Pentecostal Mission and Global Christianity

INTRODUCTION: PENTECOSTALISM AND WORLD MISSION

Editors

The significance of the modern Pentecostal movement to world mission is seen in different ways as the various essays in this volume make clear. One of them is that in the global south, for example, it has become virtually impossible to talk about Christianity without Pentecostalism in its various forms and dimensions. Additionally in both Western and Eastern Europe today, the single largest Christian churches belong to the Pentecostal tradition. Although the ecumenical movement has during its history talked about unity in the body of Christ often quoting the high priestly prayer of Jesus Christ (Jn. 17), for many years Pentecostalism was approached through value-loaded and pejorative terms and expressions. Historic mission Christianity remained the norm and Pentecostalism became an aberration in traditional theology and mission studies. Non-western Pentecostalism like its African versions suffered the most when their pneumatological emphases, especially on healing and prophecy, were explained as attributable to the workings of traditional spirit-deities rather than the one Holy Spirit of Christ that indigenous Pentecostals wanted to experience in church life.

Today in Africa, as in other non-western contexts, the force of Pentecostalism has led to the Pentecostalization of historic mission churches to the point where in many countries the expressions Pentecostal, charismatic and evangelical are becoming indistinguishable from each other. The mainstreaming of Pentecostalism as an inter-disciplinary academic field of religious and theological studies and the establishment of centres devoted to Pentecostal-charismatic studies across the globe adds to the growing importance that Pentecostalism has acquired in world Christianity. To that end, the single most important contribution that Pentecostalism has made to world mission since Edinburgh 1910 is to draw attention to the role of the Holy Spirit in the whole enterprise. This is a point initially made by John V. Taylor in The Go Between God: The Holy Spirit and the Christian Mission. The commissioning of the disciples for mission and the granting of the Spirit by the resurrected Christ occur at the same time. Thus by pointing to the power of the Spirit as the source of Christian mission, the Pentecostal movement was drawing attention to a neglected factor in the Christian enterprise. We say this because at a time when the ecumenical movement did not know what to make of the movement or even failed to take account of it in world Christian history the Spirit, like the wind that blows from God in Christ, was making his presence felt in the lives of men and women through his power of transformation.

A century after Edinburgh 1910 the power of the Spirit blowing through Pentecostalism means we cannot talk about world Christian mission without the movement. This can only be the doing of the Lord. Thus whether we are talking about indigenous Pentecostalism or non-western immigrant Christian communities in the northern continents, Pentecostalism is beginning to define the future of Christianity and world mission as this volume makes clear.

Pentecostalism in its Global Diversity

Pentecostalism is not a monolithic movement. Thus any attempt to define Pentecostalism at the global level faces insurmountable challenges. Reasons for the multiplicity and diversity of movements and traditions that can be grouped under the inclusive category or Pentecostalism are many and varied. First, unlike established Christian traditions such as Roman Catholicism, Pentecostalism cannot build on ecclesiastical tradition for the simple reason that it came to existence only a century ago. Second, until recent years, Pentecostalism has not produced much theological literature; its contribution to Christian faith has been in the form of occasional pastoral and missional writings, testimonies, dreams, prophecies and the likes that do not easily translate into an analytic, discursive theology.¹ Third, because Pentecostalism was birthed out of dynamic experience rather than a theological discovery, it has liberally incorporated elements from a number of theological traditions and sources such as Methodist-Holiness Movements, the Protestant Reformation, mystical-charismatic movements in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as ‘Black’ or African American spirituality.² Its theology is still in the making and represents a dynamic ‘syncretistic’ exercise; the Pentecostal identity is best described in terms of spirituality rather than theology.³ The fourth challenge to attempting a definition of global Pentecostalism has to do with the movement’s breathtaking diversity, to the point that one should probably speak of Pentecostalisms (in plural). The diversity has to do with two dimensions relating to the nature of the movement: cultural and theologico-ecumenical. Pentecostalism, unlike any contemporary religious movement, Christian or non-Christian, is spread across most cultures, linguistic barriers, and social locations.

Finally, there is the complicated and complex question of Pentecostalism’s relation to the Charismatic Movements which emerged few decades later among historical churches and subsequently, even in more diverse forms, outside established churches. In order to make some sense of this bewildering matrix, it is advisable to follow the current scholarly consensus and speak of three interrelated set of movements, namely, first: ‘Classical Pentecostalism’, Pentecostal denominations such as Assemblies of God or Foursquare Gospel, owing their existence to the famous Azusa Revival; second, ‘Charismatic Movements’, Pentecostal-type of spiritual movements within the established churches (the biggest one of which is Roman Catholic Charismatic Renewal), and third, ‘Neo-Charismatic Movements’, some of the most notable of which are Vineyard Fellowship in the USA, African Initiated Churches, and China House Church Movement, as well as innumerable number of independent churches and groups all over the world⁴ Number-wise, the Charismatic Movements (about 200 million) and neo-Charismatics (200-300 million) well outnumber Classical Pentecostals (75-125 million).

Even with this three-fold typology in place, there is a continuing debate among Pentecostal scholars as to the contours of Classical Pentecostalism. Just consider these examples: African Pentecostalism gleans from the rich African religio-cultural soil, including the spirit world⁵ similarly to the way Latin American Pentecostalism conceptually encounters folk Catholicism and spiritism;⁶ some Korean Pentecostals have made use of shamanistic traditions in the culture,⁷ and so on.⁸ Not all Pentecostal theologians, however, are willing to admit that these non-white, non-western Pentecostalisms with their contextualized and ‘syncretistic’ pneumatologies represent genuine Pentecostalism. The dispute continues and is not likely to find a resolution.⁹ What is clear is that ‘[i]n Third World Pentecostalism, experience and practice are usually far more important than dogma. Pentecostalism today is in any case both fundamentally and dominantly a Third World phenomenon. In spite of its significant growth in North America, less than a quarter of its members in the world today are white, and this proportion continues to decrease’.¹⁰

Edinburgh and Pentecostalism

Two Great Mission Movements

It is not an exaggeration that the two most significant mission movements of the twentieth century are the ‘Edinburgh’ legacy and global Pentecostalism. The former, which began in the historic Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910, had developed mission theology that is closely linked with unity of the church through the international mission conferences organized by the International Missionary Council. Its incorporation into the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 1961 coincides with the birth of the Evangelical missionary movement, culminated in the Lausanne Conference in 1974. The other ‘sibling’ in the modern missionary landscape is the birth of the modern Pentecostal movement. In spite of debates on the exact origin of the movement, it is commonly agreed that the Azusa Street Mission (1906-1909) is the beginning of the global Pentecostal movement. This movement had grown from zero to half a billion by the turn of the new century, and it continues its growth, particularly in the global South.

These two powerful mission movements, birthed in the same decade, seldom met with each other. At the same time, their influences have grown to a global scale, the former through the Commission of World Mission and Evangelism (CWME) of the WCC and the formation of mission theologies, and the latter through the steady and sometimes explosive growth throughout the world. Of course, ideologically the two took very different paths, and in fact, the gap between them has been ever widening: the CWME has championed ‘left’ mission agendas epitomised by Liberation Theology and Missio Dei, while Pentecostalism has been in the forefront of evangelism and church planting. In simplistic terms, the former focused on ‘life before death’, while the latter on ‘life after death’.¹¹ Understandably they have rarely converged with each other, except in a few rare instances, such as the US Assemblies of God mission department once working with the Foreign Missions Conference of North America, the missionary association which eventually became part of the National Council of Churches.¹² However, this rather enduring engagement (from 1920) was to come to an end, as the US Assemblies of God strengthened its anti-ecumenical stance.

It is only in the last quarter of the twentieth century, that several specific steps were taken, but not without difficulties. The Catholic and Pentecostal theological dialogue has shown an enduring commitment to dialogue and mutual understanding from 1972. Currently it is running the sixth cycle of this ground breaking ecumenical dialogue. The Reformed and Pentecostal dialogue followed (1996-2011), while other initiatives have either been commenced or attempted, including one with the WCC, with the Lutheran Church, and also with the Orthodox Church.¹³ This was also the time when some Pentecostal churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America began to engage with national and global ecumenical bodies. The membership of the Korean Assemblies of God in the National Council of Churches came with much objection from western sister churches. Although there are positive signs of changing attitudes among Pentecostal churches towards church cooperation, it is likely that non-western Pentecostal churches will play a leading role in Pentecostal engagement in ecumenism. Responsibility for this large gap on ecumenism is not entirely the Pentecostals’ doing. The kind of ecumenism advocated by the WCC has been viewed with a great deal of suspicion, not only by the Pentecostals, but more broadly by evangelicals. Obstacles inadvertently placed by the WCC both in theological and organizational areas have proven to have worked against the very purpose of the ecumenical movement. The recent success of the Global Christian Forum seems to affirm work to be done by both sides to achieve meaningful church cooperation. And the day seems to have dawned.

Edinburgh 2010 and Pentecostalism

The first plans to celebrate the centenary of the Edinburgh Missionary Conference were initiated by the Church of Scotland through the program called Towards 2010. When its first planning conference was organized by calling twenty global mission leaders in May 2005, a Pentecostal delegate was invited from Asia to represent the Asian Pentecostal Society, and this conference proposed nine study themes and transversal themes.¹⁴ The preparatory work of the Towards 2010 was handed to the General Council of the Edinburgh 2010, once it was formed in 2006. Among the twenty General Council members, a Pentecostal delegate represented global Pentecostal Christianity. When the size of the conference was finalised, the Pentecostal delegates were the largest in number among church representatives, reflecting the sheer size of Pentecostal Christianity in the twenty-first century. No one among the 1910 conference leaders would ever have thought that an obscure and ignored Pentecostal Christianity would grow, in a century, to become the second largest Christian group, only after Catholics!

Thirty global Pentecostal delegates were invited to the actual conference, representing over 10% of the 250 official conference delegates.¹⁵ On the second day, a Pentecostal leader was among the three plenary speakers. During the conference, Pentecostal delegates came together for two evenings for fellowship and exchange of views; some Charismatic delegates also joined the meetings. The delegates decided to produce a statement, and this document has become part of the official conference collection.¹⁶ The full text is worth repeating:

We acknowledge the historical significance of Edinburgh 1910 and rejoice that we have been counted among those gathered together in Edinburgh 2-6 June 2010 to mark the centennial. The twentieth century gave clear testimony that although we were not in attendance at Edinburgh 1910, we have taken our rightful place on the landscape of contemporary Christianity. We would like to express our gratitude to those who prepared and participated in the Edinburgh 2010 conference and for giving us the opportunity to be able to affirm the significance of the global mission call joining a diverse fellowship of believers in Christ.

As Pentecostal delegates we participated at Edinburgh 2010 in the nine themes as well as on all levels of the study processes. We have shared issues and concerns. We listened, prayed and learned together, with an attitude of love and respect, building bridges rather than creating chasms, divisions and barriers. We affirm the divine mission mandate to reconcile the whole of God’s creation in Christ and do this across denominational and confessional lines. We are to engage in effective witnessing [to] the Good News of Jesus Christ to all parts of the world, in the power of the Holy Spirit and to the glory of God. This vision reflects the heart of God and belongs to the very nature of the Church.

We appreciate that Pentecostals are recognised in a positive way. At the same time we leave with the challenge to find fuller expressions of global Pentecostalism in an ecumenical context. We also noticed a disparity of the language used and concerns expressed between the global North and global South. We must be careful that the academic voices of the North do not wash away the narrative claims of the South. As Pentecostals we are acquainted with both linguistic traditions, we realise that we can play an important role as bridge builders. This would truly benefit the whole Body of Christ. Furthermore, we are deeply aware that Christians need the help of the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit’s guidance and empowerment we will be able to answer God’s mandate to the world.

We humbly acknowledge that it is God who has the last word. Issues that relate to mission and unity should not drift into intellectual manoeuvrings. It must be the prayer of all people of God, wherever they are, to hear what the Spirit has to say to the churches so that we can turn to God and our common call can be, ‘Come, Lord Jesus!’¹⁷

The conference statement called ‘The Common Call’ was viewed as a remarkable achievement of the whole conference process, considering the full breadth and incredible diversity of the participant stakeholders, from the Catholic and mainline churches to the Pentecostal and African Independent Churches. Any Pentecostal believer would detect a strong influence of Pentecostal hands in the formation of the document. The ninth point is a good example:

9. Remembering Jesus’ way of witness and service, we believe we are called by God to follow this way joyfully, inspired, anointed, sent and empowered by the Holy Spirit, and nurtured by Christian disciplines in community. As we look to Christ’s coming in glory and judgment, we experience his presence with us in the Holy Spirit, and we invite all to join with us as we participate in God’s transforming and reconciling mission of love to the whole creation.¹⁸

Although Pentecostals do not have a monopoly on the Holy Spirit, the conference process from its inception began with a strong acknowledgement of the contribution of Pentecostal mission in the expansion of global Christianity. The publication of Atlas of Global Christianity¹⁹ for the celebration of the Edinburgh centenary makes it clear that the present and future of global Christianity depends heavily on the continuing growth of Pentecostalism. And the truth is, this is a wide-spread belief! Pentecostalism grows at an annual rate of 2.20%, while Christianity as a whole records a bare minimum of 0.09%.²⁰

The Pentecostal Volume

The production of documents is a long-established legacy of the 1910 conference. The eight-volume conference publications have been read, studied, interpreted, evaluated and criticised for the last one hundred years. The centenary celebration, to be truthful to this tradition, was far more than the conference. The real contribution will be a body of literature that may reach close to thirty titles.

Besides conference-related titles, and ones that grow out of various study commissions, several major church families were encouraged to organize a study process to be culminated in a volume. Along with Catholic and Orthodox churches, the idea of a Pentecostal volume was suggested in order to study the unique contribution of Pentecostal mission to global Christianity in the last one hundred years. The volume is also to provide Pentecostal Christianity with a new direction towards its new century of mission.

The book is organized by themes that the editors concluded to be the most important and critical themes for Pentecostal mission, past and future. Each study is to look back at the past of Pentecostal mission and offer reflection, but also to pay serious attention to the good health of future Pentecostal mission. Some themes have more than one study, and in such cases, the second studies look at specific cases, with defined religio-cultural and socio-political contexts.

Contributors have been selected who will bring a good balance between the North and the South. Considering that today’s Pentecostal Christianity, like global Christianity as a whole, is a ‘southern’ religion in its characteristics and concentration, the editors have made a serious attempt to bring in unique voices of the South. Less successful is the gender balance. In spite of a desperate search, the editors were only marginally successful, finding just four women authors. A small consolation is that both are from the global South. This seems to point to one area where future global Pentecostals need to pay special attention: preparing women for leadership in academics as well as in ministry. The volume concludes with a reflection by bringing the voices of the contributors for the future of Pentecostal mission.

¹ This is of course not to say that Pentecostals have not produced theology. They have, but in forms that until recently have been neither appreciated nor well known by the professional theological guild. Pentecostalism’s way of doing theology, paralleling the way much of non-Western Christianity is still doing, has been oral rather than discursive. Only in recent years a proliferation of academic literature among Pentecostals has emerged as number of theologians, many of them trained in the best theological schools of the world, have not only reflect on their own tradition but also engaged older traditions.

² Hollenweger has summarized the ‘roots’ of Pentecostalism in these terms: 1) the Black oral root; 2) the Catholic root, 3) the evangelical root, 4) the critical root, and 5) the ecumenical root. This typology serves as the structure of his book. For a brief discussion, see his ‘Verheissung und Verhängnis der Pfingstbewegung’, Evangelische Theologie 53 (1993), 265-88.

³ For discussion of Pentecostal identity, see Kärkkäinen, ‘Free Churches, Ecumenism, and Pentecostalism’, in A. Yong (ed.), Towards a Pneumatological Theology, ch. 4.

⁴ While canons are still in the making, this is the typology adopted in The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, revised and expanded edition, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Maas (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002).

⁵ See, e.g., Allan H. Anderson, Moya: The Holy Spirit in an African Context (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1991); ‘Pentecostal Pneumatology and African Power Concepts: Continuity or Change?’ Missionalia 19 (1990), 65–74.

⁶ See, e.g., Walter J. Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origin and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), ch. 7 (on Mexico) and ch. 10 (on Chile).

⁷ See, e.g., Boo-Woong Yoo, Korean Pentecostalism: Its History and Theology, Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity 52 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988).

⁸ See further, Allan Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger (eds.), Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999).

⁹ See the conflicting judgments in Gary McGee ‘Pentecostal Missiology: Moving beyond Triumphalism to Face the Issues’, PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 16:2 (1994), 276-77 and Allan H. Anderson, Bazalwane: African Pentecostals in South Africa (Pretoria: University of South Africa Press, 1992), 2-6.

¹⁰ Allan H. Anderson, ‘The Pentecostal Gospel and Third World Cultures’ (paper read at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Springfield, Missouri, 16 March 1999, http://artsweb.bham.ac.uk/aanderson), accessed 21 August, 2006.

¹¹ Wonsuk Ma and Julie C. Ma, Mission in the Spirit: Towards a Pentecostal/Charismatic Missiology (Oxford: Regnum Books, 2011), 264-65.

¹² Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., ‘The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation: 1920-1965’, in Wonsuk Ma and Robert P. Menzies (eds.), Pentecostalism in Context: Essays in Honor of William W. Menzies (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1997), 107-150.

¹³ A useful collection of documents and statements of ecumenical dialogues involving Pentecostals is available in Wolfgand Vondey (ed.), Pentecostalism and Christian Unity: Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010).

¹⁴ Kirsteen Kim and Andrew Anderson (eds.), Edinburgh 2010: Mission Today and Tomorrow (Oxford: Regnum, 2011), 343-34.

¹⁵ The list of the delegates is found in Kim & Anderson, Mission Today and Tomorrow, 425-42.

¹⁶ Kim & Anderson, Mission Today and Tomorrow, 343-44.

¹⁷ Those who signed the statement are: Rev. Dr. Miguel Alvarez, (USA), Mr. Kenneth Ben (Cook Islands), Dr. Cheryl Bridges Johns (USA), Dr. David Daniels (USA), Dr. Anne Dyer (UK), Mrs. Dynnice Rosanne Engcoy (Philippines), Dr. Samson Fatokun (Nigeria), Dr. Pamela Holmes (Canada), Rev. Dr. Harold D. Hunter (USA), Rev. Dr. Veli Matti Kärkkäinen (Finland), Dr. Elijah Jong Fil Kim (USA), Rev. Steven K.L. Kum (Malaysia), Dr. Julie Ma (Korea), Dr. Wonsuk Ma (Korea), Rev. Rauno Mikkonen (Finland), Apostle Dr. Opoku Onyinah (Ghana), Rev. Philippe Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso), Rev. Dr. Tavita Pagaialii (Western Samoa), Dr. Jean-Daniel Plüss (Switzerland), Rev. Dr. Daniel Ramirez (USA), Dr. Elisabeth Del Carmen Salazar-Sanzana (Chile), and Rev. Bal Krishna Sharma (Nepal).

¹⁸ Kim & Anderson, Mission Today and Tomorrow, 2.

¹⁹ Edited by Todd M. Johnson and Kenneth Ross (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).

²⁰ Todd M. Johnson, David B. Barrett, and Peter E. Crossing, ‘Status of Global Mission, 2011, in Context of 20th and 21st Centuries’, International Bulletin of Missionary Research 35:1 (Jan 2011), 29.

THE EMERGENCE OF A MULTIDIMENSIONAL GLOBAL MISSIONARY MOVEMENT: A HISTORICAL REVIEW

Allan Heaton Anderson

Edinburgh 1910 and Pentecostalism

This chapter looks at the origins and development of a global network in early Pentecostalism, and how this contributed to the formation of a multidimensional global movement. The great Edinburgh Missionary Conference of 1910 was an important milestone in Protestant missions and gave birth to the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century. This was also a conference that put great stress on evangelism, and the motto of its organizer John Mott was ‘the evangelization of the world in this generation’. But there is little evidence that it had any influence on Pentecostal missions. After all, Pentecostals were not invited to this event and their work was unrecognized, quite understandable in these early days when they were not yet organized into structures. Furthermore, Edinburgh 1910 did not foresee the massive transformation in the nature of the Church that was to take place during the twentieth century, in which Pentecostalism played a major role. Pentecostalism confounded the general assumption at Edinburgh that Christianity would not flourish without white missionary control. It probably became the main contributor to the reshaping of Christianity itself from a predominantly western to a predominantly non-western phenomenon during the twentieth century. However, for the Pentecostals and radical evangelicals themselves, the Edinburgh conference was hardly noticed.

There may only be one printed commentary on this epochal event made by Pentecostals at the time. The editor of the Atlanta-based The Bridegroom’s Messenger Elisabeth Sexton, in a 1910 editorial titled ‘Increasing Missionary Activity’, referred to the Edinburgh Conference of less than three months earlier as ‘undoubtedly the greatest missionary gathering the Christian world has ever known’. She noted that although the increasing number of missionary societies (aided by the laymen’s movement) pointed to an ‘auspicious outlook for great results for God’ in this age unlike any other, she doubted whether any activity ‘not representing the fullness of the Gospel, with full redemption in Christ Jesus for body, soul and spirit’ would achieve the expected outcome. She wondered whether the unity reported on in Edinburgh was ‘by the working of the blessed Spirit of God, uniting them in Christ’ or was merely ‘apparent unity out of respect for the great occasion’. She lamented what she saw as ‘compromise’ in allowing a Roman Catholic to address the conference – unless Catholics had ‘greatly changed’, she added. She felt that concessions had been made ‘regarding heathen religions in recognising certain moral good in them’. Such concessions would ‘dishonour God and weaken the cause of Christ’. She reiterated her conviction that the only ‘equipment for effectual missionary service’ was ‘Holy Ghost power’ and ‘uncompromising faithfulness to the full Gospel truth’. Without this there was ‘little hope for great results for God as the outcome of this great missionary conference’. She saw the conference as a lost opportunity, especially as it had in her view missed the urgent eschatological dimension of missions and the power of the Spirit that were thrusting out Pentecostal missionaries all over the world in the shortest possible time. It was not the frantic and increased activity in itself that would achieve God’s purposes, she wrote, but the haste that was needed in these last days was in ‘preparation for that blessed day, and the making ready of the Bride of Christ’. Any missionary activity that did not have this end in view would ‘miss the highest privilege of this age’.¹ Missionaries made premillennial eschatology part of their preaching wherever they went and the seeming delay in Christ’s coming did not deter them.

This commentary illustrates what were some of the fundamental issues already developing in Pentecostal circles based on a premillennial eschatology that was highly suspicious of and uncooperative with the wider Christian world, especially in the case of the ecumenical movement and Catholicism. Thankfully, this was beginning to change. Over two years later, Cecil Polhill, leader of the Pentecostal Missionary Union (PMU) in Britain had a broader experience with his Anglican background and China Inland Mission involvement. His assessment of Edinburgh was more positive. The conference was ‘evidently ordered in the Plan of God’, he wrote, and its reports brought the church ‘face to face with the world’s needs in detail’ while they concentrated on the ‘unparalleled opportunity’ and the ‘Church’s responsibility’. He drew special attention to the ‘Report of the Commission for Carrying the Gospel to All the Non-Christian World’ and highlighted its emphasis on the unprecedented opportunities for evangelization. But he observed that the Church had not responded to these calls and that the Pentecostal movement had arisen to rectify this grave omission. Polhill positively drew attention to the calls of the conference for making the most of the unprecedented opportunities to engage in world evangelization. There had never been a decade like the second decade of the twentieth century where doors all over the world were opened. Sadly, the Great War of 1914-18 was to put pay to these opportunities and leave the world reeling from its devastation with a profound disillusionment in western civilization.² Incidentally, two PMU missionaries were official delegates to a continuation conference of Edinburgh 1910 conducted by John Mott in Beijing in 1913.³ So Pentecostals were not entirely absent from these events.

Early Pentecostalism as a Missionary Movement

By 1916, six years after the Edinburgh conference and only ten years after the beginning of the Azusa Street revival, Pentecostal missionaries from the West were found in at least forty-two nations outside North America and Europe.⁴ This was indeed a remarkable achievement, especially in view of the lack of central organisation and co-ordination, the naivety of most of these missionaries, and the physical difficulties and opposition they encountered. Pentecostal denominations were still in the process of formation, and in most countries they did not exist as organisations with centralised structures. Most of these early missionaries were novices who had never ventured outside their own, often narrow cultural setting. Those who left America in the wake of Los Angeles’ Azusa Street revival did so with the conviction that they could speak the languages of the nations to which they had been called. European Pentecostals from the Pentecostal Missionary Union, being rather more phlegmatic and having the experience of Cecil Polhill of the China Inland Mission to guide them, went out to China, India and central Africa expecting to need to learn the languages. Many of the early Pentecostal missionaries lacked financial means (including funds to take furloughs in their homelands); they were subject to impoverished living conditions, and many died from tropical diseases. Some of their stories are indeed tragic.

It is possible, however, to understand the present global proliferation of Pentecostalism from these rather chaotic beginnings and to discern the essential characteristics that made it ultimately the most successful Christian missionary movement of the twentieth century. Pentecostalism has always been a movement with global orientation and inherent migrating tendencies that, coupled with its strong individualism, made it fundamentally a multidimensional missionary movement. Very soon its ambassadors were indigenous people who went out to their own people in ever-increasing numbers. Networks were formed that criss-crossed nations and organisations. These networks were essential in the globalising process, and were aided and abetted by rapid advances in technology, transportation and communications. As the twentieth century progressed Pentecostalism became increasingly globalised, and the power and influence of the former colonising nations and their representatives diminished.

Charismata or ‘spiritual gifts’ and ecstatic or ‘enthusiastic’ forms of Christianity have been found in all ages, albeit sometimes at the margins of the ‘established’ church, and they have often been a characteristic of the church’s missionary advance, from the early church to the pioneer Catholic missionaries of the Middle Ages. Protestantism as a whole did not favour such enthusiasm, however, and it often suppressed any expressions of Christianity that would seek to revive spiritual gifts. The histories of the Anabaptist, Quaker and Irvingite movements are cases in point. It took new revival movements in the nineteenth century (especially of the Methodist and Holiness type) and movements among other radical Protestants who espoused similar ideas, to stimulate a restoration of spiritual gifts to accompany an end-time missionary thrust. The many and various revival movements at the start of the twentieth century had the effect of creating a greater air of expectancy for Pentecostal revival in many parts of the world. The signs that this revival had come would be similar to the earlier revivals: an intense desire to pray, emotional confessions of sins, manifestations of the coming of the Spirit, successful and accelerated evangelism and world mission, and especially spiritual gifts to confirm that the power of the Spirit had indeed come.

Key to understanding the globalisation process in early Pentecostalism was the role of the periodicals. There were at least three features of this process. First, the early periodicals were sent all over the world and provided the mass media for the spread of Pentecostal ideas. Second, they also formed the social structures that were necessary during this time of creative chaos, when the only form of missionary organisation was often linked to the support engendered by these periodicals. International travel was an increasing feature of the early missionaries and their networks and conferences the means by which their message spread. One cannot read these different early periodicals without noticing how frequently a relatively small number of the same Pentecostal missionaries are referred to in all the periodicals. Division and schism was to come later; but the periodicals promoted a unity of purpose and vision that has since been lost. And third, this internationalism, this global meta-culture of Pentecostalism was evident in these years through the influence of both the periodicals and the missionary networks. In the first years the missionary networks like those of A.B. Simpson’s Christian and Missionary Alliance were essential for the spread of Pentecostal ideas. Azusa Street missionaries A.G. and Lillian Garr arrived in Calcutta in December 1906, and immediately held meetings with the western evangelical missionaries when they discovered that they could not speak Bengali as they thought.⁵ At the same time, Pentecostal missionaries like William Burton in the Congo saw the globalization that occurred by which native peoples were adopting western ways as ‘a marvellous, an unparalleled opportunity for presenting the realities of Christ’ to replace the now discarded old beliefs in witchcraft, fetishes and charms.⁶

In any discussion on the multiple origins of global Pentecostalism, I make four central assumptions, without which the history cannot be fully understood. The first assumption is that the Welsh Revival (1904-5), the revivals in North-East and Central India (1905-7) and the Azusa Street revival in the USA (1906-9) were all part of a wider series of revivals that promoted Pentecostal beliefs and values throughout the world. In particular, a convincing case can be made to situate Pandita Ramabai’s Mukti Revival in Kedgaon, near Pune in 1905-7, within the emerging Pentecostal movement; and Minnie Abrams, one of its leaders, was instrumental in passing on the news of this revival to inspire the emergence of Pentecostalism in the Methodist Church in Chile.⁷ The second assumption is that the existing missionary networks, especially that of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, were fundamental in spreading Pentecostalism internationally. Many of these missionaries were among the first Pentecostals on the ‘mission field’ and their experience of Pentecostal Spirit baptism spread quickly among these networks and among their converts, particularly in China and India, where the greatest concentration of Pentecostal missionaries was soon to be found. The third assumption, already mentioned, was that the Pentecostal periodicals posted to missionaries in the ‘field’ were not only significant in spreading Pentecostalism internationally but were the foundation of the meta-culture that arose in global Pentecostalism in its earliest forms. The last assumption to make is that the various centres and events in early Pentecostalism were part of a series of formative stages in the emergence of a new missionary movement that took several years to take on a distinctive identity. This identity has changed and become more complex over the years, and was not at all distinct at its beginning. Put simply, Pentecostalism as it existed in 1910, 1960 or 2010 were very different animals.

The Impact of the Mukti Revival

The Azusa Street revival was undoubtedly the most significant of the early twentieth century revival movements in America that were formative in the process of creating a distinct Pentecostal identity. Azusa Street also was the main cause for the rapid internationalizing of American Pentecostalism. But there were other similar movements at this time, the most noteworthy of which was the Mukti (‘Salvation’) revival in India (1905-7) at the Mukti Mission under the famous Brahmin Christian woman Pandita Ramabai, her daughter Manoramabai and the former Methodist Episcopal missionary Minnie Abrams. This significant revival lasted for a year and a half and resulted in 1,100 baptisms at Ramabai’s school, confessions of sins and repentances, prolonged prayer meetings, speaking in tongues, and the witnessing of some seven hundred of these young women in teams into the surrounding areas, about a hundred going out daily, sometimes for as long as a month at a time. Ramabai formed a ‘Bible school’ of two hundred young women to pray in groups called ‘Praying Bands’ and to be trained in witnessing to their faith. These Praying Bands spread the revival wherever they went and some remarkable healings were reported.⁸

The revival had at least four far-reaching consequences, apart from the significant role Mukti workers had in the early expansion of Pentecostalism in India.⁹ First, it is clear that the eyewitness and participant in the Azusa Street revival Frank Bartleman, its African American leader William Seymour, and the writers of its periodical The Apostolic Faith saw the Indian revival as a precedent to the one in which they were involved. It was seen as a prototypical, earlier Pentecostal revival that they thought had become ‘full-grown’ in Los Angeles.¹⁰ It is more likely, however, that these were simultaneous rather than sequential events in a general period of revival in the evangelical world accompanying the turn of the century. Together these revivals created an air of anticipation that was a prominent reason for the growth of Pentecostalism. Second, women played a more prominent role in the Indian revival than in the American one – although women leaders played very significant roles in both the Azusa Street revival and the early American missionary movement that issued from it. But the fact that Ramabai was an Indian woman who resisted both patriarchal oppression in India and western domination in Christianity and was attracted to what a biographer calls ‘the gender-egalitarian impulse of Christianity’ was even more significant.¹¹ Or as her assistant Minnie Abrams put it, Ramabai was ‘demonstrating to her countrymen that women have powers and capabilities which they have not permitted them to cultivate’.¹² The Mukti Pentecostal revival was pre-eminently a revival among women and led by women, motivating and empowering those who had been marginalized and cast out by society. This was another case of Pentecostalism’s early social activism, empowering the marginalized and oppressed for service and bestowing dignity on women. In this the Mukti revival and Ramabai herself were pioneers within global Christianity and without precedent. This was to result in an unparalleled missionary outreach of Indian Christians into surrounding areas and further abroad. As one periodical observed, Ramabai’s ‘Praying Bands’ of young women were going ‘in every direction to scatter the fire that has filled their own souls’ and the result was that ‘many parts of India are hearing of the true and living God’.¹³ The third consequence was that both Ramabai in her ministry and the revival she led demonstrate an openness to other Christians, an ecumenicity and inclusiveness that stand in stark contrast to the rigid exclusivism of most subsequent Pentecostal movements. This was undoubtedly one result of the pluralistic context of India and Ramabai’s indebtedness to her own cultural and religious training in Brahmin philosophy and national consciousness, despite her later Christian fundamentalism.

The fourth consequence was its contribution to global Pentecostalism, especially its impact on Latin American Pentecostalism. Minnie Abrams contacted her friend and former Bible school classmate in Valparaiso, Chile, May Louise Hoover, who with her husband Willis were Methodist Episcopal missionaries. Abrams sent a report of the revival in Mukti contained in a booklet she wrote in 1906 titled The Baptism of the Holy Ghost and Fire, which in its second edition later that year included a discussion of the restoration of speaking in tongues. This was the first written Pentecostal theology of Spirit baptism, and thirty thousand copies were circulated widely. As a result of this booklet and Abrams’ subsequent correspondence with the Hoovers, the Methodist churches in Valparaiso and Santiago were stirred to expect and pray for a similar revival. The Pentecostal revival began in 1909, creating a schism in the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Willis Hoover became leader of the new Chilean Methodist Pentecostal Church consisting at first of those expelled from the Methodists. Chilean Pentecostalism has its roots in the Mukti revival and was specifically a Methodist revival that did not promote a doctrine of ‘initial evidence’. An alternative to the ‘initial evidence’ form of Pentecostalism was developing globally and Mukti was its earliest expression.¹⁴ Mukti operated as a centre for Pentecostalism, not only in India, but was visited by scores of early Pentecostal traveling preachers and missionaries. The Mukti revival can legitimately be regarded with Azusa Street as one of the most important early formative centres of Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism has always had revival centres for international pilgrimage, and the Azusa Street Mission and the Mukti Mission were the most prominent of the earliest ones.

The various revival movements in Mukti, Los Angeles, and Valparaiso were all part of a series of events from which global Pentecostalism emerged. Missionaries from these various revival movements went out into faith missions and independent missions, some joining Holiness and radical evangelical organizations like the Christian and Missionary Alliance and then became Pentecostal. The coming of the Spirit was linked to a belief that the last days had arrived and that the ‘full gospel’ would be preached to all nations before the coming of the Lord. Considerations of religious pluralism, colonialism and cultural sensitivity were not on the agenda of those who rushed out to the nations with this revivalist message believing that they had been enabled to speak those languages they needed for the task. The stage was set for the coming of a new Pentecost to spread across the world in the twentieth century. The means by which these Pentecostal fires would spread would be a global network of these same faith missionaries and so-called ‘native workers’ whose devotion to Christ and enthusiastic zeal were unrivalled by most of their contemporaries. The Pentecostalism emerging was essentially a missionary migratory movement of unprecedented vigour.

Pentecostalism and Independency

Another very important aspect of early Pentecostalism was its impact upon independent churches, especially in Africa, India and China. China was the largest of the early fields for Pentecostal missions. It has been estimated that there could have been as many as 150 expatriate Pentecostal missionaries there by 1915, and the creation of the Assemblies of God in Arkansas in 1914 and the affiliation of the majority of these missionaries with them meant that by 1920 they were by far the largest of the Pentecostal bodies in China.¹⁵ But even more significant was the fact that by that time there were already strong nationalist forces forming churches totally independent of western missions and developing a Pentecostal spirituality that was distinctively Chinese. These Chinese churches already formed the majority of Pentecostals by the time the expatriate missionaries were forced to leave China in 1949. Questions concerning how these churches differ from western-founded Pentecostals and the extent of conscious or unconscious adaptation to the Chinese context require much more research. The evidence in China that Pentecostalism converged with and strongly influenced the phenomenon of independency is incontrovertible. Pentecostalism in its emphasis on the supernatural was in sync with Chinese folk religion, its offer of spiritual power to everyone regardless of status or achievements, and its deep suspicion of hierarchical and rationalistic Christianity, encouraged the development of new, anti-western independent churches. Resentment against western interference in Chinese affairs and patriotism increased during the 1920s, which was when most of these churches began. Pentecostal missionaries were unwittingly drawn into this process. Assemblies of God missionary W.W. Simpson was in contact with Chinese independent churches in Manchuria and made pleas for more missionaries to come to China to work with them. Other Pentecostal missionaries frequently interacted with Chinese independent churches in this period. Their policy of creating self-supporting Chinese churches assisted in developing independency. A missionary writing from Taiyuan in Shanxi wrote of a strong Pentecostal church he visited that was started in 1914 and was run completely by Chinese leaders with four full-time workers.¹⁶ Independent Chinese Pentecostalism had both foreign and domestic influences in its formation. Pentecostal missionaries from the West brought their teachings of divine healing (although not a new idea for some Chinese Christians) and speaking in tongues, which was a new idea. At the same time there was a strong anti-western and nationalistic feeling in China at the beginning of the twentieth century, causing many newly emerging Chinese Christian groups to distance themselves from western missionaries.¹⁷ The two largest Chinese Pentecostal denominations to arise during this period were the True Jesus Church and the Jesus Family, both of which came under these two influences. They are still active in China today: the True Jesus Church (being Oneness and Seventh-Day) is possibly the largest Protestant grouping in China, and the Jesus Family set up separate living and self-supporting communities after the model of an Assemblies of God mission in Taiyuan, Shandong under the Anglins.¹⁸

A similar process took place in colonial India and Ceylon. The early history of Pentecostalism in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) has been shrouded in confusion. The same involvement of local workers that was true of India and China was the case with the Pentecostal work in Sri Lanka. Alwin De Alwis (d. 1967), was preparing for the coming of the American missionaries Mr and Mrs W.D. Grier to Colombo in 1913. De Alwis was an early convert to Pentecostalism, receiving Spirit baptism in 1912, possibly as a result of South Indian-based George Berg or J.L. Bahr’s ministry in Sri Lanka. De Alwis was the Griers’ main co-worker and took charge of their work in 1915, and the Griers left Sri Lanka permanently in 1917.¹⁹ It is indicative of how important the careful reconstruction of early Pentecostal history is when it has been suggested that Pentecostalism in Sri Lanka began with the Danish actress Anna Lewini and Walter Clifford, a former British soldier in India, who arrived in Colombo in 1919 and 1923 respectively. From their work evolved the Assemblies of God and the independent Ceylon Pentecostal Mission of Alwin De Alwis and Ramankutty Paul. It was also thought that the De Alwis family became Pentecostals as a result of Clifford’s healing services, whereas De Alwis had already been a Pentecostal for a decade.²⁰ It is true that Paul and De Alwis were connected with Lewini and Clifford in Colombo, but it was more the case of the missionaries working with established missions there than being the direct cause of the independent church that followed. In any case, Paul and De Alwis founded the independent Ceylon Pentecostal Mission in 1921, a unique church that encouraged celibacy for its pastors and community living for its members.²¹ Pentecostal missions were active in Sri Lanka long before Lewini and Clifford arrived, and its pioneers were Sri Lankans.

Out of the Ceylon Pentecostal Mission came the inspiration for a whole series of independent Pentecostal secessions. In South India, several Indian preachers associated with the American missionary Robert Cook were instrumental in starting independent Pentecostal churches, including K.E. Abraham, who joined Cook in 1923, was ordained by Ramankutty Paul of the Ceylon Pentecostal Mission in 1930, and with others founded the Indian Pentecostal Church of God in 1934, now (with the Assemblies of God) one of the two largest Pentecostal denominations in India.²²

The pressures of religious change occurring in colonial Africa at the end of the nineteenth century resulted in many movements of resistance. The ‘Ethiopian’ independent churches in Southern Africa and the ‘African’ churches in West Africa were not as much movements of religious reform and innovation as were the later ‘prophet-healing’ or ‘Spirit’ churches, but were primarily movements of political protest, expressions of resistance against European hegemony in the church. Although they rejected the political dominance of white-led churches, they framed their protest in familiar Protestant categories and therefore did not seriously contest its social, religious and cultural components.²³ Their more lasting significance lay in the fact that they were the first to overtly challenge social structures of inequality and oppression in the church and to give a religious ideology for the dignity and self-reliance of the black person – thus foreshadowing the African nationalist movements and forming a religious justification for them. These secessions were often the result of tension between an increasingly self-aware African Christian community and a multiplying number of zealous European missionaries with colonial expansionist sympathies. The secessions that began in South Africa and Nigeria and spread to Kenya and the Congo were to set a pattern for the next century. Secession was not a peculiarly African phenomenon, as Africans were simply continuing the plurality that was common in European and North American Protestantism. By the end of the nineteenth century there were already hundreds of new denominations, ‘faith missions’ and other mission societies springing up in the West, from where missionaries were sent to Africa. These multiplied denominations and societies were reproduced there, and it is hardly surprising that it was considered quite a natural thing for secessions to occur – urged on by the mission policies and colonial politics of the time that were highly prejudicial to Africans.²⁴ The entrance of Pentecostalism into the African melting pot had the effect of stimulating new and more radically transforming forms of independent churches. The ‘African’ and ‘Ethiopian’ churches were overshadowed in the early twentieth century by new, rapidly growing ‘prophet-healing’ or ‘spiritual’ churches – so named because of their emphasis on the power of the Spirit in healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues. Along the West African coast, churches associated with the Liberian prophet William Wade Harris and the Nigerian Garrick Sokari Braide emerged. They were later followed by churches known by the Yoruba term ‘Aladura’ (‘owners of prayer’) from the 1920s onwards in south-western Nigeria, where the emphasis was on prayer for healing. All these churches had their genesis in healing and revival movements at the time.²⁵

The existence of large and strong independent churches in southern Africa today has much to do with early Pentecostal missions. There are indications that Pentecostal missionaries tapped into a new phenomenon that was particularly strong in British colonial Africa, and especially in South Africa. American Pentecostal missionary Jacob Lehman wrote of a whole tribal community in the north-west of Southern Africa that had, with their chief, seceded from ‘a certain missionary society’ because of the highhandedness and exploitation of the missionaries. Near Middelburg, Transvaal, Lehman, and his fellow missionaries Archibald Cooper and William Elliott held services to welcome a group of secessionists into the Pentecostal fold. John G. Lake visited an ‘Ethiopian’ church conference that was seeking affiliation with his Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM). Lake wrote of a ‘native missionary’, Paul Mabiletsa, who told Lake about a paralyzed woman healed through prayer in the Germiston district. Mabiletsa founded the Apostolic Church in Zion in 1920, to become one of the larger Zionist churches whose leadership remained in the Mabiletsa family throughout the twentieth century. Lake himself reported that twenty-four ‘native Catholic churches’ and ‘five large Ethiopian churches’ had decided to affiliate with the AFM in 1910, and that the ‘African Catholic Church’ with 78 preachers joined in January 1911. Again in 1911 the ‘Ethiopian Church’ affiliated with Pastor Modred Powell, a British missionary, to become the Apostolic Faith Church of South Africa. Clearly, many of the early Pentecostal ‘converts’ in South Africa were already members of Christian churches, especially African independent ones.²⁶ But the flow went both ways – by 1915 there were several secessions from the Pentecostals, especially from the AFM. Azusa Street missionary Henry Turney also complained of African women who had ‘risen up refusing to acknowledge any authority in the church’ and who were now ‘trying to establish a church of their own, with a native as leader’.²⁷

The role of Pentecostalism and expatriate Pentecostal missionaries in the early years of African, Indian and Chinese independency and the links with some of its most significant leaders is historical facts that must not escape attention. Although these movements tended to isolate themselves, they were another manifestation of Pentecostalism’s propensity to diversify and its impact on the changing shape of global Christianity. The Zion Christian Church is the largest denomination in South Africa, and independent ‘Zionist’ and ‘Apostolic’ churches together form the largest grouping of Christians in that country today. Although the independent churches may no longer be described as ‘Pentecostal’ without qualification, the most characteristic features of their theology and praxis is definitively Pentecostal and, in the case of South Africa, also influenced by the Zion City movement of John Alexander Dowie near Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century. Healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues, and baptism by immersion (usually threefold), and even the rejection of medicine and the eating of pork, are some of these features that remain among these African churches. Dowie’s movement also had historical connections to Pentecostalism in the American Mid-West and in the Netherlands.²⁸

Whatever their motivation might have been, expatriate Pentecostal missions were unwittingly catalysts for a much larger movement of the Spirit that was to dominate African Christianity and play a significant role in transforming Christian demographics worldwide for the rest of the twentieth century. Half the world’s Christians today live in developing, poor countries, where forms of Christianity are very different from what western ‘classical Pentecostals’ might wish them to be. These Christians have been profoundly affected by several factors, including the desire to have a more contextual and culturally relevant form of Christianity, the rise of nationalism, a reaction to what are perceived as ‘colonial’ and foreign forms of Christianity, and the burgeoning Pentecostal and Charismatic renewal. These factors play a major role in the formation of independent churches throughout the world.

Multidimensional Global Pentecostalism

Although Pentecostals have only existed for only a century, today they are among the most significant role players in Christian missions, with three quarters of them in the Majority World.²⁹ According to some statistics, in 2011, 64% of the world’s Christians (1,396 million) were in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania, while those of the two northern continents (including Russia) constituted only 36%. When this is compared to 1900, when 82% of the world Christian population was found in Europe and North America, we have dramatic evidence of how rapidly the western share of world Christianity has decreased in the twentieth century. According to the same statistics, if present trends continue 69% of the world’s Christians will live in the South by 2025.³⁰ But it is not only in terms of overall numbers that there have been fundamental changes. Christianity is growing most often in Pentecostal and Charismatic forms, and many of these are independent of both western ‘mainline’ Protestant and ‘classical Pentecostal’ denominations and missions. What Andrew Walls describes as the ‘southward swing of the Christian centre of gravity’ is possibly more evident in Pentecostalism than in other forms of Christianity.³¹ It is not always transparent in the various statistics what proportion of these numbers are Pentecostals or Charismatics, and often it depends on how Pentecostalism is defined. In the Pew Forum’s Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals, conducted in 2006, it was discovered that in all the countries surveyed, Pentecostalism constituted a very significant percentage of Christianity. In six of the countries Pentecostals and Charismatics were over 60% of all Protestants. In Brazil, Guatemala, Kenya, South Africa, and the Philippines, they constituted over a third of the total population – in Guatemala and Kenya it was over half.³² Barrett et al. estimated a total of 523 million, or 28% of all Christians to be Pentecostal and Charismatic in 2000. This number was divided into four groups: 1) 18 million ‘peripheral quasi-Pentecostals’ (or 3% of the total); 2) 66 million ‘denominational Pentecostals’ (12%); 3) 176 million ‘Charismatics’, including 105 million Catholics (32%); and 4) the largest group of 295 million ‘Neo-charismatics, that is, Independents and Postdenominationalists’ (a massive 53% of the total).³³ Of course, these figures are debatable but do give indication that something highly significant is taking place in the global complexity of Christianity as a whole and of Pentecostalism in particular.

The terms ‘Pentecostals’ and ‘Pentecostalism’ are used here as elsewhere in my research to include a wide variety of movements where the emphasis is on receiving the Spirit and practicing spiritual gifts, especially prophecy, healing and speaking in tongues. The terms