Comments on: Pentecost: The Third Great Day

By: John H

John H — Tue, 13 Jun 2006 11:50:53 +0000

I think wnpaul has probably hit the nail on the head. In the UK, Pentecost (or “Whitsun”, as it used to be known) has plummeted in its cultural importance since it ceased to be a public holiday about 30 years ago – to the extent that Walsingham hosted a “national pilgrimage” recently that took place on the bank holiday weekend before Pentecost, rather than (as might have seemed more logical) at Pentecost itself.

Previously it was quite a significant weekend – my mother remembers it was traditional to get new clothes to celebrate Whitsun (so that young girls would compare one another’s “Whitty dresses”).

Now, Pentecost is probably celebrated with the greatest fervour in charismatic churches, which is a shame, because it feeds into the perception (fostered by many charismatics) that only charismatics/pentecostals pay any real attention to the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit was largely ignored by the church until 1906 – a charge that the very existence of Whitsun in the church calendar should refute.

By: wnpaul

wnpaul — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 22:13:48 +0000

I’m not really surprised at the treatment and interpretation evangelicals give to this feast and event.
In my experience serious evangelicals do not celebrate Christmas and Easter for their intrinsic value and meaning either, but because in our culture they still provide a religious talking point. Pentecost seen theologically doesn’t, so it’s ignored. That also explains why the have no problem with dropping Christmas Day services in favor of evangelistic Christmas Eve services. And less serious evangelicals only celebrate Christmas and Easter as cultural ‘holidays’, and there Pentecost qualifies even less.

By: Michael Spencer

Michael Spencer — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 19:58:11 +0000

Touchstone Magazine publishes a wonderful Christian calendar, with superb art. I get it as a Christmas gift. It’s cheap now, and ther 07s willbe along soon.

http://www.fsj.org/newsite/pages/cal.html

By: Caine

Caine — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 18:14:31 +0000

To further illustrate your point, Michael, a few years past, I bought one of those “Christian” calendars on the market. You know, the ones with the modern Christian poster art illustrating each month of the year.

To my surprise, the feast of Penecost was not even marked on the calendar. It had each and every secular holiday and Christmas and Easter, but no Pentecost! I even wrote to the publishers asking about the issue, but got no response. I check each year and the feast has yet to be added.

And now my favorite liturgical calendar is no longer being sold at my favorite bookstore, so I am stuck with these pablum calendars each year that I have to manually mark with the Chritian holidays.

Truly an odd situation.

By: K.W. Leslie

K.W. Leslie — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 15:58:41 +0000

As a Pentecostal, I have to say you’re right on about how we overemphasize the Spirit’s gifts. The Spirit gives gifts to whomever He wants, and this shouldn’t make us proud, but humble, because we both recognize our unworthiness to bear His gifts, and our unworthiness to accept praise for something He does. The fact that many Pentecostals brag about their gifts just goes to show us that the Spirit is still willing to work with unworthy, immature people (and that is, ultimately, a good thing) but perhaps we should look at the other side of it: Perhaps the lack of mature Spirit-empowered people is because a lot of the so-called “mature Christians” suffer from pride in their maturity and orthodoxy, as if THAT wasn’t likewise a gift from God.

Oddly enough, my church didn’t even mention that it was Pentecost Sunday. It rarely does. We don’t celebrate the day so much as we celebrate the Person in our midst on a daily basis.