If Pentecostalism is anything, it is a
missionary movement, argues Allan Anderson. This past week Anderson lectured at
Trinity Western University at the Summer Seminar in Pentecostal Studies. I have
read Anderson’s books and heard him present at various academic meetings.
However, after spending the past week listening to him, it struck me that while
much research examines Pentecostalism as a restoration movement, restoring
spiritual gifts, or as a renewal movement, calling people to be filled with the
Spirit, or a political movement, seeking power, or a progressive social
movement, addressing holistically the needs of communities, Pentecostalism is
primarily a missionary movement (most likely, Pentecostalism is all of these
things). However, as a missionary movement, spreading throughout the world from
multiple centres of renewal and revival, Pentecostalism has come to represent
the most significant transformation in world Christianity since the Protestant Reformation.
There are several thoughts I have about
Anderson’s central argument as I consider some implications for researchers.
First, the history of Pentecostalism needs to consider the various ways in
which missionary networks globalized the early movement including the
technologies employed to do so. Second, Pentecostal scholars need to pay
attention to the non-North American and non-European missionaries who took the
Pentecostal message with them, and the unique ways in which it was an
indigenous movement. Finally, scholars need to pay attention to reverse mission
and how Pentecostals from Africa, Asia, and Latin America are currently active
in mission work, a global flow of Pentecostalism from the so called south to
the north.
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