Pentecostal
Assemblies of God
The largest Pentecostal body, and the one place on this chart where a church that believes in deliverance has ruled officially against most of how it is practised.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
Organising in 1914 and adopting a statement of fundamental truths two years later, this body did by council what the revival that produced it had no intention of doing by council. That is the first thing it contributes here: a Pentecostal church with a doctrinal standard a reader can check.
The second is more useful to this section than anything else in the wing. From official position papers onward it has held that a believer indwelt by the Spirit cannot simultaneously be indwelt by a demon — that a Christian may be oppressed, harassed or afflicted, but not possessed — and that the checklist method of the deliverance manuals mistakes ordinary sin and ordinary illness for demonic presence. Every other body on this branch is represented in the corpus by texts arguing for the practice. This is the body arguing against it, from inside, with the same scriptures.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Separated from
Pentecostal and charismatic · 1914Not a separation over doctrine but the decision to have any structure at all. A revival that held the gifts continue had no machinery for credentialling ministers or sending missionaries, and a general council was called to build some.
The same questions asked of every body
What it holds
Are the gifts still given?
Described from a text the corpus holdsContinuing, and expected — with tongues as the initial physical evidence of baptism in the Spirit.
The Statement of Fundamental Truths puts this in an article rather than leaving it to practice, which is what distinguishes this body from the movement it came out of.
Statement of Fundamental Truths · 1916; revised since
Who may act?
Inferred from the surrounding textsA credentialled minister, in a pastoral setting.
The body credentials its ministers and expects this to be pastoral work rather than a specialism anyone may take up, which is a restraint of a different kind from a licence.
What counts as evidence?
Described from a text the corpus holdsPastoral judgement, against the checklists — and a believer cannot be indwelt.
The official position distinguishes oppression from possession and holds the second impossible for someone indwelt by the Spirit. Where the deliverance manuals read a behaviour as a spirit's signature, this body reads sin, illness or grief until something else is shown.
Statement of Fundamental Truths · 1916; revised since
Where is the spirit?
Inferred from the surrounding textsIn a person, and around one. Not in the bloodline and not over the city.
Generational transmission and territorial authority are both later extensions this body has declined to adopt; it stays with what the gospel scenes show.
Whom do the words address?
Not established here. A formal difference a reader can check by counting clauses rather than by weighing tone.
What restraint is written in?
Not established here. Every one of these traditions knows the practice can harm. What each does about that is what popular accounts leave out.
What closes the matter?
Not established here. Whether the encounter ends, and who declares it, separates a rite from an ongoing practice.
What happened afterwards
Reception
Routinely cited by critics of deliverance ministry as evidence that the objection is not merely a cessationist one, and by deliverance writers as an institution that has lost its nerve. Both readings are in circulation and the corpus records the position rather than either verdict.
This page records what a body holds and where that is written down. It takes no position on whether any of it is true, and nothing here is instruction — the rites are described by what they contain, never as something to follow.