S14 E11: The One About Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement

A pentecostal and a person from the charismatic movement were in a room... it sounds like the beginning of a joke doesn't it? But I wonder what might surprise them about the other?

In this week's episode, Wolfgang Vondey generously enlightens us on that. We define what we mean by Pentecostalism and the Charismatic Movement and look at the etymology of these terms. We identify what makes them distinct from each other, but as you know, RE is messy so they don't fit into neat categories and boxes. 
We look at misconceptions, history, the first pentecost, controversies and of course, how we can teach it authentically.

Wolfgang is so knowledgeable and it was a delight to have this chat and find out more about these distinct movements.

Ultimately, this is about telling stories and engaging in the stories of others.  Enjoy!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the R.E. Podcast, the first dedicated R.E. podcast for students and teachers. My name is Louisa Jane Smith, and this is the R.E. Podcast. The podcast for those of you who think R.E. is boring, which it is, and I'll prove it to you. My guest today is Wolfgang Vondy, and he is here to talk to us about Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement. As we were chatting about this episode, I realised my misconceptions and assumptions and sometimes even conflation of these two movements. So I'm so glad that Wolfgang is here today and can help us make our teaching of this much more authentic, understanding their history, diversity, and distinctness. So welcome to the podcast, Wolfgang.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Yeah, thanks, Lisa. I'm really grateful to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

Can you just give us a little sense of who you are and just introduce yourself?

SPEAKER_03 0:53

So my original name is Wolfgang von Day, but most people just call me Wolfgang. I'm currently uh head of department in theology and religion at the University of Birmingham. But my official title is Professor of Christian Theology and Pentecostal Studies, so that kind of gives you a sense of what I'm focusing on. I'm also the director of the Center for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies. But originally I'm a classically trained systematic theologian. That means I'm trained classically in the languages and in the classical traditions of Christian thought, especially the early church fathers. And I'm systematic in the sense that I'm looking at Christian doctrines, constructing, understanding, analyzing Christian doctrines. But my research has been primarily in the contemporary Christian landscape and particularly in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Fascinating. And obviously, regular listeners to the podcast will kind of see a bit of a running theme of people from Birmingham University. So there's just such a wealth of knowledge and expertise here that we want to kind of draw on just to make sure that what we are teaching is representative of what's going on in the wider academic world. So let's start by defining our terms. What is Pentecostalism and what is the charismatic movement?

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Yeah, it's a great question. I think that's where we should start. Perhaps on the most basic level, these are modern religious movements in Christianity. And we have used two particular terms to describe them. Perhaps the oldest one is revival, they're revival movements, and the other one is that they're renewal movements. There are a few differences about these terms. A revival movement, perhaps as the term says, it's trying to revive something that has lost its life in a way, and they historically emerged from the revival culture in the Christian traditions, particularly what we call pietism and the holiness movement that culminated in the nineteenth century. So they're interested in bringing life back to religious communities, to individuals, to their worship, to their experiences of God, to their practices, to the way they behave and relate to God. So that's usually what's thought of as revival. But revival is also a kind of sense of a short lived, perhaps cyclical pattern that happens to traditions, to communities. They're temporary. And when we look at Pentecostalism, we have to say, well, it's now a history of little over a century, and that's a quite established, relatively long-term revival movement. So we have begun to think that revival is perhaps not the most appropriate term. And there has been a shift in the recent decades to move to the idea of renewal movements. Again, the idea is quite illustrative. Renewal is to bring something new to a tradition. So it's much more broadly, the idea here is situated much more broadly than in revival. It's an aim at renewing the Christian life. And in that sense, it's much more active than the passive idea of revival. It's somehow the revival happens to traditions. It may not be planned, it may be a sense of, oh God has come in, and these people experience something that brings life back to them. But renewing is a much more active way of, oh, let's try to bring something new to us. It's not just the return to a life of the past, it's also the kind of sense of doing something unprecedented and doing it intentionally. So in that sense, we have, well, some popular titles for, for example, of books have been the New Christendom, New Forms of Christianity. So that's what renewal is all about. I think what we can do about these two sides is to say, well, in a sense, Pentecostalism, charismatic Christianity, those are spiritual movements. And the emphasis of both renewal and revival is on the spiritual life. And I mean that quite literally. Spiritual comes from the idea of the spirit. So the emphasis of these movements is on spirit, the human spirit, but also on God's spirit and how the human spirit encounters and experiences the Holy Spirit. And so, in that sense, that's a particular emphasis of these movements and the effects of this encounter, of this experience of God's Spirit, that's what has led to both revival and renewal. So maybe in that broad sense, spiritual movements in Christianity is a good way of approaching the subject.

SPEAKER_00 5:21

I'm assuming then that because of the very nature of that, what was revival, maybe now is better seen as renewal, there is skepticism in that you are somehow criticizing the past or moving away from the sort of established tradition of the Christian church. And so you kind of get a bit of pushback, maybe from you know longer standing and more traditional Christianity.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

Yeah, absolutely. That has happened. And it happens with any renewal or revival movement, that there is a change or a shift from a traditional waste and the norms and expectations that the religious establishment has. And that has come along in the history that has formed the movements, that has formed the relationship of these movements with the larger Christian traditions. It has formed the way that we understand the terms, that we define them. So there's a lot that goes back to that kind of unexpected, unprecedented arrival of these movements in the early 20th century.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

But I would imagine then on the flip side, sometimes that established church gets a bit caught up with tradition, it gets a bit politically influenced. And so on the flip side, maybe the tradition sometimes moves away from the original state of Christianity, and some of these movements are just trying to like hedge it back a bit. Would that be fair to say?

SPEAKER_03 6:39

Yeah, that has typically been the narrative that these movements would give to the traditions, saying that precisely they are the result of, intended or not intended, they are the result of a need to change, to bring reform or a revival or renewal, whatever it is, right, to the established forms of Christianity. Because when we institutionalize, we put things in set patterns, and these patterns can bring a certain staleness, or as Pentecostals like to say, lukewarmness to the way that the faith is activated, the way that it's lived. And that's what these movements have tried to remedy and to respond to and to challenge.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

And I think what's interesting when we're looking at terms, particularly Pentecost, is to look at the etymology. And I know that there are educators out there, there are schools out there that actually are teaching key terms using etymology, so young people understand why it's called that, and therefore they understand something about what that term is rather than just a definition. So let's just go through the sort of etymology of those terms.

SPEAKER_03 7:42

Yeah, this is a good way to continue, really, because when it comes to Pentecostalism, what a word, right? A lot of people don't know how to even pronounce it, and charismatic Christians, they're much more illustrative than other Christian traditions. When you hear Catholic or Lutheran or Reformed, well, you have to kind of take a second step to understand, well, what do the reformers want to reform? Lutherans, that goes back to Luther, but what did Luther want? Catholic, what do they stand for? When it comes to Pentecostals, it's much more straightforward. The word Pentecostal comes from the word Pentecost. And Pentecost is a festival in the biblical texts, and particularly referencing a festival in the New Testament that's recorded in the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles. And in the second chapter of that book, there's the story told of the disciples of Jesus Christ after the death and resurrection of Jesus as they're waiting in Jerusalem, and they experience an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on them, and they begin to proclaim the gospel to everyone, and they're given by the Spirit an ability to do this in a variety of languages. So it's kind of a shocking event there to people. And it's described in the New Testament as a baptism with the Spirit. Again, very evocative language, like baptism with water, there's a baptism with the Spirit. And the effects that you find there in the book of Acts, these are the effects that Pentecostals recognized. So you have to look at it this way. Pentecostals didn't intend to become Pentecostals. They didn't say, oh, let's do this. It's a nice term, let's become that. They had experiences and they didn't know what to do with them, and they didn't understand whether they were right, and they were looking at the scriptures to see if this was acceptable. And what they found was, well, we're experiencing just what is going on in the book of Acts, and that's at Pentecost. So we're just like that. We're just like those Pentecost people. We're Pentecostals, and that's the kind of language that stuck. So you know what you're getting when you say Pentecostal. Charismatic is slightly different. The emphasis is a bit different. Charismatic comes from the Greek word charis, and charis means gift. But that word is used also in the New Testament, and it references quite a variety of gifts of the Spirit, and it includes, for example, the ability to speak in tongues, in other languages like the disciples at Pentecost, but there are also other gifts like word of knowledge or prophetic words or the gift of healing. So when you talk about someone who is a charismatic Christian, they often look beyond just Pentecost, and they're often looking a bit further to the early church, to the Apostolic Church, and they're saying, well, there are broader, wider gifts. And hey, look, these gifts are not really present in the church today, but we're experiencing these gifts. So what are we? We are charismatic Christians in the sense that these gifts have been given to us, renewed or revitalized, whichever you prefer. So these are variations on the emphasis of the spiritual life. And I've heard people say that all Pentecostals are charismatic, but not all charismatics are Pentecostal. And that's primarily because there is such an emphasis and a focus on Pentecost for Pentecostals to understand themselves, and that's much less the case when it comes to the word charismatic Christian.

SPEAKER_00 11:13

And just to clarify, and you tell me whether I remembered this right. So Penti is the Greek word for fifty, because this event in the New Testament is meant to have happened 50 days after the ascension. Am I right?

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Yeah, that's something we can use as an interpretation. And that goes back to Pentecostals reading the scriptures in a way that they look at Pentecost and then look backwards. So they read that and then they look at what happened with Christ and then they look backwards into the Old Testament, and that's where they find these passages as well. So what they find at Pentecost is that the disciples interpret the events on that day again through the lens of events of the Old Testament. They're looking at prophets like the Prophet Joel, the book of Joel in the Old Testament to interpret things differently. So that's one way of saying there is a specific idea. What I like about your comment though is that it does happen after Easter, so after the resurrection, and a lot of people think, well, the gospel kind of ends with that, right? You get Jesus and then he dies and then he's raised from the dead, and maybe there's an ascension to heaven, but that's it. And for Pentecostals, it's really a matter of saying, well, it does continue because that Jesus who has ascended to God, to the Father, has poured out the Spirit, and so what you then see at Pentecost and what you experience in these contemporary revival movements is a continuation of the work of Christ. And that's a very important way of reading the records.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

Yeah. But also I think many of us will be familiar with the story of Pentecost in terms of you've got these men and probably some women as well, partly terrified because actually they're now following a criminal that's just been executed. They've been left alone. This guy that they've been following for years has now disappeared. They are partly terrified that they think they might get killed, but at the same time, Jesus says, I'm gonna come back. So they're kind of waiting, thinking that that's gonna be imminent. And so that's the context in which then that sort of Pentecostal outpouring baptism of the Holy Spirit happens. And this is one of the tongues of fire and speaking the languages, and they're sort of everyone thinks they're drunk because they're laughing and things like that. But actually, something that we spoke about that I think is really fascinating, and I think the listeners are gonna find fascinating, is how that event or that phenomena transcends social bias and prejudice. And I think that's the bit that I'm really interested here.

SPEAKER_03 13:44

Yeah, when we look at Pentecost, it's such a scandalous event, really. We're looking at disciples that were told, wait in Jerusalem, you know, tarry there. And well, what are they waiting for? Well, they're told that they will receive the Spirit and they will receive power, but they don't really know what that looks like. And when it comes to pass, again, we have to read these stories, there's this mighty the sound of wind, a mighty rushing wind. So it sounds like a storm, but they're inside a room. So can you imagine what's happening there? And you have to be, you know, really in that context. But keep in mind that here we now have revival groups, we now have spiritual movements who are reading themselves into the story. And so they must have had similar experiences of that kind of storm happening in the in their own rooms, in their own prayer life and experiences. And they're discovering that at Pentecost there's a promise that's far broader. It's a promise that when they're reading backwards, where the disciples are saying, Look, this is the spirit poured out, but this is a promise of a spirit poured out on all flesh. So in that chapter two that I was referencing, it's not just poured out on, say, religious leaders, it's not just poured out on apostles or disciples, although they are the ones who are baptized in the spirit. The promises are poured out on all flesh. And when the disciples then come to explain this, they're saying this is a promise given to everyone, to the ends of the world. This is to men, this is to women, this is to the free, this is to slaves, you know, this is to young and to old sons and daughters, everyone really. So it's overcoming a social bias, it's overcoming religious prejudices, even of the Jews of their time. And we see that in the response of the Jews of the time, saying, well, these people are drunk, not just probably in the way that they're staggering, like you might expect from a drunk person, but they're drunk in what they're proclaiming. And I've recently written a book called The Scandal of Pentecost, where I examine this a bit more, that this was scandalous, right? I mean, the word scandal is a word that comes from the New Testament, and it's applied frequently to the person of Jesus. Jesus was a scandal, he was a stumbling block, and he was that because of how he was confronting these normative expectations, how he was changing things and calling people to understand that the way that they were living was not the way that they were supposed to live. So he was, what do they call him? He was eating with sinners and tax collectors. I mean, that's scandalous, right? He was bringing renewal and revival. And the church at Pentecost, it's continuing that kind of pattern. It is doing something shocking. These are Galileans. I don't know who you want to compare it to, but these are stupid people. They shouldn't be able to speak in all these languages, and now they're proclaiming this.

SPEAKER_00 16:47

Can anything good come from Galilee, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

It's unbelievable. And that's really what Pentecostals have seen, that this is there is something happening here that they too have experienced, and they're thinking, wow, what a promise. We're even broader and bigger than they were. This is it, right? They're looking back at that and they're saying, This is precisely what we see there, and this is continuing to the ends of the world. This is taking us to the kingdom of God. And that's why you can imagine that's the nature of revival for them.

SPEAKER_00 17:17

So does that make Pentecostalism, does that make it quite a diverse group of people that's quite inclusive rather than it's defined by a particular race or a particular social class or whatever?

SPEAKER_03 17:31

Yeah, Pentecostalism is a global diverse movement. Yeah and obviously you can imagine that the movement itself encounters struggles with that kind of realization because the revival, the renewal happens in communities that are not yet Pentecostal, right? So you're not a Pentecostal and then you have a revival, you're some other Christian, and then you have a revival, and then you realize, well, I actually have this Pentecost-like experience. So it's Methodists and Baptists and Catholics, and sometimes, of course, atheists and others, right, of other religions who have these experiences. And their existing cultures, they're not yet ready for what's going on there. So they're being transformed by this experience. So we can say, yes, they're very diverse. There are men, there are women, there are young, there are old, but there are also struggles within the movements to realize that on a continual basis, to institutionalize that without suppressing these kinds of voices, right? It's not always easy to say when the spirit is poured out, children can prophesy. But when you have actual children in your church service and let them speak, you know, what they may say is not something you you're prepared to hear. So it requires discernment, it requires also changes in the way that things have been before this can become a reality.

SPEAKER_00 18:53

They're gifts of the spirit, aren't they? They're sort of gifts of interpretation and of discernment. They're the kind of less sexy ones, you know, everyone wants to kind of be able to heal and speak in tongues and bring back people from the dead and things like that. They're not the fun ones, but actually they're really significant in order to kind of discern and be wise and things like that. In that context of that sort of event that sort of transcends bias and prejudice. Let's look at the sort of history of modern-day Pentecostalism. Where, when, how it started, and sort of plotting that rough history.

SPEAKER_03 19:24

Yeah, if we have a couple of hours, let's let's go on to that one. But short term, right? So a hundred years is actually relatively short.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

It's a young movement. I'm that's partly why I find it fascinating. You can actually work with this. You don't have a few thousand years. But there are actually, even though it's a short history, there are different ways to plot, to teach the history of these movements. Originally, there was what we might call a single origin theory. And that theory was that Pentecostalism originated at the Azusa Street Mission and Revival in Los Angeles in the USA. That was a revival 1906 to 1915 in a congregation led by an African American preacher, William J. Seymour, and that eventually transcended the confines of Los Angeles that turned to a broader movement in the US, what we call today classical Pentecostalism. They had an emphasis on mission, on evangelizing others, on spreading the gospel worldwide. And they did go. They actually did go and leave to go into the world, and that led to the spread of Pentecostalism. That theory has been revised in the last hundred years of scholarship to what we might call a multiple origins theory now. And we realize there was a Zusa Street that was very significant, but there was also, for example, the Welsh Revival of 1904, 1905, there were Korean revivals among Methodists in 1904 and 5, there were Korean revivals among Presbyterians in 1906, there were revivals in the Mukti mission in India, and all of these pockets of revival contributed to the rise of Pentecostal charismatic Christianity during the early 20th century. So we have kind of a rough plot here where we have these spiritual experiences and revivals that direct Christians to search the scriptures and then looking at, well, Pentecost and the Spirit and the gifts and realizing that they've been suppressed, that they've been forgotten, and they go to their own churches, they go to their peers, and they're sharing with them these new experiences. And guess what? These peers are responding just like the Jews at Pentecost. They're saying, You're drunk, you're out of your mind, right? We have criticism, we have persecution of these early Pentecostals. We have some accounts, even like I remember one saying there was called the last vomit of Satan. So they're casting them out of their churches. And obviously the response is that these Pentecostals now begin their own churches, they begin their own traditions. So that's what we see in the 1920s and 30s. We have assemblies and churches, eventually denominations. So we have a much more institutionalized growth worldwide of Pentecostalism that accelerated after World War II. Then these groups entered into ecumenical dialogue and conversations with other traditions. And today, if we want to have a rough history, they're now one of the most established streams in Christianity. I think we think of about 600 million in 2025, and I've seen some estimate of a billion Pentecostal Christians by 2050. So the revival that we talk about, the kind of nature of the revival, characterizes also the history. It's a spurious history. There's a lot of energy in those 100 years.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

And can I ask whether the criticisms have been theologically based, or are they more kind of just stylistic, you know, I don't like the style of your Christianity, or do they have fundamental theological problems with it?

SPEAKER_03 23:12

Yeah, it's both. So stylistic, if you will, probably mostly in terms of the behavior. Pentecostals were originally often called holy rollers, because the image of rolling around, right? They themselves have practices that speak of being slain in the spirit, falling over under the pressure, under the power of their experiences. So they have very unusual experiences that a lot of Christians look at and say, that's not something we want. That's not something that is proper. There were also theological differences. Primarily, of course, the idea of being baptized in the spirit. When this happens, what that looks like, a dominant emphasis on speaking in tongues, how can you do that? What does this mean? Is that a language? And of course, we have revivals that happen occasionally where they were very what the traditions would call strange behaviors, strange teachings that have come out of those. And so we have both sides. We have criticism for their practices and criticism for their doctrines.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

They did some scientific research into speaking in tongues and they did a brain scan and looked at what part of the brain was active when people spoke in tongues, and it wasn't the language part of the brain. So they could show that this is not a language type skill when you speak in tongues. So yeah, it's really fascinating. One thing I think is really important to distinguish is the difference between Pentecostalism and a Pentecostal church. I think that's important because I think we can maybe conflate the two, confuse the two, not really understand their relationship. And I think by asking this question it helps us really understand what Pentecostalism is, that it's not a denomination in its strictest sense.

SPEAKER_03 25:06

Yeah, I often get asked about the Pentecostal Church, and perhaps the thought is, well, there's a Catholic Church, there's a Reformed Church, there's a Lutheran Church, uh they may have formal names that are slightly different, but what about the Pentecostal Church? And I think what's helpful there is that in the history of these movements, there was quite a resistance to the idea of being called a church. They were revival movements within churches, right? They were renewal movements or spiritual movements within a church. There was never a desire to leave their church, to found a new church. That's not something that they desired. There was more a sense of the spirit is poured out on the world, on the church, and it transforms the church. It empowers Christians, but not to form a church. So there are still groups today that do not use the word church for their self-description. They use words like assembly to designate what they are. And there is not one Pentecostal church like the Roman Catholic Church. There are churches, there are groups, independent groups and denominational forms. They do exist, of course. But overall I think it's good to still consider Pentecostalism a movement, because they think of themselves as a movement of Pentecost for all Christians. Everyone can be a Pentecostal in that way, right? Because they are experiencing that. And it's a movement of the churches to become the church. So if there is the idea of this invisible church, the church, then Pentecostalism is some form of realizing that. So they're still adapting, and that's important when we speak of Pentecostalism. Theologically, it's quite difficult for Pentecostals to think of the idea of a finished church. I think what's important here is that these movements are eschatological movements. And that word eschatology comes from the word eschaton, it's a Greek word for the end. So they're movements that emphasize the end. They look for the end of all things. And for them that means the kingdom of God, but also the church when it is arrived with God, when it is completed with God. So the church is still on its way, it's still becoming. And Pentecost started this, so the Pentecost event in the Bible is the public emergence of the church. But throughout history, we have this church continually being affected by Pentecost becoming the church in the end. So it's important to realize that. Now that said, there are, of course, Pentecostal churches. You can say, What church do you go to? I go to a Pentecostal church. It's just that there isn't an overall Pentecostal church in the world that would capture all of the different churches and denominations.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Okay. And just to pick something up on what you said, so there is a belief within Christianity that Pentecost was the beginning of the church, that that was the event in Christian history where the church was established because God had sent the Spirit.

SPEAKER_03 28:15

Well, we have to be nuanced here. So theologically, you can say, of course, the church begins at creation.

SPEAKER_02 28:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:21

And you can also say that the church begins with Jesus Christ. There's a birth that has to do with a Christian church that begins with Jesus Christ. So Pentecost in that sense is not the beginning. The disciples are already formed by Christ at that point, but they emerge publicly. Keep in mind that just before Pentecost, they have run away, they've all deserted Jesus, they're shut up in a room, they're afraid, they don't want to come out. And now there's this transformation. They have been empowered by the Spirit, they have received the gifts of the Spirit. They're going out into the streets, they're proclaiming as if they had never been afraid, right? There's some difference that has happened there. And I think that's something important. And it's not the birth of the church, but it's definitely a public emergence of the church.

SPEAKER_00 29:11

So it's the birth of the public-facing church.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

Yeah, that might be a way of putting it.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Because actually the Catholics would kind of cite it as Peter, you know, on this rock I will build my church, Petra. And therefore that was the first Pope. So let's then, if that was kind of a brief plotted history of Pentecostalism, what's the history of the charismatic movement and how does that differ?

SPEAKER_03 29:32

Yeah, when we look at that, perhaps the best way to begin is to say the charismatic movement is a second generation Pentecostal movement. So if Pentecostalism, we call it classical Pentecostalism, is the first generation, then a second generation subsequently is what we call the charismatic movement. And these are revival movements, these are spiritual movements that happen inside of the established traditions. And originally we actually spoke of Catholic Pentecostals. We didn't speak of Catholic charismatics or charismatic Catholics. They were called Catholic Pentecostals until we had to distinguish the differences. So often the charismatic movement is linked to the healing revivals of the 1940s and 50s. But again, I think it's more important to say there are multiple origins. So we have early acknowledgments of a second generation in the American Episcopal Church in 1960, where we have a sharing of Pentecostal experiences, charismatic experiences. We have seeker meetings among Lutherans and Presbyterians during the 1960s. Again, they're seeking the gifts of the Spirit. We have revivals at Catholic universities in the late 1960s in North America. And then we have third wave, so a third generation, also called neocarismatic wave during the 1980s. And that's resulting in new covenant communities. They have very illustrative names like Sword of the Spirit, Word of God, and new movements like the Vineyard Movement, or here the British New Covenant, the British New Church movement. I think important is that these second generation movements and the charismatic individuals, they remain in their tradition. They're merging the spirituality of their tradition with this new charismatic form of spirituality. So they're not cast out anymore. We've learned from the Pentecostal history. They're not leaving anymore. They've learned from the problems with that. They're deliberately staying in order to renew their traditions from the inside. So that's probably the key difference is that a charismatic Christian is a Catholic charismatic or a Baptist that is charismatic or a Methodist that's charismatic or a Lutheran. To complicate that picture, the third generation, the third wave, often has led to non-denominational or independent charismatic churches. So these are not within their traditions. They're kind of the churches you see on the corner somewhere that has a name, but there's no denomination, there's no larger church attached to that. So it complicates the history a little bit. But I think you can see that there are generational differences between these developments, even if there are quite a lot of similarities in their emphasis.

SPEAKER_00 32:22

Because I guess there's a sense of accountability and authority. That actually if it's a movement that's kind of separate from an established church, then people are nervous about how do we know what we're doing is right and is there someone kind of guiding us? Whereas if there it's a sort of movement within a particular domination, then actually a lot of people feel safer. I feel safe. There's an established authority, but I'm free to kind of embrace this kind of new wave of charismatic Christianity, which probably sits quite well with people. It's really fascinating. Sorry, I was just looking, I'm as you're um speaking, I'll make a little notes that I'm going to put in the show notes. So if we had to now pin down their distinctive characteristics, how they are different from each other.

SPEAKER_03 33:06

Yeah, so distinctives is really a great choice of terms because that's exactly the term that Pentecostals have used for themselves. Imagine that they were asked, well, what are they believing? What are they practicing? And they would say, well, we have some distinctives that make us different. The challenge has been, when you come up with two, three, four, five, six, seven distinctives, the challenge has been the coherence of these distinctives. Because when you mention them alone, they can become somewhat disconnected teachings or doctrines. And so all you say is, well, okay, these are charismatics, they believe everything we believe, except they also believe in the gifts of the Spirit. I think a better way of speaking about that is that there is a narrative, there's a story that ties them together. And the major difference is perhaps the way that these groups tell their story, and the story is their encounter with the Holy Spirit. So a key difference is for Pentecostals, the baptism in the Spirit is a distinctive second or third experience that follows conversion. So we have someone is converted to Christianity, right? Someone is saved, but then they have an experience of being transformed and sanctified, and then they have another experience of being empowered by the spirit, they're being baptized in the spirit. Whereas charismatics, because of the way that they remain within the thought of their traditions, they usually say, well, the spirit is already present at regeneration, and so subsequent encounters are more of a filling or a refilling and a revitalizing of what you already have. And that of course leads to practical differences. The Pentecostals emphasize evangelization and mission, as I said, to get people to the point of spirit baptism. Charismatics are more interested in renewing their own tradition. So that's what we should think about. It's an emphasis on their story. And the biggest story in Pentecostalism is probably what we call the full gospel, the fivefold or fourfold gospel. Imagine that they would say, Well, there is a gospel, and other Christians would say, Well, we also have a gospel. And Pentecostals would say, Well, what's distinctive about us is that our gospel has things that you are neglecting. Your gospel is not complete, it's not full. And this full gospel is an interesting story. It's a proclamation of Jesus, but it says that Jesus is Savior, sanctifier, spirit baptizer, divine healer, and soon coming king. And people would have these things memorized. They would sing songs about them, and they would say, This is what we believe. And so that's very distinctive when you say that. Whereas a charismatic Christian might not have this kind of story, they might have part of it, they might have some of it, but that's what distinguishes them really in terms of their self-understanding.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

So almost the Pentecostal movement almost has its own distinct theology, but charismatic movements don't need that because they're already potentially part of an established church with its own theology.

SPEAKER_03 36:07

Yeah, that's one way of looking at it. It's an important way of looking at it. You cannot understand the charismatic movement in the established churches without understanding the established churches.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:16

The Catholic charismatic is a Catholic. Whereas you can understand Pentecostals without explicitly looking at these other traditions.

SPEAKER_00 36:23

Yeah, absolutely. It feels as though there are difficulties in defining these movements. You know, as you said, the charismatic movement has had these kind of three waves and they're all kind of distinct. So fitting them into sort of boxes or categories, I'm guessing, is actually quite difficult.

SPEAKER_03 36:42

Yeah, it's been a major challenge. Imagine that, you know, you have to work with the boxes you have. You have to work with the categories that we inherit. So how do you fit something in that's unprecedented? A revival, a worse, a renewal. If there's something new, we need new categories, right? So there have been major problems with fitting them into existing categories because concepts really dominate. So the most typical boxes have been doctrines. And this has led to the idea that Pentecostal charismatic Christians are no different except that they have the spiritual gifts, but that's all there is. And at worst they have doctrines that don't fit anywhere, like the doctrine of the baptism in the spirit. But other boxes are practices or rituals, for example, practices, right? Because this has led to the impression that the only difference between a charismatic Christian and the Christian in that tradition is that the charismatic is more lively, right? They're charismatic in the general sense of the term. Right? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

It's a bit reductive, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 37:45

That's not the case, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:47

It has even led to the idea that, well, Pentecostals, they're not liturgical, they're non-liturgical, or they're even anti-liturgical. But when you look at them, these groups are very liturgical at times, overtly so. So again, the categories don't fit. Well, perhaps another example I can give is non-theological boxes. That is, we look at other disciplines, other ways to teach, to assess these movements. And one of the earliest was actually psychology, then followed by linguistic studies. But psychology had made assessments of Pentecostals, and the early studies would say that these Pentecostal Christians are unstable, they're deranged. But when we had, so I'm talking 1960s here, but when we look at 1980s psychological studies later, we have now found that the Pentecostal charismatic Christians are more stable psychologically than other Christians or non-Christians compared in these studies. So we had to revise our studies, and that means we had to revise the boxes and the categories that we possessed. And so that really shows us how difficult it is. We really need to define them along their own story. We need to understand their contexts, right? We need to understand their narratives, their motivations, their experiences, their sensitivities. And I think if we do that, not only do we have a better understanding of these movements, but the movements gain a better understanding of each other, and it can lead to reconciling Pentecostals and charismatics along that kind of narrative.

SPEAKER_00 39:22

I'm really interested what you said about psychology. So just obviously I did the um episode with Clarissa Sharp on the psychology of religion. Do you think maybe Pentecostalism is quite holistic? And so you've got the doctrine and you've got the theology, you've got the beliefs, but actually you've kind of got this element of experiential and connecting to the spirit. And it's almost, I guess it's almost Jungian, isn't it, in terms of it sort of balancing all the kind of elements of being human. And so actually, do you think maybe that's why there's sort of some kind of psychological harmony, more so in in Pentecostals?

SPEAKER_03 39:57

Yeah, in the traditions, some in traditional theology you often have the image of the head, the hand, and the heart. And thus connecting that is something that you read that in spiritual traditions outside of Pentecostals. Scholars today speak of Pentecostalism as an embodied Christianity. So there's an emphasis on embodied forms of the Christian life, and that's something that they have learned has been lacking, right? So there's a lot of head stuff going on in the Christian traditions, and there's a lot of heart, but you know, the hand may not be connected really well in the way we live, and sometimes the heart isn't connected very well. So this emphasis on the whole person, it's something that Jesuits, for example, have also emphasized is something very important to Pentecostals. Have the whole person transformed, have the whole person changed. That's something they have experienced, right? And that's something they want to communicate to other Christians.

SPEAKER_00 40:52

I might cut this bit out, but I just in my head I'm seeing a lot of links between Sufi Islam and Pentecostal movement in terms of almost its distinctness within its own wider religion, but also that emphasis on mind, body, soul, spirit connecting in order to connect Allah in a more holistic way.

SPEAKER_03 41:14

Yeah, and for that I would recommend my colleague Richard Todd, who is an expert in Sufism, and he might be more equipped to speak to them, whereas he and I have to have these conversations in order to overlap right the two beliefs. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Oh, I'd love to do that, it'd be great. My next question, I'm I'm really excited about it. And I think you maybe came up with the question, it's such a great one, which was if there was a Pentecostal and a charismatic Christian in a room, what might surprise them about the other?

SPEAKER_03 41:46

Yeah, that's a really interesting way of thinking, right? Because that's really what has happened, of course, in their history. Yeah. And unexpectedly so, but also especially at ecumenical gatherings. And I think the biggest surprise is probably how much they are alike, how much they share their experiences and how they practice their faith, right? But most of all, I think what would surprise them, I'm a theologian, so that's the way I have to think. What would surprise them is that they're both liturgical. They're both liturgical movements, they practice their lives liturgically. And Pentecostals might discover from the charismatic Christian that there is no animosity between the new gifts of the Spirit and the traditional forms of the liturgy, right? That in charismatic churches they can exist side by side, that the gifts can renew the liturgy, they can revive the liturgy, we don't have to reject it. And I think that's the message that the charismatic Christian would give in the room. And then on the other hand, the charismatic might discover that Pentecostals are actually very liturgical. You cannot actually express yourself as a Pentecostal without referencing the way that you live, practice, exercise your faith without reference to the liturgy, to worship, to praise. Those are expressions of their story. They belong to it. So you might have at the end of the day the charismatic come out and say, I didn't know Pentecostalism was a liturgical movement. Right? And at the same time, maybe there are challenges. They might say, well, what Pentecostals challenge the charismatic Christian to do is that the gifts of the Spirit can also create new forms of liturgy. It's not just revitalizing a liturgy that already exists, but it may also challenge that some aspects, some forms of that liturgy may not appropriately become a vehicle for worship and for the presence of God. So there may be new things that have to happen. And just like Pentecostals should not reject tradition, charismatics should not reject the new that has been brought by the Spirit, right? So that's kind of a common discovery, a common way of acting and living together. And I think that's Really, what's important. The way that I've actually talked about that in the past is that they might discover that the way they act, the way they live, is peculiar. And when we try to describe that way and we say, how is it different from other Christians? What I've said is that what they do is play. They are simply more playful Christians. Charismatic and Pentecostals play with their liturgy, they play with their rituals, they are open to that kind of surprise and of saying, Well, I'm engaged in this. See, let's see what happens. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes you're embarrassed, and sometimes you discover new ways, but it's all about in that playful attitude, opening space for this Pentecost, for these gifts of the Spirit to enter into the Christian experience. And I think that's something that they might discover. They might learn to play together in the presence of God, and that would be really a surprise to them, I think.

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Is that playfulness? I don't know if this is a strange parallel, but the Sermon on the Mount that Jesus gave, He keeps saying, You've heard it said, but I tell you. And so there is that precedent, you know, in the teachings of Jesus that there was a way that we did things, and now I'm gonna suggest this new way. And it was kind of crazy stuff. You know, you've heard it said, you know, love your neighbor, I'm gonna tell you to love your enemy. What? You know, so there is that playfulness in the way that Jesus spoke about traditional theology and teachings and things like that, put his own thoughts upon it.

SPEAKER_03 45:32

Yeah, I think the difficulty is, I mean, you and I know, the older we get, the more difficult it is to play.

SPEAKER_02 45:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

We find it quite challenging. We have serious conversations. I know religious education is a serious conversation, we don't have playful interactions. But when you actually find yourself playing, whether with your children or with others, those are contexts where real relationships are made. Those are contexts where real discoveries are made, and we find ourselves most at home. We're happy, we're open. And I think that's something that happens there. And if anything, where Jesus played, well, you know, look at what Jesus does. Let's feed 5,000 people. What does he do? Why don't we take a few loaves of bread and a few pieces of fish and multiply them? Let's look at someone who's blind. What do we do? Well, how about spitting in our hands or using mud on the ground? If that's not playful, I don't know what. But but he uses that as a way of channeling the presence of God that people haven't experienced before. So it's liberating, and I think that's what Pentecostalism is trying to convey.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

But is there then a flip side to that playfulness, which has maybe given Pentecostalism a bit of sense of controversy, do you think?

SPEAKER_03 46:47

Oh, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. I mean, who's comfortable with a playful religion, right? Who's comfortable with someone coming and speaking in tongues or prophesying the judgment of God or whatever other things might have come from Pentecostals? So, yes, there has been a lot of criticism from others about that, because Pentecostals are they're still in the making. They're a hundred years old. So it's a very young movement within Christianity. They haven't had a thousand years in a process where you know they can be shaped into a tradition. But most of the challenges have ignored something that's very important, that these young movements, any religious movement, always has extremes. And if we move these extremes outside of our picture, if we teach religious education and not include the extremes, we lose a lot of what's happening in the religious landscape. If we do teach Christianity without the extremes, we lose the entire Pentecostal charismatic movement. And if we look at them and we kind of try to move the extremes out of the way, well, we have a sterilized movement. We have a movement that's nice and that fits, but we're not understanding that there's a lot of dynamism that includes problems, and even Pentecostal charismatic Christians are aware of these problems, but there's no easy fix. It's not something that happens overnight. So these extremes are part and parcel of what we need to include in our classrooms, in our books. They belong to Pentecostalism at the moment. What I think is important is that these extremes always come with both ends of the extremes. They're not always one-sided, right? So there were a lot of books in the past that talked about charismatic chaos. For example, was one popular book. Yeah, sure, charismatic extremes, the extreme use and emphasis on certain spiritual gifts is something that you can find, but you can also find a very traditional sense of Pentecostalism that emphasizes the traditional sense of mystical Christianity. So as much as you can find a very ecumenical Pentecostal, you can also find someone who's very isolated and sectarian. As much as you can find someone who's very inquisitive, you also find Pentecostals that are anti-intellectual because they're afraid of how this intellectual pursuit will stifle the experience of the spirit, right? You have very triumphalistic Pentecostals and you have very socially active Pentecostals. There are both ends of the extreme, and I think we need to continue to observe these extremes and how they're handled before we can make a judgment on them and just accept that that's currently what Pentecostalism is worldwide. It is a global movement, it's a diverse movement, and that's what belongs to their image.

SPEAKER_00 49:34

And actually that ties back to that first Pentecost where it's challenging sort of bias and prejudice, therefore makes Pentecostalism quite inclusive and indiscriminate. I think as RE teachers, we're quite nervous to teach the extremes, particularly the negative extremes rather than the positive ones. I think we're nervous that our students are quite impressionable and that's the bit that they will hold on to, and that's the bit that they will remember to define something, or that they will use it to create quite a negative image about a religion. And I think that we've maybe subconsciously, I don't know if it was a conscious thing, moved away from teaching extremism head-on. That we don't want to become voyeurs of the crazy in our classrooms. You're maybe suggesting it's helpful because it helps you to see something as a full, colourful, messy kind of movement rather than a sterile one.

SPEAKER_03 50:33

Yeah, you might have read my books there because it's exactly the words I use. It's a messy Christianity. And it's important to be that way. I mean, playfulness is messy.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:42

Uh it's not always organized, right? But I think if you were serious about that, it is a global movement. And it's important that a lot of times when we suppress what we think of as extremes, what we actually do is we take on a colonized lens on these movements and the way that we think something should happen. It's a Western lens, it's a north northern hemisphere lens, it's an educated lens that says, well, this is not proper. But most of Pentecostalism today is in the global south, and things there are quite different in the way that we perceive what is right and what is proper. Right? So that's something that we should keep in mind, including the multiple origins, right? So we cannot say that the revival in Korea happens in the same way as it did in Wales or in the USA or in Britain. So there are different explanations. I think the best way to approach that is the way that these movements have done it, namely through the biblical texts. And when we do that, what we what we find, what Pentecostals have found there is that at Pentecost, the disciples, well, they they don't just speak in tongues, they speak in different tongues.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

Right?

SPEAKER_03 51:56

So there is not one tongue, because that's not enough. There isn't even just many tongues, there are different tongues. And these differences, the nuances, right, in the way that people spoke, in the way they were heard, that's also something contemporary Pentecostalism shares with that day of Pentecost. They speak in different tongues. I mean, this is an analogy, but we need to understand and find ways that allow us to appreciate the differences, to discern the differences, and some things need to be removed, some things need to be changed, but obviously we need to understand them first and understand them from the inside. So that I think might help to approach their stories and their practices and their beliefs a bit more generously.

SPEAKER_00 52:40

I'm really fascinated by what you said in the that almost erasure is part of colonization because we are putting a value judgment on what is seen as normal, what is seen as a bit out there. It's really fascinating. I mean, let's stay on this kind of idea of how we teach this authentically, effectively in the classroom. What advice would you have for us?

SPEAKER_03 53:02

Well, I think the way that we need to begin is that we evaluate our questions. We often don't ask the right questions when we approach these movements because we approach them with questions that we've used elsewhere.

SPEAKER_02 53:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:14

So we think, for example, that we can understand Christianity by applying the questions we apply to Islam. We can understand Catholicism if we use the questions that we've used to understand Protestant Christianity and so on and so forth. But the questions that we have may not be appropriate for understanding Pentecostalism. So we shouldn't assume that there's one answer that we already know, but we also shouldn't assume that we have questions that are sufficient to understand movements that are new. We don't even know what happens to them. So that was actually one of the earliest questions at Pentecost. What's going on? What's happening here? Right? So they didn't even know. And that's a good way to start. Not why are you doing this? And why are you like so extreme? But why not start with what's going on? You know, challenging is that it's a global movement, but maybe global questions, right? The big questions aren't appropriate for them. Maybe we need to look more at local categories, smaller categories, where we say there is a Pentecostalism in Africa, but there's also smaller Pentecostalism in Ghana and Nigeria. There is a Pentecostalism in Europe, but there's also Pentecostalism in Britain and in France and so on, right? So these kinds of local concepts might be quite helpful. I also think it's important to think about and rethink our questions because the movements are changing themselves. We talked about the history. So there is classical Pentecostalism, Neo-Pentecostalism, third wave, and so on. So the questions that we have asked to the classical Pentecostals, they're not going to have the same answers anymore. And even when we think of the new forms of Pentecostalism, migrant forms of Pentecostalism, we have Africans here in England, and they were once a first generation immigrants, and they maybe did things in the way they were used to and tried to live in a new context. But now we have a second and third generation of these immigrants. They're no longer African, they're now British, and so they do things differently. Again, we need new categories for them as well. And I think the history of scholarship of teaching on this has told us these errors, and we need to make sure that we're sensitive to them.

SPEAKER_00 55:32

And that's a real challenge for us because I think how do we do that in a way that's accessible to teenagers? But actually, there's some work coming out at the moment from Oak National. They just have a human being and they're like, you know, my name is so-and-so, and I'm from here, and I am A, and I think blah, blah, blah. And then you have another little character who has a little voice bubble who says something, and then that will help you to engage that diversity between and within religious traditions in a way that is accessible, I think, for teenagers. Is there anything more you want to say about critically evaluating the questions that we ask?

SPEAKER_03 56:07

Obviously, there's a lot more to say just thinking that the movements themselves have not expressed who they are to their own satisfaction.

SPEAKER_00 56:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:15

So who are we as outsiders to come with ideas and categories and thinking they done it, right?

SPEAKER_00 56:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 56:22

But definitely there are opportunities. And that's why I love doing this, and that's why I do this kind of work, because they are still in development. So there are a lot of opportunities for us to engage this. Unlike, may I be biased here, unlike other theological or religious studies topics, right? It's about the room that we have to evaluate them. So you could go to the psychology of religion to understand Pentecostal behavior. If you're a historian, you love history, you could revise our histories. If you're interested in political science, you could analyze the political behavior of these Christians, right? If you're an ethicist, you could look at the moral views of these Christians. If you're a social scientist, you could do a lot of empirical work. So there's so many opportunities for you to engage and to become a scholar of Pentecostal charismatic Christians. That's really what makes this exciting.

SPEAKER_00 57:17

And actually that really suits the sort of multidisciplinary nature of RE in the 21st century that we are trying to look at movements or beliefs or whatever it might be through those different lenses. Because actually each thing is doesn't exist in a vacuum. We are all influenced by our own psychology, by our experiences, by our culture, by the time and the era that we're living in. So that's really helpful.

SPEAKER_03 57:40

Yeah, and I think you see that at the center uh for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies that I direct these are primarily doctoral students, but they come from all across the world. I teach students that are, you know, I have meetings with them that some of them are in Korea, they are 10 hours ahead, and then I have a conversation in the evening with someone who is in Hawaii, so they are 10 hours in the other direction. And when we're meeting here, you know, they are Africans, they are Asians, they are Europeans, they have all kinds of experiences, all kinds of age groups. They were once Catholic, some of them were not. So there's so many varieties here that brings them together, their interests together. That's really what makes that field so exciting.

SPEAKER_00 58:23

Oh, brilliant. And as we're just bringing this sort of conversation to a close, any final thoughts?

SPEAKER_03 58:27

Yeah, I think that's where I would want to end, really. Yeah in the sense of saying take advantage of these opportunities, come into a field where you can leave an impression by doing something that hasn't been done yet. And that kind of really what makes religious education exciting. It's not just learning what has been done, not just understanding the history and the categories that make things work, but also seeing and being challenged by movements where they don't quite fit and they're different, and they challenge us to come up with new things, to be inventive. And that's really, I think, what suits me and I think a lot of other people enjoy as well.

SPEAKER_00 59:05

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_03 59:06

Yeah, maybe just more playful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

Engaging with them.

SPEAKER_00 59:09

I think we as RE teachers love the messiness of RE. We love that things don't fit into boxes, and and if we liked that, we probably would have become, you know, a maths teacher. Yeah. Where one plus one equals two, you know. And off going, a question I ask all my guests is that if you could wake up tomorrow and one thing was different about the world, what would you want it to be?

SPEAKER_03 59:29

Well, there's a lot of things I'd like the world to be different, uh, and but if we're staying on the topic, one thing that I haven't mentioned is that I'm not just a scholar of Pentecostalism, I'm actually also a practicing Pentecostal. So what Pentecostals do typically is they give a testimony, and that's just part of sharing their story, right? So it's part of their way of doing this. So I grew up Catholic, but I met God, that's the way of putting it. I had an experience, a spiritual experience, meeting God who called me to minister. And it was a radical confrontation with my previous beliefs and my experiences. I wasn't able to comprehend what had happened here, is this God? What does God want? How can this happen? How can you have this kind of experience? So that was really difficult for me to integrate into my Catholic beliefs and into my practices. And it was the Pentecostals that I met, I happened to meet almost accidentally, who could explain to me what happened, what I had experienced. It was like their story and my story made sense. I think so. My wish would be that tomorrow what we do is listen more to our stories, that what we have experienced and how we've made sense of what we'd experienced. And I think it will lead to shared experiences, to shared discoveries and in a form of reconciling with others that leads to new understanding. I think that will make a real difference in religious education. That we're not just trying to comprehend ideas and concepts and methods, but that we're also listening to the story that different faiths and different Christians have, especially when they are movements that are young and unknown and perhaps a bit eccentric, that we learn to listen first, and out of that can come a whole lot of new understanding, perhaps even your own personal transformation. And that makes, of course, a lot of difference in the way that we study from then on.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:29

And actually, Jesus came along, new movement, incredibly radical, lots of criticism from the established religion and established authorities at the time, and you know, it's kind of it's lasted a bit and it's grown a bit.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:43

It has, indeed, yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:45

Wolfgang, I do have to ask you what your experience was, your kind of spiritual experience. Do you mind telling us the story?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:52

Yeah, so I have a previous life, so to speak, where I had a career in Japanese studies, and so I worked for the Japanese government in Japan, and it was a quite stressful job. So what I used to do in the evenings was I would go for walks in the dark. I lived in Okinawa, so there's lots of sugarcane fields, and I used to walk through the sugarcane fields just to get away from everybody. And I've just had God speak to me. I had heard a voice saying, Wolfgang, I want you to minister. Now, here's the funny thing. This is what you have to keep in mind. I'm German, and here I am in Japan. Yes. And there's nobody there who speaks English where I was, and certainly no one who would call me Wolfgang, and I didn't know what this was. Why not speak to me in German? And what in the world does the word minister mean? So I had to go home, had to get a dictionary, look it up, and I looked up minister. I still have the dictionary, I still have it underlined. It has just an explanation, and it refers to Ministry of Defense. You know, of course I knew instinctively that was not what God was calling me for, right? So I had to now find out what does ministry mean? And so I went to other Christians and said, What's ministry? And I had to learn from Pentecostals. What's ministry? And in a way of speaking, I'm still on this journey of following that call, learning what it means to minister and being a minister. Now that has become my academic profession. It is in that sense a ministry, but that's what I was confronted with and had to understand. So the story of Pentecost, the story of other Christians has helped me understand that God is still very much alive, that God is still calling out to me, to others, and has something for us to do. And we can understand that when we look at the broader patterns of the way that God is revealed. So that's something that has that has put a stamp on my life, if you will. And I wish that others would have a similar kind of story to tell and share. And I'm sure they do.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

Even if they don't have a story, listen to the stories of others. That's right. Be curious, you know, be curious about other people's lives and listen to their stories. Wolfgang, thank you. Oh my goodness, it's just been a really marvellous chat. I've loved it. And I think it Nikki McGee, I'm just gonna name and shame you because it feels like this episode is right up your street, so message me. So I know that she's a regular listener to the podcast and she loves things like this. Particularly, I think Nikki McGee, you tell me if I'm wrong. The bit about the word scandal and scandalous. I think that will be her little uh golden nugget that she's gonna take away. It's been a really rich talk, Wolfgang. Thank you so much for your wisdom, for your expertise, and then also for sharing your personal story with us as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:37

Yeah, you're quite welcome. It was my privilege.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:40

My name is Louisa Jane Smith, and this has been the RE podcast. The podcast for those of you who think R.E. is boring, but it's not. It's messy and it helps us to connect to people. So let's tell our stories and provide a platform where our students can engage in the stories of others. But thank you so much for listening to us or the life out of you.