Restoring the Kingdom – book review

Restoring the Kingdom by Andrew Walker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’m writing a book, with John de Gruchy, on the rise and decline of the charismatic renewal movement in South Africa, and one of the influences on it was what Andrew Walker in this book calls the Restoration Movement, and was at one time called, by some, the House Church Movement, but which now seems to be called The British New Church Movement.

The charismatic renewal was a worldwide movement that reached its peak in the 1970s, in which Pentecostal phenomena, such as speaking in tongues, appeared in non-Pentecostal churches, such as Anglicans, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Baptists and others.

I found this book particularly useful, as it provides a history of the movement including its relationship the the charismatic renewal in Britain, and to the “shepherding movement” in the United States. The main aim of the Restoration Movement was to prepare for God’s coming Kingdom by restoring the New Testament Church and its ministries.

It could be said that the Restoration Movement is the result of the influence of the charismatic renewal movement on the Plymouth Brethren, though it generally appeared a few decadees before it appeared in other Christian groups. The Plymouth Brethren had been influenced from the start by the dispensationalist teaching of John Nelson Darby, which divided history into various periods, and asserted that things like speaking in tongues disappeared once the canon of scripture was complete, so that Pentecostal phenomena could not be attributed to the Holy Spirit. Thus many of the founders of the Restoration Movement were ex-members of the Plymouth Brethren.

The Restoration Movement retained some aspects of Brethren teaching, however, such as their opposition to what they called “denominationalism”.

The path of the Restoration Movement briefly crossed that of the charismatic renewal in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but they parted ways when the Restoration leaders maintained that “denominations” could not be renewed, and that true Christians should “come out” of them, leading to accusations that they were “proselytising” and “sheep stealing”.

Some of their teaching was also linked with that of the “shepherding movement” in the USA, especially the teaching on the restoration of the ministry of apostles as describerd in Ephesians chapter 4, and their doctrine of “covering”, in which each Christian had to be accountable to someone who was over them in the Lord, so children were accountable to parents, wives to husbands, husbands to their local elders and the elders to the apostles. The apostles covered each other. This was taught by people like Ern Baxter, Derek Prince and Bob Mumford in the USA, and they also visited the UK and influenced the Restoration Movement there with this teaching.

This approach tended to be very authoritarian, though, as Walker notes, in 1976 the Restoration Movement split into two branches, which he called R1 and R2, and the R1 tended to be more authoritarian than R2. The authoritarianism was well expressed by Derek Prince when he said “We do not obey those in authority because they are right, we obey them because they are in authority.”

In South Africa the Restoration Movement did not appear in the same form as it had in Britain, but it did have considerable influence on the charismatic renewal movement. Leaders from the Restoration Movement in the UK and the “shepeherding movement” in the USA visited South Africa and spoke at charismatic renewal conferences, and tapes with their teaching circulated more widely. One result was the formation of several new Neopentecostal denominations, often caused by groups breaking away from other denominations. Many of these new denominations were also influenced by things other than the Restoration Movement, such as prosperity teaching, and so the Restoration teaching was mostly present in diluted form.

One of the things that the Restoration Movement claimed to be opposed to was “denominationalism” and so its leaders insisted that it was not a new denomination, but was simply the Kingdom of God. Some of the Neopentecostal churches that had been influenced by its teaching claimed to be “nondenominational”. This was regarded as disingenuous by those in other denominations.

Walker tries to deal with this in his book in a chapter headed “Is the Restoration Movement a denomination?”

In a way this is the least satisfactory part of the book, because the word “denomination” has several different meanings. Walker uses it in the sociological sense, where sociologists of religion classify religious bodies as “churches”, “denominations” or “sects” according to various criteria. The problem is that the sociological classification does not match the ecclesiological classification, and the differing ecclesiologies of different groups classify them differently. So the denominations that the Restoration Movement distinguishes itself from would probably regard the Restoration Movement as yet another denomination, or series of denominations, having its own recognised leaders, its own distincive teachings, and regarding themselves as distinct from other Christian groups.

I suspect that most “denominational” Christians would think of a “sect” as a smaller group that splits from one denomination, either because of a quarrel, a personality clash, or a doctrinal or policy disagreement, and continues to define itself largely in contrast to the body it broke away from. This differs from the sociological understanding.

Like me, Andrew Walker is a member of the Orthodox Church, and in many ways Orthodox ecclesiology is closer to that of the Restoration Movement than to that of the “denominations”, in the sense that the Orthodox Church does not regard itself as a denomination, but as the “One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church”. The Orthodox Church too rejects denominationalism, though possibly for different reasons than those of the Restoration Movement. From the Orthodox point of view, “denominationalism” is the understanding that Christianity is one entity of the large class “religion” and that Christianity is a religion composed of smaller units called denominations. The sociological categories are not the same as the ecclesiological categories, and there are several ecclesiological categories that differ from one another.

Another similarity that Walker does not mention, but which strikes me as quite interesting, is that the Restoration Movement is trying to restore some things that have been lost or neglected in Western Christianity, but have continued in Orthodoxy. The “shepherding” relationship seems to have some relationship with the Orthodox notion of having a “spiritual father” (or in some cases, mother, though the Restoration Movement or at least the R1 version of it, seems to insist on male leadership in this).

Yet another is that the Restorationist doctrine of “covering” seems to have some parallels with the Orthodox understanding of “jurisdiction” referring to the spiritual authority of a bishop or patriarch. In some parts of the world, where there are overlapping episcopal jurisdictions, Orthodox Christians might ask “What is your jurisdiction?” in almost exactly the same way as a Restorationist might ask “Who is covering you?”

Walker also notes that the Restoration Movement is sometimes called the “House Church Movement”, and that this is a misnomer for two reasons: firstly, though house churches were quite common in the early days of the Restoration Movement, they are now the exception rather than the rule, and secondly because house churches were far wider than the Restoration Movement.

One example of the latter might be the house churches in Anglican parishes in England and elsewhere. This “house church movement” grew in the 1940s and 1950s, and was not linked either to the Restoration Movement or to the charismatic renewal, at least not in its beginnings. There was a similar movement in the Roman Catholic Church called “Basic Christian Communities”.

But there were also some unattached house groups in the UK, or some that were loosely attached to Baptist, Evangelical or Pentecostal churches. Walker explains that some of these house churches got involved in the charismatic renewal, and that when, through that, they were exposed to Restorationist teaching, some of them asked one or other Restorationist apostles for “covering”.

All this makes the book very useful to me. Though it doesn’t mention South Africa more than twice, and then only in passing, it does help to make some aspects of the charismatic renewal in South Africa much clearer.

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