Tongues of Fire
Tongues of Fire
The Pentecostal Revolution in Protestantism
The charismatic movement is the most rapidly growing element of Christianity today. Pentecostalism in its various forms is now the largest single Christian group apart from Catholicism and outnumbers the sum total of all other forms of Protestantism. Although numerical estimates of its strength are unreliable, the movement grew from ground zero in 1900 to at least half a billion in 2000. Its historical origins and fundamental beliefs locate it firmly within the bounds of Protestantism. Yet its astonishing growth, spiritual vitality, and capacity to adapt to local situations are forcing Protestantism to review both its center and its limits. The numerical growth of Pentecostalism, primarily among the urban poor and the socially marginalized of Asia, Africa, and South America, is transforming Protestantism.
A few examples may help readers who are unfamiliar with the scale and significance of this movement to gain a sense of the cumulative seismic impact it is having on world Christianity.1 The Yoido Full Gospel Church is a Pentecostal church based in the Yoido district of Seoul in the Republic of Korea. When the church began in ex-army tents in the slums of Seoul in 1958, it emphasized the transformative impact of the gospel through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit in the face of the adverse social and economic conditions of depressed postwar Korea. Today the church has a membership of 700,000. Its main place of worship can hold 25,000 people, but it must still hold multiple services on Sundays.
The city of Lagos in the former British west African colony of Nigeria is widely regarded as the Pentecostal capital of the world—despite the fact that Pentecostalism in that nation traces its origins back only to small-scale projects in the 1970s. Today the Faith Tabernacle can accommodate 50,000 worshipers in its stadium-like auditorium. The Redeemed Christian Church of God now has 4,000 parishes throughout Nigeria. The movement has achieved such prominence that traditional Protestant denominations in the region now incorporate charismatic elements into their worship. The somewhat staid forms of Anglican worship that predominated during the colonial era have simply been displaced by worship forms that emphasize African cultural roots and the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.
So what is this new form of Protestantism? Where did it come from? Why has it proved so attractive? What challenges does it raise for more traditional forms of Protestant life and thought? And most important of all, what are its implications for the future of Protestantism? In this chapter, we reflect on these issues.
THE GROWTH OF AMERICAN PENTECOSTALISM
The origins of the Pentecostal movement are traditionally held to lie in the United States. Although the roots of the movement are particularly to be found in the holiness tradition, the movement took on its distinctive form in the first decade of the twentieth century, primarily through the influence of the African American preacher William J. Seymour.
Seymour was born in Centerville, Louisiana, in 1870, the son of former slaves, Simon and Phyllis Seymour. After a period working as a railroad porter in Indianapolis, he moved in 1900 to Cincinnati, where he joined the Evening Light Saints, a Christian group noted for its radical holiness theology, including the doctrine of “second blessing entire sanctification,” premillennialism, and the promise of a worldwide revival through the Holy Spirit before the rapture. In 1903 Seymour moved to Houston, Texas, where he joined a small holiness church pastored by a black woman, Lucy Farrow, who put him in touch with Charles Fox Parham. On hearing Parham’s descriptions of speaking in tongues in 1905, Seymour set out to spread the word, based at the church he founded, the Apostolic Faith Mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles.2
Primarily (though not exclusively) from this California base, Pentecostalism spread rapidly in America. It appealed particularly to the socially marginalized, especially through Seymour’s important concept of an ecstatic egalitarian ecclesiology.3 Unusually, it seemed to appeal to and be embraced by both white and African American Christian groups. It was regarded as eccentric, even dangerous, by American culture at large, as newspaper headlines in Los Angeles in April 1906 made clear: “New Sect of Fanatics Is Breaking Loose,” and “Wild Scene Last Night on Azusa Street.”
Popular journalism around the time of the Azusa Street revival made clear the antipathy felt toward the movement, which aroused both racial and theological prejudices: “Colored people and a sprinkling of Whites compose the congregation, and night is made hideous in the neighborhood by the howlings of the worshippers who spend hours swaying forth and back in a nerve-racking attitude of prayer and supplication.” The key role played by women in the revival was out of line with contemporary cultural norms and once more attracted negative media coverage.4 More significantly, the charismatic experiences reported seemed to many to represent a new outbreak of the “enthusiasm” that mainline Protestantism had regarded with intense suspicion, laced with not a little cultural disdain, since the eighteenth century.5
It is also important to appreciate that Charles Parham had no intention of adopting the racial inclusiveness proclaimed and practiced by Seymour and Azusa Street. In an abortive and counterproductive move, Parham, who was particularly disturbed by its commitment to interracial fellowship, attempted to take control of the Azusa phenomenon.6 Among other things, Parham later went on to teach that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were the privileged descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, and he spoke in glowing terms of the Ku Klux Klan. He was never reconciled with Seymour and eventually died in disgrace.7
Although Pentecostalism can be thought of as traditionalist in its Christian theology, it differs radically from other Christian groupings in its emphasis on speaking in tongues and its forms of worship. These are strongly experiential and involve prophesying, healings, and exorcisms. The Pentecostal worldview includes elements that relate easily and naturally to the folk religions of many regions of the world, especially in Africa and Latin America, such as the casting out of demons (a practice that tends to make Western academic theologians cringe with unease). The movement’s populist worship style and apparent lack of intellectual sophistication have caused mainline denominations and the academy either to ridicule or ignore it. Yet Pentecostalism began a new phase of expansion after the Second World War, paving the way for its massive growth in the second half of the twentieth century. Even in the United States, Pentecostalism has overtaken most of the mainline denominations that dominated the American religious landscape from 1800 to 1950.8
Pentecostalism began to become respectable and accepted in white middle-class America through the neo-charismatic renewal of the 1960s. In part, this change in attitude can be put down to the upward social mobility, greater disposable income, and suburbanization that followed the Second World War. Yet the decisive factor was the emergence of charismatic phenomena typical of Pentecostalism—hitherto seen as a distinct Christian group—within the historic Protestant denominations. The incident that is traditionally identified as having brought Pentecostalism to wider public attention in the United States took place in Van Nuys, California, in 1960, when the rector of the local Episcopalian church, Dennis Bennett, told his congregation that he had been filled with the Holy Spirit and spoken in tongues. Reaction varied from bewilderment to outrage; the local Episcopalian bishop promptly banned speaking in tongues from his churches. However, it soon became clear that others in the mainline denominations had shared Bennett’s experience. They came out of their closets and made it clear that they believed that they had experienced an authentic New Testament phenomenon that would lead to the renewal of the churches.
By the late 1960s, it was evident that some form of renewal based on charismatic gifts (such as speaking in tongues) was gaining hold within Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, and Presbyterian circles. Through this development, Pentecostal themes and emphases became increasingly acceptable within American Protestantism, even if that acceptance took rather longer in some denominations than in others—the Southern Baptist Convention, for example, has not been significantly affected by the charismatic movement. Of equal importance, a charismatic movement began to develop within the Roman Catholic church. The Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement started in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1967 among students and faculty of Duquesne University.
In an influential study of the development of charismatic movements in the United States during the twentieth century, church historian Peter Wagner distinguished three “waves” of the movement.9 The first such wave took the form of classic Pentecostalism, which arose in the early 1900s and was characterized by its emphasis on speaking in tongues. The second wave took place in the 1960s and 1970s, mainly within mainline denominations as they appropriated spiritual healing and other charismatic practices. This second wave transformed public perceptions of the movement and began its move away from the periphery of American religious life and toward the center.
The third wave, exemplified by John Wimber, emphasized “signs and wonders.” Through the Spirit, he argued, a new wave of supernatural power had been unleashed upon the churches to enable healing, victorious living, and the defeat of evil spiritual powers. The idea of “spiritual warfare”—that is, the Christian’s spiritual battle against evil spirits—played a particularly important role in Wimber’s thought.10
This third wave caused considerable controversy during its early period in the 1980s. Wimber and Wagner taught a course popularly known as “Signs and Wonders” at Fuller Theological Seminary from 1982 to 1986, when faculty and trustee pressure closed it down for a year; it was reinstated, with a markedly lower profile, a year later. Wimber went on to lead the Vineyard Fellowship, which has proved one of the most significant global agencies in developing this approach to the Christian life.
Using the term “Pentecostal” to describe all these movements has now become problematic. The term is generally used today to refer to a family of churches—such as the Assemblies of God—that particularly emphasize speaking in tongues. The term “charismatic” is now used to refer to movements within the mainline churches based upon the ideas and experiences of the Pentecostal movement. Charismatic renewal within the mainline churches has led to new and informal worship styles, an explosion in “worship songs,” a new concern for the dynamics of worship, and an increasing dislike of the traditionalism of formal liturgical worship.
The Pentecostal movement—which must now be taken to include charismatic groups within mainline churches—has changed considerably since the Second World War. The most obvious change is the massive surge in its numbers. It is now estimated that there are more than 500 million Pentecostals in the world, with a very wide geographical distribution. This movement that some argue has its origins primarily within African American culture has now taken root in South America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. But there have been other, more subtle changes in the movement that reflect its remarkable ability to adjust to the social dynamics and realities of its increasingly diverse environments. The absence of any centralized authority within Pentecostalism has removed the inflexibility that has so hampered mainline Protestant attempts to indigenize the gospel outside the West.
Some significant divergences have emerged within the movement, especially between charismatics working within mainline Protestant denominations and those in specifically Pentecostal contexts. The former, with the theologies and sacraments of their parent denominations on which to draw, often are more developed in these areas than their Pentecostal counterparts. Pentecostals, on the other hand, tend to adopt intuitive, pragmatic attitudes toward the church, believing that its structures and forms are capable of infinite adaptation through the leading of the Holy Spirit.
The American origins of the movement have led some to suggest that its success is ultimately linked with American power and influence.11 There is some truth in this observation, in that American Pentecostalism has been immensely influential in beginning other movements worldwide. However, two cautionary comments are in order. First, American Pentecostals have not been close to their nation’s government, power, or influence. Even until 1960—by which time the global “planting” of Pentecostalism was well under way—the movement was seen as lying on the margins of American society and was virtually devoid of cultural credibility, academic respectability, economic power, or political influence.
Second, Pentecostalism developed in ways adapted to its new global environments, with leadership rapidly passing to indigenous pastors. The case of Korea is instructive. In 1952 the American Assemblies of God sent Abner Chesnut to Korea as their first missionary. The Korean Assemblies of God was organized in 1953 and opened its first Bible school the following year. Paul Yonggi Cho—who went on to found the Yoido Full Gospel Church—was one of its first students. The form of Pentecostalism that Cho developed was clearly influenced by Presbyterianism (the dominant form of Christianity in Korea) and by worship traditions originating from the revivalist and holiness traditions. Yet it was unquestionably Korean, having adapted to its local context rather than retained the forms of those who planted it.
The spread of Pentecostalism is not due primarily to the projection of American influence but to the capacity of what was projected to take root in new situations. The ministry of Carlos Alberto Annacondia, who was converted in Buenos Aires in 1979 through the ministry of the Panamanian evangelist Manuel A. Ruiz, indicates how an essentially Latin American Pentecostalism has developed by propagating and transforming itself through indigenous agencies. The revival that swept through Argentinean Protestant communities in 1982, primarily through Annacondia’s ministry, was thoroughly homegrown, having supplanted the old missionary gospel with a new, culturally resonant package of beliefs and social outreach.
Yet there is another response that may be made to the charge that Pentecostalism is essentially an American export. This involves a more attentive study of its origins, which reveals that its history is far more complex than has been appreciated. In what follows, we note some insights emerging from the new quest for the origins of Pentecostalism.
THE NEW QUEST FOR THE ORIGINS OF PENTECOSTALISM
The traditional account of the origins of Pentecostalism, which we set out earlier in this chapter, tends to portray it as an American phenomenon that gradually spread throughout the world, partly by active transfer, partly by passive diffusion. On this view, Azusa Street was the Jerusalem from which the message of God’s gift of the Spirit went out to the nations. There is certainly some truth in this account: twenty-six Pentecostal denominations trace their historical origins back to Azusa Street. Nevertheless, this hugely influential (especially in the United States) account is increasingly recognized to be incomplete in the light of a wealth of material now being uncovered by historians.
More significantly, the traditional theory demands a model of Pentecostal development that is essentially that of the adaptation of an American model to other contexts. The question that the historian is forced to consider is why and how an American model was changed to suit other locales. What if the phenomenon had multiple origins, most of which were outside the United States? What if Pentecostalism was already present in India (to give only one possibility) before Azusa Street and developed its own independent trajectory in that region?12
The explosion of scholarly interest in Pentecostalism that has arisen in the last twenty years has begun to cast light on the complex origins of the movement that forces revision of the traditional model.13 Major studies of the origins of the movement in Argentina, Chile, Ghana, Korea, the Philippines, South Africa, and South India have forced historians to make essential revisions to the earlier paradigms. The historical origins of Pentecostalism now seem as complex as those of the original Protestant Reformation itself. A number of roughly contemporary movements with recognizable shared beliefs and expectations emerged in the first decade of the twentieth century, but without any obvious indication of reciprocal causality.
The picture that is now becoming clear is that of a series of local “Pentecostalisms” emerging in the first decade of the twentieth century. The 1906 revival at Azusa Street was one of them. So was the 1903 revival in Pyongyang, Korea; the 1905–7 revival at Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti Mission in Poona, India; the Manchurian revival of 1908; the revival in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1909; the revival that broke out in the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast, and the Liberian Kru in 1914; and other revivals in Norway, China, Venezuela, and elsewhere. Each of these revivals demonstrated Pentecostal characteristics, though there was no clear connection between them. What we can now recognize as Pentecostalism was well established in India before anyone there had heard of Charles Parham, Azusa Street, or William Seymour.14
The parallel with the emerging scholarly understanding of the origins of Protestantism in the early sixteenth century is striking. Once more, multiple sources for the movement have had to be recognized as the historical evidence mounts for the fundamental historical and intellectual heterogeneity of the movement—whose manifestations nevertheless share enough common ground to allow collaboration, negotiation, and mutual support. And the same mechanisms that led to the consolidation and significant—but not total—convergence of individual reformations to yield “the Reformation” led to the collaboration and even convergence of these emergent Pentecostalisms. The American model may have been more influential than some in shaping the emerging movement’s thought, structures, and expectations—but it cannot be said to be the cause or source of the movement.
As this more complex picture has emerged, Pentecostal historians have begun to interpret it in terms of the providential dispersal of essentially the same divine gift throughout the world in a relatively brief period of time.15 Yet for our purposes, this increasingly complex and nuanced picture allows a critically important point to be made: the theme of “diversity within unity” was present from the origins of the movement. It was not a later development that resulted from an essentially American movement being forced to reconsider its strategies, objectives, and approaches in the light of its encounter with non-American situations. Rather, it was integral to the historical emergence of the phenomenon that we now call “Pentecostalism” but that had no shared name or sense of identity until people began to compare notes, often stimulated by the fame of events at Azusa Street.
PENTECOSTALISM: ITS DEFINING CHARACTERISTICS
In many respects, Pentecostalism accepts the basic themes of Protestant theology, but with a significant addition that leads to modifications of doctrinal emphasis at some points and different patterns of worship at others. The term “Pentecostal” takes its name from the Jewish festival of Pentecost, during which, the New Testament records, the apostles were “filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues” (Acts 2:4). Traditional Protestant theology had regarded this phenomenon as unique to the age of the apostles; adapted and necessary to the first phase of the expansion of the church, it was not, on this view, requisite or active thereafter.
The defense of this “cessationist” position was not without its difficulties, beginning with the fact that any consistent application of this argument threatened to make large sections of the New Testament irrelevant to modern Protestantism. In practice, of course, no such argument has ever been made. When all the theological accretions are swept away from the argument, it reduces to one very simple point: the Holy Spirit is not experienced in the church today as it was by the apostles on Pentecost. The significance of the events in Topeka, Kansas, in January 1901, and then at Azusa Street in Los Angeles in April 1906, was that they suggested that things might have changed. And if they had, a lot of theological rethinking would have to be done. We see here a classic example of what the historian of science Thomas Kuhn famously described as a “paradigm shift” in the development of the natural sciences—the emergence of new approaches when the capacity of older theories to account for new experiences and observations is seen to be defective.
The feature that both characterizes and distinguishes Pentecostalism from all other forms of Christianity is its insistence and emphasis upon an immediate encounter with God through the Holy Spirit and the ensuing transformation of individuals. Although Pentecostals and other charismatics do not always agree on how best to articulate theologically this understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit, they share a common expectation of certain patterns of divine action. The “full gospel,” Pentecostals insist, must include the gift of tongues. Yet there is more to this characteristic of Pentecostalism than this brief statement might suggest. Pentecostalism does not simply believe in speaking in tongues; it provides a social context that reinforces a sense of expectation that speaking in tongues will take place, thereby creating the social structures that sustain and extend the phenomenon.16 Pentecostal communities embody this social expectancy, which provides an important support against criticisms of the phenomenon as “abnormal” or “improper” from outside.
So what exactly is this gift? The New Testament draws a distinction between xenolalia (“speaking in foreign languages”) and glossolalia (“speaking in tongues”). Most early Pentecostals, such as Charles Parham, insisted that believers have been given the power to speak in foreign languages; most of them subsequently came to the view, however, that the Spirit causes speaking in tongues for personal edification. The classic Pentecostal view has come to be that this phenomenon is a consequence of the presence of the Spirit in believers.17
So just what is “speaking in tongues”? In trying to answer this question, it is helpful to draw a distinction between a description of the phenomenon and its theological interpretation. The phenomenon usually takes the form of an intense religious experience expressing itself in ecstatic speech, typically during a period of worship or open prayer that is perceived to have great personal meaning for the individual worshiper. The “speech” in question corresponds to no known language and is generally unintelligible to external observers.18 Charismatic theologians interpret this phenomenon as corresponding to the experience of the early Christian communities, as recorded in the New Testament, particularly in Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. It is seen as a sign of the living presence of God within individuals, offering both reassurance of salvation and guidance to individuals and the community as a whole.19
The phrase “baptism in the Spirit” has come to be especially important for Pentecostalism. It refers to a special divine anointing, gift, or blessing subsequent to conversion, which is demonstrated by speaking in tongues. Classical Protestantism held that all necessary resources were given to the believer at baptism or conversion. The continuity of Pentecostalism with the holiness tradition is clear at this point: sections of the movement recognize a “second blessing” in which believers receive a special anointing from God to enable them to live a victorious life, triumphing over sin and temptation. The holiness movement recognized a postconversion enhancement of an individual’s personal spirituality, which was often described as the “second blessing.” The baptism of the Spirit is seen as the fulfillment of this “second blessing.”
Writers such as A. J. Gordon and Reuben A. Torrey began to speak of a “baptism of the Holy Spirit” in the 1880s and 1890s. However, this was conceived primarily as the empowerment of the individual through an increase in the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit. An excellent example of this phenomenon can be seen in the ministry of the noted evangelist Dwight L. Moody, who experienced this form of personal renewal in 1870. Yet—and this is of critical importance—there was no suggestion that this “second blessing” or “baptism in the Holy Spirit” led to speaking in tongues. It was all about empowerment and encouragement.
The suggestion of a theological link between “baptism in the Spirit” and “speaking in tongues” was first made by Parham in 1901, and that link has remained typical of Pentecostalism ever since. Refinements introduced since that time include the distinction between speaking in tongues as a universal sign and as a specific gift. On this view, all true believers are able to speak in tongues as a sign of their baptism in the Spirit, and some have the gift of being able to use this in public worship. The evidence of this “second blessing” is the ability to speak in tongues.
This has important implications for the understanding of the identity and significance of Jesus Christ in Pentecostal thought. Whereas traditional Protestantism tends to think of Christ as having secured forgiveness of past sins and an assurance of eternal life through his death on the cross, Pentecostalism has developed a fourfold understanding of his significance that is often referred to as the “foursquare” gospel, following the approach developed by the American Pentecostal leader Aimee Semple McPherson (1890–1944). While preaching in California in 1922, she had a vision based upon four symbols—a cross, a crown, a dove, and a cup. She took these to be symbols of the central themes of evangelism, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and used them as the theological basis of her International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.20
The “foursquare” interpretation of evangelism emphasizes what Christ presently does within the lives of believers. While retaining the traditional Protestant teaching of the past and future dimensions of salvation—the forgiveness of past sins and the future hope of resurrection—McPherson stressed the transformative impact of Christ upon individuals and communities here and now. On this approach, Jesus Christ is to be understood as:
Although the basic beliefs of the foursquare gospel are not universally acknowledged within Pentecostalism, they illustrate one of the movement’s most significant characteristics—the affirmation that Jesus Christ may be experienced at the present moment and has the power to heal and transform people and communities at their point of need and in their moment of need.
THE APPEAL OF PENTECOSTALISM
Why is Pentecostalism so appealing, especially to those who find themselves on the margins of society? The best answer seems to be its emphasis upon personal spiritual empowerment, through which the status of individuals is not determined by their sociological location or their intellectual ability, but by their gifting by the Holy Spirit. This radical shift in the frames of reference by which individuals are evaluated is strongly evident in the egalitarianism of Seymour’s Azusa Street ecclesiology (but not, it must be emphasized, in Parham’s Topeka ministry).
This is a point of no small importance. Robert Beckford, a British black Pentecostal scholar, has argued that the egalitarian phenomenon of speaking in tongues at Azusa Street signified more than any baptism in the Spirit. It was an expression of the community’s commitment to a “radical social transformation” that placed it in direct continuity with the egalitarianism shown by the New Testament community of faith in the aftermath of its experience of the Holy Spirit.21 God speaks to and through all true believers. While this egalitarian ethos has been lost in many sections of Pentecostalism through the rise of various forms of elitism, it remains an ideal that challenges and attracts in about equal measure. Where the first generation of Protestants spoke of the “priesthood of all believers,” the Pentecostal equivalent would be the “prophethood of all believers.”22
Alongside this tendency toward egalitarianism—and possibly as its fundamental condition—Pentecostalism insists upon the universal accessibility of the divine. Experience of God is not restricted to a spiritual elite; it is not dependent on intellectual or academic excellence; nor is it something that is unattainable in the present, being postponed until a postmortem encounter with God in the heavenly realms. Like certain forms of Pietism or sections of the holiness tradition, Pentecostalism accentuates the reality of this experience of God and its importance for spiritual growth and theological reflection. A “living faith” (to borrow the language of the Pietist tradition) is not about doctrinal rectitude or theological precision, but about the experience of God as a living reality in the believer’s soul.
Yet this accessibility applies to the means as much as to the goal of the spiritual life. Pentecostalism uses a language and form of communication that enable it to bridge cultural gaps with great effectiveness. Walter Hollenweger, one of the most distinguished historians of the movement, points to the importance of this use of readily accessible means of communication to the success of the movement:
[Pentecostalism] is an oral religion. It is not defined by the abstract language that characterises, for instance, Presbyterians or Catholics. Pentecostalism is communicated in stories, testimonies and songs. Oral language is a much more global language than that of the universities or church denominations. Oral tradition is flexible and can adapt itself to a variety of circumstances…. When you become a Pentecostal, you talk about how you’ve been healed, or how your very life has been changed. That’s something that Pentecostals talk about over and over, partly because people are interested in hearing that sort of thing. Pentecostalism today addresses the whole of life, including the thinking part. More mainline forms of Christianity address the thinking part first, and that often affects the rest of life—but not always.23
Such reflections led an earlier generation of Pentecostals to be suspicious of academic study and to wear their anti-intellectualism as a badge of honor. Yet the increasing sense of confidence within the movement has led it to become more interested in technical questions of biblical interpretation, systematic theology, and broader cultural issues. Pentecostals are increasingly aware of the potential of their tradition to deal with interpretative issues that deadlocked American Protestantism in the early twentieth century.24 It remains to be seen whether this intellectual and cultural engagement will dull Pentecostalism’s cutting edge or increase its capacity for self-actualization in new contexts.
THE IMMEDIACY OF GOD: PENTECOSTALISM AND THE TRANSCENDENT
In an earlier chapter, we noted that traditional Protestantism’s emphasis upon an indirect knowledge of God, mediated through reading the Bible, led to “desacralization”—the creation of a culture with no sense or expectation of God’s presence in its midst. This point has been stressed by a series of sociologists—including Max Weber, Charles Taylor, and Stephen Toulmin—who have, in their different ways, shown that Protestantism was the means by which a society that originally possessed a strong sense of the sacred became “disenchanted.” The inevitable result of this was secularization—the final elimination of God from the world. As Francis Fukuyama points out in his End of History and the Last Man (1992), “the generally accepted agent for this secularization in the West was Protestantism.”25
Historically, it is clear that a major determinant for the emergence of atheism as a serious cultural force is whether a culture has lost a sense of the divine. The absence of any expectation of encountering the divine directly through nature or in personal experience inevitably encourages belief in a godless world—the kind of culture that lives etsi Deus non daretur (“as if God did not exist”). By limiting knowledge of God to what can be known about God’s words and God’s will, some classic forms of Protestantism have in effect placed an embargo on any direct knowledge or experience of God.
Indeed, some sections of Protestantism, often deeply influenced by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, continue to this day to emphasize “theological correctness” by stressing the overarching importance of having right ideas about God. These correct notions of God are to be determined by a reading of the Bible, which is understood primarily as a doctrinal handbook. Faith thus becomes an indirect knowledge of God, stated in terms of beliefs about God that, however correct they may be as far as they go, convey the impression that Christianity is little more than abstract theorizing about a God whose will is revealed in the Bible.
It is a danger that is well recognized within mainline Protestantism, and it was partly addressed through the rise of Pietism. The noted American Presbyterian writer James Henley Thornwell (1812–62) had no doubts about the danger of excessively rationalist or cerebral approaches to theology:
It gave no scope to the play of Christian feeling; it never turned aside to reverence, to worship, or to adore. It exhibited truth, nakedly and baldly, in its objective reality, without any reference to the subjective conditions which, under the influence of the Spirit, that truth was calculated to produce. It was a dry digest of theses and propositions—perfect in form, but as cold and lifeless as a skeleton.26
Such an approach to theology divorced it from the realm of experience—and hence from the reality of everyday Christian life, especially among believers who did not find intellectual analysis natural or easy.
This is precisely what Harvey Cox describes as “text-orientated believers”—that is, those Protestants who believe that God can only be accessed (and then to a limited extent, in the form of abstract religious ideas) through reading the Bible or hearing an expository sermon. For Cox, Pentecostalism celebrates the resurgence of “primal spirituality” and absolutely refuses to allow experience of God to be limited to the rarefied world of abstract ideas. God is experienced and known as a personal, transformative, living reality.
The contrast with Pentecostalism on this point could not be greater. Pentecostalism’s emphasis on a direct, immediate experience of God avoids the rather dry and cerebral forms of Christianity that many find unattractive and unintelligible. It is thus significant that Pentecostalism has made huge inroads in working-class areas of Latin America, Africa, and Asia, in that it is able to communicate a sense of the divine and its implications without the need for prayer books and the other traditional paraphernalia of Protestant culture. Pentecostalism eschews the aridity of dogmatic theology and sets in its place the personal renewal of the believer through the Spirit—something that can be narrated and proclaimed rather than logically dissected and analyzed.
Pentecostalism declares that it is possible to encounter God directly and personally through the power of the Holy Spirit. God is to be known immediately and directly, not indirectly through study of a text. Whereas traditional Protestantism is wary of allowing any such immediate experience of God, Pentecostalism celebrates it and makes it a hallmark of Christian living. God has an impact upon the totality of existence and is not confined—as in some traditional Protestant traditions—to the world of the mind.
So why is this so important? These observations need to be set against one of the most dramatic developments to take place globally in the aftermath of the Second World War—the spread of Marxism. Although imposed by force in many parts of eastern Europe and central Asia, Marxist ideas proved inspirational to many groups in Latin America, Africa, and Asia that were disillusioned with the existing social order and wanted to change it radically. Marxism offered a worldview that promised to transform society—and it was a worldview without God.
In Latin America, Marxism quickly gained the initiative, with Cuba emerging as a revolutionary template. In Brazil, Marxism adapted to the local situation, and theorists such as Caio Prado (1907–90) presented its socioeconomic vision as the remedy for the nation’s ills. Recognizing the importance of dealing with the social issues this reflected, some prominent Catholics in the region developed “liberation theology,” which emphasized the transformative social vision of the gospel.27
Liberation theology was not, however, compelling. Part of its problem was that it offered a vision of social transformation in which the individual seemed to have no particular role. Pentecostalism, in marked contrast, offered a vision of personal transformation in which individuals sorted out their own lives, then those of their families, and then moved on to broader social issues.
Pentecostalism creates a strong sense of expectation of a direct, personal, transformative encounter with God in the worship of the church and in personal experience. Personal transformation subsequently leads into social concern. Far from being oppressive or fraudulent (as Marxism argued), belief in God has been liberating and transforming. How could God’s existence be doubted when God is such a powerful reality in people’s lives? And how could God’s relevance be doubted when God inspires people to care for the poor, heal the sick, and work for the dispossessed? The outcome of this movement has been remarkable. Pentecostalism is displacing Marxism as the solace and inspiration of the urban poor.
Important though this development is, the relevant point in this section is Pentecostalism’s resacralization of everyday life. A permanently absent God can quickly become a dead God. If the existence of God makes little or no impact upon the experiences of everyday life, the business of living might as well be conducted without reference to God. By opening up again the possibility of a transcendent reality virtually closed off by modernism, Pentecostalism injects the presence of God into everyday life—through social action, politics, and evangelism.
The rise of Pentecostalism thus represents a challenge to the more cerebralized forms of Protestantism. It urges them to reconsider their excessive intellectualism and to discover the forbidden realms of imagination, emotion, narrative, and experience. This kind of experiential and transcendent impoverishment of faith is partly due to early trends in sections of Protestantism, which are open to challenge and correction, and partly due to the excessive influence of modernism upon the movement as a whole, which is subject to historical erosion as well as principled rejection. Protestantism is not wedded to such a distancing from the transcendent; the rise of Pentecostalism may yet prove to be the stimulus for it to reconsider this question—to the enrichment of the movement as a whole. Protestantism, after all, is a work in progress that subjects itself to constant review and is willing to correct mistakes and wrong turnings.
Yet many mainstream Protestants feel that Pentecostalism itself might represent precisely such a mistake and a wrong turning. We must therefore move on to consider some tensions between the movements and their implications for the future of both movements.
TENSIONS WITH TRADITIONAL PROTESTANTISM
The rapid rise of Pentecostalism has not been without controversy. The movement is unquestionably a form of Protestantism: it emerged historically from the American holiness tradition, and it emphasizes the place of the Bible in Christian life and tradition. Like all Protestant groups, Pentecostalism affirms the authority of the Bible with a specific and distinctive way of interpreting the text that attaches particular importance to the role of the Holy Spirit in interpreting the Bible and in guiding and empowering the individual. Pentecostalism regularly affirms a commitment to the acceptance of the real and present work of the Holy Spirit through gifts and signs as imparted to believers for service and witness.
This commitment has given rise to a tension that is often characterized as “word versus spirit.” Classical Protestantism holds that God’s will and purposes are revealed only through the written text of the Bible; Pentecostalism recognizes the role of “words of knowledge” to individual believers, which may be important for the community as a whole. For traditional Protestants, this approach seems to devalue the place of the Bible in the Christian life; for Pentecostals, the older approaches limit God’s capacity to reveal himself to individuals through his Spirit.
Classical Protestantism is also uneasy about Pentecostalism’s idea of “baptism in the Spirit,” which it regards as inadequately grounded in the Bible. Most charismatics believe that a Christian receives the Holy Spirit at conversion but does not receive the fullness of the Spirit until later, through baptism in the Holy Spirit, in which he or she receives a full empowerment for Christian service. Baptism in the Holy Spirit is thus seen as a second work of grace after conversion. Traditional Protestant theology does not accept this framework, which is also encountered in the holiness tradition, holding instead that all Christians are baptized in the Holy Spirit at conversion.
A more serious concern has arisen over what many traditional Protestants see as the non-trinitarian understandings of the Holy Spirit associated with one or two Pentecostal groups. Although these groups are not typical of the movement as a whole, their critics regard them as indicative of the movement’s theological trends and patterns of thought. “Oneness” Pentecostals—sometimes referred to as “Jesus Only” charismatics by their critics—insist upon the unity of God (as seen in the “Shema”; Deuteronomy 6:4) and regard the classical idea of the Trinity as introducing division within the Godhead.
The United Pentecostal Church International (UPCI) thus differs significantly from the Assemblies of God (AoG) and other classic Pentecostal churches through its declaration that it “views the Trinitarian concept of God, that of God eternally existing as three distinctive persons, as inadequate and a departure from the consistent and emphatic biblical revelation of God being one.” In its place, the UPCI offers a doctrine of God that classical Protestantism—and the vast majority of Pentecostals—regard as a form of modalism, a trinitarian heresy rejected by the early church. Thus, the UPCI states that “God is manifested as Father in creation and as the Father of the Son, in the Son for our redemption, and as the Holy Spirit in our regeneration”—a view usually referred to and rejected as “Sabellianism.”28
A final area in which traditional Protestantism has expressed concern about Pentecostalism concerns a strand of thought that has emerged in a significant number of its churches—namely, that being right with God ensures health and wealth. Leading American exponents of this approach within the Pentecostal tradition include Oral Roberts and Benny Hinn. This “prosperity gospel” is capable of being stated in a number of ways; its most fundamental theme, however, is that “being poor or ill is a sin, when God promises prosperity and health.”29 This “name-it-and-claim-it” theology causes many, both Pentecostals and traditional Protestants, serious theological problems. After all, Jesus Christ was not wealthy in any sense of the term, and his crucifixion is hardly consistent with the idea that God blesses the faithful with long lives and the evasion of suffering.
While many traditional Protestants are uneasy about the rise of Pentecostalism, there is a growing appreciation of its merits and a willingness to work with it in programs of outreach, pastoral care, and political and social action. This naturally leads us to explore what the longer-term impact of the movement on Protestantism might be.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PENTECOSTALISM FOR PROTESTANTISM
Many see the advent and advance of Pentecostalism in the twentieth century as no less important than the Reformation of the sixteenth century, And some even describe the emergence of Pentecostalism as a “second Reformation,” or a “new Reformation.” Both of these labels, though understandable, are inappropriate. The term “second Reformation” was widely used in scholarly studies of an earlier generation to refer to what is now more accurately and helpfully known as “confessionalization.” This was not understood as a “second” or “new” Reformation, but as a second phase in the continuing process of recalibration and reformulation that lies at the heart of the Protestant enterprise.30
Pentecostalism is to be seen as part of the Protestant process of reflection, reconsideration, and regeneration. It is not the consequence of a “new Reformation,” but a legitimate outcome of the ongoing program that has characterized and defined Protestantism from its outset. Like most other movements within Protestantism, it builds upon what has gone before. Its spiritual egalitarianism is clearly both a recovery and a restatement of the classic Protestant doctrine of the “priesthood of all believers.” Its emphasis upon the importance of experience and the need for transformation can be traced back to earlier Pietism, particularly as developed within the holiness tradition. Yet it has welded and wedded these insights into its own distinctive vision of the Christian life and of how God is encountered and proclaimed. It offers Protestantism a new paradigm of self-expression that was once regarded as marginal and slightly eccentric by the Protestant mainstream; one hundred years later, Pentecostalism is increasingly coming to define and determine that mainstream itself.
So what might this movement have to say to other Protestants? At one level, the movement has brought about renewal within mainline Protestantism through its “worship songs.” The history of Pentecostalism in France—one of Europe’s most secular countries—illustrates this well. Evangelical and charismatic churches grew from 800 registered congregations in 1970 to 1,800 in 2000. This growth is widely attributed to the charismatic movement, which has not only become a significant Protestant group in itself but also revitalized worship in many mainline denominations. While noncharismatic Protestant churches appear to be stagnant or in decline, charismatic sectors of the Protestant community are growing and taking advantage of a subtle yet growing interest in spiritual matters among French youth.
Yet there are deeper issues here, one of which is of particular interest. In that Pentecostalism is a late arrival on the Protestant scene, it has forged its ideas and approaches without being molded by past controversies, constraints, and traditions. One of the most distinctive features of Pentecostalism is its total disconnection with any notion of “Christendom.” This paradigm shaped Western Christian thinking about its social identity from the onset of the Middle Ages (some would argue since the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine) until the end of the First World War.31 It is based on the notion of geographical regions that possess a religious and cultural identity determined by the Christian faith.
Although this notion has been in decline in western Europe since the eighteenth century, Protestantism emerged in an era when this notion was still dominant. Protestantism has never entirely shaken off its lingering memory, and over the years it has acquired habits of action and thought that reflect its social origins in western Europe. Whether the Protestant communities have been inclined to accept or reject the model of Christendom, it was the constant backdrop to their reflections.
Much the same is true of the Enlightenment and the rise of modernity, which have had a decisive effect on the shaping of Protestantism and made no small contribution to the tensions, confusion, and disagreements over how to respond to postmodernity. Wolfhart Pannenberg has persuasively argued that much Western Protestant theology has been shaped by the rise of the natural sciences and the secular critique of authority.32
Pentecostalism emerged in the first years of the twentieth century and blossomed from about 1950. It was never subject to the controlling assumptions about what was “reasonable” or “normal” that so shaped earlier Protestant communities. Sociologically, it was a religion of the poor, marginalized, and dispossessed, who had little interest in matters of theology or church politics. Without having its ideas and expectations molded by the notion of Christendom and traditional Protestant responses to this, Pentecostalism was free to develop its own post-Christendom paradigms and often retrieved pre-Christendom strategies without even realizing it.
Similarly, Pentecostalism adapted to postmodernity without having first been molded by modernism. Its emergence at a cultural junction allowed it to adapt as it saw best to the prevailing local cultures without having to discard or modify an inherited set of assumptions and attitudes that traditionalists tended to regard as normative. Pentecostalism was thus able to respond rapidly and sympathetically to local cultures without being restrained by modernist Western assumptions about how this should be done. Pentecostalism, as has often been observed, is the global religion best adapted to the globalization process itself.33
We see here an emerging form of Christianity that has skipped the agenda of a past generation and is able to construct its outlook and strategic policies without reference to a period of history that was of such importance in the West. There is an obvious technological analogy to hand in the emergence of cell-phone technology. Many Africans now have cell phones without having had traditional landlines in the past. Technology has simply skipped an intermediate generation in this region. No one needs to have used a landline telephone to understand or use a cell phone. Seeing no need to engage with past memories of Christendom or modernity, Pentecostals proceed directly to the next generation of ideas and approaches.
Some have suggested that Pentecostalism was deliberately conceived as a postmodern form of Protestantism. The historical evidence for this is simply not compelling. It is far more accurate to suggest that the movement emerged with an outlook that proved—by accident rather than design (although Pentecostals would speak of “divine providence” in this regard)—to be exceptionally well adapted to the new cultural mood emerging in the West in the late twentieth century and to the premodern mood prevalent throughout the global South. This is a resonance of happenstance, not a carefully crafted strategy of adaptation. Yet for Pentecostals, this is a matter of God’s providence and planning and must be discerned as such.
Pentecostalism’s resonance with postmodernism is probably best seen in the field of biblical interpretation. Pentecostals, while affirming the traditional Protestant notion of the accessibility of the Bible and the right of every believer to interpret this text, stress the multiple dimensions of meaning that arise—not on account of the indeterminate nature of the text, but on account of the “leading of the Spirit” into the true meaning of the text, which that same Spirit originally inspired.
We must now consider the global growth and diversification of Protestantism in the twentieth century, a process in which Pentecostalism has played a significant role. Yet while Pentecostalism is by far the most numerous component of the worldwide Protestant movement at present, there are other significant players and factors that have made significant contributions to its dynamics in the opening years of the twenty-first century. In the following chapter, we consider some of these trends and their possible implications for the future.