was always going to be a reaction to this repression of ecstasy. Christianity, suggests the Bishop of London, ‘exists as a massive symphony, where the truth is given by the interplay of the various parts. If you omit any part of it, then there is a reaction and exaggeration of the missing element.’ Ecstasy came back into Anglicanism with a vengeance in the mid-eighteenth century. To be precise, it came back on 24 May 1738, at 8.45 p.m., in Aldersgate Street in London. A pious young Christian called John Wesley felt his heart ‘strangely warmed’ after attending a gathering of ecstatic Protestants called the Moravians. His brother, Charles, had likewise experienced a ‘baptism of the Holy Spirit’ three days before. The Wesleys spread their new vision throughout the Anglican Church, although it later split from Anglicanism and became known as ‘Methodism’. At its heart is the idea that Christians can encounter the Holy Spirit today, and this baptism of the Spirit gives us the assurance that we are saved. Methodists became famous – or infamous – for their highly emotional services, their theatrical sermons, their wonderful hymns (many of them written by Charles Wesley) and their strenuous evangelism, particularly to the working class. They would organise ‘love-feasts’, where hundreds or even thousands of people would gather for open-air services and ‘camp meetings’, which could go on for hours or days. Attendees wept, fainted, shook, groaned, danced, laughed and leaped for joy as the Holy Spirit descended upon them and they committed their life to Jesus.
The Holy Spirit spread across the world, and is still spreading, through spectacular revivals. There was the Welsh Methodist revival of the 1730s–50s, in which ‘old men and women leaped around like roe deer’.5 There was the First Great Awakening of American Christianity in the 1730s and 1740s, and the Second Awakening of the early-nineteenth century; there was the Welsh revival of 1904, and the Azusa Street revival of 1905, which kickstarted Pentecostalism. Since the 1980s, Pentecostal churches have experienced extraordinary growth in the developing world, as people in Latin America, Africa and Asia move to the city and look to the Holy Spirit for life-guidance. Around 35,000 convert to Pentecostalism every day – think of that, 24.3 intense personal surrenders to the Holy Spirit every minute.
Ecstatic revivals tended to follow a similar script: someone had an ecstatic experience, it spread, and the religiosity of their community abruptly went through the roof, with people flocking to all-day all-night services, where they burst into prophecy or song as the Spirit came upon them. Sometimes charismatic preachers stirred the crowds to heights of emotion, but equally often the congregation themselves took charge, including working-class men, women, black people, people whose voices were not always heard in less ecstatic times. The Spirit was no respecter of order or hierarchy. Like wildfire, the revival would spread to a nearby community, and again people would be swept up in religious excitement, a sense that they were living in extraordinary times, perhaps even End Times, when great miracles were possible, when bodies were healed, sins cleansed, souls saved, churches revived.
Gifts of the Spirit
Sceptics, including many Christians, observed these revivals with a mixture of amusement and horror, as a regression to primitive irrationalism, like the flagellant craze or dancing manias of the Middle Ages. No wonder, critics sneered, revival ecstasy was so common among women, the working class, ethnic minorities – these groups were naturally more unstable, emotional and credulous. But in some ways, Methodism and its later descendants could be seen as a product of the sceptical Enlightenment, as well as a reaction to it – it was an ‘experimental religion’, as John Wesley put it, in which God’s existence and personal love for you was ‘proven’ by the intense physical and emotional experience of ecstasy, as well as in dreams, healing, prophecy and other ‘gifts of the Holy Spirit’. Mainstream Protestantism and Catholicism had, since the Reformation, insisted such gifts of the Spirit had ceased after the first generation of Christians (a doctrine known as ‘cessationism’). But the Wesleys helped to popularise a new form of ‘charismatic Christianity’, which insisted the Holy Spirit was still handing out the free gifts (charis in Greek means ‘grace’, ‘favour’ or ‘gift’). Like good Enlightenment scientists, churches kept statistical records of how many people made ‘commitments to follow Jesus’ as statistical proof of God’s power and love. In total, around a hundred thousand supposedly made ‘commitments’ in the Welsh revival of 1904, a tenth of the population, although it’s not clear how many were Christians already, or how many remained Christian once the collective ecstasy had subsided.
Revivals tended to take place in nonconformist Protestant congregations – Methodist, Mormon, Baptist, Pentecostalist, Shaker, Seventh-day Adventist and so forth. Mainstream middle-class Catholic and Anglican churches stoically resisted invasion by the Holy Spirit.6 But in the 1960s that changed. Baby-boomers sought spiritual experiences of all kinds and some of them stumbled across Christianity – specifically the charismatic Christianity found in Methodism and Pentecostalism. One charismatic young hippie called Lonnie Frisbee, who would later be rejected by the Church for being gay, encountered Jesus while tripping on LSD. Lonnie started zapping the Holy Spirit to other hippies, who became known as ‘Jesus Freaks’. They gathered at Calvary Chapel in southern California, and later at a network of Californian churches known as the Vineyard, run by John Wimber. The Jesus Freaks took the Holy Roller ecstasy of Pentecostalism and connected it to white middle-class congregations. They also adopted the rock and roll services of Pentecostalism – indeed, Vineyard attracted several rock converts, including Bob Dylan.
In the 1980s, John Wimber preached at HTB in London. Nicky Gumbel – then an uptight barrister in a three-piece suit – got zapped by the Holy Spirit, and reportedly had to be carried cataleptic through the church windows. ‘God is giving that man the ability to tell people about Jesus,’ Wimber said, as Nicky was carried out.
HTB caught fire again in the early 1990s, via a spectacular revival in Canada called the Toronto Blessing. A press report from that time reads: ‘Nicky Gumbel prays that the Holy Spirit will come upon the congregation. Soon a woman begins laughing. Others gradually join her with hearty belly laughs. A young worshipper falls on the floor, hands twitching. Another falls, then another and another. Within half an hour there are bodies everywhere as supplicants sob, shake, roar like lions, and strangest of all laugh uncontrollably.’7 But that was back in 1994. Since then, it has been quieter at HTB, although Alpha has kept on growing all over the world. I asked Nicky if he missed those tempestuous days: ‘I see it as like the ocean – there are always waves, but sometimes it’s more gentle and peaceful, and sometimes there are huge waves. What matters ultimately is the fruit, and whether people’s lives become more loving, gentle and peaceful.’ But I still felt that charismatic Christians, including Nicky, longed for another big wave to revive our secular culture and sweep us back into church. ‘More, Lord, more!’ I heard pastors pray eagerly. ‘Give us immeasurably more.’
Jesus as detergent
‘How was that?’ Nicky asked me eagerly.
‘I felt . . . er . . . peaceful.’
In fact, nothing spectacular happened on the Alpha weekend. The speaking in tongues sounded a bit silly to me. During the service, a lady came up and asked if she could pray for me. She’d had a vision: ‘You have a masculine exterior, but a floral heart.’ As in I’m gay? Well, it was a kind gesture. The weekend was epic. We all felt high. After inviting in the Holy Spirit, we watched England play rugby, drank beer and danced at a disco. Our small group danced in a circle to Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy In Love’. We were like a little family, in which I felt accepted and cherished.
When we were back at HTB, I said I wasn’t entirely sure about the whole Christian thing, but I was prepared to give it a go. Perhaps faith was like a relationship: you always had doubts but you discovered love through commitment. I was on board with the God of love, the grace of the Holy Spirit and the lovely community. I was less sure about the biblical infallibility, original sin, the Virgin Birth, the Devil, the sinfulness of homosexuality, the apocalypse, the entire Old Testament, the divinity of Jesus, or Christianity’s
