United States
Father Dennis J. Bennett had ample reason to be pleased with what St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, in the wealthy Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys, had become during his nearly seven years as rector. A struggling congregation had gotten onto its feet and now numbered 2,600 members. His ministerial staff included four associate priests. Still, Bennett was not entirely satisfied with his own spiritual state. His education at the University of Chicago and then Chicago Theological Seminary had filled his head but left his heart lukewarm. He longed to regain the passion he had known following his conversion experience back at age eleven.
A fellow priest called him one day and mentioned a couple of parishioners who had quite suddenly become energized in their faith and service to God. They talked about something called “the baptism in the Holy Spirit.” Bennett was curious enough to go to a prayer meeting in this colleague’s church … which led to a Saturday morning meeting of just four people in a private home. In his inaugural book, he tells about feeling self-conscious, even awkward:
“What do I do?” I asked them again.
“Ask Jesus to baptize you in the Holy Spirit,” said John. “We’ll pray with you, and you just pray and praise the Lord.”
I said: “Now remember, I want this nearness of God you have, that’s all; I’m not interested in speaking with tongues!”
“Well,” they said, “all we can tell you about that is that it came with the package!”
John came across the room and laid his hands first on my head, and then on my friend’s. He began to pray, very quietly, and I recognized … he was speaking in a language that I did not understand, and speaking it very fluently. He wasn’t a bit “worked up” about it, either. Then he prayed in English, asking Jesus to baptize me in the Holy Spirit.
I began to pray, as he told me, and I prayed very quietly, too. I was not about to get even a little bit excited! I was simply following instructions. I suppose I must have prayed out loud for about twenty minutes … and was just about to give up when a very strange thing happened. My tongue tripped, just as it might when you are trying to recite a tongue twister, and I began speaking a new language!
Right away I recognized several things: first, it wasn’t some kind of psychological trick or compulsion…. I was allowing these new words to come to my lips and was speaking them out of my own volition … and it was rather beautiful….
A new joy and intimacy with God rose up in Bennett’s soul, to the point that he dared not keep quiet about it. His church members asked him what had happened, and he answered their questions. Over a period of weeks, some seventy people asked to follow in his steps and were similarly blessed, including two of the staff priests. Rumors began to spread, however, and finally the rector felt he should come clean with the entire congregation. On Sunday, April 3, 1960, he mounted the pulpit and spilled the whole story.
The reaction that day was dramatic. Some listeners were intrigued, while others rose up in protest. Comments flew through the air. “We are Episcopalians, not a bunch of wild-eyed hillbillies,” one man shouted after mounting a chair like a soapbox. “Throw out the damned tongues-speakers!” another yelled. One associate priest dramatically took off his vestments and said that under the circumstances, he had no choice but to resign.
Newspapers picked up the story, and by the next day the wire services had spread it nationwide. Both Time and Newsweek soon ran articles. Bennett was amazed but also troubled about what he should do, especially after his bishop, Francis Eric Bloy, sent out a pastoral letter banning tongues across the Los Angeles diocese. Bennett wrote to Charismatic statesman David du Plessis for advice and received wise counsel not to fight but rather to ask for reassignment elsewhere.
By the summer of 1960, he was installed in a tiny mission church in Seattle, St. Luke’s, that was about to be closed for the third time. The situation was so dire that his message about Holy Spirit empowerment was welcomed—anything to help keep the doors open. People warmed to what he was explaining and sought this new dimension for themselves. Attendance began to grow. Life and energy blossomed. Even the death of Bennett’s first wife, Elberta, in 1963, did not quench his spirit or the pursuit of his calling.
Over the next decade, St. Luke’s became a center of renewal and the largest Episcopal parish across the Northwest. Bennett married again in 1966 to a counselor and teacher named Rita Reed (sister of Dr. William Standish Reed, initiator of the Christian Medical Foundation). She was in fact the speaker at a seminal women’s meeting in Seattle the next year that evolved into the Aglow International movement. She also helped her husband craft his story into the bestseller, Nine O’Clock in the Morning.
In 1971 they collaborated again on a practical guidebook called The Holy Spirit & You, which gave direction to believers seeking deeper encounter. They had a unique way with metaphors to explain the baptism in the Holy Spirit: “It is a baptism, meaning a drenching, an overflowing, a saturating of your soul and body with the Holy Spirit…. The word ‘baptize’ in Greek means to completely suffuse—it is used in classical Greek of a sunken, water-logged ship.” In another place, they write: "...when we allow the indwelling living water of the Spirit to flow out into our souls and bodies, we are refreshed first…. Then the living water begins to pour out to others, and they see the power and love of Jesus in His people. He is now able to use us to refresh the world around us."
The invitations to travel and speak became so numerous that, in 1981, Dennis Bennett retired from parish work at St. Luke’s to assume wider impact. His bishop, Robert H. Cochrane, recognized him at that point as a “canon of honor” for his work across the Charismatic landscape. He was one of the founders of the Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship, later renamed Episcopal Renewal Ministries. He contended that “No one needs to leave the Episcopal Church in order to have the fullness of the Spirit—but it is of greatest importance that the Spirit be allowed to work freely in the Episcopal Church.”
Following Dennis’s death in 1991, Rita Bennett continued to write and minister, especially in the areas of inner healing and emotional freedom. Together, their mature influence proved invaluable not only for Episcopalians but for those across the denominational spectrum worldwide.
Dean Merrill
© 9/11/26