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A New Type of Christianity

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 churches leave much to be desired––especially those with wealthy leaders whose questionable and exploitative practices continue to be debated in public forums. 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.

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.

Adapted from the conclusion to the forthcoming: Allan Heaton Anderson, To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2013), due for release in November 2012.


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