Eucharisma: A New Venue for Thoughtful Pentecostal & Charismatic Writing

Earlier this week, the second issue of Eucharisma was published (and I've got an article in it on praying the name of Jesus). I haven't had time to say much about Eucharisma yet (or about anything else this year, for that matter!), but I do want to highlight it. T.M. Suffield and I have launched Eucharisma as a forum to encourage us within the UK Pentecostal and Charismatic world to think deeply, read deeply, and be rooted in the Christian tradition. So, we aim to publish thoughtful theological writing from across the UK Charismatic, Pentecostal, and Continuationist scene. That's a wide scope, so we won't always agree. Yet, within our disagreements, we want to encourage thoughtful dialogue.

Unfortunately, Pentecostals and Charismatics tend to have a (sometimes deserved) bad reputation when it comes to careful theological thought. I hope both on this blog and in my published work elsewhere that I've helped demonstrate that that need not be the case. But I'm not alone, and so in Eucharisma we want to help draw together voices from across the various spheres of UK continuationist thought (for, all too often, we're only familiar with people within our own sphere). 

So, Eucharisma is a theological ‘journal’ aimed at Pentecostal and Charismatic churches and Pastors in the UK. (It's not a scholarly journal — we're not writing for academics, but for the thought-life of the church.) There are, unfortunately, very few opportunities for people to write theologically in Pentecostal/Charismatic spaces. Yet, writing—and engaging with good theological writing—helps to shape the thinking of our future thinkers, teachers, and leaders.

So much writing in the Charismatic/Pentecostal world is either at such a high level that it is only accessible to those who have long been embedded in the world of academia, or else it's severely lacking in theological and biblical grounding. Yet, most of our churches and pastors lie in between these two extremes. So Eucharisma is for them. We're still finding our feet and growing into how to best do that, but hopefully there'll be something in the first two issues that will engage your interest and your thoughts.

Issue 1 came out earlier this year. Issue 2 came out this week. You can read any of the articles online or download the whole issue as a free PDF from our site. 

And, if you're interested in praying the name of Jesus, have a look at my article which draws on our Pentecostal forbears and the Jesus Prayer tradition earlier in the history of the church. 

Please do spread the word. And if you've got some interesting thoughts for an article, you can propose it to us here.