Global Pentecostal Studies

William K. Kay, Professor of Theology, Glynd r University, Wales In trying to predict a future research agenda on Pentecostalism here are four suggestions: 1. Pentecostalism under the academic spotlight : Academic activity situated in tertiary institutes will continue to grow exponentially. Research programmes of all kinds will persist and accessible international peer-reviewed publication will allow countries with weaker infrastructures to begin to catch up with the best. This is already occurring, as an examination of the citation indices shows. Medical, chemical and other research papers are now routinely posted online and available to researchers all over the world. Universities are competing globally with each other in this race for scientific pre-eminence so that the best universities are able to headhunt cutting-edge grant-capturing researchers from anywhere in the world. Given that the hard sciences are internationalising even more rapidly than was onc...

Mark Hutchinson, University of Western Sydney, Australia Michael Wilkinson’s last post on the importance of disciplines such as sociology to Pentecostal scholarship was, I thought, well made. It focuses on the problems of ‘relevance’ when the job given to Pentecostal scholars is to ‘think theologically’.  What we don’t usually ask is ‘who wrote the job description?’ Ideas, especially programmatic ideas, never exist in the vacuum – as a whole Pentecostal scholars respond to the needs of their emerging institutions, which in turn answer to the movements and denominations which support them.  The job description given to them is usually phrased in such terms as ‘tell us what to think about....’ (insert difficult contemporary issue from a list compiled either by the evangelical school up the road or the front page of a newspaper). Usually left unsaid are the conditioning statements. A common one is: ‘... but don’t think too hard because we need the answer next...

Allan Anderson, University of Birmingham.  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 megachurches, 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...

The long-term sustainability of Pentecostal studies requires the establishment of a broader research agenda. This is not a project one can do by her/himself. I've asked a number of people to consider writing their thoughts about Pentecostal studies and over the next several months I will post their comments here.

Early sociological thinkers all wrote about religion and society and how religion offered important insights into social processes, systems, ritual, civil society, power and authority, leadership, and a host of other topics. By the middle of the twentieth century religion moved to a marginal position. This was due to several factors. One was a shift among sociologists toward issues of methodology. Some also thought secularization was occurring and religion would ultimately disappear leaving them to wonder how religion fit into larger studies. But it was also because social scientific studies of religion ceased to make important links between their work and the broader field of sociology. Detailed studies of denominations and congregations, while descriptively rich, failed to connect with the broader issues of social change, culture, and society. Sociologists of religion became more cloistered with well-attended meetings and presentations of excellent research. The problem was,...