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Presentation Abstracts

Abstracts appear below.

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Afe Adogame

The paper tackles two interrelated issues: First, some scholars have canvassed that African churches have been reduced to a state of penury as a result of the collapse of African economies; and consequently the continent has become increasingly receptive to a form of Christianity that is new, fundamentalist, American, and through which its resources, personnel and technology exert overbearing impact on African religious landscape. Second, such scholars even tease out the externality of the “prosperity gospel” to African religious sensibilities, waving it off simply as a hiccup and by-product of American Pentecostalism. It was argued that “health” and “wealth” are central discourses in African Pentecostal rhetoric so long as they remain catchwords for Africans who patronize these churches in their droves, against the backdrop of dawdling socio-economic and political crises. The main thrust of their argument is that Pentecostal Christianity evolving in Africa is far from being a genuinely African construct, arising from African experience and meeting African needs. This paper critiques this strand of argument which privileges “ecclesiastical externality” and “extraversion” in explaining the public role and demographic stature of African Christianity. Such assumptions fail to take cognizance of the colossal diverseness and complexity of African Christianity, and glosses over indigenous religious creativity and innovation. We contend that the internal church dynamics; the import, prevalence and packaging of healing ritual attitudes and action account largely for the rapid expansion of Pentecostal Christianity in a way that they are significantly reshaping local and global religious maps of the universe. The paper foregrounds the Malachi rhetoric as a vital anchor on which the economic base of most African Pentecostal churches revolves. Drawing from recent religious ethnography, the paper explores how internal religious characteristics and self-financing dynamics and strategies act as significant stimuli for Pentecostal growth and demographic spread in Africa and in the diaspora.

Allan Anderson

The paper focuses on the global dimensions of Pentecostalism's growth outside the United States and Europe, especially during the first two decades of the twentieth century, and the implications of this for the current growth of Pentecostalism globally.

James Ault

Christianity’s explosive growth in Africa—totally unanticipated at the dawn of independence—holds important lessons about the nature of Pentecostalism and its current ascendance on the world stage, particularly through Christianity’s shifting center of gravity to the global South. To grasp such lessons we will screen pieces from a documentary series on African Christianity (in progress) edited in cinéma-vérité style from over 250 hours filmed in Ghana and Zimbabwe and, then, the United States, following some of the films’ characters in their work or “on mission” in that metropolitan nation. This series will demonstrate that African Christianity’s phenomenal growth stems from its being rooted ever more firmly and confidently in local cultures recognizing, in contrast to the Post-Enlightenment assumptions of the West, a world of diverse spirits interacting regularly with the material world. Within such a worldview, African Christians in all traditions—mission-founded, old independent and new Pentecostal—have been bringing to new heights ministries of healing, prophesy, prayer and deliverance, ministries of the supernatural that have been the main engines fueling Christianity’s astonishingly popular growth in postcolonial Africa. Beyond portraying the basic trajectory of this process with interpretive commentary from thinkers like Kwame Bediako and Andrew Walls, these films will work, in the main, through the personal dramas of ordinary believers to bring viewers effectively—and affectively—into worlds of African belief in which Pentecostalism naturally flourishes and is, indeed, perhaps, at home.

Ann Bernstein

Four out of five South Africans claim membership of the Christian religion. Census statistics record a substantial growth trend in the numbers affiliated to Pentecostal and Charismatic churches. There is a mushrooming of congregations in the informal urban shack settlements, townships, inner cities and upmarket suburbs of Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town and other major urban centres. Simultaneously, there has been no growth in numbers of adherents to traditional mainline Christian churches. A significant research project has been underway over the past 18 months led by Professor Peter Berger (Boston University), Professor James Hunter (University of Virginia) and Ann Bernstein (Centre for Development and Enterprise, South Africa).

The Centre for Development and Enterprise commissioned research reports comprising in-depth surveys of pastors, businesspeople, politicians, social activists and congregants to explore different dimensions of the impact of this burgeoning phenomenon on the social, economic and political dimensions of the country’s development. A larger more representative sample of Pentecostal, mainline and non-religious South Africans living in the country’s economic heart, the Gauteng province was conducted to complement the qualitative research. We are currently interrogating the data to determine the extent to which this hidden dynamic in South African public debates and analyses is impacting the broader society.

Anthea Butler

The place of Los Angeles as the “cradle of the Pentecostal movement” may be contested by scholars, but Pentecostalism in Los Angeles today reaches across many ethnic communities and social classes. The face of Pentecostalism in Los Angeles is the face of Global Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism in the City of Angels embraces many worship styles, social, economic, and community concerns, yet holds on to the core Pentecostal beliefs. The panelists and video presentation on the panel are representatives of the vibrancy of the global Pentecostal movement in Los Angeles, and how their various outreaches are changing and revitalizing not only communities in the Los Angeles area, but invigorating Pentecostalism on a world-wide scale.

R. Andrew Chesnut

For over four centuries the Catholic Church enjoyed a religious monopoly in Latin America in which potential rivals were repressed or outlawed. Latin Americans were born Catholic and the only real choice they had was whether to actively practice the faith. Taking advantage of the legal disestablishment of the Catholic Church between the late 1800s and the early 1900s, Pentecostals almost single-handedly built a new pluralist religious economy. By the 1950s, many Latin Americans were free to choose from among the hundreds of available religious "products," a dizzying array of religious options that range from the African-Brazilian religion of Umbanda to the New Age group known as the Vegetable Union. I demonstrate how the development of religious pluralism over the past half-century has radically transformed the "spiritual economy" of Latin America. In order to thrive in this new religious economy, Latin American spiritual "firms" must develop attractive products and know how to market them to popular consumers. Three religious groups have proven to be the most skilled competitors in the new unregulated religious economy. Pentecostalism, the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and African diaspora religions such as Brazilian Candomble and Haitian Vodou have emerged as the most profitable religious producers. I explore the general effects of a free market, such as introduction of consumer taste and product specialization, and shows how they have played out in the Latin American context.

Paul Freston

Latin America is in many ways the current global heartland of Pentecostalism and has also become a centre of Pentecostal political involvement. This involvement dates from the last 20 or so years and has replaced the earlier apolitical stance of nearly all the churches. But it has been very diverse and extremely controversial. The paper examines the main outlines of this involvement, its varied causes and forms, and its impact on the image of Pentecostalism and on the politics of (partially) democratic Latin America.

Ogbu U. Kalu

Recent scholarship on African Pentecostalism tends to start from the contemporary and urban experiences to explore the impact of external cultural forces and show how Africans respond to the forces of externality and globalization. Pentecostalism is imaged as the religious vanguard. The model misses the force of the movement’s fit into the indigenous worldviews and the Pentecostal practices in the rural contexts. This study is a cultural discourse that reconstructs the movement’s response to the system of meanings embodied in the symbols and worldviews of indigenous African religions and cultures. Pentecostal response is beyond making a break with the past. It affirms the spiritual force and present reality of the past and uses the areas of resonance and kindred atmosphere to catalyze cultural change. It is the “setting to work” of the pneumatic semen of the gospel in Africa, at once showing how Africans appropriated the gospel message, how they responded to the presence of the kingdom in their midst, and how its power transformed their worldviews. Exercising a measure of agency, they absorbed new resources in reshaping their histories. The conceptual scheme proposes a different starting point and explores the conversation between religion and culture, the clash of covenants, the contested strategies of worldview maintenance and the negotiation between three publics in African cultural reality-the indigenous, emergent and western publics. This means that the conversation partners in shaping Pentecostal ideology and praxis are the indigenous religions and cultures, the contemporary cultures, competing religious forms in urban and rural contexts, the experiences of individuals and communities, biblical resources and the ecclesiastical tradition or the pneumatically-driven Pentecostal image of the church. These are not discreet categories but are useful sources for revisiting the debate on Pentecostal response to African cultural heritage.

Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen

The aim of this presentation is to reflect on the state and contribution of Pentecostal spirituality and theology to our understanding of the role of the Spirit in the world and in relation to religions. After a brief consideration of the state of pneumatology in contemporary theology, the presentation attempts an outline of global Pentecostal pneumatologies with a view to considering their approach to religions. Diversity within the various Pentecostal and Charismatic theologies of the Spirit will be highlighted as well as their relation to mainline doctrines of the Spirit.

Luis Lugo & John Green

In this session, Luis Lugo and John Green of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life will be presenting the results of a major 10-country survey of Pentecostal publics, funded in part by the Templeton Foundation. The Forum conducted face-to-face surveys in selected African, Asian and Latin American countries with large Pentecostal populations (Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, the Philippines, South Korea and India). The Forum also conducted a telephone survey of American Pentecostals. The surveys offer a unique look at the beliefs and attitudes of Pentecostals and charismatics in the United States and throughout the global South, including their views on a wide range of social, political and economic issues.

Frank Macchia

Is there such a thing as a Pentecostal theology, or are there only different Pentecostal theologies? Over the last several decades, this issue has been debated with interesting results. Walter J. Hollenweger proposed a diverse spectrum of Pentecostal theologies united only by certain tendencies of religious experience and expression. Donald Dayton, however, proposed that there is a theologically-coherent focus to Pentecostal theology globally that revolves around four components of Christ as "Savior, Spirit Baptizer, Healer, and Coming King." The arguments since Hollenweger's and Dayton's proposals have tended to proceed along one of these two streams or some form of synthesis between them. Both streams attempt to get beyond the older notion of Pentecostal theology as nothing more than a defense of an experience of "Spirit baptism" or "speaking in tongues." In sensitivity to both streams, the following paper focuses on the metaphor of Spirit baptism as the organizing center of Pentecostal theologies globally but in a way that expands the metaphor's boundaries ecumenically.

David Martin

I argue that Pentecostalism represents the voluntaristic, decentered and market model of religion pioneered in Anglo-America, in a world where its main competitors, Islam, Catholicism and (maybe) China represent rather different principles. I indicate some of the resistances to the market, in particular ethnoreligiosity. I also indicate how Pentecostalism, through the global circulation of people, crosses ethnic and cultural species barriers and achieves rapid indigenization. In that sense Pentecostalism is a fissile movement inherently in diaspora through the creation of a portable identity. This identity is based on therapeutic release and necessary discipline, and helps the poor, especially poor women, survive material deprivation, and helps emerging middle classes achieve psychic stability.

Donald Miller

Based on field research and interviews in 20 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, this paper argues that there is an emergent focus on social ministry within a growing number of Pentecostal and charismatic groups. This emphasis reflects a theological shift within some elements of Pentecostalism as well as an increasing number of adherents who are educated and middle class. Formerly, Pentecostal social involvement was often individualistic, offering food, clothing, or shelter to members of the church community who were in personal need. Increasingly, and especially in large Neo-Pentecostal churches, there is genuine engagement with the broader social needs of the community, although the attempt is typically to create alternative social programs related to education, medical care, and so on, rather than political engagement. These “progressive” Pentecostal churches believe they are growing a new generation of potential leaders who, in the future, might contribute to governance that is less corrupt and more just. The engine of social engagement for Pentecostals is an experience of worship in which vision, commitment, and self-sacrifice are cultivated—but buoyed by a lightness of spirit and self-transcendent joy.

Doug Petersen

Discrimination, neglect, and economic disparity are the norm within most Latin American countries. The effects of globalization and authoritarian power structures have effectively eliminated lesser groups from participation. In these hostile environments, Pentecostals have created the most extensive network of popularly directed associations outside the Roman Catholic Church. As the dust settles on this exciting phenomenon, it is apparent, however, that Pentecostals are confronted with a myriad of novel and complex challenges. Even though they may be sufficiently motivated to remain in the trenches and reach the hurting and marginalized around them, this army of compassionate workers will need an inspired moral imagination if they wish to be agents of social transformation.

This presentation argues that Pentecostals can enhance the effectiveness of their social action programs by encouraging the development of the skills, methods, and approaches that are necessary for moral imagination and organizational creativity to flourish. Specifically, I suggest that Pentecostals, with commitment to a supernatural worldview and equipped with the empowering presence of the Spirit, would benefit by practicing a moral imagination. A moral imagination could help Pentecostals to discern and understand their specific context from a fresh perspective, to imagine new possibilities for acting in that context, and to evaluate the strength of those possibilities from a biblical point of view. A moral imagination, guided by the Spirit, would provide a platform from which Pentecostals could develop effective social action strategies that are creative, innovative, entrepreneurial, and biblical.

Margaret M. Poloma

There is a strong link between religious revivalism and divine healing in American religious history. The practice of divine healing has tended to decline within a religious movement as its charismatic moment morphs into religious doctrine and ritual. This routinization of charismatic healing from spiritual experience to religious ritual is evidenced throughout the two millennia of Christian history, with the practice of divine healing being revitalized in the past 150 years during heights of religious revivals. Most Christian groups that were open to the experience and practice of the supernatural gift of healing, however, did not make it a central tenet of faith. It was not until the 20th century and the rise of Pentecostalism, with intermittent waves of revival washing across its shores during its 100-year history, that divine healing once again assumed a central role in orthodox Christian practice, often being linked with salvation itself. Within the time allotted, this presentation will deal with three main topics relevant to Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal belief, ritual and experience of divine healing. First, we will present an abridged history of Christian divine healing to place the topic within a larger historical context; next we will discuss the changing meaning attaching to divine healing within American Pentecostalism; and finally we will offer a modest attempt to construct a tentative bridge between Pentecostal healing and modern scientific thought.

Cecil M Robeck, Jr.

There is little question that the Apostolic Faith Mission, which occupied the property at 312 Azusa Street in Los Angeles from 1906-1931 played a significant role in the birth, growth, and expansion of Pentecostalism. In recent years, historians of Pentecostalism have differed over what that role was and how far it actually extended. Still, the “Azusa Street” story has drawn many people to it as a kind of “Ur” text, a myth that helps to explain the origins of Pentecostalism? This paper will set forth the basic story line of the mission’s life, from its inception through the first half-dozen years of its existence. Working as they did through previously existing holiness networks and venturing into previously unexplored areas, this paper will draw from a wide range of previously unused sources to follow the trails of the mission’s evangelists, missionaries, and church planters, as they went from Azusa Street to the ends of the earth.

Jeffrey Schloss

After largely ignoring the crucial issue of religion for the past century, the natural sciences have more recently focussed vigorous attention on it in two ways. Evolutionary and cognitive sciences have speculated on the origin of capacities for religious belief and experience. Social psychological and epidemiological sciences have investigated the transmission and consequences of religious commitments. There has been little integrative commerce betweent these areas, and the causal accounts of the former have tended not just to explain religious cognition, but to "explain away" religious warrant. This talk will explore a concilliatory proposal that posits a role for visible religious experiences in reducing "commitment barriers," recognized to limit the evolution of group cooperation and virtually rule out altruism. Specifically, biological signalling theory elaborates an important adaptive function for reliable external signs of interior dispositions. Charismatic manifestations meet all the theoretical criteria for such signals, and in the history of the church have been viewed not only as signs of God's presence but also as portals of commitment, which at times appear to have attended expansion of community across social, economic, and ethnic barriers.

Timothy Shah

Surveys by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life as well as other organizations find that white evangelicals in the U.S., including Pentecostals, are markedly more pro-Israel than any other American religious group other than Jews. Does this “Evangelical Zionism” have its equivalent among evangelical groups in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, including Pentecostals? The presentation will discuss whether a recent 10-country survey by the Pew Forum finds a pro-Israel tendency among Pentecostal respondents. It will also discuss the role of biblical Israel in Pentecostal political rhetoric and activism in recent years, with a focus on Guatemala, Zambia, South Africa, and Nigeria.

Robert Woodberry

Although the spread of “Pentecostal” movements in the Global South has been heralded as both a boon and a curse for democracy, many of these claims have been based on limited and anecdotal data. A survey of the literature suggests the overall impact seems to be generally positive, but modest, long-term, and partially dependent on context. One important (and often neglected) mechanism has been how competition with Pentecostals has transformed the behavior of more established religious groups.