be healed. She expected, and reported seeing, miraculous healing that she attributed to the direct action of God. This was not of itself unusual, and such prayer was not uncommon among those who took part in the study. What was unusual about this participant was that she hardly, if ever, read the Bible. When pressed on this she said that she was content to discern God’s will through prayer and to rely on the direct intervention and guidance of the Holy Spirit. She had not found the Bible particularly helpful in guiding her daily life and practice. Such a thoroughgoing charismatic but ‘biblically detached’ faith was unusual among the Bible and Lay People sample. All the other charismatic Anglicans I spoke with read the Bible frequently and said that scripture was central to the way in which they understood their faith and discerned the will of God. They were, in effect, ‘charismatic evangelicals’.
