Meet ACNA Bishop Todd Hunter and the Mission Viejo Screamer

This audio clip comes from a recording done at Mission Viejo Vineyard in 1994, when Hunter was the National Coordinator of Vineyard Churches.  Spend a few minutes listening to this carefully and then read the commentary at YouTube site hosting the clip.

This, folks, is the modern charismatic movement, and it slithered under the door of American Episcopalianism and the Church of England back in the 60s and 70s.  From there it made its way into the so-called "Anglican Realignment",  The Anglican Mission in America (AMiA), the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) and other "Three Streams" jurisdictions.

I learned just a couple of days ago that Bishop Hunter and I have something in common:  we were both ordained a deacon in AMiA by Bishop Philip Jones.  As near as I can tell from my brief stay in AMiA, the kind of charismania observed in the audio clip still exists there.  At its Winter Conferences, attendees are often invited to participate in something called "soaking prayer", just to cite one example of this un-Catholic lunacy.  It's one reason Hunter stayed with the Realignment and the principal reason I left it for the spiritual sobriety and historical rootedness of Continuing Anglicanism.  After I left, I once got into a heated online discussion about charismaticism with one of the fellows with whom I was ordained a deacon.  I asked him whether there are some "manifestations of the gifts of the Holy Spirit" that are clearly bogus, and I cited as an example the famous Holy Ghost Hokey Pokey.  He simply danced around the question, which reinforced to me something I have long observed, that for all their "Spirit-filledness" the charismatics are some of the least spiritually discerning people on the face of the planet.  They are constantly confusing the stirrings of their own spirits wth those of the Holy Spirit.

As Hunter humbly tells it in his book The Accidental Anglican, the Powers That Be in AMiA were all agog about making him a deacon "because I had all the compulsory theological education and long years of pastoral and bishop-like experience."  That sounds to me like AMiA immediately groomed Hunter for the episcopacy, and he was ready to accept.  His ordination to the diaconate could't even wait to be scheduled in an established church.  No, for some reason as they were each making their way to somewhere else, Jones met Hunter at a Houston airport in 2008 and ordained him a deacon in a chapel there.  

AMiA would then make Hunter a priest and a bishop in rapid succession.  The year for both was 2009.  So, in the space of a little over a year or so, Hunter went from deacon to priest to bishop.   While not unknown in the history of the Church, such rapid elevations have nonetheless been very rare, and for good reason.  Sometimes the actions were wise, sometimes they were not.  If wrong motivations come into play, the results have all too often been disastrous, and by my lights both AMiA's and Hunter's motivations were extremely suspect, and disaster is now the clear result.  But hey, Hunter was one of them, a "Spirit-filled" church planter, and with big street cred from the Vineyard, that Mecca of charismania, to boot. 

Hunter would go on to defect from AMiA to ACNA, as so many have, and the rest is history.  He is now Ordinary in a non-geographical diocese with a silly and defiantly non-traditional name, The Diocese of Churches for the Sake of Others (C4SO), which has turned out to be ACNA's most controversial - and unstable - diocese. To put it succincly, C4SO is a weird mixed bag of charismania, wokism and social activism.  Under Hunter's leadership, it has become ACNA's "problem child". One of its more left-leaning parishes left it for The Episcopal Church.

But back to the video.  Listen to it.  Pay special attention to The Screamer and how Hunter interacts with her.  Note all the (mostly female) "holy laughter."  This is what Todd Hunter takes to be the "moving" of the Holy Spirit and "normal Christianity".  We call it Neo-Montanism at best and pagan ecstatiscism at worst, however, and it has no place in Anglicanism. 

Just like women's ordination. 

Comments

[Stephen]

That is some creepy stuff, no doubt about that.

May God forgive me for hoping that C4SO does depart ACNA. It would make the solutions of other issues much easier. I know for a fact that, despite everything, there are some wonderful Christians in that diocese, though, and I hope all of us end up in union in a Godly church in His time.