The charismatic renewal brought Pentecostal-style worship into Catholic, Anglican and other older churches.
When Dennis Bennett, an Episcopal rector in Van Nuys, California, told his congregation in 1960 that he had spoken in tongues, Pentecostal experience began to spread inside the older churches without leaving them: Catholic (from 1967), Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian. The Vineyard and many independent churches came out of the same wave.
The tree's references for this branch: Britannica: Pentecostalism · Pew Research: Spirit and Power (2006) · Wikipedia: Charismatic movement.
Lineage: Israel and Judah: the First Temple›Second Temple Judaism›The early, undivided Church›Catholic Church›Church of England (Anglican)›Methodist›Holiness movement›Pentecostal›Charismatic renewal
The charismatic renewal is what happened when Pentecostal experience turned up inside the older churches and the people who received it stayed where they were. It is not a denomination and never became one. Its members are Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and Orthodox who pray for healing, expect prophecy and sometimes speak in tongues, in parishes that otherwise look exactly as they did.
It is usually dated to a Sunday morning. On 3 April 1960 Dennis J. Bennett, rector of St Mark's Episcopal Church in Van Nuys, California, told his congregation that he had received the Pentecostal experience and had spoken in tongues. He said it again on the next two Sundays, including Easter, and many of his parishioners received the same thing. He was forced to resign, the press picked it up, and the resulting controversy told Christians across the country that this was now happening in their own kind of church rather than only in Pentecostal ones 9,12. It reached Lutherans and Presbyterians by 1962 and Methodists in the 1970s 9.
The Catholic renewal began at a student retreat. From 17 to 19 February 1967, about twenty-five to thirty Duquesne University students met with two faculty members, Ralph Keifer and William Storey, at the Ark and the Dove retreat house at Gibsonia, Pennsylvania. What happened there spread to Notre Dame and Michigan State within months and then worldwide 10,11. Rome did not suppress it. Paul VI received the movement's third international congress on 19 May 1975 and called it, in words Pope Francis later quoted back, a great opportunity for the Church 4,5. In Britain the Anglican priest Michael Harper founded the Fountain Trust in 1964 to carry the same renewal through the Church of England 14,15.
The people it happened to paid for it. Bennett lost the parish he had told, and through the 1960s clergy in several churches lost posts, licences and friendships for saying in public what he had said, while some denominations issued warnings against the whole thing 9. The renewal's answer, that it was not asking anyone to leave their church, took years to be believed.
See it on the family treeThe charismatic renewal crosses denominational boundaries rather than having a single confession of its own. Participants generally retain their church's teachings while placing particular emphasis on experiencing the Holy Spirit and the spiritual gifts.
The addition is usually called baptism in the Holy Spirit: a release or fresh coming of the Spirit in a believer's life, sought and often received through prayer and the laying on of hands, and expected to be felt. CHARIS, the body Pope Francis established to serve the Catholic renewal, quotes the preacher to the papal household, Raniero Cantalamessa, describing it as a simple and powerful means that has renewed the life of millions of believers in almost all Christian churches 3. Catholic charismatics generally understand it not as a second sacrament but as the stirring into flame of what baptism and confirmation already gave.
With it come the spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14: prophecy, healing, tongues and their interpretation, discernment, words of knowledge. Charismatics hold that these were not withdrawn when the apostles died and are meant for ordinary congregations now. Unlike most Pentecostal denominations, the renewal has generally not taught that tongues are the necessary evidence of the Spirit's baptism, which is one reason it could live inside churches that would never have accepted that claim 9.
In a charismatic parish the liturgy is usually the church's own, with something else running alongside it. There is more singing and it lasts longer, often with hands raised. There is a time when people pray aloud together, sometimes in tongues. Someone may bring a prophecy and someone else will weigh it. Prayer for healing is offered, normally by lay people, and often after the service rather than during it.
The renewal's characteristic institution is the prayer meeting rather than the service: a weekly gathering, lay led, in a hall or a home, where the singing and the gifts have room that a Sunday liturgy cannot give them. Alongside it grew covenant communities, seminars for teaching newcomers, and large conferences. Structures came later and cautiously. CHARIS, established in 2019 to serve the whole Catholic renewal, is a body of the Holy See with public juridic personality rather than an association people join, which is a careful way of giving a movement a home without making it a church; Francis had asked for a single international service two years earlier, at the renewal's golden jubilee vigil 1,2,6.
The renewal has no Bible of its own and reads whatever the host church reads, which is part of what makes it a renewal rather than a denomination. In practice it grew up with the modern English translations of the 1960s onward and its meetings tend to use whatever is plainest aloud.
What is distinctive is which passages get the weight. The gift lists of 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 are read as a description of normal church life rather than of a first-century phase; Acts is read as a pattern rather than only as a record; and James 5 on anointing the sick is taken as an instruction still in force. The verses below are given in the Berean Standard Bible.
Free to read here: Berean Standard Bible, King James Version, Reina-Valera 1909, Bíblia Livre, Neno: Maandiko Matakatifu, Bíbélì Mímọ́, Baịbụlụ Nsọ, Littafi Mai Tsarki. The full note on which Bible Charismatic renewal use, with sources ›
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the Berean Standard Bible and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
For the common good. The charismatic answer to the charge that this is about personal experience: the gifts are given for other people.
Earnestly pursue love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.
Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts. Both halves of the sentence, in that order, which is the renewal's own summary of itself.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.
God's love poured into the heart through the Holy Spirit. The verse behind what charismatics mean when they say the experience is felt.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal.
Tongues without love, a clanging cymbal. Paul put this between the two chapters on the gifts, and the renewal has had to keep going back to it.
Do not extinguish the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.
Do not extinguish the Spirit, and test all things. Twenty-one words that hold the whole argument between charismatics and their critics, and inside the renewal itself.
The renewal is now very large and very hard to count, because its members are counted inside their own churches. The Pew Research Center, analysing estimates from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell, put the world's charismatic Christians at about 305 million and Pentecostals at about 279 million, which together is roughly 27 percent of all Christians and more than 8 percent of the world's population. Almost half of all charismatics live in the Americas and nearly 30 percent in the Asia-Pacific region 7. Pew groups the two together as renewalists, because in practice they shade into one another 8.
Institutionally the renewal now has settled homes. CHARIS serves the Catholic renewal worldwide from Rome 1,2. The Vineyard, which began as a set of charismatic congregations that did not fit anywhere else, became a denomination of its own 17,23. Independent charismatic networks, which Pew and others describe as neo-charismatic, are among the fastest growing forms of Christianity anywhere 20. And a good deal of the renewal has simply become ordinary: sung worship led by a band, prayer ministry after the service and the Alpha course, which came out of the charismatic Anglican parish of Holy Trinity Brompton, are now found in churches that would not describe themselves as charismatic at all 21,22.
Mostly where you go to church. Pentecostals belong to denominations founded for this purpose, such as the Assemblies of God or the Church of God in Christ. Charismatics hold similar convictions about the Spirit's gifts while remaining Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist or Orthodox. There is also a doctrinal difference: classical Pentecostals have generally taught that speaking in tongues is the evidence of the Spirit's baptism, and the renewal has generally not 8,9.
Yes, and it has said so repeatedly at the highest level. Paul VI received the renewal's international congress in 1975 and called it an opportunity for the Church; John Paul II and Benedict XVI encouraged it; and in 2019 Pope Francis established CHARIS as a single international service for the whole Catholic renewal, a body of the Holy See with public juridic personality 1,2,4,5. Individual bishops have also urged caution about particular practices, which is a normal thing for bishops to do and not a contradiction.
No. Most charismatic teaching treats tongues as one gift among several and holds that not everyone receives it, following Paul's own question about whether all speak in tongues. Plenty of people in charismatic churches pray for healing and expect prophecy without ever having spoken in tongues 9.
No, and it has taken some care not to become one. Its whole method is to work inside existing churches. Some bodies did emerge from the wider wave, most visibly the Vineyard and a large number of independent networks, but a charismatic Catholic parish is a Catholic parish and a charismatic Anglican one is Anglican 1,17,20.
The main objection is cessationism: the view that the miraculous gifts were given to authenticate the apostles and their message and ceased when that work was finished, so that what charismatics experience must be something else. There are also practical objections about disorder, about the emotional pressure of healing meetings and about the harm done by particular teachers. Charismatics answer from Scripture, chiefly that Paul tells the church to desire the gifts and to test them rather than to expect their withdrawal.
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BibleVerse. “Charismatic renewal: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-09, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/charismatic/
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Two commands in one breath, and a movement that has spent sixty years being told it is failing one of them or the other.
Do not extinguish the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt, but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.