This distrust, says Alvarez, is not a feature but a bug to Pentecostalism. In Pentecostal Orthodoxy, he answers this question with another: What would it look like for Pentecostals to trace their heritage from the primitive apostolic age, through the early church, and into the present day? Alvarez points out that Pentecostalism is “informed solely by the primitive church as described in the book of Acts.” This attraction to an apostolic faith is often supplemented by a distrust of “humanly made institutions, creeds, and traditions” which “diminished the Spirit’s power and presence in the church.” Since many Pentecostals believe that the Spirit’s power returned at the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, church history after the apostolic age and prior to the Azusa Street Revival is often marginalized. It turns out that Alvarez has wrestled with this very question for years. I kept returning to the same question: Are we a people of shallow inheritance? Call it a case of “low church complex,” but I felt as if I was on the outside looking in. They had fully developed liturgies, creeds, and theological systems while we often improvised. They worshiped in beautiful cathedrals, we in nondescript buildings. As time went on, however, I began to discover the riches that other denominations had to offer. In my high school years, I was glad to be part of a movement that brought a sense of vigor, enthusiasm, and awe to the global church. While I do not wish to conflate the Pentecostal and charismatic strains, I think of Pentecostals as close cousins because of our mutual emphasis on the Holy Spirit, speaking in tongues, and signs and wonders. It was as part of the charismatic movement that my grandfather served as a missionary, translator, and Bible teacher in Central America and the United States. My family has been acquainted with the charismatic movement for three generations and, by extension, the Pentecostal movement as well. Instead, a recovery of orthodoxy is a movement “away from a fundamentalist evangelical way of being in the world and shifting toward the faith and practice of a more liturgical, sacramental, and creedal Christianity.” But isn’t “Pentecostal Orthodoxy” a fundamentally self-contradictory term? How could a group of Christians known for their focus on the present and their unpredictable services devote so much attention to an ancient and liturgical experience of Christianity? Familial Faith Pentecostal Orthodoxy, at the very least, brings attention to a growing number of Pentecostals who are seeking “orthodoxy.” What, then, is this “orthodoxy” that Pentecostals are seeking? When Alvarez mentions “orthodoxy,” he is not referring to the Eastern Orthodox Church or even simply right teaching in the theological sense. Instead of focusing on a single family, Alvarez reflects on the past, present, and future of Pentecostals, the largest growing body of believers in the world at this time. However, the heritage that Alvarez has in mind is panoramic in character. More than any physical inheritance my grandparents will someday pass on, I deeply treasure the meaningful heritage of these stories.Ī concern for spiritual inheritance is also at the core of Emilio Alvarez’s recent book, Pentecostal Orthodoxy: Toward an Ecumenism of the Spirit. This story, like many others told by my grandfather, shapes a rich spiritual inheritance that testifies to the holiness, greatness, and mystery of God. More than thirty years later, my grandfather still tells the story of when the Holy Spirit stirred the hearts of an entire class with reverence and affection for God. After an hour and a half, the class packed up, filed out of the room, and drove back home. In a silence that can only be compared to that of Zechariah in Luke 1, the class was struck by the dense presence of God in the room. Professor David Henry had begun his Ministry of Evangelism class in routine fashion but abruptly stopped forty-five minutes into the lecture. On this particular evening in the winter of ’91, however, students of Crenshaw Christian Center’s Ministry Training Institute sat motionless and silent in their seats. On an ordinary day, class would have ended an hour ago.
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