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Toronto Blessing": a Sociological Perspective

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Toronto Blessing 43 Inspecting the Fruit of the "Toronto Blessing": A Sociological Perspective Margaret M. Poloma By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn- bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down andan? thrown intot/tfc the fire. Thus,TTtMj, by theirfAetr?rMtfyoH fruit you willwt7/ recognizereco?/tt?e them. (Matt. 7:16-20; NIV) - . Whatever else they are, revivals are messy at least they are messy before they are cleaned up by their theological descendants and sanitized by secular scholars in the academy. The so-called "Toronto Blessing" (many of its proponents prefer the nomenclature of "The Father's Blessing") - with its blatant display of somatic manifesta- tions and emotional outbursts - leaves many left-brained rationalists . dismayed and often embarrassed by this latest Pentecostal-Charismatic (P/C) outpouring. Some P/Cs have joined anti-P/C evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in denouncing the renewal that began in North America in January, 1994 - a revitalization of the P/C move- ment that has impacted hundreds of American churches (including the Brownsville Assembly of God) and has now spread around the globe. American Pentecostalism, having worked hard to move from sect- like to bona fide denominational status, is understandably wary of the Blessing that seemingly undermines recent Pentecostal gains in respectability. Many are at a loss as to how to judge the Blessing with- out expending a great deal of personal energy to gather the necessary information to make an informed decision. The charges and the coun- tercharges about the latest phase of the P/C movement are too often limited to simplistic biblical "proof-texting," which has found fertile ' soil in both radio airwaves and the Internet While sometimes infor- mative and intellectually stimulating, the charges and countercharges lHank Hanegraaff, often referred to as the "Bible Answer Man," has been a foe of the Toronto Blessing and the so-called "Laughing Revival" of Rodney Howard- Browne since the inception of the renewal. For Hanegraaff's book-length critique see Unmasking the Truth Behind the World Wide Counterfeit Revival (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1997). See also James A. Beverley, Revival Wars. A Critique of Counterfeit Revival (Evangelical Research Ministries, 1997) and Holy Laughter and the Toronto Blessing (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995). 44 are more likely to be provocative and even titillating than facilitators of sound discourse. Following the admonition of Jesus to "test the fruit" as well and the similar litmus test suggested by William James in his classic work, Varieties of Religious Experience, I sought to move beyond the critical rhetoric and to employ my training as a sociologist to inspect the fruit of the Toronto Blessing. Using participant observation, structured inter- views, the Internet and two major surveys, I sought to study empirical- ly the consequences of the unusual outpouring of the Spirit for which the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (TACF) in Ontario, Canada, has become the epicenter.2 Methodology and Sampling Although the larger study involves a triangulation of methodolo- gies, I will rely primarily on the results of two interrelated surveys col- lected from pilgrims to TACF. The first was a sample of 918 respon- dents who completed a questionnaire distributed through one of the fol- lowing sources: the August 1995 issue of Spread the Fire, the October 1995 "Catch the Fire Again" conference program, and the November, 1995 "Healing School" program. Approximately 25 percent of the respondents included supplemental information through letters, diary entries, e-mail messages and tape cassettes. This qualitative data is used throughout this monograph to illustrate and help further describe the "hard" data reported in the responses to the survey questions. Questionnaires were returned from 20 different countries, with the majority of the responses coming from the United States (54%), Canada (26%) and England ( 11 %). Although these three countries do supply most of the visitors to TACF, other countries - especially non- - English speaking Asian ones are noticeably missing from this sam- ple. Visitors represented over 40 denominations and sects, with more than one in four (28%) indicating their church is either independent, nondenominational or interdenominational. Twenty percent (20%) of the respondents are members of Pentecostal denominations or sects, 15 percent are either Anglican (Canada or United Kingdom) or Episcopal (U.S.A.), 11 percent are members of Vineyard Christian Fellowships, 2For a sociological discussion of the Toronto Blessing framed in Thomas O'Dea's institutional dilemmas within charismatic movements, see Margaret M. Poloma, "'The 'Toronto Blessing': Charisma, Institutionalization, and Revival," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36 (June 1997): 257-271. For a comparison and contrast of the Toronto movement with the Pensacola outpouring, see Margaret M. Poloma, "The Spirit Movement in North America at the Millennium: From Azusa Street to Toronto, Pensacola and Beyond," Journal of Pentecostal Theology 12 (April 1998): 83-107. .
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