Days of Fire and Glory

I couldn’t put this book down! Once I’d started, I read all 300+ pages in less than twenty-four hours.

Graham Pulkingham was an Episcopal priest in Houston, overwhelmed by the problems of serving a decaying neighborhood. He received what he took to be a message from God telling him to go to New York. There, at the hands of David Wilkerson (The Cross and the Switchblade), he received a pentecostal-style baptism in the Spirit. When Pulkingham returned to Houston, he discovered he had the power to bring about miraculous healings. Crutches were left at the altar rail. Incurable diseased were pronounced cured.

Many of his fellow Episcopalians were appalled by the charismatic direction Pulkingham’s spirituality had taken. Some questioned his sanity. Long-time members left the parish. But encouraged by prophetic utterances, Graham Pulkingham persisted. He formed a daily 5:30 a.m. prayer group, to which several dozen people committed themselves, despite their full-time jobs. People sold large homes to move to small apartments nearer his newly charismatic church and care for the poor of the neighborhood. Above all, there was praying in tongues.

Pulkingham’s church attracted more and more people. The weekday schedule grew to include two morning prayer meetings as well as Bible study and interpretation. They opened a street ministry and a coffee house. The young musicians at the coffee house made successful records. Many churchgoers formed communal households. People from out of town came to visit Redeemer church to see what was going on. CBS made an hour-long documentary about them. Graham Pulkington himself wrote the first of several books. Sunday attendance, which had once been 200 people, grew to 2,000 people. Even a Friday evening service would attract 800. People came from as far away as Europe.

And then, ever so slowly, things started to go wrong. The communal households became increasingly cult-like and dictatorial. Community became an end in itself rather than a means to an end. The church became so intensely inward-looking that some members only met outsiders a few times each year. As outreach locations were founded, the Redeemer leaders, including Graham Pulkingham, spread themselves too thinly. And money was tight. A household might have only three wage-earners to support two dozen people. The mentally ill were counseled by volunteers with no professional training.

In 1978, Redeemer church made televion news again — this time for a very different reason. The community was charged with holding young people against their will. When the parents brought a court case, a TV station ran a weeklong series branding Redeemer a cult.

Marriages broke down under the strain of such an intense and demanding life. While the church and its members had formerly seemed to be under divine protection in this rough neighborhood, robberies and even home invasions began to occur. Women were raped. After having spent several years absent from the church on a mission to the UK, Graham Pulkingham left Houston again, this time to move to Colorado. His replacement as leader seemed unable to cope with the responsibilities and stopped returning phone calls. Allegations of child abuse surfaced. People drifted away from Redeemer church and its problems.

Finally, in 1992 the truth about Graham Pulkingham himself emerged. Despite being married, he had been persuading the men he counseled to have homosexual sex with him. A year later, he was dead of a heart attack.

So what conclusions we can draw from this tale of disappointed hopes, with its cast of hundreds? Author Julia Duin had her own experience of living in a Christian community, and she describes community life as “so hard . . . the cost would be staggering.” Her book is published by the Crossland Foundation, who “seek to identify the causes for these disorders and the ways that these disorders can be eliminated from the church.”

Julia Duin. Days of Fire and Glory: The Rise and Fall of a Charismatic Community. Baltimore, Md.: Crossland Press, 2009. Hardcover. 368 pages. ISBN 0979027977. $24.95.