Pentecostalism: To the Ends of the Earth
It’s arguably the fastest-growing religious movement in the world. Yet, despite increasing from less than 1 million adherents at the beginning of the 20th century to as many as 614 million today, the story behind the “spectacular rise of global Pentecostalism” has gone largely untold.
By Troy Anderson
Now, in his new Oxford University Press book – To The Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity – Allan Heaton Anderson, a professor of Global Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, explores what he describes as a “seismic change in the character of the Christian faith.”
“Christianity as a whole has been transformed by Pentecostalism,” Anderson told ToTheSource. “In overall numbers, (Christianity) has probably kept more or less the same proportion of the world population over the past 200 years, but as far as the character of Christianity is concerned, a much greater proportion of Christianity is now (attending) Pentecostal, Charismatic and independent churches.”
In the book, Anderson focuses on the innovations, challenges and achievements of Pentecostalism in the “Majority World,” where more than three-quarters of its adherents live. Anderson argues it is no coincidence that the southward shift in Christianity’s center of gravity over the 20th century has coincided with the emergence and expansion of Pentecostalism.
“Worldwide, Pentecostal Christianity may be the greatest success story of the past century, and the movement continues to grow mightily in numbers,” Philip Jenkins, the Distinguished Professor of History at Baylor University and the author of The Next Christendom: The Rise of Global Christianity, wrote in a recommendation of Anderson’s book.
“How very valuable, then, to have such an ambitious and user-friendly guide to this global expansion, written by one of the greatest scholars of the phenomenon. To The Ends of the Earth is a really excellent book, which somehow manages to remain judicious and critical in the face of the amazing spiritual explosion it depicts.”
Birthed in indigenous revival movements in the 19th century and propelled into the “second largest force in world Christianity” by the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 and similar events around the globe, Pentecostal, Charismatic and associated movements have exploded over the last century.
The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary at South Hamilton, Mass. estimates the number Pentecostals, Charismatics and Neocharismatics has skyrocketed from 981,000 in 1900 to 614 million in mid-2010 – and is expected to increase to 797 million by 2025.
That’s a growth rate of 2.42 percent and higher than the rate of growth of any other religion, including Islam at 1.82 percent. The overall rate of growth of Christianity – the world’s largest religion – is 1.35 percent. Since 1900, the total number of the world’s Christians – both Protestants and Catholics – has more than quadrupled from 522 million to 2.2 billion – and is expected to increase to 2.6 billion by 2025, according to the Gordon-Conwell report, “Christianity 2010: A View from the New Atlas of Global Christianity.”
The report mirrors a recent one by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life that found Christianity is growing exponentially in Africa, Asia and Latin America, offsetting declines in Europe. The Pew report also found that this growth is largely driven by an explosion in the number of Pentecostals, Charismatics and independents. Now totaling a quarter of the world’s Christians, eight in 10 of the world’s Pentecostals, Charismatics and independents live in the Americas (37 percent) or sub-Saharan Africa (44 percent).
“It’s a fundamental change,” Jenkins told ToTheSource. “I think it’s one of the most important changes in the history of Christianity, period. Look at the sheer speed of numerical growth and the rapidity of the transformation. We are talking about a revolution that has happened in the space of less than a century. That’s amazing!”
Pentecostals take their name from the biblical feast of Pentecost, which took place 50 days after Passover. Those early followers of Jesus who had gathered for the festival, as described in the Book of Acts, were said to be “filled with the Holy Spirit” and able to “speak in other tongues.”
Although the term is now widely used by religious scholars and social scientists, “Pentecostalism” is used to embrace movements as diverse as the Pentecostal Mission in India, the “Oneness” True Jesus Church in China, the Zion Christian Church in Southern Africa and Brazil’s Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. These are also lumped together with traditional Pentecostal churches like the Assemblies of God and the various Churches of God, along with the Roman Catholic Charismatic movement and a variety of independent churches and mega-churches in the United States and elsewhere.
In the book, Anderson explores a number of reasons behind the exponential growth of Pentecostalism – a segment of Christianity famous for its lively, highly personal faith that emphasizes “gifts of the Holy Spirit” such as speaking in tongues, divine healing and prophesying.
Perhaps the most important reason behind the growth of Pentecostalism is that it is fundamentally an “ends of the earth” faith, Anderson wrote.
“The experience of the Spirit and belief in world evangelism are hallmarks of Pentecostalism, and Pentecostals believe that they are called to be witnesses for Jesus Christ to the farthest reaches of the globe in obedience to Christ’s commission,” wrote Anderson, a former full-time Pentecostal minister with more than two decades of activism in Southern African Pentecostalism.
“And they have been remarkably successful. They have contributed enormously to the southward shift of Christianity’s center of gravity and provided a powerful argument against the inevitability of secularization…. Pentecostalism has been arguably the fastest growing religious movement in the contemporary world.”
Above all else, Pentecostalism is a missionary movement, Anderson wrote. Global Pentecostalism began as a revitalization movement among “radical evangelicals who were expecting a worldwide, Holy Spirit revival before the imminent coming of Christ,” Anderson wrote.
“The earliest Pentecostals understood their movement in eschatological terms, the divine breaking into history of a movement of the Spirit to revive a dead church, evangelize all nations, and prepare for the imminent second coming of Christ,” Anderson wrote.
In the book, Anderson pointed out that periodicals played a vital role in the growth of Pentecostalism – facilitating the early missionary migration and rapid globalization of the faith. Often the only link with any form of organization was through these publications. The magazines and newsletters provided missionaries with information about the movement’s progress and promoted conventions at which missionaries appealed for more workers and funds.
Anderson also notes how the Pentecostal message is attractive to women – pointing toward the “widespread phenomenon of women with charismatic gifts” and those women, like men, could “exercise any spiritual gift, testify to their experiences, and witness through music, prophecy, song, and many other forms of participation in the services….”
“The majority of Pentecostals are women – by most estimates the proportion is three to two, and in some countries it is probably higher…, Anderson wrote.
Anderson also attributes the expansion of Pentecostalism to a strong belief in the Bible.
“Pentecostalism as a whole also identifies its beliefs with the biblical worldviews,” Anderson wrote. “It becomes therefore an attractive option for those most in sympathy with a supernatural worldview.”
Another major attraction in the “Majority World” is that Pentecostalism offers biblical answers for needs prevalent in poor societies like sickness, poverty, hunger, oppression, unemployment and loneliness, Anderson wrote.
“In any given Pentecostal congregation one will discover testimonies of healings, deliverance from evil powers, the restoration of broken relationships, success in work and business ventures, and other needs that were met, usually through what was seen as the supernatural intervention of God through this Spirit – including the use of agents of the Spirit like evangelists, prophets, and other gifted church leaders,” Anderson wrote.
During the latter half of the 20th century, which Pentecostal historian Vinson Synan described as “the century of the Holy Spirit,” many people were attracted to Pentecostalism by its conviction that “emotions, music, and dance, and especially the exercising of spiritual gifts” are important for meaningful Christian worship, Anderson wrote.
Contemporary Christian music, currently represented by artists like Casting Crowns, Jeremy Camp, Third Day and Jars of Clay, has its roots in the Jesus movement revival that arose in the American hippie counterculture of the late 1960s and 70s. Known as “Jesus music,” some of the early pioneers of this music include Larry Norman, Keith Green, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Barry McGuire and Andraé Crouch and the Disciples.
“The (Jesus People movement) appealed to disenchanted hippies, almost all of them under thirty years of age, and was decidedly Pentecostal in orientation,” Anderson wrote. “Although the JPM had largely dissipated by the end of the 1970s, new independent churches formed by some of its leaders were the vanguard of a fresh proliferation of American independent churches and mega-churches in the 1980s…. The new network of independent churches were soon the fastest growing churches in the English-speaking world.”
Anderson also attributes the growth of Pentecostalism to the publicity generated by television evangelists and ministers such as Oral Roberts and Pat Robertson.
“Beginning in 1955, Oral Roberts (1918-2009) brought the healing and Pentecostal subculture into homes across the United States through his weekly national television program,” Anderson wrote.
In the intervening years, the number of Christians worldwide has doubled, from 1.1 billion in 1970 to 2.2 billion in 2010.
Today, there are more than 100 million Pentecostals in Africa, and Pentecostal practices infuse Catholic, Anglican and independent churches.
“In Africa, it was estimated that Christians exceeded Muslims for the first time in 1985, and Christians are now almost the majority – a phenomenon so epoch-making that (Yale Divinity School Professor) Lamin Sanneh describes it as ‘a continental shift of historic proportions,’ ” Anderson wrote.
Today, there are four times as many Christians in Africa as there were in 1970 and almost the same is true in Asia, while the Christian population of Latin America over this period has almost doubled, Anderson wrote.
“Of course, some of this has to do with differentials in population growth; but it remains true that much of the global growth of Christianity has occurred through conversion in the global South, where the influence of Pentecostalism is strongest,” Anderson wrote.
In contrast, the Christian population of Europe during the same period has increased only by about a quarter, and that of North America by about a third, he wrote.
“The decrease in the percentage of world Christianity in the global North is likely to continue,” Anderson wrote. “But even if the statistics are wildly speculative, the fact that this movement had only a handful of adherents at the beginning of the twentieth century makes its growth an astounding development.
“Although this growth has reversed in some more developed countries like South Korea and among Anglos in the United States, there is no sign that the rate worldwide has slowed down, and in places like sub-Saharan Africa, China, Central America, and India it may still be increasing.”
(Source: www.tothesource.com)
