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Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
The Manila Healing Revival and the First Pentecostal Defections in the Methodist Church in the Philippines
Luther Jeremiah Oconer
Graduate Division of Religion, Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue,
Madison, NJ 07940, USA
loconer@drew.edu
Abstract
This article examines the arrival of the worldwide healing revival movement in Manila in the mid-1950s and its role in the first Pentecostal defections in the Methodist Church in the Philippines. It seeks to answer why, despite the presence of other Protestant denominations in Manila at that time, Philippine Methodism became a fertile seedbed for divine healing revival- ism, I argue that Methodists’ conspicuous participation in the healing revivals was part of a larger Holiness revival impulse that had pervaded their denomination decades earlier, when pneumatological language or, most specifi cally, emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit was the central motif. T us, the turn of Filipino Methodist schismatics to divine healing and eventually Pentecostalism did not emerge in a vacuum, but can be seen as a trajectory remi- niscent of the birth of the modern Pentecostal Movement.
Keywords
healing revival, Lester F. Sumrall, Ruben V. Candelaria, David M. Candelaria, Manila Bethel Temple, Taytay Methodist Church
Introduction
Although the Assemblies of God (AG) oficially began work in the Philippines in 1926, it was not until the 1950s that the Pentecostal denomination began experiencing rapid growth. Arthur Tuggy notes that from a membership of about 2,200 in 1952, it registered a phenomenal 500- percent increase by 1958.1 This period of growth began with the arrival of renowned AG pastor
1
Arthur L. Tuggy, The Philippine Church: Growth in a Changing Society (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1971), 151-52. Also quoted in Joseph L. Suico, “Pente- costalism in the Philippines,” in Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia, ed. Allan Anderson and Edmond Tang (Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2005), 352.
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009 DOI: 10.1163/157007409X418158
1
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67
Lester F. Sumrall in Manila. Sumrall’s aggressive evangelistic campaign in the city opened the way for the arrival of a number of prominent healing evange- lists who led thousands of converts to Pentecostalism with their “salvation- healing” crusades in the city. This ushered in what Sumrall would later call the “Great Philippine Revival,”2 which, for the sake of discussion, I will call the “Manila healing revival.”
A signifi cant footnote to the success of the revival was that, to some extent, it took place at the expense of the Methodist Church in Manila. Dwight Stevenson first reported in 1955 that the AG “proselytized heavily” from the Methodist Church in Manila.3 When AG evangelist Clifton Erickson con- ducted his crusade in Manila in 1954, two prominent Methodist ministers were designated to interpret for him: Ruben V. Candelaria, superintendent of the Manila district, and his cousin David M. Candelaria, a pastor from Taytay, Rizal, a town located east of Manila. Such cooperation and friendship between Sumrall and the Candelarias, however, was censured by the Methodist leader- ship, which led to the Candelarias’ defection to Pentecostalism. Ruben became the first Filipino pastor of Bethel Temple, a church built by Sumrall in 1953. Later renamed Cathedral of Praise, it is one of the largest, if not the largest Pentecostal church edifi ce in the Philippines.
4
David, on the other hand, along with over half of his members, in 1956 formed the Taytay Methodist Com- munity Church, an independent “evangelical full-gospel” congregation, which has maintained cordial relations with the AG through the years.5
See also Floyd T. Cunningham, “Diversities within Post-War Philippine Protestantism,” The Mediator 5, no. 1 (2004): 106.
2
See, for example, front cover of Lester F. Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles (Springfi eld, MO: Rev. Clifton O. Erickson, 1954).
3
Dwight E. Stevenson, Christianity in the Philippines: A Report on the Only Christian Nation in the Orient (Lexington, KY: College of the Bible, 1955), 20. A recent analysis further suggests that in the ensuing years, especially in the 1990s and onwards, non-Catholic Pentecostalism “grew at the expense of Protestant mainline denominations.” See Christl Kessler and Jürgen Rüland, “Responses to Rapid Social Change: Populist Religion in the Philippines,” Pacifi c Aff airs 79, no. 1 (2006): 80-81.
4
Lester F. Sumrall and Tim Dudley, The Life Story of Lester Sumrall: The Man, the Ministry, the Vision (Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press, 2003), 177-78.
5
Eleazer E. Javier, “The Pentecostal Legacy: A Personal Memoir,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 8, no. 2 (2005): 293; Stephen Strang, “Sumrall, Lester Frank,” in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas, rev. and exp. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 1109-10. See also Glenn Cruz, interview by author, digital recording, May 19, 2005, Taytay City, Philippines; David M. Candelaria, interview by author, digital recording, May 19, 2005, Taytay City, Philippines.
2
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
This article examines the Manila healing revival, the Methodists’ involve- ment in it, and the circumstances surrounding the Methodists’ defection to Pentecostalism. It also seeks to answer why Methodists, of all Protestants pres- ent in Manila at that time, fi gured prominently in the AG healing campaigns. I argue here that their conspicuous involvement was part of a wider impulse within the denomination to revisit the revival practices of the past. Further- more, pneumatological language or emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit, which lay at the core of the healing revival, had some afinities with the brand of revivalism that pervaded Philippine Methodism decades earlier.
Lester Sumrall and the Manila Healing Revival
T ough the beginning of the AG in the Philippines is usually traced from the work of Benjamin Caudle, who arrived in Manila in 1926, historians give more credit to the role of balikbayans or returned Filipino immigrants who had encountered Pentecostalism in the United States. The successful work begun by these indigenous pioneers, particularly in a number of towns in the provinces of Antique, Cotabato, Iloilo, Ilocos Sur, Ilocos Norte, and Pangas- inan throughout the 1930s, resulted in the oficial establishment of the AG in the country in 1940, and consequently in the infl ux of American missionar- ies in the years that followed.6 The initial membership gathered by the denom- ination soon experienced phenomenal growth in the 1950s, as suggested by Eleazar E. Javier, as it began shifting its sights on Manila and other urban centers throughout the country.7
At the forefront of this shift was Lester Frank Sumrall (1913-1996), who left his large pastorate in South Bend, Indiana to heed the call to Manila. He initially took over the work at Glad Tidings Revival Center in a rented mar- ketplace in Maypajo, Caloocan, Rizal soon after his arrival with his family in
6
Rodrigo C. Esperanza, a former Methodist exhorter from Pozorrubio, Pangasinan was one of the balikbayan pioneers. See Trinidad C. Esperanza, “The Assemblies of God in the Philip- pines” (unpublished M.A. thesis, Fuller T eological Seminary, 1965), 17-51; Trinidad E. Seleky, “Six Filipinos and One American: Pioneers of the Assemblies of God in the Philippines,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Theology 4, no. 1 (2001); Eleazer E. Javier, “The Pentecostal Legacy,” in Supplement to Chapters in Philippine Church History, ed. Anne C. Kwantes (Manila: OMF Literature, Inc., 2002), 63-73. See also David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World T eir Parish (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), 164; Cunningham, “Post-War Philippine Protestantism,” 62-63.
7
Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 299; idem, “Pentecostal Legacy,” 71. Cf. Elijah Jong Fil Kim, “Fili- pino Pentecostalism in a Global Context,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Theology 8, no. 2 (2005): 237.
3
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July 1952.8 T ree months later, Sumrall launched an aggressive campaign in Manila by organizing the “salvation and divine healing” crusade of healing evangelist A.C. Valdez, Jr. at the San Lazaro race track from November 23 to December 7. This event, which Sumrall called “the first largest protracted meet- ing” in the Philippines, gathered an estimated crowd of twenty thousand and brought hundreds of individuals to an experience of salvation and healing.9
The success of the Valdez salvation-healing revival not only helped increase the membership at the Maypajo Revival Center, but also generated the needed support base for the establishment of the Manila Bethel Temple, Sumrall’s church-planting project in the heart of Manila, which he hoped would be a “great evangelistic center.”10 By January 1953 Sumrall was able to secure $20,000 from the AG Missionary Department to purchase a jungle lot on Taft Avenue, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the city. Situated in the govern- ment district of Manila, the lot also lay in close proximity to prime Protestant churches, the nearest being Central Church, the largest Methodist church in the Philippines. Sumrall also bought an old B-17 hangar in Manila to reuse its steel for the construction of the temple.11
It was during the preparation phase for Bethel that Sumrall fi gured promi- nently in the deliverance of Clarita Villanueva, a female inmate at the Bilibid Prison in Manila. Villanueva made national headlines throughout May of that year as she struggled with demonic possession, or with “The T ing,” as the media named it.12 Mainstream media coverage of Villanueva’s successful deliver- ance not only made Sumrall a “household name” but also won some degree of favor for the ministry of the AG in the city. In fact, a grateful Mayor Arsenio Lacson passed a special ordinance granting them a free building permit for the construction of Bethel Temple — the first Protestant church to be given such.
13
8
For Sumrall’s call and arrival in Manila, see Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles, 15-17; Lester F. Sumrall, The Real Manila Story (South Bend, IN: Lester Sumrall Evangelistic Association, 1964), 6-8. See also Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story, 146-48; Esperanza, “Assemblies of God,” 48. For a short profi le on Sumrall, see, for example, Strang, “Sumrall, Lester Frank.” 1109-10.
9
Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles, 25. Floyd M. Horst, “Hundreds Saved in Manila,” The Pentecostal Evangel (February 15 1953), 6.
10
Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles, 29.
11
Ibid., 22-30; Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story, 153. See also Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 301.
12
For newspaper coverage and witness accounts detailing Clarita Villanueva’s ordeal and encounter with Sumrall, see Lester F. Sumrall, The True Story of Clarita Villanueva: A Seventeen- Year Old Girl Bitten by Devils in Bilibid Prison, Manila, Philippines (Manila: Lester F. Sumrall, 1955), 7-108; Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story, 161-73.
13
Lester F. Sumrall, “Manila Calls for Help!” The Pentecostal Evangel (November 1, 1953), 6; Sumrall, Clarita Villanueva, 109-10; Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story, 173-74.
4
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
In addition, the event laid the groundwork for a much bigger salvation-heal- ing revival by visiting evangelist Clifton Erickson, a rising fi gure in the healing movement, who arrived from a successful campaign in Chile.14 Erickson’s meeting was staged in the very heart of Manila — at the Roxas Park situated in front of City Hall, a location that the mayor granted to Sumrall for free.15
Beginning in the third week of January 1954, the “great revival of Roxas Park,” as Sumrall later termed it, attracted nightly crowds estimated at between thirty and fi fty thousand, or a cumulative attendance of approximately a quar- ter of a million throughout the six-week gathering. Sumrall also reported that nearly ten thousand came forward “for a prayer of salvation,” and thousands crowded around the platform to get healed each night. Of the unspecifi ed number of people who testifi ed to their healing, Sumrall documented sixty- one cases in his Modern Manila Miracles, including that of popular actor Car- los Padilla, who was healed of paralysis.16 Erickson also held preparatory afternoon services, first in Maypajo and then, beginning on January 25, in Bethel. T us, when it opened for its first Sunday service a few days later, Manila Bethel Temple, more popularly known as the “Christ is the Answer Church,” was poised to be not only the largest Protestant Church but the fast- est growing church in the country. On its fourth Sunday, the closing Sunday of the Erickson campaign, 2,396 individuals reported for Sunday school.17 The campaign also took the unusual step of initially conducting services in four diff erent languages, Tagalog, Ilocano, English, and Chinese — a strategy similar to its more established Protestant neighbors.18
Upon his return with his family to Indiana, Sumrall was replaced by Ernest Reb of the Oriental Missionary Crusade. In January 1955, evangelist Ralph Byrd of Atlanta, Georgia, began a three-month healing revival campaign in
14
Clifton Erickson was among the “rising revivalists” who attended the first healing conven- tion organized in December 1949 by Gordon Lindsay of the Voice of Healing. See David E. Harrell, Jr., All T ings Are Possible: The Healing and Charismatic Revivals in Modern America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 55. For an account of Erickson’s call to Manila, see Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles, 18-19.
15
Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles, 110; idem, The Real Manila Story , 21-22; idem, Clarita Villanueva, 110.
16
Sumrall, The Real Manila Story , 20. See documented healings in Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles, 65-100. See Ruben Candelaria’s report in Oficial Record Sixteenth Session Philippine Annual Conference of the Methodist Church 1954, 53. Hereafter designated as PAC followed by the conference year.
17
Sumrall, The Real Manila Story , 23; idem, Modern Manila Miracles , 46; Glenn Dunn, Les- ter F. Sumrall, and Robert McAlister, “Revival in Manila,” The Pentecostal Evangel (March 21, 1954, 8.
18
Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles , 42-43.
5
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ten cities throughout the country. Byrd is credited with introducing the “baptism of the Holy Spirit” as evidenced by glossolalia into the work of the denomination in the country.19 In 1956, Sumrall returned with Oral Roberts, who conducted meetings, again held at Roxas Park. Other prominent healing evangelists who conducted similar campaigns in Manila during the period include Rudy Cerullo, T.L. Osborn, and others.20
It should be noted that the Manila healing revival was part of a much bigger movement, one that David Harrell identifi es as the “Healing Revival” move- ment that lasted from 1947 to 1958, and brought worldwide prominence to a number of independent healing evangelists, such as William Branham, Oral Roberts, and others.21 The series of salvation-healing revivals in Manila during the period were the most ambitious form of open-air meetings ever attempted on Philippine soil. T ey simply represented a great leap from the more local- ized evangelistic meetings more commonly organized by Methodist, Holi- ness, Pentecostal, and other Protestant churches in the country at that time. Furthermore, these events launched, on a much larger scale, a new form of revivalism in the Philippines by infusing the standard revival themes of salva- tion and holiness in Christ with the message of divine healing as its “defi nite doctrinal content,” to borrow Michael McClymond’s phrase.22 T us, it can be said that these meetings were the progenitors of the mass healing move- ment in the Philippines, which now fi nds preeminence mostly among Catho- lic Charismatic groups and indigenous Pentecostal churches in the country.23
19
See Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 292; Esperanza, “Assemblies of God,” 49. This claim is substantiated in “Signs Follow Preaching of the Word in the Philippines,” The Pentecostal Evangel (March 27, 1955), 7; Glenn M. Horst, “I Saw Revival in the Philippines,” The Pentecostal Evan- gel (July 31, 1955), 6.
20
Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 298; Esperanza, “Assemblies of God,” 49; Lester F. Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle: A Story of the Great Philippine Revival (South Bend, IN: World Temples, 1962), 9.
21
Harrell, All T ings Are Possible , 5-6. It is understood that the healing movement is diff erent from the Latter Rain movement, a parallel movement during the same period. Both movements were rejected by most Pentecostal denominations. See Richard Riss, “The Latter Rain Movement of 1948,” Pneuma: The Pentecostal Theology 4, no. 1 (1982): 33. See also Donald W. Dayton, “The Rise of the Evangelical Healing Movement in Nineteenth Century America,” Pneuma: The Pentecostal Theology 4, no. 1 (1982): 2.
22
Michael J. McClymond, “Issues and Explanations in the Study of North American Revivalism,” in Embodying the Spirit: New Perspectives on North American Revivalism, ed. Michael J. McClymond (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2004), 11.
23
One of the largest of these groups is the Roman Catholic El Shaddai movement. See, for example, Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 67.
6
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
Inasmuch as the Manila healing revival provided a signifi cant turning point in the history of the AG in the Philippines, it also gives a premise for the defec- tion of Ruben Candelaria and other Methodists to Pentecostalism.
The Dove, the Eagle, and Methodists Caught Up in the Revival
In his published accounts of the Manila healing revival, Sumrall consistently recognized the signifi cant contributions of Ruben V. Candelaria (1909-1989), superintendent of the Manila District. For example, in his The True Story of Clarita Villanueva published in 1955, Sumrall acknowledged that “one of the greatest blessings” that came to him as a result of the deliverance of Clarita Villanueva was the friendship of Ruben.24 A year later, Sumrall released A Methodist Minister Receives Christ’s Promise and Power, Ruben’s personal tes- timony and retelling of the events leading up to his “Pentecost.”25 In The Dove and the Eagle, a booklet released in 1962, Sumrall detailed the life and role of Ruben the “Dove” and his cousin David the “Eagle” in the Manila healing revival. The book’s title was a reiteration of the prophetic declaration uttered by Oral Roberts at the Roxas Park healing revival in 1956:
“Ruben, you are a Dove.” T en with his hand upon David’s head he said, “David you are an Eagle; you have within you the spirit of an Eagle. As Ruben, with his Dove- spirit, longs for companionship, so you with your Eagle-spirit, long for the solitude of high places. You are both blessed of God and anointed of God to perform your diff er- ent tasks.”26
Ruben held undeniable stature in Philippine Methodism. Born April 27, 1909 in Nueva Ecija, he left his career as a public school teacher to become a Methodist preacher in 1931. After an impressive stint in a number of congregations such as Jaen, Cabanatuan, Taytay, Iba, Tuguegarao, and Tondo, he quickly rose within the ranks of the denomination. In 1950 Bishop José Valencia appointed him superintendent of the Manila District, an area covering twenty-seven churches mostly in Manila, Quezon City, and Rizal. Ruben also chaired the conference’s committee on worship and taught worship in the denomination’s
24
Sumrall, Clarita Villanueva, 111; idem, The Real Manila Story , 18.
25
Ruben V. Candelaria, A Methodist Minister Receives Christ’s Promise and Power (South Bend, IN: Calvary Press, 1956).
26
As quoted in Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle , 8-9. Special thanks to Rev. Jesse Candelaria, son of David Candelaria, for pointing out the book to me. See Jesse Candelaria, interview by author, e-mail, February 24, 2005, Angeles City, Philippines.
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School of Ministerial Training. In 1952 he held the distinction of being elected the lone ministerial delegate of the Philippine Annual Conference to the Gen- eral Conference in Seattle.27
Despite Ruben’s seemingly secure and rising reputation in Methodism, the nascent Manila healing revival would eventually propel him toward Pentecos- talism. Two events led to this: first, when he learned from Dr. Mercedez Diaz, a longtime acquaintance from Knox Memorial Methodist Church and a crip- ple, how she got healed in the Valdez salvation-healing campaign; and second, when the reputed daily Manila Times reported Clarita Villanueva’s deliverance through Sumrall, to whom the paper also erroneously referred as a “Methodist missionary.”28 T ough he was initially critical of the Valdez meetings, the two events led the Methodist superintendent to yearn for Pentecostal power in his ministry and to personally seek out Sumrall, partially to verify whether Sum- rall was indeed Methodist. T at same day, his desire to meet the renowned missionary was divinely confi rmed when he was asked by the pastor of the Methodist Church in nearby Novaliches for assistance in borrowing from Sumrall Oral Roberts’ healing fi lm Venture into Faith. The two wasted no time, and in that same afternoon they had a cordial meeting with Sumrall in his ofice in Malinta, Polo, Bulacan. Just before they left Ruben professed his desire for power or “blessing” in his ministry, inciting Sumrall to pray for him and lay his hand upon him. T ough it was Ruben’s first exposure to what he called “Pentecostal prayer,” an enduring friendship was forged, or, as Ruben would later put it, they “became brothers.”29
The same friendship paved the way for the oficial entry of the healing revival among Methodists in the Manila District and, to some degree, among some Protestant churches under the Philippine Federation of Christian Churches. After launching the campaign with a preview of Roberts’ fi lm at Knox Memorial Methodist Church, Sumrall and Ruben soon found themselves booked to speak in fi fty-one churches, mostly Methodist, in Manila, Rizal, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Bataan, and Mountain Province. Usually spending three nights in each church, they showed Roberts’ fi lm, “preached deliverance, and prayed
27
José L. Valencia, Under God’s Umbrella (Quezon City: New Day Publishers, 1976), 70-71; Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle , 13-14. See also PAC 1950, 37; PAC 1955, 100-01; PAC 1952, 13-14; PAC 1953, 118; “To Methodist World Confab,” The Philippine Christian Advance , March 1952, 9.
28
Sumrall, Clarita Villanueva , 98-99, 114-16; idem, The Real Manila Story , 15; Candelaria, Methodist Minister , 9-12.
29
Candelaria, Methodist Minister , 12-15; Sumrall, Clarita Villanueva , 116; idem, The Dove and the Eagle, 4. See also Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 91.
8
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
for the sick.” T roughout the campaign they also distributed back issues of Gordon Lindsey’s magazine Voice of Healing, which was the “primary voice” of the worldwide healing revival movement. Ruben reported that no church was large enough to accommodate the crowds that fl ocked to the meetings and that “hundreds and thousands of people were saved and healed.”30 The cam- paign culminated at the Manila District conference held at the Taytay Meth- odist Church from January 7 to 9, 1954, where, in the evenings at the town plaza, Sumrall preached to a crowd of about three thousand and prayed for the sick.31 Tese initial campaigns in the churches, as both Sumrall and Ruben claimed, had “in a large measure, prepared the way” for the success of the Erickson revivals at which Ruben alternated as interpreter with his cousin David, another important fi gure in the revival.
32
David M. Candelaria, Ruben’s first cousin and pastor of the Taytay Methodist Church, also had a remarkable career in the denomination of his birth. Born on April 12, 1912 to a devout Methodist family in San Leonardo, Nueva Ecija, he decided to enter the ministry in 1930 during the Epworth League Christmas Institute. He soon left his job as a government clerk in Cabanatuan and studied at Union T eological Seminary, Manila, for his Bach- elor of T eology. After graduating at the top of his class, he served congrega- tions in Hagonoy and Taytay, which both grew in “leaps and bounds.” For twelve consecutive years, he was secretary of the powerful Committee on Conference Relations in the annual conference. He also served as dean of the Pastor’s School for fi ve years, and taught a number of courses in the School of
Ministerial Training for nine years.33
Early on in the campaign in 1953, when Sumrall preached at the Manila District workers’ meeting at Knox Church, David had what he called his “first experience with Pentecost.” He opened Taytay Methodist Church for a healing revival one Sunday evening in August of that same year. It was while the Rob- erts fi lm was being shown that David experienced divine healing from a lin-
30
PAC 1954, 53; Sumrall, Clarita Villanueva The Dove and the Eagle
16. For more on the Voice of Healing
, 117; idem, The Real Manila Story
, 19-20; idem,
,
, 16; Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story , 175; Candelaria, Methodist Minister
, see James A. Hewett, “Voice of Healing,” in The New Inter- national Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements
M. van der Maas, rev. and exp. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2003), 1178-79.
31
PAC 1954, 53.
idem, Clarita Villanueva
, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard
, 19;
, 2.
32
PAC 1954, 53; Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story , 175; Sumrall, The Real Manila Story
, 117; idem, Modern Manila Miracles
33
PAC 1952, 16; PAC 1953, 116-17; Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle
M. Candelaria, interview.
, 25-26. See also David
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
75
gering illness. Also among those healed were his wife, Felicisima, and their eldest son, Jesse.34 T at meeting thrust the Taytay church not only to the fore- front of the Manila healing revival but also on a trajectory toward Pentecostal- ism. At a time when the AG did not have a signifi cant presence in the Tagalog area, Taytay Methodist Church acted as a quasi-AG church as it actively sup- ported the nascent healing revival. For example, Taytay Methodists “occasion- ally” attended special meetings at Glad Tidings Revival Center in Maypajo. When Sumrall opened “The Healing Hour,” a fi fteen-minute radio program, at the height of the Erickson campaign, the generous Methodist congregation helped foot the bill. It also fi lled “coconut banks” to help raise funds for the construction of the Bethel facility.35
The salvation-healing revival among Methodists and their participation in the Erickson campaign should be seen as part of a broader revival movement within the church, which emerged at a time, as Floyd Cunningham argues, when Methodists “began to give up on their revival methods.”36 As early as 1951, Ruben had campaigned for revivals and, together with most ministers at a worker’s retreat in February, 1953, had already advocated a revivalistic thrust in his district even before he met Sumrall.37 What eventually drew Ruben to Sumrall was his yearning for a recovery of what he termed, in The True Story of Clarita Villanueva, “lost power.” He acknowledged having ini- tially experienced this “power” at a spiritual retreat in Guiguinto, Bulacan in November 1931:
I shall never forget that gathering as long as I live. Dr. J.F. Cottingham, a missionary in the Philippines for almost forty years [sic], spoke on the Power of the Holy Spirit. At about the close of his message, the Holy Spirit fell upon the expectant congregation of about sixty pastors and women workers. The women started crying and wailing as that minister, full of the Holy Spirit, shouted, “Hallelujah!” and “Glory to God!” encouraging us to shout and praise the Lord. And so even the ministers were gripped by the power of the Holy Spirit; and every one of us were crying and praying under the spell of God’s mighty power. All of us went forward to the altar, and for over two
34
David M. Candelaria, “When God Baptized a Methodist Church with the Holy Ghost: The David Candelaria Story,” World Harvest (February 1963), 6-7; Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle, 26-28.
35
Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story, 176; Sumrall, Modern Manila Miracles , 60-63; idem, The Dove and the Eagle, 31; Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 290-92.
36
Cunningham, “Post-War Philippine Protestantism,” 75. Cunningham suggests that this decline in revivalism among Filipino Methodists began in the post-war years. For a comprehen- sive treatment on early Filipino Methodist revivalism, see my previous work, Luther J. Oconer, “Holiness Revivalism in Early Philippine Methodism,” Methodist History 44 no. 2 (2006): 80-93.
37
PAC 1954, 52.
10
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
hours, knelt in prayer and consecration. From that moment on I decided I would stick to the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ and praise His Name.38
Ruben also attributed to this experience his empowerment, while serving as assistant pastor of the Methodist Church in Cabanatuan City, to engage in street preaching and eff ectively conduct an evangelistic meeting at which over one hundred converts joined the church.39
Joshua Frank Cottingham (1874-1939), the district superintendent of the Manila District at that time, essentially functioned as an itinerant Holiness evangelist who blazed the trail with his “Pentecostal services” or culto Pentecos- tal, as Filipino Methodists called them, between 1910 and his return to Indi- ana in 1933.40 T ese “Pentecostal services,” which began in 1891 among American Methodists, actually represented a “climax” in the shift toward the articulation of the doctrine of Holiness in terms of the Pentecostal language of “baptism of the Holy Spirit,” as Donald Dayton reminds us.41 T ey eventually found their way into the Methodist Church in the Philippines through reviv- alist missionaries like Cottingham and became integral to Philippine Method- ist culture from about 1910 until the beginning of the Second World War. For years, Filipino Methodists had loosely understood Pentecostal baptism either in Wesleyan or Keswickian “higher life” categories — an impartation of righ- teousness, a deepening of spiritual life, and empowerment for service.42 Ruben’s introduction to this in 1931 ushered him toward an emboldened preaching ministry a few months later. T us, Ruben’s and other Methodists’ attraction to the healing revival comes as no surprise. Such evolution is reminiscent of what Dayton points out as the tendency for Holiness people who had
38
See Sumrall, Clarita Villanueva, 112-13.
39
Ibid.
40
See Oconer, “Holiness Revivalism in Philippine Methodism,” 92. For examples of Cotting- ham’s revival ministry, see Frank C. Laubach, The People of the Philippines, T eir Religious Progress and Preparation for Spiritual Leadership in the Far East (New York: George H. Doran Co., 1925), 221-22, 29-30.
41
Donald W. Dayton, T eological Roots of Pentecostalism , Studies in Evangelicalism, No. 5. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1987), 91-92. See also Timothy L. Smith, Called Unto Holiness; the Story of the Nazarenes: The Formative Years (Kansas City, MO: Nazarene Publishing House, 1962), 53; idem, “The Holiness Crusade,” in The History of American Methodism , ed. Emory S. Bucke, The T eology and Practices of Methodism: 1876-1919 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1964), 626-27.
42
Dionisio D. Alejandro, From Darkness to Light: A Brief Chronicle of the Beginnings and Spread of Methodism in the Philippines (Quezon City, Philippines: United Methodist Church Philippines Central Conference Board of Communications and Publications, 1974), 33, 104-7; Oconer, “Holiness Revivalism in Philippine Methodism,” 83-92.
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77
adopted “the doctrine of Pentecostal baptism in the Spirit” eventually to embrace divine healing.43
Pentecostal Defections in the Methodist Church and the Aftermath
Despite the positive results of the salvation-healing campaign in Methodist churches, the Methodist leadership was unhappy with the collaboration between Sumrall and the Candelarias. An anticipatory clash would occur at the Philippine Annual Conference in Cabanatuan City in February 1954, just after the Erickson campaign. At one point during the conference, Ruben was put through what he described as a “friendly ‘inquisition’” by Bishop Valencia along with some American missionaries and church dignitaries. T ey ques- tioned, among other things, his friendship and cooperation with Sumrall and Sumrall’s free access to Methodist pulpits. Charged with violating the Meth- odist Book of Discipline, Ruben defended himself by arguing, “If there should be a confl ict between my Bible and my discipline, I would have no dificulty in deciding which one will prevail.” T erefore, because Ruben refused to acquiesce to their demands, the bishop “fi red” him. Ruben fi led for sabbatical leave a few days later.44
T ough his fate had already been decided, Ruben still made a last-ditch eff ort to promote divine healing at that same Annual Conference. In his report before the assembly, he not only reiterated the work of revival in the district and his participation in the Erickson campaign but also insisted on the need for the church to adopt divine healing in its evangelistic eff orts to successfully “beat Roman Catholic propaganda and power so deeply entrenched in the country.” He also reminded them of the episcopal address at the General Conference he attended two years earlier, which encouraged the church to learn from the Pentecostals. Ruben’s recommendations, however, provoked a two-hour heated debate that eventually led to the formation of a special com- mittee of fi ve tasked to study the question on divine healing. Nevertheless, the debate failed to silence Ruben and his supporters. At the evening service, he preached on the same subject using texts from the Letter to the Hebrews and was supported by a number of lay delegates who rose to testify to their own healing. On the last day of the conference, when the committee reported, it recommended eight biblical texts in support of divine healing. T ough the
43
Dayton, T eological Roots of Pentecostalism , 136; idem, “The Rise of the Evangelical,” 7-18. 44
Candelaria, Methodist Minister, 16-22; Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle , 16-21.
12
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
committee clearly afirmed the practice in principle, it failed to address Ruben’s recommendations explicitly. The church leadership was simply not ready to adopt divine healing as an evangelistic tool.45
T us, Ruben’s stellar career in Methodism basically ended at the close of the conference. Left without an appointment and a home, he eventually accepted Sumrall’s off er to take the Tagalog pastorate of the thriving Bethel Temple. He fi led for “voluntary withdrawal” at the annual conference a year later.
46
In January 1955, with the encouragement of visiting evangelist Ralph Byrd and Ernest Reb, the new senior pastor of Bethel, Ruben claimed to an experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit “according to the Bible pattern.” After four days of fasting, he spoke in “another tongue” for an hour and a half after Byrd and Reb prayed for him in his ofice.
47
Four days later, David, who was still connected with the Methodist Church, also experienced his “Pentecostal infi ll- ing” at Reb’s home in Bethel Temple. The Methodist congregation in Taytay would soon follow suit.48
About a week after his Pentecost, David invited Reb, who was joined by some deacons and members from Bethel, to conduct a weeklong revival meet- ing in his church. On February 11, the first evening, an outpouring of the Holy Spirit came to the church, which, according to Javier, who was a member of the church at that time, was “similar to Acts 2.”49 David and other witnesses also claim that a large cloud of smoke billowed from the church building, which prompted about two hundred people to rush to the church, some of whom even carried buckets of water to douse the fi re. When they arrived, what they found instead, according to David, was the “fi re of the Holy Spirit.” About eighty people spoke in tongues for the first time while most of them lay “slain” on the fl oor.
50
The Taytay congregation’s Pentecostal baptism in 1955 increasingly strained its relationship with the Methodist Church. At the annual conference in March, a complaint was fi led against David under Paragraph 921 of the Book
45
PAC 1954, 26, 34, 52-53, 70-71.
46
PAC 1955, 36, 43; Candelaria, Methodist Minister , 22-24; Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle , 21-22.
47
Candelaria, Methodist Minister , 24-32; Sumrall, The Dove and the Eagle , 22-24; “Signs Follow,” 7. Aside from the Candelarias, two other Methodist preachers were reported “fi lled with the Spirit” during Byrd’s meetings at Bethel Temple.
48
Candelaria, “When God Baptized a Methodist Church,” 7; “Signs Follow,” 7.
49
Jesse Candelaria, interview; Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 292; “Signs Follow,” 7.
50
David M. Candelaria, interview; idem, “When God Baptized,” 7; Esther C. Javier, inter- view by author, e-mail, February 9, 2006, Mandaluyong City, Philippines.
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79
of Discipline by one of his members. T ough David was cleared by the investi- gating committee, tensions were far from over.51 A year later, when Bishop Valencia decided to transfer David to another church, the congregation decided to leave the church to form with David the Taytay Methodist Com- munity Church (TMCC), which was incorporated on July 17. A week later, a trial court formed by the conference “expelled” David from the Methodist ministry. Shortly after the defection less than half of the 460-member congre- gation rejoined the Methodist Church under a new pastor. In 1964, they opened a new building just about a block away from the original one. T is also resulted in an acrimonious legal standoff for the church property, which was eventually decided in favor of the Methodist Church. As a result, David’s group ceded the original building and opened a new one in 1972.52
T ough it never joined the AG, the TMCC maintained friendly relations with the Pentecostal denomination for years. For example, young people from the church and its daughter churches have studied at Bethel Bible Institute, some of whom eventually served in the AG with distinction. Prominent among them was Eleazar Javier, Ruben’s son-in-law, who, after being granted release by his home church in 1961, became one of the pastors at Bethel Temple. He later rose within the ranks to serve as General Superintendent of the Philip- pine General Council of the Assemblies of God from 1977 to 1997.53 After his stint with the AG national leadership, he became senior pastor of TMCC. During his pastorate, the church was renamed, “The Messiah Community Church” in 2002.54 But as for the Taytay Methodists who stayed with the Methodist Church, their Pentecostal impulse never evaporated completely as it experienced a resurgence in the 1980s and early 1990s with the ascent of the Charismatic movement in the country.55 The church, which remains Charismatic in orientation to this day, emerged as the fastest growing United
51
PAC 1955, 33-34.
52
David M. Candelaria, interview; idem, “When God Baptized,” 7; PAC 1957, 39, 86; PAC 1959, 26; PAC 1963, 117-18; PAC 1964, 79. In 1963, the Taytay case even reached the Supreme Court, which eventually referred the case to the Court of Appeals. See Taytay Methodist Com- munity Church v. Eladio M. Reyes, G.R. No. L-15731 (Republic of the Philippines Supreme Court 1963), http://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri1963/apr1963/gr_l-15731_1963.html (accessed October 9, 2005).
53
Javier, “Personal Memoir,” 293, 98; idem, “Pentecostal Legacy.”
54
See David M. Candelaria, interview.
55
Although the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement reached the Philippines in the early 1970s, the movement exploded in the late 1970s and early 1980s. See Kessler and Rüland, “Responses to Rapid Social Change,” 78.
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
Methodist Church (UMC) congregation in the Philippines during that period.56 Taytay Methodists were also instrumental in the birth of the Aldersgate United Methodist Renewal Fellowship, a Charismatic Renewal group operating within the UMC in the Philippines, in 1992.57
Even as David and the TMCC continued to battle the Methodist Church for ownership of the Taytay property in the 1960s, Ruben also had a fair share of legal entanglements at Bethel Temple that ironically pitted him against the “A. G. ‘fathers’ in Springfi eld” over what he felt was their unwillingness to hand over leadership to Filipinos at Bethel — a sentiment reminiscent of early Filipino Methodist struggle in the Methodist Church.58 On November 1963, barely two weeks after Ruben was elected to head Bethel as its first Filipino administrator, the Philippines General Council of the AG acted to wrest con- trol of the church by sending two armed guards to prevent the congregation from gathering for services, but this proved futile. Four months later, two crim- inal cases were fi led against Ruben in the Court of First Instance of Manila.
59 Bethel’s tenuous relationship with its parent denomination ultimately came to a head in May 1965, when the General Council, which met for its convention, dissolved the Manila-based Central District that Bethel was under, thereby depriving its workers of their licenses to preach. In response to this, Ruben and the other ministers as well as their supporters resolved to separate by forming the Philippine Assemblies of God, Inc. (PAG), a “self propagating, self-governing, and self-supporting” church, which also elected Ruben as its first General Superintendent.
60
Internal disagreements among the nationals at Bethel mainly involving the status of its missionary pastor, however, eventually forced three groups to leave, including that of Ruben, which began holding its
56
Taytay UMC’s phenomenal growth was from 1982 to 1994. See Minerva V. Amable, “Intensive Study of Church Growth Taytay United Methodist Church” (unpublished M.Div. thesis, Union T eological Seminary, Philippines, 2002), 58. For Taytay UMC’s history, see “The History of the Taytay United Methodist Church” (computer printout, Taytay United Methodist Church, Taytay, Rizal, n.d.).
57
The formation of the Aldersgate movement led Bishop Emerito P. Nacpil of the Manila Episcopal Area to issue a circular in 1993 to “not oppose the charismatic movement within our United Methodist constituency.” Quoted in Jose L. Padang, Primer for United Methodists, 2006 ed. (Tarlac City, Philippines: Marion Walker Scholarship Foundation, Inc., 2006), 79-81.
58
Ruben V. Candelaria, “The A.G. Show in the Philippines Is On,” Bethel Temple 12th Anni- versary, July 1966, 8-9. Cf. Esther C. Javier, interview by author, e-mail, 10 February 2006, Mandaluyong City, Philippines.
59
Ruben V. Candelaria, “God Spoke to Me . . . 12 Years Ago,” Bethel Temple 12th Anniversary, July 1966, 4; Candelaria, “The A.G. Show,” 7-9.
60
Ramon Tupas, “Philippine Assemblies of God, Inc. — A New Movement Is Born,” Bethel Temple 12th Anniversary, July 1966, 10.
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own services in a rented building close to Bethel. Even after Ruben’s death in 1989, the PAG continues to maintain a network of about forty churches in the Southern Tagalog region.61 Manila Bethel Temple, on the other hand, ceased to be connected with the AG but continued to prosper under its American pastor and his successor. Now called Cathedral of Praise, the six-thousand- seater megachurch has been under the helm of Lester Sumrall’s great-nephew David E. Sumrall since 1980.62
As for the Methodist Church, a perusal of the statistics in the Philippines Annual Conference journals from 1955 to 1961 indicates that the Manila District lost more than six hundred members to Pentecostalism. Aside from the Taytay Methodist Church, the hardest hit included Kamuning Methodist Church in Quezon City; Central Church in Manila; and Martyr’s Church in Paranaque.63 Tese losses, however, were overshadowed by gains posted by the district under the leadership of veteran minister Esteban T. Cruz, who replaced Candelaria. As the AG increasingly advanced in Manila and other urban cen- ters around the country, the Methodists turned much of their attention to rural frontiers south of Manila. After launching in 1956 an “unprecedented evangelistic program and missionary enterprise” in southern Luzon and in the Visayan islands, the district planted thirty-six new churches in what was to become the Southern Luzon Visayas District in 1961.64
Conclusion
The Manila healing revival provided not only a signifi cant turning point for the AG in the Philippines, but also the catalyst for the first Pentecostal
61
Esther C. Javier, interview by author, e-mail, February 10, 2006, Mandaluyong City, Philippines.
62
Sumrall and Dudley, Life Story, 177-78. The Cathedral of Praise is cited as one of the ten largest independent Pentecostal churches in the country in Suico, “Pentecostalism in the Philip- pines,” 355. Strang, on the other hand, claims that it is the “largest church in the Philippines with more than 24,000 members,” in Strang, “Sumrall, Lester Frank.” 1110. See also Cathedral of Praise, “Who We Are,” http://cathedralofpraise.com.ph/cop_v3/html/newTo Cop/who WeAre.html (accessed October 11, 2008).
63
PAC 1955, 100-01; PAC 1956, 118-19; PAC 1957, 104-05; PAC 1958, 122-23; PAC 1959, 160-61; PAC 1960, 164-65; PAC 1961, 58. During the period, about 430 members were lost due to “transfer to other denominations.” Interestingly, the statistics never showed any decrease in the Taytay membership even after the break in 1956, except for its Sunday school attendance, which was cut to half in the 1957 record. Since we know that more than 230 members left Taytay, then it is safe to say that about six hundred members were lost.
64
PAC 1963, 63-64; PAC 1965, 77.
16
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L. J. Oconer / Pneuma 31 (2009) 66-84
defections in Philippine Methodist history. It was this brand of revivalism that led a number of Methodists on a trajectory toward Pentecostalism and on a direct collision course with their leaders. In hindsight, the participation of Methodists in the revival is but one manifestation of a much broader eff ort in the denomination to see the church return to its revivalistic roots, which was overshadowed by other concerns after the Second World War. T us, it comes as no surprise that out of the many Protestant groups in Manila at that time, it was the Methodists who prominently supported and welcomed the healing revival in their churches.
This resurgence of revivalism among Filipino Methodists also brings to the fore their Holiness revival past — the rituals of culto Pentecostal, which culti- vated a pneumatological language of Pentecostal baptism mostly among first- generation and second-generation Methodists. It must be understood that the form of revivalism introduced by visiting Pentecostal healing evangelists begin- ning in 1952 carried with it a “doctrinal content” that was not totally alien to a number Filipino Methodists. In particular, the Pentecostal language of “bap- tism of the Holy Spirit,” loosely understood by Methodists as empowerment for service, found some afinity with the message of divine healing as ritualized in the Manila healing revival. It was divine healing that had initially drawn them to the movement. Methodists who participated in this transition eventu- ally found themselves propelled away from the denomination of their birth to Pentecostalism. As they began to experience Pentecostal baptism as evidenced by glossolalia, which was introduced later in the revival, for most of these people there was simply no turning back.
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