{"id":2755,"date":"2014-10-20T05:36:28","date_gmt":"2014-10-20T05:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=2755"},"modified":"2014-11-01T08:56:59","modified_gmt":"2014-11-01T08:56:59","slug":"apparently-more-people-are-pentecostal-than-realize-it-and-other-shocking-revelations-no-pun-intended","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/apparently-more-people-are-pentecostal-than-realize-it-and-other-shocking-revelations-no-pun-intended\/","title":{"rendered":"Apparently more people are Pentecostal than realize it (and other shocking revelations [no pun intended])"},"content":{"rendered":"

Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement<\/em> by Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori is certainly an interesting text with a lot of first-person research underscoring its perspectives. The text is particularly interesting in that a president of a major Christian related development organization \u2013 Food for the Hungry \u2013 who happens to be Evangelical and a sociology professor who happens to be Episcopal collaborated together in the authorship of the text and found their pre-existing biases challenged.
\nitisexam<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall, I found the book very interesting from a general theoretical perspective and from a general informational perspective. However, while recognizing the difficulty of what the authors have undertaken, I did not find the authors defining of Pentecostal to be wholly adequate. The authors\u2019 primary goal in the text is to consider a particular category of Pentacostal expression that they refer to as \u201cProgressive Pentacostalism\u201d and \u201cProgressive Pentacostals.\u201d[1]<\/a> They do delineate this category out from more general Pentecostalism, but not by much when the push-comes-to-shove. In my eyes, there are indeed Christian Pentecostal churches that do not fit their category of Progressive Pentacostalism. However, while understanding the variation they seek to establish, the actual definition of Progressive Pentacostal they offer makes it more difficult than not to find a non-Pentacostal Christian church that doesn\u2019t look like it could be Progressive Pentacostal. Early on they define Progressive Pentecostal as, \u201cChristians who claim to be inspired by the Holy Spirit and the life of Jesus and seek to holistically address the spiritual, physical, and social needs of people in their community.\u201d[2]<\/a> So, this definition fits the large majority of Christian churches that consider themselves to adhere to a Trinitarian understanding of the Divine including Catholic, Evangelical, other so-called Mainline denominations, expressions of Quaker, Mennonite, Brethren, etc., etc.<\/p>\n

Again, as I noted, it\u2019s not that I have not found the text to be extremely intriguing\u2026I have. It\u2019s simply that I have found the defining of Pentacostalism (especially, Progressive Pentacostalism) to be exceptionally broad \u2013 even with some of the limiting factors that the authors note they put on their categorization.[3]<\/a> Now, overall, I don\u2019t mind this per se with this text, as I have found the some of the larger sociological\/theological conjecturing helpful, but it does appear to be an aspect that needs further clarification. For instance, it would have been interesting to see how many (if any) of the churches the authors studied that are defining themselves as Pentecostal require<\/em> people to \u201cspeak in tongues\u201d in order to be \u201csaved\u201d and if so, if any of the churches in this category fit into the authors understanding of Progressive Pentacostalism.<\/p>\n

The authors note that there may be influence by Evangelicals occurring in this process of Pentecostals more broadly caring about broad-based, societal engagement [and of course, the general suggestion in the literature is that Evangelicals were influenced in this manner by Mainline denominations with the whole matter being based on integrative societal principles related to upward mobility],[4]<\/a> but of course this would be the case since I find that according to the definition as I understand it many Progressive Pentecostals are actually Evangelicals.<\/p>\n

Overall, in my perspective the redeeming and the best qualities of this text are the authors engagement with the sociological\/theological orientations of Liberation Theology, the Social Gospel, Marx, Freud, Rudolf Otto, William James and the like; all of the first-person research and the presentation of this in the text; and the general descriptive engagement around Pentacostalism such as their \u201cthree ways that Pentecostalism has the potential to be an agent of social transformation,\u201d their \u201cfive different expressions\u201d and their \u201cfour different emphases\u201d of Pentacostalism\u2026again, for me, not primarily as descriptions of Pentecostal manifestation per se, but as a general world-wide movement of religious expression.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

I would suggest\u00a0reading this text less with an interest in Pentecostalism and more with an interest in the ongoing, post-modern\/pre-modern worldwide (re\/in)surgence in religious engagement that has turned Secularization Theory on its head. Critique of Secularization Theory\u00a0has of course been done many times and in many ways before at this point, but I find this to be where the authors\u2019 educational and practical expertise truly shines.
\n000-958 <\/a><\/p>\n

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[1]<\/a> Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement<\/em> (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 1-2.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid., 2.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid., 2.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid., 3.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid., 22-38.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement by Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori is certainly an interesting text with a lot of first-person research underscoring its perspectives. The text is particularly interesting in that a president of a major Christian related development organization \u2013 Food for the Hungry \u2013 who happens to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[257],"class_list":["post-2755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dmiller","cohort-lgp4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2755"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3122,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2755\/revisions\/3122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}