The World's Christians. Douglas Jacobsen

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4 The Pentecostal Tradition

      Pentecostalism is the youngest of the four contemporary Christian mega‐traditions. It is so recent in origin that the name of the movement is still undecided. Sometimes called “charismatic” (because it stresses the “charisms” or “gifts” of the Holy Spirit) or “renewalist” (because it renews faith that has become dull or routine) or “Spirit‐filled” (because it emphasizes the Holy Spirit), what sets this tradition apart is its focus on the personal, miraculous experience of God. The word “Pentecostal,” which is used here, is the oldest and most common way of naming the movement. This name is derived from the story in the New Testament that describes the descent of the Holy Spirit on the followers of Jesus on the day of Pentecost several weeks after Christ’s death. According to the Book of Acts, the Holy Spirit rushed into the room where the group was meeting, sounding like a mighty wind and looking like flames of fire.

      In the New Testament story of Pentecost, Jesus’s disciples were miraculously empowered by the experience and left the meeting speaking excitedly in ways that other people heard as either a variety of different human languages or as drunken rambling. When the modern Pentecostal movement burst onto the scene at the beginning of the twentieth century, a similar phenomenon of speech was involved, with the headline of the Los Angeles Daily Times screaming “WEIRD BABEL OF TONGUES.” In fact, speaking in tongues became such a key marker of early Pentecostalism that it was sometimes called the “tongues movement.”

Since beginning a century ago, the growth of Pentecostalism has been phenomenal. Today the movement circles the globe, with representation in the global south outpacing growth in the global north (see Figure 4.1). Almost a fifth of the world’s Christians now identify with the movement. Pentecostals themselves would say that this growth has been brought about by the Holy Spirit, but a variety of social factors help to explain the explosion of Spirit‐filled Christianity around the world and especially among the world’s poor. More than any other Christian tradition, Pentecostalism allows people who have been beaten down by the world to feel loved and empowered by God – and the emphasis on feeling is important. Pentecostal Christians don’t just believe in God; they claim to feel God’s presence physically in their bodies. Pentecostalism is also popular partly because it is inexpensive. Pentecostals do not need cathedrals or icons, and they don’t need a highly trained clergy. All that is required for worship is to lift hands and voices in praise of God, and this can occur anywhere, including in the shabbiest of settings. Partly because it offers so much for so little, Pentecostalism has become the fastest‐growing religious movement in the history of the world.

Because so many Pentecostal Christians are poor, some sociologists have described Pentecostalism as a religion of the oppressed, a spiritual coping mechanism for dealing with social and economic distress. But not all Pentecostals are poor, and even many who are poor would reject such explanations as inaccurate portrayals of who they really are. While they might readily admit that faith helps them to endure the harshness of life, they would also say that it energizes them with a sense of power and purpose. The Holy Spirit gives them the ability to bind demons, to heal the sick, to live at peace with their neighbors, and when necessary to stand up for their own rights. And God’s call to action, received through dreams, visions, and prophetic utterances as well as through the words of the Bible, gives them a strong sense of divine leading and guidance. Rather than seeing themselves as the passive poor who need God’s help merely to survive, Pentecostal Christians see themselves as agents of God who have been charged with transforming the world through the power of God’s Spirit.