As its sub-title says, this book consists of ‘papers on the new charismatic wave of the mid 1990s’. Sponsored by ACUTE (The Evangelical Alliance Commission on Unity and Truth among Evangelicals), it is in three parts. Part I brings seven essays on the Toronto Blessing (TB) giving contrasting perspectives. Part II is a chronicle of the TB, tracing the pre-history, rise, spread and critique of the movement and then its decline and transmutation. Part III reprints 13 ‘key statements on the TB’.

It seems strange to be going back to the TB so long after what the book recognises as its decline. However, the editor argues that the TB ‘represented a crisis for the Evangelical Alliance’ and ‘was significant not merely … for what the TB was in and of itself, but for what it revealed about the state of evangelical and charismatic Christianity at the turn of the millennium’ (3–4).

His introductory essay traces the leading ideas, practices and figures (Howard-Browne, Hinn, Arnott, Wimber, etc.) that led up to the outbreak and growth of the TB. He then outlines three crises that he believes arose over the TB. The first was the crisis of definition: is the TB revival, renewal, awakening, a time of refreshing or of preparation? The second was a crisis of discernment over animal noises, other phenomena, the fruit of the Blessing, etc. The third was a crisis of unity, since the TB showed how fractured the evangelical community actually was.

Part I’s seven essays come from varying, even opposed perspectives. Some (and many quotes in Part II) see the proof of TB in the claimed fruit in people’s lives, such as greater love for God, etc. To Mark Cartledge the TB was ‘a spur to holistic discipleship’; to Patrick Dixon it was explicable in terms of ‘an altered state of consciousness’ (as if ‘the renewal of the mind’, Romans 12:2, is inadequate?); and to Margaret Poloma it indicated ‘a reconfiguration of Pentecostalism’. By contrast, to David Pawson it was ‘a mixture of the divine, the human and the demonic’ and to Stephen sizer ‘it represented a sub-Christian movement in which the basis of faith has shifted from the historical Jesus of the cross to the present “spirit” of personal experience’ (57). To the reviewer the latter two essays give the most rigorous biblical examination of the TB phenomena.

Part II’s chronicle of the TB often gives small details about day-by-day events at and flowing from Toronto, many of which seem to have little abiding significance—e.g. which newspaper reported what when. It recounts the rise of ‘such physical convulsions as jerking and twitching, pogoing, bouncing and running on the spot, shouting, weeping and roaring’ (153). It also records John Wimber’s decision to expel the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church from the Vineyard movement.

‘Now you see it, now you don’t is an overall impression left by this book. So much excitement about bizarre and passing phenomena. So much travel expense. So much agitation about definitions. So many rash claims, as this one by John Arnott: ‘I believe that we are heading for the greatest harvest the world has ever seen’ (290). While recognising the claims that the TB did produce true spiritual fruit (greater love for God, the Bible, the lost, etc.), it still seems amazing that two questions did not seem to be pursued: (1) How does the Bible see love for God being created, stirred and strengthened? (2) How should pastoral care be shown to those bowled over by phenomena? Had the first question been asked, it would surely have led people back to the one true and abiding spring of love for God—the death of his Son in our place (e.g. 2 Cor. 5:14–15). Had the second been faced biblically, it would surely have directed people away from the often superficial goings-on to the bedrock and roots of true faith. Maybe those are the lessons to be underlined from the TB years.

Footnote: the book omits to name the one person present at the EA’s 1994 Euston conference who ‘declined to endorse’ its ‘Euston statement’ (203); for the record, it was the present reviewer.

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