The Faith Spectator/All Fall Down
Aikman, David
Toronto T hey line up in ranks like migrant day workers, mostly young or middle-aged, their eyes closed and their hands stretched out almost in supplication. A two-person prayer team approaches,...
...Externally, at least, the blessing is easy enough to All Fall Down by David Aikman The American Spectator November 1995 67 describe...
...And fall they do, almost invariably...
...In this respect, Vineyard is hardly different from thousands of Pentecostal and charismatic churches...
...Sometimes it's quite sudden, as though felled by a blow to the forehead...
...Discount packages are being offered by hotels like the Regal Constellation, which lets a $100 room to Vineyard visitors for only $53, and even throws in a shuttle to the church...
...They come seeking what Protestants around the world know as the "Toronto Blessing...
...Athos and Jerusalem...
...backs, fully conscious and usually quite peaceful, though at times some of them shake a bit or even guffaw with boisterous laughter...
...Marston Price, Episcopal Rector of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Orleans, Massachusetts, claims he fell down three times when he visited the church...
...But in January 1994, something unusual happened at the church's Toronto Airport branch...
...So what is one to make of all this...
...What they are undergoing is not the initiation test of some new California psycho-cult, but the reward, in effect, of having made a Christian pilgrimage—more precisely, a Protestant pilgrimage—to the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church...
...a split has developed between those who believe the "Toronto Blessing" is the prelude to a massive religious revival that could rival the Great Awakening of the 1740s, and others who believe it may be devilish in origin...
...At the end of a normal service of worship, and usually after receiving a personal prayer, many visitors to the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church fall down—under, they believe, the power of the Holy Spirit...
...Ever since Martin Luther they have wrinkled their noses at the idea that God's grace dwells in any particular location...
...Vineyard churches don't advertise themselves as a place for healings, but they do place a lot of emphasis on worship...
...Since January of last year, hundreds of thousands of visitors from the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world have made the trek to this redbrick converted convention center, which sits just two blocks from the Toronto airport and looks inside like a cross between an abandoned factory and a hi-tech aircraft hangar...
...and overseas that actually did start out in California—Anaheim, in fact—as a modest home Bible study in 1977...
...It's an explanation that covers a lot of bases...
...Any hint of gold-digging would quickly discredit the "Blessing" and surely turn off the spigot of visitors...
...Hundreds of Christian visitors from England began arriving in Toronto that spring...
...The Roman Catholics have Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje, and the Orthodox have Mt...
...There is no Cadillac or Mercedes in sight, and no pressure either on visitors to make a contribution...
...Wherever pilgrims tread, the jingle of cash registers follows soon afterwards...
...The phenomenon is especially unusual for Protestants, who have a longstanding prejudice against the notion of pilgrimage...
...For several consecutive nights people were literally falling all over each other, some of them laughing and others trembling...
...John Freel, a Baptist pastor associated with the Toronto Vineyard church...
...Choruses are usually led by guitar rather than organ or piano, an instrumental arrangement attractive to non-denominational boomers and post-boomers...
...We are receiving more and more of an impartation of the Spirit," says Marigold Rivets-Carnac, the wife of an English clergyman...
...But if the church itself is making any money from the endless stream of visitors, it isn't evident...
...Before an hour is out, scores of people are lying on their David Aikman is a former senior correspondent for Time...
...But I don't think the devil is interested in setting people free and giving them a deeper knowledge of Christ...
...media seem hardly to have heard of the Toronto Blessing, but the Canadian and British press have had a field day withthe story...
...Sometimes it's a gentle sliding process, like the fainting fit of a Victorian heroine...
...We are believing for a fresh anointing to go back with...
...For the chamber of commerce, though, every day it continues is another blessing...
...As the main team member prays a few inches in front of their expectant faces, the other positions himself carefully behind them to catch them as they fall backwards...
...Virtually every renewal and revival in church history has been attacked by some part of the Christian church...
...Some people say that the devil does it," explains Rev...
...The catchers ensure that they fall painlessly and avoid hitting the others already lying there...
...For the faithful, the phenomenon is a supernatural visitation, though why Toronto should have been selected is obscure...
...Torontans—in general a blasé and not famously religious lot—seem to hover between pleasure at the bumper tourist income and a bemused awkwardness about the cause for it...
...T he Vineyard Church is part of a loose association of nearly 600 churches in the...
...Others are more effusive...
...With its customary myopia on religious matters, the mainstream U.S...
...The church also teaches that miraculous phenomena—healing, miracles, prophesying, and speaking in tongues—are as present today as they were in New Testament times...
...The phenomenon started to attract both pious and curious from far and wide...
...Once on the carpet they lie there for up to an hour or more, sometimes shaking, crying, or even shouting...
...It was just a deep sense of peace and God's love...
...And here in the U.S...
...Canadian hoteliers say that some 100 new year-round jobs have been created by the Blessing, most in the tourist industry...
...Within months the manifestations had spread to churches in England, Australia, and the United States...
...Many of the faithful even return three or four evenings in a row to repeat the experience...
...CI 68 The American Spectator November 1995...
...Reports of healing allowed the church to grow and multiply with little or no organizational effort...
...Vineyard staffers claim to be baffled why the people keep thronging to their church, and say they have no idea how long the manifestation will continue...
...One of them returned to Holy Trinity Brompton, a prominent Anglican church in London, and told her own story of experiencing the "Blessing"—whereupon clergy and laity alike began falling down, laughing and shaking, too...
...Evangelical Christian publications worldwide have meanwhile been earnestly debating the import of the phenomenon...
...A two-person prayer team approaches, men to the men and women to the women...
...I didn't feel anything overwhelming of any sort," he says...
...But Protestants have never had a particular holy place, least of all one at which visitors believe they are experiencing a special divine touch, a sort of love-bomb of the Holy Spirit...
Vol. 28 • November 1995 • No. 11
