Harald Bredesen (1918—2006)
Country of Origin
-
United States
Countries/Regions of Ministry
- United States
Traditions
- Charismatic
- Presbyterian
Ministries
- renewalist
- pastor
Harald Bredesen, pastor of the First Reformed Church in the New York City suburb of Mount Vernon, is known as the first ordained minister from a mainline denomination to receive the baptism in the Holy Spirit, speak about it openly, and not be dismissed. As a youth, Harald had grown up a Minnesota church his Norwegian father pastored. When he studied for the ministry at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, no one spoke in tongues. Nevertheless, Bredesen would spend the rest of his life—close to fifty years—explaining the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the vitality it brings.
In an interview with John L. Sherrill, the latter testified that Bredesen arrived with “a clerical collar, a bald spot, and an excitement that was contagious….There, in a setting of coffee cups and sugar shakers, he told me a story that seemed to come from a different world.” Bredesen reported becoming dissatisfied with the gap between first-century Christianity and its modern-day expression. He went to the mountains for a spiritual retreat, where one morning as he stood outside gazing at the Alleghenies, he paused in his praying… and came an outpouring of words he did not recognize. “It was as though I was listening to a foreign language,” the minister told Sherrill, “except that it was coming out of my own mouth.”
Bredesen recounted that he was amazed, curious, and a bit frightened. He ran, still talking aloud in this tongue, to the edge of a small community. On the stoop of another cabin sat an old man. Bredesen continued to speak in the tongue which was coming so easily and naturally from his lips. The man answered, talking rapidly in a language that Bredesen did not know. When it became obvious that they were not communicating, the old man spoke in English.
“How can you speak Polish but not understand it?” the man asked.
“I was speaking in Polish?”
The man laughed, thinking that Bredesen was joking. “Of course it was Polish,” he said.
But Bredesen wasn’t joking. As far as he could recall, he had never before heard the language. He then addressed his own congregation at First Reformed Church, running a series of late-Sunday-afternoon prayer meetings called “Vespers” to welcome spiritual gifts. Co-led by Bredesen and a young seminary intern Pat Robertson (of future CBN fame), people worshiped freely and waited expectantly for the Spirit’s touch.
Revival ensued. Visitors included New York Times assistant national editor Bob Slosser. After being Spirit-filled, he went on to write books with Charismatic leaders including David du Plessis and Everett (Terry) Fullam. Reporters came from Time Magazine, the Associated Press, and Walter Cronkite’s CBS Evening News. Bredesen went to Ivy League schools including Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. A remarkable awakening took place with many students speaking in tongues; the press dubbed them “glossoyalies”. By the time Bredesen visited the University of Chicago and Stanford University, the Saturday Evening Post had crowned him “charismatic envoy to the campuses.”
Being based near New York City, he crossed paths with David Wilkerson, the young minister to gang members. Wilkerson connected him with John Sherrill; together they wrote The Cross and the Switchblade. Another younger personality greatly influenced by Bredesen and his wife Genevieve was the pop singer Pat Boone. In one book introduction, Boone wrote, “Abraham … Moses … Gideon … Elijah … I think I’ve known a man like these. His name is Harald Bredesen. Miracles trail him wherever he goes.”
Bredesen's friends and followers said that his heart for God was infectious as they watched him walking, praising aloud, and often speaking in tongues. He was known to follow the Spirit’s leading in unpredictable ways, sometimes showing up unannounced to see prominent figures. He built a warm friendship with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, eventually honoring him with a new prize he invented called “Prince of Peace.” (Other recipients in later years: Mother Teresa, King Hussein of Jordan, and Billy Graham.) Sadat called it “the high point of my entire life, more important to me even than the Nobel Peace Prize. That was in the political arena. This was spiritual.” The legacy Bredesen left--to the curious and the critical alike--was of a man who was too winsome to oppose, but too touched of the Lord to dismiss.
Further Reading
- John L. Sherrill, They Speak with Other Tongues, ch. 2
- The Cross and the Switchblade