The erosive consequence of Pentecostals joining the NAE

I am convinced the present generation of Pentecostals has almost altogether abandoned its historic roots. Both by experience and by disposition the earliest Pentecostals were a lay movement, where there was little interest in "clergy" and all were called "brother" and "sister." At the same time, there were a large number of women who had been ordained for ministry. But in three generations of the Assemblies of God, I have watched all that change. When the Pentecostals joined the National Association of Evangelicals, an erosion took place in the area of church and ministry that is bidding fair to destroy the very thing that God the Holy Spirit created in the first place. Despite protest to the contrary, we are now de facto a denomination of clerics, second only to Roman Catholicism; and, unfortunately, we have become a denomination of white male clerics. Although I have little hope that one voice can stem this overwhelming tide, I include this essay because it expresses the convictions not only of a New Testament scholar, but of a Pentecostal that bemoans the dissolution of the "restoration" on this very crucial theological issue. For some, this essay may seem to have a dimension of "clergy bashing" to it; if so, it probably gives expression to my own deeply populist roots, which I am convinced in this case are also the roots of the New Testament church.

[Gordon Fee, Gospel and Spirit: Issues in New Testament Hermeneutics page xi]

Fee's verdict concerning the erosive consequence of Pentecostals joining the NAE is right on; it was a classic case of pouring new wine into old-wineskins. In my opinion, evangelicalism was/is riddled too much with modernism, accepting the presumptive mind-set of the Enlightenment. The Pentecostal movement, with its supra-rational restorationist focus on letting the Truth of God's Holy Spirit lead scripturely-correct religious practice, trumped modernism's rationalism with its Spirit-quenching Kantian restrictions on religion while at the same time exposing the spiritually-counterfeit masquerade of theosophism/anthrophosophism with its neo-gnostic nonsense. The late 20th century drift toward post-modernism seemed to be a secular attempt to escape the modernist dead-end; that effort is failing and will continue to fail because it too quenches the Spirit of Truth with its embrace of radical poly-valence and abhorrence of Real Presence.

I doubt that the "christianity" emerging from post-modern culture will fair any better.