Murray Dempster, Byron D. Klaus and Douglas Petersen, The Globalization of Pentecostalism: A Religion Made to Travel (Carlisle, Ca: Regnum, 19990, xvii + 406 Pps.
This book looks at changes in the academic disciplines, features of global regions, and nuances of the cultural issues related to global Pentecostalism, to what may be called the new Catholicism. Harvey Cox noted that Pentecostalism was a religion made to travel. The future of religion belongs to P. and not to mainline Christianity (xiii). McClung proposes provides a paradigm for P. mission that highlights the creation and integrity of justice for the human community, one that contains elements of ecumenism, ecology, eschatology, and holism, and he notes the intrinsicness of P. missiological nature. Wonsuk Ma chronicles the emerging critical approach to scripture in the P. movement as evidenced by publications and learned journals, one that preserves the immediacy of God’s word without being trapped in subjectivity, noting that P.’s have a literal, apologetic, and non-critical reading of scripture, a stress on Luke-Acts narratives, and an eschatological orientation. Jackie D. Johns says its imperative that P. understand and contextualize their terms of social and political engagement in positing a participatory model whereby a believer may appropriate an experiential knowledge of God, as they have an alternative worldview and epistemology based on experience that they view as normative. He adds that P. picture the bible as the primary reference point for cummion with God, see them as a link b/t God and his people, and serve as a template to read the worldMacchia asserts that whereas tongues were formerly seen to be evangelistically oriented, now they are seen to be a dynamic empowerment for global witness of the people of God. He notes that the most significant paradigm shift for P. in the 21st century is to realize the implicit ecumenical and multicultural witness of P. for the kingdom of God.
Hollenweger sees at the root of P. the ecumenical harmonization of story, vision, prayers, and healing, one that integrates body and soul, nature and spirit, and society and person. Cecil Roebuck agrees and notes that P. is ecumenical and multicultural, even if the movement itself doesn’t recognize it. Roebuck adds that early P. saw their movement as a work of the Spirit that created a unified witness to the gospel message among the people of God. Donald Gee noted in 1949 that a distinct mark of P. movement was the perception of a fundamental unity in and of the Spirit.
Edward Cleary focuses on Latin American P. and shows how P. reached its current status in Latin America. Cleary notes that P.’s individual experience of the Holy Spirit and the emphasis that they put on that sets them apart from other denominations, and is a primary and constant part of their religious lives.
Japie Lapoorta looks at the African context, offering a case study on the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa, and its recent move toward racial reconciliation. Lapoorta claims that P. theology is narrative in form and structure (“Unity or Division,” in The Globalization of Pentecostal Theology). Secondly, in this theology, experience is more important than traditional, rational theology of the West. Thirdly, he claims that narrative theology makes possible contact and dialogue b/t different people and people groups. Fourthly, narrative theology is rhetorically powerful and a libertive instrument in the lives of people and communities. Fifthly, narrative theology is not systematic theology per se.
Gabriel Fackre defines narrative theology in the following way: “narrative theology is the discourse about God in the setting of a story. Narrative becomes the decisive image for understanding and interpreting faith. Depiction of reality, ultimate and penultimate in terms of plot, coherence, movement, and climax is at the center of all forms of this talk about God” (”Narrative Theology” in Religion in Life 37).
Hollenweger emphases the aspect of future expectations in his teachings about myth. He states that we should involve ourselves in other people’s myths, and that we should see talk about the Holy Spirit as talk about experience, which he claims is theme of pneumatology. He proposes a pneumatology that is not overshadowed by Christology (Hollenweger, Intercultural Theology).
Pluss indicates that the impulses toward global theology naturally would not come from materially satisfied people groups, but rather from the poor and marginalized who find in the Advocate one who can sympathize with them (“Globalization of Pentecostalism of of Individualism?,” in T.G.o.Pent.). For the P., there is a dialectic b/t what the bible ‘told me’ and what the Spirit ‘tells me’ (i.e. experience).
Jungja Ma, in “Pentecostal Challenges in East and South-East Asia,” (in T.G.o.Pent.), notes that for the majority of the 20th century, these countries were under colonial rule, and that even now the process of modernization and the advances of science, the Asians are relatively animistic and superstitious in comparison to Westerners, a condition in which P.-type churches and faith flourishes b/c of its dynamic worship practices. The Asians take the power-based evangelism of P. as the biblical pattern and norm.
Satyavrata, in “Contextual Perspectives on Pentecostalism as a Global Culture: A South Asian View” (in T.G.o.Pent.), notes that b/c of the ancient tradition of spirituality in South Asia, the subject of the Holy Spirit is of great interest and attraction (ref. i.e. Hinduism). Satyavrata claims that describing the commonality of P. in terms of globalized movement forces an artificial homogeneity on the movement unnecessarily, and runs the risk of sectarianism. However, the P. movement exists to bring renewal and unity to the church as a whole, as well as new impetus and energy to its mission.
Stronstad, in “Pentecostal Experience and Hermeneutics” (in Paraclete) notes that understanding the bible is always a matter of the mind b/c mankind is made in the image of God and it is in the Word that the human mind encounters the divine mind; thus, interpretation is a matter of rationality as well as experience and spiritual perception.
David Daniels, in “Everybody Bids You Welcome” (in T.G.o.Pent.), suggests that the globalization of P. means that the future of Christianity will be localized and multicultural in character, and is a pure;ly contextualized phenomenon.
Samuel notes, in “Pentecostalism as a Global Culture,” (in T.G.o.Pent.), that in general, P. worldwide invites indigenous leadership, the churches thrive in rural or urban settings and reflect social mobility, and they demoinstrate a strong commitment to familial structure, their teaching is based on the biblical teaching of the priesthood of all believers, and their ministry emphasizes healing and deliverance.
Dempster’s contribution, “Issues Facing Pentecostalism in a Postmodern World,” in this volume notes that one of the defining characteristics of postmodernism is its rejection of the modern notions of foundational epistemology, objective knowledge, and scientific rationality
Roebeck notes that whereas Seymour’s hope to produce a truly color-blind religious movement succeeded for a while, it ultimately failed b/c of the inability of whites to allow for a sustained of black leadership (“Azusa St. Revival” in DCPM). Roebeck deomnstartes in the DPCM that the early P. leaders held hope that this movement would generate Christian unity, but wehen the movement moved closer to evangelkicalism in the 1940’s, that became increasingly harder to accomplish.
Gerald T. Sheppard, in “Pentecostals, Globalization, and Postmodern Hermeneutics” (in T.G.o.Pent.), writes that Pentecostals are better titled ‘submodern’ than postmodern, premodern, or anti-modern (289).
Cecil Roebeck, in “Pentecostals and Ecumenism in a Pluralistic World,” (in T.G.o.Pent.), notes that whereas the early P. witness was explicitly ecumenical, it seems to have lost its way in the first in the 1940’s when they sought Evangelical approval. Charles Fox Parham, calling himself the true Elijah, thought he could lead the redeemed church (i.e. the P. movement) into fruitful evangelization in such a way to result in a single, restored, visible, Pentecostal church (341). William Seymour, building on Parham, noted that the P. movement stood for ‘Christianity Unity Everywhere’ (342). The term ecumenism is derived from the Greek noun, ‘oi’ (i.e. oikos), meaning house or dwelling. By extrapolation, it came to refer to a household. Thus, to engage in business pertaining to the household refers to a form of ecumenism (344). In a sense, the world is merely a global village, one in which the Holy Spirit is active within thoroughly. Roebeck lays out three stages of ecumenism: 1) a narrowly defined, merely a visible unity; 2) an action-oriented, more human-based notion, one that seeks solidarity with all humans b/c the Spirit is active throughout the cosmos, and 3) a group that looks at ecumenism as including not only humans, but also the environment and all of creation (344–366). It does not seem to me that P. has yet to enter into this third stage, and is barely into the second stage (ref. Yong et. al)