1964
You might say that the twentieth century was the century of the charismatic. As historian Mark Noll says in Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity, "In 1900 there were, at most, a bare handful of Christians who were experiencing special gifts of the Holy Spirit similar to those recorded in the New Testament. By the end of the century, as many as 500 million (or more than a quarter of the worldwide population of affiliated Christian adherents) could be identified as Pentecostal or charismatic.״
Modern-day Pentecostalism can be traced back to a revival in 1906 at a small mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. The distinctive characteristic of Pentecostals is the belief that the "baptism in the Holy Spirit״ is evidenced by speaking in tongues.
For the first half of the century, the movement flourished, thanks to the vigor of the Assemblies of God and other Pentecostal denominations. Evangelists like Oral Roberts and groups like the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship spread the movement beyond the denominations.
But it wasn't until April 3, 1960—when Dennis Bennett of the St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, announced to his congregation that he had received the gift of speaking in tongues—that the charismatic movement (or neo-Pentecostalism) was launched. Time and Newsweek carried Bennett's story, giving the movement national publicity. Bennett wrote of his experience in the book Nine O'clock in the Morning, which we could have easily included on our list.
Instead we include John Sherrill's They Speak with Other Tongues, published in 1964. Like Bennett, Sherrill was an Episcopalian, but a layman, and a more or less nominal one at that. Through a cancer scare and the witness of Catherine Marshall
LeSourd, he made his "leap of faith״ and established a personal connection with Jesus Christ.
But a year afterward, as the "high״ of his conversion experience was beginning to level off, he started hearing of the Pentecostal experience and began to investigate it. They Speak with Other Tongues tells Sherrill's story, first of his own conversion, and then of his investigation. Pie talks about the history of the movement and then his conversations and correspondence with numerous people who were identified with it. The book reads with journalistic style as well as a feeling of investigative reporting. He tells both sides, what he likes and what he is suspicious of. And in the end, in 1960, the same year that Bennett had his experience, Sherrill spoke in tongues.
Sherrill continued to use his writing talent to aid the Christian community. In subsequent years Sherrill with his wife, Elizabeth, wrote or cowrote numerous best-sellers, including The Cross and the Switchblade, The Hiding Place, and God's Smuggler.
But how did They Speak with Other Tongues change the century? For one thing, it sold about a million copies in the United States, besides its translations into other languages. The charismatic movement had now crossed over into the mainline Protestant denominations. But more specifically, it was after students and faculty at Duquesne University read this book in 1967 that a charismatic renewal broke out in the Roman Catholic Church. Later the Pope paved the way for greater acceptance of the movement by decreeing the charismatic gifts to be useful and necessary to the church. Today members of the Roman Catholic Church make up a significant part of the charismatic movement worldwide.