Michael Barber shared a YouTube video from a conference hosted by Kenneth and Gloria Copeland—charismatics of the Word of Faith variety—where Tony Palmer of the Ark Community—a charismatic, evangelical, episcopal group that works closely with the Vatican—basically challenges the attendees to work toward reconciliation since “Luther’s protest” has concluded and we’re all preaching the same Gospel now. Palmer’s address is followed by a video greeting from Pope Francis to this assembly of charismatics.
My brain is a bit scrambled by all this. I watched Palmer’s talk, Pope Francis’s greeting, and Copeland’s response to the Pope. On the one hand, it seems beautiful: who doesn’t want Jesus’ prayer for unity to be answered? On the other hand, it seems strange: Palmer describes the audience as a group of “leaders” who have private jets, who pastor large congregations, and who are basically “movers-and-shakers”. What sort of Christianity does this represent? If you have the chance to watch the video tell me your thoughts (and please, if you’re going to comment for or against what happens in the video let it be done after you’ve actually watched it). I’d be especially interested in hearing from Catholics, charismatics, and charismatic Catholics (like our own JohnDave Medina)!
See also:
– Dale M. Coulter, Pope Francis and the Future of Charismatic Christianity
the archives near Emmaus 
How can we not be moved by prayers for Christian unity? Christianity unity is a hallmark of the return of the King, and what true Christian doesn’t groan deeply in their soul for the Shepherd’s return? I was particularly moved by the Catholic concession that we are ‘saved by grace through faith alone’. Well done. However the Catholic churches counter claim, that we are called to good works, is also something of an indictment to Protestant Christianity. I blame Calvinism which has so made ‘good fruit’ and ‘works of the Spirit’ irrelevant to Protestant faith. Salvation by grace through faith calls us to good works!
How are we to judging this new Catholic Church? The same way we are to judge all who claim faith in Christ – righteously and with the same standard we judge ourselves. That standard is Christ. A good tree produces good fruit, an evil tree produces an evil fruit. Within the Catholic Church there are believers and non-believers, just as there are in protestant churches. Christianity may a house divided but this division is not Protestant/Catholic. Rather this division is between true followers of the shepherd and false-followers of the shepherd. That affliction affects us equally. We cannot conflate Christian unity with the Christian gospel itself – there is good unity and bad unity but with all whom commune with Christ there has never been division.
Even if there is still variability within Catholic Church doctrine, the catholic church is a house divided as the protestant one and this is a problem the Catholic church itself needs to address. It is not appropriate for Protestants to address this sliver without first addressing its own beam. So what does this call for unity require? Does it; require we come to agreement on the authority of the Pope; or jointly develop a theology of praying to saints; how about addressing issues of celibacy in the priesthood; address issues of the authority of scripture; Catechism; sacraments; holidays or communion?
It’s true that honest believers in Christ should pursue Christian unity, but such a pursuit should never minimize our differences. There are important and non-important doctrines. Though God will sort out doctrines when we get up stairs we need discernment to know which ones need to be addressed now for the sake of unity and which ones don’t. We need Spiritual strength to abandon the diabolical ones keeping the divine ones. This too is an issue of all believers, and not just some.
Even so, and without doubting the sincerity of the Pope’s faith, it is not entirely clear these two churches have moved together enough that they are preaching the same gospel. Christian unity is a widespread hope – but there is still danger that buying into a popular movement which may be worldly destroys our faith, rather than staying set apart as part of a holy, righteous one.
Christianity needs one shepherd, Christ. So any goal should be to bring the sheep to the shepherd, not to break down denominationalism for the sake of a false unity. If that’s the goal – I agree. On that, Jesus was simply sacramental – but the sacrament He introduced us to pointed to Him, not to the Ecclesia, or to episcopal unity. This suggests that what is needed is one denomination of Jesus.
It was somewhat worrying how Tony misrepresented the Spirit of Elijah in a humanistic way. Elijah attacked the priests of Baal, so the Spirit of Elijah reconciles man to God, not man to himself. Protestants and Catholics alike must take on our priests of Baal so that we might be reconciled to God. In this Protestantism may have introduced 30,000 denominations, but this is less a curse than being bound to the false religion of Catholicism’s past. Diversity in Christ is not divine if it is the source of division which Tony said was diabolic. Finally, the Pope’s use of the Joseph’s metaphor was curious. In the metaphor, were Joseph’s brothers the ‘catholic church’ and Joseph ‘the Protestants’ or the other way around? Either way – very curious.
I find it highly unlikely that Pope Francis has ever listened to a sermon from Kenneth Copeland. It seems to me that representatives of the Ark Community suggested to representatives of the Vatican that it would be a nice gesture if Pope Francis were to send a message of greeting to this conference. Pope Francis was informed of this, and hence his message. I wouldn’t make too much of it.
I’d suggest that Andrew’s labeling of medieval Catholicism as a “false religion” is inflammatory.
Michael the ‘label’ you find inflammatory shouldn’t be ascribed to me, rather it is how the original reformers saw the abuses of the church, which has by its own admission, come to agree somewhat.
Vatican 2 and the current (theological) concessions by the Church all but admit the Catholic church’s abuses of the past. Similarly, responding to the reformation by holding inquisitions and killing those protesting are another historical fact. To deny any of this is to be something of a revisionist.
Please don’t credit me with being inflammatory.
Neither in the the documents of the Second Vatican Council, the mea culpas of John Paul II, nor in any ecumenical document that I know of, has the Catholic Church stated that she was previously a “false religion.”
It is not the official position of the Catholic Church, nor does it seem to be the common opinion of most Catholics, that the collective sins of Catholics in the past temporarily rendered Catholicism “false.”
Jesus’ last prayer was for unity of all His disciples that we be One as He and the Father are One. We must be in communion with Him in Truth. There will always be the Adams and Eves that ate from the tree and want the God that fits their lifestyle. But Jesus did establish His Church upon humans, his disciples. I pray that all congregations calling themselves Christian can be one. But as not all Catholics or Evangelicals are not living their religion. I am sure their will always be Judas’ and the great divider (Satin) will want these congregations to except his lies. FYI, I am Catholic
I liked what the Pope had to say- in fact, I like Pope Francis in general.
I wish he’d say the same to some groups *within* the Catholic Church who feel spurned by his attitude towards certain deeply held beliefs, but at least he’s a “Son of the Church”.
One reason I’m still Catholic is because the Church can change. Not dogma. But doctrine develops, and discipline changes quickly.
Nostra Aetate put it best- Catholics believe theology is the most noble of sciences, and we reject nothing that is true in faiths other than ours, while holding up Christ and the Church he founded as the fullness of truth.
Bad actors in the past don’t make Christ’s teachings “false”. No Pope ever taught error- mainly because the Popes and Bishops who *were* in error were too busy collecting gold and having orgies to bother much with teaching anything at all. The reformation was caused by such men.
I fear we still have a few of those around- I don’t often believe what I read in the New York Times about the Church, but they had a very interesting article today on a Bishop who bankrupted his diocese, closed schools, then spent a few million preparing his private retirement home for his retirement in a couple more years.
If the bad actors are still in the church, they’re in Newark, not Rome.
I am Lutheran and the protest is NOT over…..No one even came close to discussing the Doctrine of Justification by which the Reformation stands or falls. Until Rome corrects her doctrine of salvation there can be no unity as she preaches another gospel.
I am a Christian who, God willing, will be entering the Catholic church this Easter. Before that, I was an apostate, denying Christianity completely; before that, when I was a Christian the first time, I was a follower of Kenneth Copeland, in particular, and of others who teach as he does.
I am concerned for how my fellow Catholics may interpret the Holy Father’s message to Kenneth Copeland’s audience (they are not Pentecostal, whatever similarities they may have with that denomination – Copeland and his followers are non-denominational, Charismatic, and Word-of-Faith). I fear they will read too much into this simple prayer for unity, and forget that desiring unity among Christians does not mean we are already united with the separated brethren in their many forms.
I am also concerned because I am too familiar with Copeland’s teachings about Christ and God. Copeland is not leading a movement that is just another Protestant group any more than most people would consider Mormons to be just another Protestant group, equally Christian with Presbyterians and Baptists. (Don’t let the Bishop’s Anglican credentials fool you – he’s part of an Anglican breakaway group. The specifics of the group aren’t relevant here, except to point out that his group is not in communion with Canterbury.) I don’t mean to say that Mormons, or followers of Copeland’s teachings, aren’t Christian – I don’t intend to get into that question – but that both of these groups are very different from other Christian groups. Very different.
Copeland teaches, among other heresies, a form of adoptionism – Jesus isn’t the eternal and unchanging Son of God, but was a kind of idea in the heart of God. He wasn’t God incarnate, but was completely human. At some point (which is unclear) he became or acquired God, but on the Cross, was again not God at all, because God cannot suffer (nor would God want to). Also, that it wasn’t Jesus’ physical death that effected salvation (because any prophet’s death could have done it if that was the means of salvation), but his complete spiritual death, experienced during his stay in Hell. And if any person had the “knowledge of Scripture” Jesus had (by which is meant a personal revelation of hidden meanings by the Spirit), any of us could have achieved what Jesus did.
I wish I was exaggerating.
And though he seems to speak about the Trinity and the divinity and lordship of Jesus, he doesn’t mean the same thing at all by those terms as most Christians do.
While we have differences with all of the Protestant churches, not all of those differences are equally distant. Some of those differences, as in this case, are so distant from us as to be not only heretical, but spiritually dangerous, if we are not aware of the nature of our differences.
I am an Anglican in a Charismatic Catholic tradition.
By Catholic I mean that I see default christianity in terms of sacraments and the teaching of the apostolic church be it Orthodox, Oriental, Coptic or Roman. I am not sure I would say that protestants preach another Gospel, but I wouldn’t say they teach the faith of the Apostles – not that this sounds any friendlier! By Charismatic I mean I recognise that God is authentically present in the Charismatic movement, and also that I believe that the Apostolic faith has always been supernatural and gift filled in practice. Each of the seven sacraments is a miracle for a start.
Now, Word of Faith I have particular concerns about – not just the health and wealth but the tendency to hyper-kenoticism, the idea that Christ ministered as a mere human anointed by God. For many years I was pretty much ‘Anti Charismatic whilst being Charismatic’ because of the theological abuses of the Charismatic movement.
And then Bp. Palmer, whose ordination comes through some sort of continuing Anglican body that even I haven’t heard of, and I thought I had a feel for most of them!
But the video was profound. Not just the Pope’s message, but Bp. Palmers theological lecture to the gathered leaders (although it had plenty of holes). The sense of unity in encounter is a particular gift of the charismatic movement, even when God seems to draw those in who I quite personally would prefer to exclude! I have been on the other end of this, when those suspicious of a man in a dress who presides at the eucharist as a sacrifice speaks words of life in the Spirit.
I don’t see the video as God’s approval for all that KCM, Bp Palmer or Pope Francis teach. But I do see the video as evidence that God is not quite finished with us yet.
So Michael, would you say that selling indulgences for heavenly favour, excommunications and prohibitions against laity for reading the bible (in their own language no less), proclamations of human infallibility, and Mary worship, constitute ‘true religion’?
@Andrew: I don’t quite understand why you’re harassing Michael here. I didn’t invite that sort of discussion when I posted this. When Michael says that the Church isn’t admitting to being a false religion he doesn’t deny that the Church needed reformation. Prior to Luther, Calvin, et al., we all come from the same Church in need of reform, but we went about it differently. Roman Catholicism has reformed. I don’t mind you saying that you think we have irreconcilable differences at this point—I’d agree with that, which is why I haven’t “crossed the Tiber”—but pushing and pushing on Michael to admit he is part of a false religion is not welcomed here, so please stop. This sort of aggressiveness makes people feel unwelcome and uncomfortable on this blog.
@Bible Mike: I share the same prayer and I hope over time we continue to grow into the unity of the faith.
@Ted: I like Pope Francis a lot as well. He has been good for the Church, even for those of us who aren’t Catholic. I agree that the Church will always have corrupt people in it. As we’ve seen in some major evangelical churches and institutions lately there is no place in the Church where scandal is impossible. We remain human!
@Daughter: So you disagree with the worldwide Lutheran communities statement that both communities preach salvation by grace through faith unto good works?
@Heather: Thank you for your insightful comment and congratulations on your entrance into the Catholic Church this Easter. I was raised among Oneness Pentecostals who deny the Trinity and even they were worried about some of Copeland’s teachings at many points. You are right (and I think you echo @Michael here) that this is likely just a kind greeting—not that the Pope doesn’t want unity—but not a relaxing of his views regarding what it would take for such unity to come to pass. I am often confused by what constitutes Anglicanism these days, but it is helpful to know that he is not in fellowship with Canterbury. That does change his message a bit.
@Edward: That makes good sense. I think we need to be honest like you’re being and recognize that this doesn’t mean that our differences have disappeared, but we may find hope in knowing that the Spirit continues to work on us all.
Is pentecostal personal ordinariate on the way?
I’m a pentecostal pastor. I don’t like the civile war of christianity.
If Pope creates personal ordinanariate for pentecostals I will be among the firsts who will be part of it.
The 33.000 fighting Christian denomination is not God’s perfect will.
Make AGAPE not war!
I have listened to the whole session three times. Shall we make the 33,001st denomination out of this? Don’t you get it? The disciples of Jesus were always fighting amongst themselves when he was here on earth. After the Holy Spirit came like the sound of a mighty wind, they preached the word in power, healed, prophesied, and shed their blood for His church. Shouldn’t we do the same, or shall we go on fighting? Don’t we trust the Lord and His vicar on earth, Peter, who holds the keys to the kingdom? The gates of HELL shall not prevail against it. Francis’ message is one of unity….we have ALL sinned…let’s share our tears, not our avarice. Fear is useless. What is needed is trust. The devil is prowling about like a roaring lion seeking to devour….babies are being murdered in the womb, old people (and now children) are being euthanized…wake up! Please! Put your differences aside, pray in tongues before the Father and do not end in the flesh but let the Spirit Himself intercede in utterances and groanings too deep for words! He will do it if we only pray, pray, pray and receive the power He wants to give us…a new way of being human…unless we become like little children we cannot…NOT enter the kingdom of God.
I have only four words to say about Pope Francis’ video: Trojan Horse, beware people.
@DaughterofScottland- your protest may not be over, but that doesn’t mean that nobody has discussed Justification between Lutherans and Catholics. This is the document referred to in the video:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/documents/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_31101999_cath-luth-joint-declaration_en.html
Pope Francis extended a courteous “best wishes” to a non-Catholic community as a kind gesture for a friend, Tony Palmer. All the conspiracy chat requires that you assume the Pope knew all about KCM and Mr. Copeland’s teaching, then made a calculated decision to begin work on the ” new world order church”.
It was a kind message of love to another group the Pope believed was coming together to worship our Lord, Jesus Christ. The fact that is was Copeland is irrelevant (ironic but still irrelevant). The heartfelt message from Tony struck me as much as Pope Francis’ message. Tony seems taken by the beauty and truth of the Catholic Church and he seems to be modeling the “bridge builder” role he referenced. He is raising his children Catholic and honoring and supporting his wife as she has come back home. That is a gutsy stand and one that has no doubt cost him personally.
Once again Pope Francis has shaken things up while staying true to The Church. Tony may not have said everything perfectly but he gave himself up in front of a crowd that likely found what he was saying shocking, and he did not back down when some comments came back his way from the attendees.
Let’s see if anyone takes up the challenge to admit that The Catholic Church has been the catalyst for ecumenism for a very long time. And for that attempt at outreach She has been called every vile name in the book. I only learned recently that “end time” focused churches get “whore of Babylon” fuel from the simple fact that no other institution in the world is as old and big as The Catholic Church. Seems a stretch to preach unfettered hatred for other Christians based on that single demographic fact.
Tony said something else important that Bishop Fulton Sheen used to say. Tony said a great deal of animosity some separated brothers have with the Catholic Church ( he did not use that word specifically) is based on propaganda. See Chick Tracks spread all over for decades with those same distortions preached from the pulpits.
I pray some good will come of this and some reason will come into the reconciliation process.
God Bless you all
God Bless Pope Francis
Jim Lonergan – Austin, TX
To say “the protest is over” is nonsense. I don’t like protesting, I don’t like division, I like one big happy family. How is this possible before Jesus returns? I don’t think it is. It was Jesus’ prayer that His followers be one, I pray that too. Jesus also said the end times would be marked with false Christs and false teachers who lead away many. Will the real followers of Jesus please stand up.
We all know that the kingdom of God is 1) righteousness, 2) peace and 3) joy in the Holy Spirit. The order is also very important. The true peace (and brothership in Christ) must be built on absolute righteousness, on the word of God. In any other case it wont be permanent, but the door for hypocrisy.
Actually, Vatican’s opinion about this kind of friendship is here: http://blog.guidedbytruth.com/anathema.php . Read it, if you like horror stories. 😦
If Vatican revoke those anathemas, we can start a real discussion about this unity. Without revoking those anathemas it is nothing but hypocrisy. So, I have a question for the Pope, as Luther was questioned long ago: revoke or not?
God bless You all.
Attila- they can’t without revoking Gal 1:7-9, for the Council of Trent added NOTHING that the Apostles didn’t preach themselves. The Catholic version is the version taught by the Apostles. The 30,000 denominations and splits, are the versions taught since Martin Luther.
I’d rather go with the Apostles that Knew Christ, than with new dogma invented in 1517.
Theodore – I accept that you think the Catholic version is the one and only true gospel, therefore everybody else, who do not think so, can be put under a curse, as the members of the Council of Trent decided to do. This is a great example of love and brothership preached by Vatican and Tony Palmer. Based on these facts, we have two options: accept Catholic Church dogmas or remain under it’s curse. Nice job.
Fortunately, I have a third options based on Proverbs 26,2: As the bird by wandering, as the swallow by flying, so the curse causeless shall not come.
I do not accept the Catholic version, and I give you one example among many: the Eucharist. This dogma contradicts Hebrew ch. 8,9,10, and I agree with Luther that Eucharist is idol worshipping. Too many people were killed because they were thinking in the same way, and we can not simple say: okay, forget it, forget the differences, forget the dogmas (as Tony Palmer said) and love each other (based on the blood of millions of martyrs). This is absolutely impossible.
Rome invented many new dogmas which contradict the whole Bible, not Luther. What the Catholic Church teaches is as far from the teaching of the apostles as the east from the west.
The christian unity must be based on truth, not on beautiful emotions, and, sorry to say that, on lies.
Which just goes to prove my point. Catholics for 1400 years before Martin Luther was born celebrated the Eucharist. The Real Presence was the entire reason for the Mass; the sacrifice of the Eucharist brought Christ to us. The Didache proves that the Catholic position was taught from the very earliest times, by the 12 Apostles.
Martin Luther threw away Christ, and 500 years later you still deny the real presence in the Eucharist- you still deny Christ himself, and claim the Real Presence to be a lie, in ignorance of the evidence of the Early Church Fathers, in ignorance of 1500 years of Church history.
If we are to be lovers of Truth, we have to throw out the “beautiful emotions” of Protestantism, the heresy of Sola Scriptura that enables individuals to take verses out of context and prooftext with them, and we must reject the empty promises and sin.
The curse is only causeless if you refuse the easy conversion. Come back to Mother Church. Come back to Christ.