Conclusions
The global South has seen a remarkable expansion of pentecostal forms of Christianity in the last century, an expansion that has altered global religious demographics considerably. In Latin America, Africa, and Asia, many large urban mega-churches have arisen, and much of the rapid growth in Chinese Christianity has come among those who have a pentecostal inclination. The internationalizing of the Charismatic movement in the 1960s and 1970s began to erode the isolation of indigenous independent churches in the global South, but these changes had already been brewing for decades. Rapid improvements in communications and travel brought the outside world closer to hitherto isolated communities. With new nation-states created out of former colonies came resistance to foreign cultural symbols, including Western hegemony in ecclesiastical affairs.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in China after 1949, but the entire majority world was affected. As we have seen, China developed its own forms of Christianity without recourse to the outside world. Although we may describe much of this as affected by Pentecostalism, applying this nomenclature to Chinese indigenous churches indiscriminately is as inappropriate as it is in the cases of Spirit churches in sub-Saharan Africa. India, with its closer ties to the West, has more claim on the title “pentecostal” for many of its independent churches, but even this must be qualified. Latin America, with more than a century of independence, had its own momentum; and there Pentecostalism took a different turn, although not unaffected by what was happening in the North. Nevertheless, large denominations that eschewed contact with the United States emerged there from the mid-1950s onward, sometimes referred to as the second phase of Pentecostalism in Latin America, following the first denominations founded by foreigners. The Philippines, with its centuries of majority Catholicism, presented a somewhat similar situation, and indigenous leaders emerged to form new movements making a considerable impact on the religious scene. At the same time, the massive Catholic Charismatic Renewal in Brazil, the Philippines, and India helped stem the flow of Catholics into pentecostal churches.
Independent pentecostal churches have proliferated worldwide. Those formed in the first half of the twentieth century and birthed in indigenous revival movements were the thin end of the wedge. They expanded rapidly and formed their own traditions, remaining isolated from mainstream Christianity for decades. For the most part, classical Pentecostalism distanced itself from them. Western pentecostal missionaries saw them as a threat or nuisance at best, or as heretics at worst—especially in the case of more heterodox movements like the True Jesus Church and the Zion Christian Church. Their hostility was passed on to the national churches that emerged from their work, and that hostility was reciprocated. Increasingly, complex and multifarious networks of new independent churches have mushroomed in recent years, making them possibly the largest grouping within Pentecostalism as a whole. The recent history of Pentecostalism is littered with “revival” movements causing schisms that have become its defining feature.
Facts and figures on the growth of any global religious movement are notoriously difficult to come by, yet statistics on the growth of Pentecostalism are exultingly quoted, especially by classical pentecostals. The most frequently quoted ones are those of Barrett and Johnson, who estimated that Pentecostalism had some 614 million adherents in 2010, a quarter of the world’s Christian population, which they projected would rise to almost 800 million by 2025. This figure was placed at only 67 million in 1970, and this enormous increase has coincided with Europe’s secularization zenith. North America started earlier and made steady progress in the course of the twentieth century, but classical Pentecostalism there, while influential, is not as significant as is sometimes claimed. A survey conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life in 2007 on religious affiliation in the United States found that pentecostals (including black pentecostals) were 4 percent of the total population. This constituted part of the 26 percent classified as “Evangelical Protestant Churches,” compared to 18 percent called “Mainline Protestant Churches,” and 24 percent Catholic. Of course, this 4 percent only refers to classical pentecostal denominations. The largest older Protestant denominations, the various Baptists and Methodists, had 17 percent and 6 percent, respectively. With 16 percent of US Americans now declaring themselves unaffiliated to any religious faith and with Catholic numbers growing, the United States is on the verge of losing its Protestant majority.1
The other northern continent is very different. Europe retains significant remnants of state churches: Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, and Anglican. Although pentecostals have made modest increases in Europe, they remain a very small minority—less than 2 percent of the overall population in all European countries except Portugal, where Pentecostalism was influenced by the vibrant Brazilian variety. They are more significant as a proportion of the European churchgoing population. We do not know how many people transfer into pentecostal churches from older churches or have dual allegiance, as is the case in Latin America and in Europe. David Martin takes issue with the common secularization theories in explaining the “exceptionalism” of Europe and suggests that Pentecostalism is less likely to succeed in the developed world because it “represents the mobilization of a minority of people at the varied margins of that world, whereas in the developing world it represents the mobilization of large masses.” He thinks that Pentecostalism flourishes in the United States because of its well-established Protestant pluralism and voluntarism, and that in Europe, Pentecostalism does not do as well where there is a strong state church— unless there is more religious plurality with a significant minority of free churches, as is the case in Romania and Ukraine, where the numbers of classical pentecostals are greater than in any other European nation.2
In fact, the dramatic growth in what are now termed “Renewalists” is best explained by reference to the three majority world continents. There are indeed many reasons for the emergence and growth of Pentecostalism in the majority world, and any attempt on my part to enumerate these runs the risk of reductionism. But I will try to highlight some of the major ones. Pentecostalism is an “ends of the earth” form of Christian mission with a transnational orientation based on personal enterprise, the ubiquitous voluntarism of its membership, and the constant multiplication of multi- centered, variegated organizations whose primary purpose is to evangelize and spread their influence worldwide. These constant efforts to expand and proselytize are underpinned by a firm belief in the Bible as an independent source of authority, one that resonates with local customs and relates better to a spiritual and holistic worldview—and by theological convictions based on a common experience of the Spirit who empowers believers’ mission to the world. The personal conversion of individuals is the goal of these efforts. To their credit, pentecostal missionaries, themselves largely untrained and uneducated, practiced “indigenous church” principles. They quickly found and trained thousands of local leaders, who took the “full gospel” much further than the foreign missionaries had done. This swift transfer to local leadership was unprecedented in the history of Christianity, and pentecostal churches became indigenous and “three-self” (self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating) before the older missions had even begun the process.
The histories recounted here demonstrate that contemporary Pentecostalism is the product of a long process of development with precedents going back to a much earlier time. Its history was in continuity with the revivalist movements out of which it emerged. Its mission was to liberate very ordinary people from colonial and ecclesiastical hegemony and (at least originally) to free women from male patriarchy. It encouraged free enterprise in a global religious market. The revival movements challenged Western hegemony and created a multitude of new indigenous churches—a type of Christianity in local idiom that was a cultural protest movement, but was also bound to include emphases on power to overcome an evil spirit world and manifestations of the miraculous. Pentecostalism addressed allegations of both the foreignness and the irrelevance of Christianity in pluralistic societies. With its emphasis on the priesthood of all true believers, it broke down barriers of race, gender, and class, and challenged the exclusive preserves of ordained male, foreign clergy. Of course, this development included multiple schisms that, while increasing division, also proliferated local leadership and encouraged religious competition.
What is often not appreciated is the extent to which Pentecostalism takes on distinctive forms in different contexts. One of the main reasons for the growth of Pentecostalism has been its ability to adapt itself to different cultures and societies and give contextualized expressions to Christianity. These are expressed in its energetic and energizing worship and liturgies, in its music and dance, in its prayer with the free use of the emotions, and in its communities of concerned and committed believers. Pentecostals are becoming more socially aware and active in efforts to relieve poverty and disease. Of all Christian expressions, Pentecostalism has an ability to transpose itself into local cultures and religions effortlessly because of its primary emphases on the experience of the Spirit and the spiritual calling of leaders who do not have to be formally educated in church dogma. This often leads to schism, but also assists multiplication. In particular, the ministry of healing and the claims of the miraculous have assisted Pentecostalism in its appeal to a world where supernatural events are taken for granted.
Some of the features of Pentecostalism that have made it attractive have been discussed here. Pentecostalism developed its own characteristics and identities in different parts of the world without losing its transnational connections. The widespread use of mass media, the setting up of new networks that often incorporate the word “international” in their titles, frequent conferences with international speakers that reinforce transnationalism, and the growth of churches that provide total environments for members—these are all features of this multidimensional Pentecostalism, which promotes this global meta-culture constantly. The opening up of what was formerly a closed world after the fall of the Iron Curtain and the post-1980 reforms in China rapidly accelerated the expansion of this transnational movement. Although sociopolitical and historical factors undoubtedly had a role in the spread of pentecostal Christianity, religious and ideological factors were probably more significant. The ability of Pentecostalism to adapt to and fulfill people’s religious aspirations continues to be its strength. A belief in a divine encounter and the involvement or breaking through of the sacred into the mundane, including healing from sickness, deliverance from hostile evil forces, and perhaps above all, a heady and spontaneous spirituality that refuses to separate “spiritual” from “physical” or “sacred” from “secular” are all important factors in Pentecostalism’s growth. It has been able to tap into ancient religious traditions with one eye on the changing world of modernity. This combination of the old with the new has enabled it to attract people who relate to both these worlds. With its offer of the power of the Spirit to all regardless of education, language, race, class, or gender, Pentecostalism has been a movement on a mission to subvert convention. Unlike older forms of Christian mission, its methods were not so dependent on Western specialists and trained clergy and the transmission of Western forms of Christian liturgy and leadership. In fact, Pentecostalism in its earliest forms broke down the dichotomy between clergy and laity that was the legacy of older churches. The author of The Secular City, Harvey Cox, in his 1995 book Fire from Heaven, reversed his well-known position on secularization and wrote of Pentecostalism as a manifestation of the “unanticipated reappearance of primal spirituality in our time” that would reshape religion in the twenty-first century.3
A book of this nature can only look at some of the many aspects of Pentecostalism worldwide. There are several important themes that I have not fully explored, such as the most recent forms of independent nonconformity, the function of mega-churches, and the mass market, including the use of media, technologies, and networking. Research must still be done on areas that have only been hinted at here: the power of free association and personal and local agency, the role and nature of the church in Pentecostalism, its leadership patterns, its structural and anti-structural permutations, church authority, governance, and the ways in which leadership patterns change over time. Pentecostals and environmental concerns, the changes affecting established institutions and structures, Pentecostalism as liberation and an option for the poor, pentecostals involved in various types of social and public engagement—all these areas deserve more attention than I have given them. Much work has already been done in the area of the migration of pentecostals from the South to the North in recent years, and I have touched only briefly on this subject. The extent to which globalization and migration in the late twentieth century have affected Pentecostalism is something that requires a much more careful analysis. 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 what the features of this global shift of center to the South means for Pentecostalism have yet to be precisely described. There is a certain tension between the global and the local in Pentecostalism, and often the local character overshadows globalizing forces that might seek uniformity. Another area that needs further investigation is the extent to which Pentecostalism has permeated and affected the beliefs, values, and practices of other Christians. Only when these investigations have taken place will we be better able to understand those external forces that forge the religious identities of people in our contemporary societies and the increasingly important role of Pentecostalisms in this pluralistic world. Many questions will remain unanswered, and indeed, some questions will not have answers.
Present Prospects
It can no longer be said without qualification that there are now over 600 million “Pentecostals” worldwide. When considering what diverse and mutually independent movements are included in the statistics, any attempt at definition will fall short of precision, and Pentecostalism can probably never be defined adequately. Only about a quarter of this figure consists of classical pentecostals, those with direct or indirect historical links to the Azusa Street revival in Los Angeles. But some 150 million classical pentecostals worldwide after only a century is still impressive. If we add the many independent churches with pentecostal orientation, plus the Charismatic churches and renewal movements within older churches, then we have a clearer picture of its magnitude. It is no accident that the southward shift in Christianity’s center of gravity over the twentieth century has coincided with the emergence and expansion of Pentecostalism. Over three-quarters of pentecostal adherents live in the majority world. Worldwide the number of Christians has doubled in forty years, from 1.1 billion in 1970 to 2.2 billion in 2010. 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 Lamin Sanneh describes it as “a continental shift of historic proportions.” There are now over 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. 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. 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. The decrease in the percentage of world Christianity in the global North is likely to continue. 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. But even in the former countries, many pentecostals haven’t left the faith altogether but have simply transferred to other Christian groups.4
A 2006 Pew Forum report (admittedly focused on urban populations) estimated that classical pentecostals formed 20 percent of the population in Guatemala, 15 percent in Brazil (the largest population of pentecostals in any country), and 9 percent in Chile. Impressive also are the figures in the African countries of Kenya (33 percent), Nigeria (18 percent), and South Africa (10 percent). With Charismatics and independent churches added in, the figures increase considerably and what they have termed “Renewalists” approximate half the national populations in Guatemala (60 percent), Brazil (49 percent), Kenya (56 percent), and the Philippines (44 percent). In these countries Pentecostalism in all its various forms is not only a significant proportion of Christianity but also a sizable chunk of the entire population with enormous sociopolitical clout. Its adherents are often on the cutting edge of the encounter with people of other faiths, albeit sometimes confrontationally so. These confrontations play out in places like Nigeria and India where other religions form majorities, and this conflict, which has already claimed many lives, is in danger of escalating. Because of its tendency to proselytize, Pentecostalism also finds itself in conflict with other Christians in their traditional strongholds, such as with the Orthodox in Eastern Europe, Catholics in Latin America and the Philippines, and the (Coptic) Orthodox in Ethiopia and Eritrea.5
Proponents of the secularization thesis have to reckon with the fact that the future of global Christianity is affected by this seismic change in its character. In his latest work on secularization, David Martin makes the point that secularization is a process that is neither inevitable nor undisputed and is subject to differentiation within different social spheres. This social differentiation, where religious and other cultural monopolies are broken, is determined by historical contexts and actually promotes religious competition and plurality in certain societies while favoring secularization in others. The historical factors producing social differentiation must be taken into account, because these push secularization in different directions. For these reasons, secularization varies enormously in different social groups. Martin considers that the grand meta-narrative of secularization might be “an ideological and philosophical imposition on history rather than an inference from history.” The growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America is an example of the effects of social differentiation, where the dominant Catholic Church was no longer seen as the binding glue of society, especially among the poorer classes. Its monopoly was broken and consequently, Latin American societies became more pluralistic. The same is true of Buddhism in Korea and China, Hinduism among India’s oppressed classes, and Orthodoxy in Ukraine. As one consequence, Pentecostalism has thrived.6
The rise of the Charismatic movement in the Western world certainly made pentecostal ideas and practices more acceptable to traditional forms of Christianity. But this might also be seen as one result of the privatization of religion beginning in the 1960s, when the established churches no longer held monopoly and authority over all things sacred. It could be argued that Charismatic Christianity provided a panacea for the spiritual deficit in organized religion and in Western society as a whole. Or, as Harvey Cox has put it, not only were people disillusioned with traditional religions in the 1960s, but also disappointed by “the bright promises of science and progress.” Cox remarks that the “kernel of truth” in the “overblown claims” of the “death of God” theologians was that “the abstract deity of Western theologies and philosophical systems had come to the end of its run.” For Cox, the dramatic growth of Pentecostalism seemed to confirm rather than contradict what he had written about the “death of God” in The Secular City three decades earlier, but it had provided an unanticipated and unwanted solution.7
After the 1980s, the “Pentecostalization” of older churches outside the Western world, especially in Africa and Asia, accelerated as these churches adjusted to the rapid growth of new pentecostal churches in their midst. They began to adopt their methods, particularly appealing to the young and urbanized. Simultaneously, the new form of Pentecostalism exhibited a fierce independence that eschewed denominations and preferred associations in loose “fellowships.” This gave rise to the pentecostal mega-churches that operate in cities like Lagos, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, and Singapore, but also in unexpected European places like Kyiv (a Ukrainian church with a Nigerian leader), Budapest, and Uppsala. Each of these European cases is the largest congregation in its respective country; and in London the largest congregation is a predominantly Nigerian one. The mega-churches form networks of similar churches across the world, and these transnational associations are not only North-South, but also South-South and East-South. In most cases, these transnational churches in the North have been unable to break free from their ethnic minority character.8
It is neither wise nor possible to predict the future of Pentecostalism, but a sense of where Pentecostalism has been in the past century will give an inkling of where it might go in the present one. Contemporary Pentecostalism is very much the result of the process of globalization, and “health and wealth” advocates are as much at home in Lagos and Rio as they are in Tulsa or Fort Worth. In many cases, the only ones who get rich in poverty-ravaged countries are the preachers. The mass media, beginning with the use of periodicals and newsletters, followed by a ready acceptance of new technologies—first radio and then television and Internet— tourism and pilgrimages to mega-churches, ubiquitous voluntarism, and an international economy, combined to create conditions conducive to the spread of a globally friendly religion like Pentecostalism. This manifested itself in many different ways. Some of the networks have begun to take on the appearance of new denominations. Some have passed to a second generation of leadership whose organizational ideas were quite different from those of the founders. Some of the new churches leave much to be desired—especially those with wealthy leaders whose questionable and exploitative practices continue to be debated in public forums.
The adaptability of Pentecostalism to a culture is more easily achieved in those parts of the world where a spiritual universe exists and healing and the supernatural are regarded as “normal” experiences. Pentecostalism also grows where a pluralistic religious environment is the norm. This makes Pentecostal forms of Christianity more amenable to the United States than to Germany or France. But, of course, the principle of social differentiation means that there will always be groups for whom Pentecostalism is an attractive religious option, even in those countries where voluntarism, pluralism, and freedom of association are limited. China watchers and Chinese scholars themselves observe that the burgeoning new Christian movements there have many pentecostal features, so that China may soon eclipse Brazil as the country with the most pentecostals, but pentecostals of a very different kind who may not use the name “pentecostal” at all. The Christian world has become more interconnected than ever before; and increasingly pentecostals are having conversations with other Christians that are bringing them out of their largely self-imposed isolation. Whether this will result in more unity or more division and diversity is anyone’s guess. It is certain that the continuous change and transformation in world Christianity will continue. But Pentecostalism in the majority world, as Philip Jenkins has observed about Christianity in the global South, does not represent a global religion with roots in the North, but a new type of Christianity altogether.9
Social scientific generalizations about the growth and future of religion are just that. We cannot avoid theological factors. The emphasis on a personal, heart-felt experience of God through the Spirit is offered to all people without preconditions, enabling them to be “powerful” and assertive in societies where they have been marginalized. They are offered solutions to their felt needs in all their varieties. This will continue to draw people in the majority world to pentecostal churches. When yours is an all-encompassing, omnipotent, and personal God who enters into a personal relationship with individual believers, everything becomes a matter for potential prayer. The “born-again” experience focusing on a radical break with the past attracts young people disenchanted with the ways of their parents. Pentecostalism’s incessant evangelism, offering healing and deliverance, draws large crowds and its organized system of following up contacts means that more “unchurched” people are reached with this message and joined to pentecostal communities. Its cultural flexibility in its experiential and participatory liturgy, offering a place-to-feel-at-home, a measure of religious continuity with the past spirit world, and (at least to some observers) the appearance of an egalitarian community meeting the “felt needs” of ordinary people—all combine to provide an overarching explanation for the appeal of Pentecostalism and the transformation of Christianity in the majority world.10