Allan H. Anderson
Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity (henceforth, “Pentecostalism”) has become a poly-nucleated and variegated phenomenon that has spread rapidly throughout the world during the twentieth century (A. Anderson 2013: ). One way to understand this variety of movements is from their theological center, and considers Pentecostalism to consist of related movements where the emphasis is on the experience of the Spirit and the exercise of spiritual gifts (R. Anderson 1979: 152). The term “Pentecostalism” itself is one with shortcomings, but despite its inadequacy refers simply to churches with a “family resemblance” that emphasize the working of the Holy Spirit, especially in the use of such “gifts of the Spirit” as healings, prophecies and speaking in tongues. The latter gift of “unknown tongues” may be said to distinguish most Pentecostals and Charismatics from other Christians, and although many members do not speak in tongues themselves or see it as a normative experience, their churches allow and often encourage its practice. Definitions depend on which range of criteria one takes. Criteria are always subjective and arbitrary, and differences may not be perceived as significant by the movements themselves on which these criteria are imposed. On the other hand, there is also the possibility of overlooking differences that may be quite important to church members. Pentecostal and Charismatic churches include a wide variety known by many different names.
Historically, Pentecostalism has multiple roots that include the radical evangelical missionary movement, the African-based slave religion of the United States, and the healing and holiness movements of the late nineteenth century. These historical roots in the radical fringes of “free church” Evangelicalism tend to create a certain fundamentalist rigidity among Pentecostals; while paradoxically, Pentecostalism’s emphasis on “freedom in the Spirit” renders it inherently flexible in different cultural and social contexts, and made the transplanting of its central tenets in different parts of the world more easily assimilated. With the passing of a century, the historical roots are not as easily recognizable. Pentecostalism began as a restoration or revitalization movement at the beginning of the twentieth century among radical evangelicals and their missionaries expecting a worldwide, Holy Spirit revival before the imminent coming of Christ. The fundamental conviction of these early Pentecostals was that before the cataclysmic eschatological events, the “old-time power” of the Acts of the Apostles would be restored to the church and “signs and wonders” would enable the Christian gospel to be preached rapidly all over the world. The message traveled quickly as its messengers spread out into a world dominated by Western colonial powers. As the world of the twentieth century lurched through two devastating world wars that created disillusionment with Western “civilization” and the colonial empires crumbled, Pentecostalism changed with it. It no longer saw itself as a form of Christianity imported from the West, but by the end of the century had developed thousands of local mutations from large urban mega-churches with high-tech equipment and sophisticated organizations to remote village house churches meeting in secret with a handful of believers. In the middle of the twentieth century and especially from 1960 onwards, Pentecostal phenomena began to reappear in the so-called “mainline” Protestant churches, and from 1967 in the Catholic Church. The resulting “Charismatic movement” in these churches grew exponentially during the 1970s and tensions led to a new type of independent Charismatic church that by the turn of the century was the most prominent form of Pentecostalism globally.
The answers to the question of what actually defines “Pentecostalism” are many and debates rage on. As we have seen, different scholars in differing disciplines have different criteria. Scholars in the Western world speak of “classical” Pentecostalism referring to those denominations that arose through the impetus of early revivals in North America, or of those denominational Pentecostals whose theological basis is an experience subsequent to conversion called “Spirit baptism”, the consequence or “evidence” of which is usually speaking in tongues. Others follow the church growth guru Peter Wagner’s lead and write of successive “waves” of Pentecostalism. In this schema, the first wave is classical Pentecostalism formed at the beginning of the twentieth century; the second wave is the Charismatic movement in the older churches that began in North America in the 1960s; and the “Third Wave” consists of the neo-evangelical, independent Charismatic churches that arose in the 1970s and 1980s. Wagner now speaks of a “Fourth Wave” and a “New Apostolic Reformation” (Wagner 1999). Each of these categories has its own personal “heroes” and catalyzers in the emergence of the category. But these terms are overused, clichéd and inappropriate in a global context. Even in the Western context there are large groups of churches that would fall somewhere in between the different “waves”.
Although the term “Pentecostalism” is now widely used by scholars of religion and most of them assume they know what it means, the term has been used to embrace churches as widely diverse as the celibacy-practicing Ceylon Pentecostal Mission, the sabbatarian True Jesus Church in China with a “Oneness” theology, the enormous, uniform-wearing, ritualistic Zion Christian Church in southern Africa and Brazil’s equally enormous and ritualistic, prosperity-oriented Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. These are lumped together with the Assemblies of God, various Churches of God, the Catholic Charismatic movement, “neo-Charismatic” independent churches with prosperity and “Word of Faith” theologies, the “Third Wave” evangelical movement with their use of spiritual gifts framed within a theology that does not posit a subsequent crisis experience of Spirit baptism, and many other forms of Charismatic Christianity as diverse as Christianity itself. Clearly, such a widely inclusive definition is problematic and leads to wild speculations about the extent of the movement. Classical Pentecostal scholars tend to use the statistics of David Barrett et al. as proof of the numerical strength of their particular form of Pentecostalism (Synan 1997: ix, 281; 2001: 373). These scholars begin their history with the early American movement and state rather triumphalistically that “Pentecostalism” has grown to half a billion members without analyzing what is included in these figures. Barrett estimated some 601 million Pentecostals, Charismatics and neo-Charismatics in the world in 2008 (Barrett, Johnson, and Crossing 2008: 30), and three distinct forms are included – “Pentecostal”, “Charismatic” and “neo-Charismatic”, numerically the largest category. Although not expressly stated, presumably “Pentecostal” here means “classical Pentecostal”; “Charismatic” means those who practice spiritual gifts in the older Catholic and Protestant denominations (with Catholic Charismatics forming the great majority); and “neo-Charismatic” includes all others, especially the vast number of independent churches – perhaps two-thirds of the total. The possible permutations are endless.
If we are to do justice to this global movement, we must include its more recent expressions in the independent, Charismatic and neo-Charismatic movements, especially as found in the global South. It is often easier to criticize the inclusive definitions of others without providing an alternative. Whatever we consider to be included needs to be completely flexible, so that we make room for the fringes where constantly changing new developments deviate from the “normal”. Despite the seeming diversity within global Pentecostalism, the movement has “family resemblances”, certain universal features and beliefs throughout its many manifestations, most of which emerged in the early twentieth century. Although this is not at all a homogeneous movement, and there are very significant differences, the thousands of different Pentecostal denominations and movements independent of those founded in North America and western Europe at the start of the twentieth century could all be described as “Pentecostal” in character, theology and ethos.
In these highly debatable, annually published statistics, it was estimated that there were 68 million “Pentecostals/Charismatics/neo-Charismatics” in the world in 1970. Thirty years later this figure had risen exponentially to 505 million, and in just eight years (2008) another 100 million were added to make a total of 601 million, about a quarter of the world’s Christians. This figure is projected to rise to almost 800 million by 2025 (Barrett, Johnson, and Crossing 2008: 30). Whatever one may think about the accuracy of these numbers, at least they do illustrate that something remarkable has happened in the history of Christianity in recent times. The rapid rate of growth of Pentecostalism and its associated movements accelerated dramatically in the last quarter of the twentieth century, and especially in the global South. Much depends, however, on what are included in these statistics, which are considerably inflated by including such large movements as African and Chinese independent churches and Catholic Charismatics. These movements, although having a “Spirit” focus, do not consider themselves “Pentecostal” and in many cases eschew such identification. But however we define Pentecostalism (this task is by no means easy and probably unnecessary), its many varieties have contributed to the transformation of the demographics of global religion itself. This has enormous implications for understanding both Christianity and its encounter with other faiths. The future of Christianity and the nature of global religion are affected by this seismic change in the character of the Christian faith.
There are other studies pointing to this global proliferation. In the Pew Forum’s Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals, conducted in 2006, it was discovered that in all ten of the countries surveyed,1 Pentecostalism constituted a very significant percentage of Christianity. It was, declared the summary, “one of the fastest-growing segments of world Christianity”, and was defined as those that “emphasize such spiritually renewing ‘gifts of the Holy Spirit’ as speaking in tongues, divine healing and prophesying.” Although the proportion varied from country to country, in six of the countries, Pentecostals and Charismatics were over 60% of all Protestants. In Brazil, Guatemala, Kenya, South Africa, and the Philippines, they constituted over a third of the total population – in Guatemala and Kenya it was over half, a remarkable statistic that indicates how pervasive and influential Pentecostalism is becoming (Pew Research 2006aa).
In Latin America its rapid growth in the second half of the twentieth century prompted David Stoll to ask whether the continent was turning Protestant, or “evangélico/a” (Stoll 1990).2 In some countries of this region Pentecostals and Charismatics are close to outnumbering Catholics and in Guatemala they have become half of the total population. The Pew survey states that Pentecostalism has grown from 4% of the total population of Latin America in 1970 to 28% in 2005 (Pew Research 2006bb). Brazil has the largest population of Pentecostals in the world, even found in the national legislature and consisting of some tenth of its members. Even in those Latin American countries where Pentecostalism is less than 10% of the population, Pentecostalism is now growing rapidly (Freston 2004). They have become catalysts of social change and are already becoming instruments of political and public clout. Guatemala has had two Pentecostal presidents, and Brazil and Nicaragua also have political parties initiated by Pentecostals. Whether Pentecostals proactively oppose reactionary structures or bolster the forces of conservativism remains to be seen (A. Anderson 2014: 283–290). Pentecostals have also grown rapidly in the Caribbean, particularly in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Haiti (Martin 1990: 51).
On the African continent, Pentecostalism began with the independent church movement in the second decade of the twentieth century. In West Africa, William Wadé Harris, Garrick Sokari Braide, and Peter Anim heralded in a new form of spiritual African Christianity that was paralleled simultaneously in South Africa by Edward Lion, Elias Mahlangu, Elias Letwaba and Engenas Lekganyane. The movements they founded together form a prominent part of Christianity in west and southern Africa. Early manifestations of Pentecostalism in the United States were found previously in the religious expressions of the slaves, who retained much of the African religious culture from which they had been abducted. In African and African diasporic Pentecostalism there is an adaptive remolding of African religious practices in a decidedly Christian context. These early roots paved the way for other African initiatives in Pentecostalism that interacted with Western forms to make Africa one of the most vibrant areas of Pentecostalism today. It is now one of the most prominent forms of Christianity and this has also profoundly affected older mission churches that have become “Pentecostalized” as a result. It is important to note the role of Pentecostalism and expatriate Pentecostal missionaries in the early years of African, Indian and Chinese independency and the links with some of its most significant leaders. The independent “Zionist” and “Apostolic” churches in South Africa together form the largest grouping of Christians in the country today. Although these independent churches may no longer be described as “Pentecostal” without further qualification, the most characteristic features of their theology and praxis are overwhelmingly Pentecostal and, in the case of South Africa, also influenced by the Zionist movement of John Alexander Dowie in Illinois. Healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, baptism by immersion, and even the rejection of medicine and the eating of pork, are some of the features that remain among these African churches. Whatever their motivation might have been, Pentecostal missions in South Africa were unwitting catalysts for a much larger movement of the Spirit that was to dominate South African Christianity for the remainder of the twentieth century. Although these Zionist and Apostolic churches have gradually increased the distance between themselves and classical Pentecostalism in liturgy and practice, their growth and proliferation are further evidence of the spread of churches of the Spirit throughout Africa.
Much more recently, new Pentecostal and Charismatic churches have become a major expression of Christianity, emerging all over the continent with services that are usually emotional, enthusiastic, and loud, especially as most make use of electronic musical instruments. Benson Idahosa in Benin City, Nigeria, was one of the earliest leaders of this new African Pentecostalism that propagates a prosperity gospel and holds seminars on how to get rich and prosper. Some of the largest Pentecostal churches in the world and the largest Christian gatherings are found in Nigeria today, especially in its southwestern region. Zambia has had two Pentecostal presidents. This new form of Pentecostalism has spread throughout Africa and into Europe and North America in the wake of African migration. Mega-churches in African cities that make judicious use of the media and electronic music play a prominent role in public life and attract many thousands, especially young people.
Pentecostalism is also expanding remarkably in many parts of Asia. In India, vigorous missionary and church planting activities characterize Pentecostal churches, especially in and from South India. Chinese Christianity is growing rapidly and is also dominated by a Pentecostal type of spirituality that began in Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai in the first decade of the twentieth century. Greater freedom of religion in this country since the 1989 tragedy of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square has resulted in the proliferation of unregistered Pentecostal and Pentecostal-like independent churches, who probably form the majority of Christians and have an uneasy relationship with both the Communist Party and the officially recognized China Christian Council. South Korea has had the largest Protestant churches in the world, including the Yoido Full Gospel Church founded by David Yonggi Cho in 1958 in a slum area of Seoul, reputed to be the largest congregation in the world by 1990 with 700,000 members. There are now several large Charismatic churches in Seoul with memberships exceeding 20,000. In Singapore there are similar churches, the independent City Harvest Church being the largest one, appealing especially to the city’s youth. Churches like these have opulent buildings holding thousands of worshippers, reflecting the emerging Pentecostal middle class in some parts of the world, or at least housing those aspiring to be such (A. Anderson 2014: 303). Large Pentecostal churches founded by Asians have emerged especially in the continent’s Pacific Rim in the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, and Malaysia. In the Philippines, the largest Catholic Charismatic movement in the world with some seven million members exists in the El Shaddai movement led by Mario (“Mike”) Verlade.
However, Pentecostalism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America often consists of grassroots movements appealing initially to the disadvantaged and underprivileged, whose desire for upward social mobility is nurtured (and occasionally realized) by its support of an alcohol-free, thrifty and industrious lifestyle. A focus on the prominent and wealthy urban mega-churches should not detract from the fact that many Pentecostals in the South meet in small groups and in shacks, schoolrooms and in the open air. Pentecostal spirituality reaches into some of the most remote and rural areas of the world and also into places where Pentecostals must meet in secret for fear of religious and ideological persecution. Pentecostalism has become the preference of the poor in places like Latin America where liberation theology has declared God’s preference for the poor. The globalization of these various kinds of Pentecostalism is a fact of our time.
There are some who say that Pentecostalism originated in the United States and there is some truth in this statement, at least as far as giving the movement its initial global impetus is concerned. Some of the roots of what is “classical” Pentecostalism today are found in American revivalism and its radical evangelicalism. The rise of Pentecostalism in the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles (1906–1908) under its leader William Seymour gave a certain authenticity to African American holistic Christianity with its bodily manifestations. This flexibility in different cultures and religions, however, did not always satisfy Westerners, who were drawn by their own sense of cultural decorum toward promoting a more cerebral and less emotional expression of Pentecostal practice. This also occurred in early American Pentecostalism, when the founder of the doctrine that speaking in tongues was “initial evidence” of receiving the Spirit, Charles Fox Parham of Topeka, Kansas, recoiled in horror at Azusa Street when he saw the intermingling of the races in manifestations of ecstasy (MacRobert 1988: 9, 31, 60). The Azusa Street revival, although part of a wider series of revivals in the early twentieth century, became the launch-pad for a new form of revivalist Christianity that emphasized spiritual gifts over cerebral ones, especially advocating an experience of baptism with the Spirit subsequent to conversion, accompanied by speaking in tongues and other miraculous signs that would enable ordinary people to spread out into all the world with the gospel before the imminent return of the Lord, into some twenty-five nations within two years. Many of these early Pentecostal missionaries reached out to existing evangelical mission networks with their message, resulting in new centers of Pentecostalism in different parts of the world that became the means of propagating the movement.
The American Pentecostals soon fell out with each other and began a series of acrimonious schisms that reverberated internationally. By 1916 American Pentecostalism was divided into three hostile sections that took different positions on Holiness and the Trinity so that Holiness, “Finished Work” and Oneness Pentecostalism emerged. African-American Pentecostalism also was isolated as Pentecostals followed the racial segregation that characterized American society at the time. But the Church of God in Christ, led by Charles H. Mason, took on its own distinctive form of Pentecostal spirituality and became the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States and the largest African American one. Early Pentecostals were also pacifist during World War I and in Britain were interred for this stand. As a result of the growth of the movement in North America and particularly the post-World War II healing evangelist Oral Roberts, Pentecostalism was seen as less of a fringe group and was gradually accepted into mainstream American society. By 1942 the major white denominations were admitted into membership of the newly formed National Association of Evangelicals. The 1950s also saw the emergence of the Latter Rain revival movement that advocated a return to New Testament Christianity and resulted in new divisions in Pentecostalism. The ministry of the New York evangelist David Wilkerson and the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship in this decade, accompanied by popular books like Wilkerson’s The Cross and the Switchblade and John and Elizabeth Sherrill’s They Speak with Other Tongues furthered the cause of Pentecostalism in “mainline” churches and opened the way for the Charismatic movement to become public.
In 1960 Episcopalian vicar Dennis Bennett was forced to resign from his church in California because he had received the Pentecostal experience. This event was given national publicity in the media, Charismatic experience in mainline churches grew during the 1960s and led to large interdenominational conferences and eventually, to new Charismatic churches that claimed to be “non-denominational” and independent. These churches constitute one of the most prominent features of American religious life, but their influence was not confined to this. Pentecostals and Charismatics like Pat Robertson, John Ashcroft and more recently, Sarah Palin, entered public life. Pentecostal expansion in the United States in the 1990s was restarted by the new migrations to the country through Hispanic, East Asian, and West African churches. North American Pentecostalism has also been the scene of various revitalization movements within Pentecostalism, including the Latter Rain movement and the healing revivals of the 1950s, the Charismatic Movement in the 1960s, the Jesus Movement commencing in California, and the shepherding movement of the 1970s. All these various movements extended their influence as its leaders traveled internationally. New revival movements occurred in Pentecostal churches during the 1990s, the most prominent being that in the Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship popularly known as the “Toronto Blessing”, and in the Brownsville Assembly of God, Pensacola, Florida. These became centers of pilgrimage for others, mainly from the Western world, to come and “catch the fire”.
In contrast to most other parts of the world, the Pentecostal movement in Europe is quite small (A. Anderson 2014: 92–111). This reflects the secularization of Europe in the past century, and although Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity has been able to hold its own in western Europe in the face of declining church attendance elsewhere, this form of Christianity remains relatively small. Pentecostalism was introduced into Europe mainly through the Norwegian Methodist Thomas B. Barratt, whose church in Oslo became a place of pilgrimage for future Pentecostal leaders, the most notable of which were Anglican vicar Alexander Boddy from Sunderland, England and Baptist pastor Lewi Pethrus of Sweden. Pentecostal churches across Europe emerged and grew slowly between the two world wars. By the 1950s European Pentecostalism was still a small minority regarded as a fringe sect by most European state churches. The Charismatic movement in Europe was earliest in France, where there were Reformed and Baptist Charismatics in the 1940s. The largest Pentecostal churches in western Europe were in Sweden, Finland, England, Portugal, and Italy. A significant Pentecostal movement among Europe’s Roma people began in France and Spain in the 1950s. The migration of Africans into Europe has resulted in new mega-churches springing up like the Kingsway International Christian Centre in London and the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God in Kiev, Ukraine.
Classical Pentecostalism has been relatively more successful in eastern Europe, where it has grown (especially since World War II) in the face of severe restrictions and persecution from Communist regimes. Yet after many years of repression this has not been without its difficulties. Perhaps the most significant pioneer of Pentecostalism in the Soviet Union was Ivan Voronaev (1886–ca. 1940) who first encountered Pentecostalism in a New York Russian Baptist church and later founded several large churches in Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia before disappearing into a Siberian labor camp. Since the disintegration of Communism there has been more freedom for Pentecostals in Central and Eastern Europe, but this has also presented various challenges. Pentecostalism expanded in many of the former Communist countries in the 1990s, but not without stiff opposition. There, the role of resistance to Pentecostalism that characterized the Communist era has been taken up by the dominant Orthodox Christianity. The latter has struggled to re-establish its hegemony in newly emerging secular democracies – and in some cases, like that of the post-Communist Russian Orthodox Church, has been quite effective in doing so.
There were an estimated 780,000 Pentecostals in Ukraine in 2000, the highest number in any European nation. There the Evangelical Pentecostal Union is probably now the largest Pentecostal denomination in Europe, with some 370,000 members. The largest single congregation in Europe is probably the Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God in Kiev, with an estimated membership of 20,000 and branches throughout the country and throughout the former Soviet Union. What is even more remarkable about this church is that its founder and senior pastor is a Nigerian, Sunday Adelaja, who has lived in the region most of his adult life and presides over a church and staff that is almost totally Ukrainian. In Romania, there are over 300,000 Pentecostals, about half of whom are Roma, the so-called “Gypsies”. The Pentecostal Apostolic Church of God is the largest denomination, founded in 1922 by George Bradin and later (1929 and 1950) uniting with other groups, the last occasion at the behest of the Communist government. This was largely a rural phenomenon until the 1950s, when it began to work in urban areas, and it now has flourishing city churches. In the immediate aftermath of the revolution in December 1989 in which the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaus.escu was executed, evangelicals and Pentecostals were given permission to hold public evangelistic rallies in several Romanian cities, which thousands attended with many conversions were. Clearly, there was a new religious freedom unprecedented in the previous four decades (Johnstone and Mandryk 2001: 536; Ceuta 1994; Pandrea 2001).
Since the fall of Communism in 1989 in Hungary, the “Faith Church” (“Hit Gyülekezete” in Hungarian), led by Sàndor Nèmeth has grown from a small underground church founded in 1979 to a mega-church with some ten thousand members in Budapest in less than twenty years, and with three hundred branches in other Hungarian cities, now the fourth largest denomination in the country.3 These new churches are spreading throughout the former Soviet block. Some of them emerging since the collapse of Communism like this one have succeeded in attracting large crowds to their services. One of the reasons for the relative success of these new Charismatic groups is their openness to the forces of globalization; this is in sharp contrast with the tendency towards self-isolation and puritanical dress codes that still characterize many of the Eastern European older Pentecostal groups. The flip side to the successes of home-grown and foreign forms of Pentecostalism in Eastern Europe is that new Pentecostal and Charismatic groups from the West on a quest for mission have entered former Communist countries with aggressive evangelistic techniques provoking fierce opposition from Orthodox churches and national governments. The Pentecostal churches there are in danger of becoming dependent on Americans for theological education, although there are also signs of resistance to any such dependency. The institutionalizing of those Pentecostal denominations that had been forced to share their identity with evangelicals and Baptists, and the creation and expansion of Pentecostal theological colleges has resulted in a more inward-looking Pentecostal movement in some of these countries.
Finally, in considering the reasons for the changes in global Christianity that have occurred in the late twentieth century through the influence of Pentecostalism, I will tentatively outline some of the characteristics of Pentecostalism that have made its message attractive in global communities. The following five features are not meant to be exhaustive.
Pentecostalism developed its own characteristics and identities in different parts of the world during the twentieth century while developing its transnational connections and international networks. The shapes of the new Pentecostalisms that have emerged as a result of the globalization process, how they differ from the older networks of denominational Pentecostalism and specifically what the features of this global shift of center from the North to the South means for Pentecostalism and world Christianity have yet to be precisely described.