preview

Heart Religion Research Paper

Decent Essays
Open Document

“Heart religion” is another strong characteristic of evangelicalism. Since the reformation, when Martin Luther (1483-1546) called the sacramental system of the medieval Roman church as the “Babylonian Captivity of the Church”, protestants had the tendency to distrust tradition . But the process of the Protestantism was changing the meaning of faith from faith-expectancy to faith- doctrine. People even once attempted to verify one’s position as a Christian by accepting correct creeds . Only when the era of Evangelicalism came, personal conversion was seen as a norm for Christians, there was an outburst of desires to have powerful, transforming personal encounters with God. Religion became a personal choice based on personal experience not just …show more content…

From its theology, the central of the movement was an intense experience of being filled with the Spirit or of awakening to a new life through the transforming power of the Spirit. The process of charismatic spirituality was from Search, searching for the God who is revealed in Christ, to Encounter, encountering with the same God by means of the Holy Spirit, and then Transformation, being transformed or renewed as the consequences of the encountering experiences. From its practice, the charismatics had given a full expression to the importance of experience. Especially their personal and deep worship, the worshippers were given freedom to express a wide range of human sensibilities: singing, clapping, concert prayer, the praise choruses, and kinesthetic movements together provided avenues of expression. Besides it, a variety of “modes of sensibility” in their ritual, including celebration, contemplation, transcendental efficacy, penitent/purgation, ecstacy, improvisation (ritualization) and ceremony, “helped to orient and animate their practices. ” As a result, the charismatic ritual created “a cultural domain for deeply felt expressions of human

Get Access