PENTECOSTAL AND CHARISMATIC CHRISTIANITY

PENTECOSTAL AND CHARISMATIC CHRISTIANITY . This form of Christianity centers on the emotional, mystical, and supernatural: miracles, signs, wonders, and "the gifts of the Spirit" (charismata), especially "speaking in tongues" (glossolalia), faith healing, and "casting out demons" (exorcism). Supreme importance is attached to the subjective religious experience of being filled with or possessed by the Holy Spirit.

The name Pentecostal derives from the account of the day of Pentecost as described in chapters 1 and 2 of the Acts of the Apostles, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the first Christians: "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:1–4). Charismatic derives from the Greek charism, meaning supernatural gifts of the Spirit, which are most often considered those listed in 1 Corinthians 12–14.

Biblical and Historical Bases

Pentecostals trace the beginnings of their movement to the day of Pentecost described in Acts. They believe that the experience of Spirit Baptism and the practice of the gifts of the Spirit that occurred on that day were meant to be normative in the life of the church and of each believer. They maintain that although the charismata ceased in the main body of the church soon after the apostolic age, one can trace an intermittent history of charismatic practices among sectarians like the Montanists, Anabaptists, Camisards, Shakers, Irvingites, Mormons, and various nineteenth-century Holiness groups. The twentieth-century Pentecostal and charismatic movements, therefore, mark the restoration of the charismata to the church.

The Origins of Pentecostalism in the United States

The Pentecostal movement developed within the radical, separatist wing of the late nineteenth-century Holiness movement in the United States. It represented an amalgam of extremist Wesleyan and Keswick views on premillennialism, dispensationalism, faith healing, and "the Baptism in the Spirit" as an enduement of miraculous powers. Charles Fox Parham, an independent Holiness preacher and former Methodist, is generally regarded as the founder of the modern Pentecostal movement. Speaking in tongues and other ecstatic behavior broke out in Parham's Bethel Bible "College" in Topeka, Kansas, in January 1901. Parham asserted that glossolalia was the evidence of "the true Baptism in the Spirit." On the basis of this teaching and faith healing, Parham's Apostolic Faith movement had some success in the lower Midwest. William Joseph Seymour, a black Holiness preacher converted by Parham, carried the movement to Los Angeles in 1906. Seymour's Azusa Street Apostolic Faith Mission became the center of a great revival, in which visitors to the Azusa mission spread the movement across the nation and around the world in only a few years.

The movement was condemned and ostracized by all other Christian churches, and it at first consisted of a few small schismatic offsprings of the Holiness sects and many independent congregations. The movement's center of strength lay in the region stretching from lower Appalachia to the Ozarks, and in the urban centers of the North and West. Adherents were drawn from vastly different religious, racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds. In time, these differences divided the movement into a bewildering array of small, hostile sects that were constantly splitting and resplitting. By 1916, the American Pentecostal movement had divided into three major doctrinal camps, and by the early 1930s, each of these had split along racial lines.

Finished Work, or Baptistic, Pentecostals

Originally, all Pentecostals believed in three acts of grace: conversion, sanctification, and Baptism in the Spirit. Beginning about 1908, William H. Durham introduced his "Finished Work of Calvary" doctrine, in which conversion and sanctification were declared a single act of grace. A majority of American Pentecostals accepted this doctrine; it was especially strong among those of Baptist and Keswick backgrounds. In 1914, a Finished Work denomination was organized: the Assemblies of God.

Second Work, or Wesleyan, Pentecostals

Those who held to the original three acts of grace were called "Second Work Pentecostals." They were predominantly from Wesleyan backgrounds and were concentrated in the South. The largest such denominations are the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.), and the Pentecostal Holiness Church.

Oneness, or "Jesus Only," Pentecostals

From 1913 to 1916, the Finished Work group was torn asunder by a controversy over the proper water baptismal formula and the nature of the godhead. Advocates of the "Oneness" position rejected traditional Trinitarianism, maintaining that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are simply different titles or offices of the one God whose name is Jesus. A number of small Oneness denominations were organized, the most important of which was Garfield T. Haywood's interracial Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. The movement consisted mostly of the very poorest Pentecostals and was strongest in the urban centers of the upper Midwest. In 1945 most white Oneness Pentecostals were brought together in the United Pentecostal Church.

Pentecostal Revival Goes Global

Within a very few years, visitors to the Azusa Street revival carried the movement all around the world. Thomas Ball Barratt, an English-born Methodist minister and pastor of an independent free church in Oslo, Norway (then Kristiania), was converted to Pentecostalism in New York City in 1906. His church, Kristiania Bymission, became the center of a revival in 1907 from which Pentecostalism spread throughout Scandinavia. The movement's greatest appeal was to evangelical and Holiness believers of the poorer classes.

In the United Kingdom, the Anglican clergyman Alexander A. Boddy attended Thomas Barratt's meetings in 1907 and then established his All Saints Church in Sunderland, England, as a Pentecostal center from which the movement spread through the British Isles. Leadership of the movement soon passed to the Welsh miners W. J. and D. P. Williams and Stephen and George Jeffreys. Overall in the United Kingdom, Pentecostalism had only modest success until the 1950s, when many West Indian and other colonial immigrants were converted to it. A Pentecostal revival in Germany began in Kassel-Hesse under the preaching of female evangelists from Barratt's church in 1907. Luigi Francescon and other Italian-Americans from Chicago established Pentecostalism in Italy in 1908, primarily among poor peasants in the South and in the major cities. In 1910, the movement was established in Brazil by Francescon and the Swedish-American steelworkers Daniel Berg and Gunnar Vingren, from which it spread elsewhere in South America. In Chile in 1907, the American Willis C. Hoover's conversion to Pentecostalism led to his eviction from the pastorate of a Methodist church in Valparaíso. Hoover then founded the Pentecostal Methodist Church. Pentecostalism was brought to Bulgaria, Romania, and Russia in the early 1920s by Ivan E. Voronaev, founder in 1919 of the First Russian Pentecostal Church in New York City.

The Pentecostal message was brought to India in 1907 by American and European missionaries. The movement spread widely but had little impact before the 1940s, when the indigenous churches, founded in the 1920s and 1930s, began to grow rapidly. In Indonesia in the early 1920s, American missionaries established the Pentecostal movement on the island of Bali, and German missionaries introduced it at Bandung, Java. The Pentecostal movement was brought to China in 1908. The movement in Japan began in 1913 but had very little growth until the 1950s.

The American missionaries John G. Lake and Thomas Hezmalhalch, converts to Pentecostalism from John Alexander Dowie's Christian Catholic Apostolic Church in Zion, Illinois, won most of Dowie's South African churches to the new movement following a revival in 1908 in Johannesburg. A former Dutch Reformed minister, Pieter Louis leRoux, emerged as the leader of the Apostolic Faith Mission of South Africa. The segregationist policies of this and other Pentecostal mission churches led to the early loss of most of their black adherents. As a result, numerous schismatic "Zionist" churches arose—so-called because nearly all use the word Zion in their official names. In addition, many independent, indigenous Pentecostal churches were founded by prophets who have often been regarded as demi-gods by their followers. Missionaries from South Africa, Europe, and North America had established the movement throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa by the 1920s, but it was the evangelizing efforts of native preachers that account for Pentecostalism's great success. The distribution of American Pentecostal literature in Nigeria led to the indigenous Aladura (praying people) movement beginning in the early 1920s, which spread all through western Africa in the wake of a revival in 1928. The preaching of Simon Kimbangu in the lower Congo in 1921 led to his life imprisonment, but the church founded in his name by his followers grew throughout central Africa.

The "Deliverance," or Healing, Revival

The institutionalization of the American Pentecostal movement, together with generational changes and the rise of many into the middle classes, brought a decline in the fervor of Pentecostal worship, especially in the larger, white denominations. This led to a renewal movement in the late 1940s. The New Order of the Latter Rain began with a revival in an independent church in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, in 1948, and soon spread throughout the world. The revival placed a new emphasis on the "laying on of hands" for the reception of Holy Spirit Baptism, healing, and other charismata. A group of faith-healing evangelists arose to deliver the faithful from formalism, sickness, and demon possession. The healers reintroduced tent revivals and attracted multitudes of non-Pentecostals.

William Branham, a Oneness Pentecostal from an impoverished Indiana family, was at first the most renowned leader of the revival. But Oral Roberts (1918–), a Pentecostal Holiness preacher from Oklahoma, soon overshadowed Branham and became the most prominent Pentecostal in the United States (he became a member of the Methodist Church in 1968). Many of the leaders of the Pentecostal denominations turned against the healers, who formed their own organizations and radio and television ministries.

The Charismatic Revival

Many non-Pentecostals first became aware of Pentecostalism through the highly publicized Deliverance revival. In the 1960s, a Neo-Pentecostal, or charismatic, movement emerged in nearly all the Protestant denominations, the Roman Catholic Church, and in Eastern Orthodox communions.

In 1951, Oral Roberts encouraged Demos Shakarian, a wealthy Pentecostal dairyman from California, to found the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship, International (FGBMFI) for the purpose of providing lay support for the healers. Hundreds of FGBMFI luncheon and dinner meetings were held in fashionable hotels across the nation. Many converts to the charismatic movement were first brought into contact with Pentecostalism through FGBMFI, which served as a bridge from the Deliverance revival to the charismatic revival.

In 1961, Father Dennis Bennett, pastor of an Episcopal church in Van Nuys, California, announced that he had received the Baptism in the Spirit and had spoken in tongues. Widespread media coverage followed, and a charismatic revival in the Protestant denominations took off, actively promoted by the FGBMFI. Fears of denominational leaders diminished when the charismatics proved to be neither schismatic nor fanatical. Their meetings were marked by restraint, and they were careful not to challenge the established doctrines and practices of their communions.

In 1967, charismatic practices emerged among Roman Catholic students and faculty at Duquesne, Notre Dame, and Michigan State universities. The movement grew rapidly by means of prayer groups and local, national, and international conferences. It soon surpassed its Protestant counterpart, numbering among its adherents many religious and bishops and at least one cardinal, Leon Joseph Cardinal Suenens of Belgium.

Protestant charismatics regard Spirit Baptism as a distinct act of grace, as do all Pentecostals, but many Protestant and all Roman Catholic charismatics regard it as a renewal or actualization of the baptism in the Spirit, which all Christians receive in water baptism or on their conversion. Some Protestant charismatics hold the "initial evidence" view of glossolalia; other Protestant and all Roman Catholic charismatics reject this view.

The Gospel of Health and Wealth

As the healing revival began to wane and many middle-class people were embracing the charismatic movement, a new movement began in the 1970s under the leadership of Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland. The "Word of Faith" teaching proclaimed that every true Christian believer could have health, happiness, and prosperity by simply claiming it. It was a gospel entirely congenial to upwardly mobile middle classes, not only in the United States, but those emerging middle classes in some parts of Asia and Africa as well. It coincided with the global expansion of capitalism and consumerism, and became a major trend in the Pentecostal/charismatic movement.

The Third Wave

This term refers to some new movements in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, but also to indigenous movements in the Third World that had been developing for many decades. The unifying element is their rejection of Pentecostal/charismatic language and heritage while preserving the practice of the charismata.

In 1975, C. Peter Wagner and John Wimber, instructors at Fuller Theological Seminary, taught a course on "Signs and Wonders" in which they held that the key to evangelism was demonstrating the power of the gospel through performing signs and wonders. They minimized Spirit Baptism and glossolalia. Wimber organized the Association of Vineyard Churches in 1985. A revival in the Toronto Airport Vineyard Church began in 1994 under the leadership of John Arnott. Its extreme bodily manifestations like dancing, laughing, and bellowing like animals earned it the condemnation of many, and it was evicted from the Vineyard Association. A similar revival marked by jerking and twitching began the following year in a Brownsville church in Pensacola, Florida. Both revivals have attracted many thousands. Wagner founded the New Apostolic Church movement in 1996. It emphasizes the authority of apostles and prophets and the loose association of entirely independent congregations.

The Shepherding/Discipleship movement, led by a group of Pentecostal preachers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also began in the 1970s. It taught the submission of every believer to the authority of a shepherd who would direct all aspects of his or her life, including choice of spouse and management of finances. The movement was rejected by most and withered away by 1986.

By far the most dramatic aspect of the Third Wave is its explosive growth in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, especially since the 1970s. These movements have taken root among peoples whose traditional beliefs were animistic, and therefore quite compatible with those of Pentecostals and charismatics. But they are not fully accepted by many more traditional Pentecostals and charismatics because some of their beliefs and practices, like ancestor worship and polygyny, are considered heretical or non-Christian. Their forms of worship, however, are virtually indistinguishable from those of the Pentecostals and charismatics.

There are four types of Pentecostalism in Asia, Africa, and Latin America:

1. Mission churches established by missionaries from the Pentecostal denominations of North America and Europe.
2. charismatic movements in the mainstream non-Pentecostal denominations.
3. Independent schismatic offspring of the mission churches.
4. Wholly indigenous movements growing out of traditional religions.

The great expansion of Pentecostalism in Africa, Latin America, and Asia since the 1960s has coincided with the global evangelizing campaigns of American healers and preachers of the Prosperity Gospel. These have made many converts among the masses of people disoriented and socially disrupted by the process of decolonization, by the penetration of capitalist market relations, and by the breakdown of traditional religions, family relationships, and community ties.

Worship

The heart of Pentecostalism is the worship service. In the early years of the Pentecostal movement, nearly every meeting was marked by speaking in tongues, prophesying, healings, exorcisms, hand-clapping, uncoordinated praying aloud, running, jumping, falling, dancing "in the Spirit," crying, and shouting with great exuberance. Very quickly these practices were subjected to unwritten but clearly understood conventions concerning what was appropriate and when; however, Pentecostal services still appeared chaotic to the uninitiated. In the larger, white Pentecostal denominations these practices have all but disappeared. Charismatics have always maintained a high degree of decorum. The original character of Pentecostal worship, however, is still much in evidence among racial and ethnic minorities in North America and Europe and throughout sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia.

Belief and Practice

Experience, not doctrine, has been the principal concern of Pentecostals. There is no unanimity on doctrine, polity, or any matter whatsoever except Spirit Baptism and the practice of the charismata. The early Pentecostals were heirs to the evangelical faith of the late-nineteenth-century Holiness movement. Most American Pentecostals subscribe to the tenets of Fundamentalism. Their only distinctive doctrine is that of Baptism in the Spirit. Many American Pentecostal denominations believe that the "initial evidence" of Spirit Baptism is always glossolalia. Other Pentecostals believe that it may be evidenced by any one of the charismata. Speaking in tongues was originally believed to be miraculously speaking a language completely unknown to the speaker. Many Pentecostals continue to hold this view, even though linguistic analysis has refuted it. Some acknowledge its nonlinguistic character but continue to assert its divine signification.

The charismatics have rejected nearly all of the Holiness and fundamentalist heritage of the Pentecostal movement. They have concentrated on integrating the experience of Spirit Baptism and the practice of the charismata into the traditional beliefs and practices of their respective traditions. Despite differences in forms of expression, worship, for all Pentecostals, is the ritual reenactment of Acts 2— the recapturing of awe, wonder, and joy in the immediate experience of the Holy Spirit, and immersion in mystery and miracle. Worship provides the believer with an opportunity for individual expression, forges an emotional bond with the spiritual community, brings consolation and assurance, and lifts one into the sublime. The believer's objective is "to feel the moving of the Spirit," or, in psychological terms, to experience intense arousal and discharge of emotion. The goal is infilling, or possession, by the Holy Spirit.

The Third Wavers only connection with the Pentecostals and charismatics is in their style of worship: the emotional and physical expression of the charismata.

Social Character

The Pentecostal movement originated in the United States as a protest against the increasing formalism, "modernism," and middle-class character of the mainstream denominations. It was a movement of the poor, the uprooted, the socially and culturally deprived, recent immigrants, blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities in America. The movement's leaders were poor and lower-middle-class clergy and religious workers with little advanced education, generally from the outermost fringes of American Christendom. With few exceptions, the social character of the movement in all the countries to which it spread was analogous, and it is still overwhelmingly so in those indigenous movements that are most dynamic in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Pentecostalism has played a role in easing the transit of some of those who have suffered most from the transformation of preindustrial societies into modern urbanizing, industrializing ones. Pentecostalism has shown an ability to incorporate elements of both traditional and modern modes of thought and behavior into a subculture that has served as a bridge between the two. Its pre-scientific outlook gives it an affinity with many non-Christian religions. Its emphasis on subjectivity, emotional expression, Spirit Baptism, healing, exorcism, and miracles makes it highly congenial to adherents of traditional religions that are characterized by animism, spirit possession, divination, shamanism, and prophetism. On the other hand, Pentecostalism has inculcated in its adherents an ethic of hard work, discipline, obedience to authority, sobriety, thrift, and self-denial—the qualities of the ideal proletarian in modernizing societies. These qualities have enabled some adherents to rise into the middle classes. It has also attracted new converts from those already moving into the middle classes, for whom the charismatic movement and the Prosperity Gospel serve as vehicles for upward mobility.

Mores

The early American Pentecostals were markedly ascetic, with prohibitions against tobacco, alcohol, dancing, gambling, movies, coffee, tea, Coca-Cola, cosmetics, and jewelry. Such prohibitions are no longer typical of white, middle-class American Pentecostals, but they are typical of other American Pentecostals. European Pentecostals have generally taken a more liberal position. Charismatics regard all such taboos as irrelevant. Nonwhite Pentecostals often tend more toward asceticism.

Social Ethics

The dominance of millenarianism among the early Pentecostals and their identification of the Social Gospel with the mainstream churches led to wholesale rejection of social activism by the Pentecostal denominations. They have always approved of individual acts of charity but have avoided corporate church involvement in social or political action. Pentecostals tend strongly toward conservative and reactionary views. They believe that society can be improved by the conversion and Spirit Baptism of individuals within it, but only the Second Coming can bring the good society—and the signs of that Coming are an increase in immorality, conflict, and general social chaos. Such beliefs militate against any real social ethic.

A few Pentecostal academics have worked to develop a Pentecostal social ethic, a move which has been welcomed by some, especially nonwhite and Third World adherents, but frowned upon by most, who are still convinced of the futility of bettering the world before its imminent apocalyptic destruction and the Second Coming of Jesus.

Political Orientation

Most American Pentecostals were hostile to any involvement in politics until the 1970s, when they were politicized around the New Right reaction against the social and cultural changes brought about by the 1960s and 1970s protest movements. They lent support to the candidacy of Jimmy Carter, a self-proclaimed "born again" Christian whose sister was a prominent charismatic, in 1976; to Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984; to the prominent Pentecostal television evangelist Pat Robertson in 1988; and to George W. Bush in 2000. After his failed bid for the Republican nomination, Robertson founded the Christian Coalition, which eventually settled into the right wing of the Republican Party.

Pentecostals and charismatics in other nations tend to support or at least accommodate any government—Left, Right, or Center—on the basis of the belief that "the powers that be are ordained of God" and should therefore not be resisted. Their only concern is that they be free to practice and proselytize their religion. However, they do tend to be more favorably disposed toward conservative, authoritarian governments. In Latin America, Pentecostalism has been favored by parties and governments who see their growth as a force to weaken the political power of the Roman Catholic Church.

Polity and Interchurch Relations

The early Pentecostals opposed all "man-made" organizations; they called only for spiritual unity based on Spirit Baptism. Soon, however, they created a multitude of tight denominational structures of widely differing polities. But whether episcopal, presbyterian, congregational, or mixed in form, in practice all Pentecostals have tended toward the authoritarianism of the national leader(s) in denominational matters and that of the pastor in congregational matters.

American Pentecostal denominations were at first strongly separatist in their relations with one another, as well as with non-Pentecostal churches. A break in the isolationism of American Pentecostals came in 1943, when several Pentecostal denominations joined the National Association of Evangelicals. In 1948, the largest white Pentecostal denominations organized the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, a racially segregated organization of Finished Work and Second Work Pentecostals. In 1994 this was disbanded and reorganized as the racially integrated Pentecostal and charismatic Churches of North America.

European Pentecostals engaged in various regional and national cooperative efforts from an early point; they held the first All-Europe Pentecostal Conference in 1939 and the first Pentecostal World Conference in 1947, which soon included many Pentecostal churches from around the world. While fellowship with other Pentecostals and evangelicals has become common, attempts at theological agreement and organizational unity have been resisted.

Since 1961 several Pentecostal churches have joined the World Council of Churches, though none from the United States. However, some American Pentecostal clergy have attended meetings of this organization, often against the official positions of their churches. charismatics, in contrast to Pentecostals, are ardently ecumenical, being active in nearly all interchurch organizations at all levels. Adherents in Africa, Latin America, and Asia stand somewhere in between—separatism and independency are quite strong, but several denominations have joined ecumenical organizations, including the World Council of Churches. In 1972 the first General Conference on charismatic Renewal was held in Kansas City; subsequent ones have been held periodically. The North American Congress of the Holy Spirit and Evangelization has met annually since 1986.

Global Dimensions

Because of the great number of Pentecostal organizations, the variety of names, and the amorphous character of many groups, it is impossible to accurately estimate the totals of Pentecostal/charismatic/"Third Wave" adherents. However, the World Christian Encyclopedia (2001), edited by David B. Barrett, estimates the global total of Pentecostals of all types at 535 million, including 65 million Pentecostals, 175 million charismatics, and 295 million Third Wavers (whom Barrett calls "Neo-charismatics"). Total adherents to these three groups (in the millions) are estimated at 79.6 in North America, 37.5 in Europe, 141.4 in Latin America, 126 in Africa, 134.8 in Asia, and 4.2 in Oceania.

See Also

Charisma; Shavuʿot.

Bibliography

The seminal work on the origins of the Pentecostal movement is Robert M. Anderson's Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Oxford, 1979; Hendrickson, rev. ed., 1992). Anderson provides a thorough narrative, analytical, and interpretative treatment of the American movement from its origins to the 1930s. Many of the major historical, sociological, psychological, and theological issues involved in the study of Pentecostal Christianity as a whole are addressed in this work.

A useful overview of developments since the movement's origins is Vinson Synan's (editor and contributor) The Century of the Holy Spirit:100 Years of Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal, 1901–2001 (Nashville, Tenn., 2001). The various works of Walter Hollenweger, who pioneered in the scholarly research of Pentecostalism, are well worth consulting, including Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition (Sheffield, U.K., 1999), edited in collaboration with Alan Anderson. Much useful information and many extensive bibliographies may be found in New International Dictionary of Pentecostal Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2002), edited by Stanley M. Burgess and written primarily by Pentecostals. The bibliographies compiled by Charles Edwin Jones, including A Guide to the Study of the Pentecostal Movement, 2 volumes (Metuchen, N.J., 1983), and The Charismatic Movement, 2 volumes (Metuchen, N.J., 1995), are indispensable for the researcher. Also indispensable is Sherry Sherrod DuPree's African American Holiness Pentecostal Movement: An Annotated Bibliography (New York, 1996), which also includes a wealth of information on many churches and prominent leaders.

Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (semi-annual, 1979–) and the Newsletter of the Society for Pentecostal Studies are essential for keeping up with the flood of literature about Pentecostalism.

For an eyewitness account by a leader in the Los Angeles, California, revival, see Frank Bartleman's Azusa Street (Plainfield, N.J., 1980). This edition has an excellent foreword by the Pentecostal historian Vinson Synan. The complete editions of the Azusa Street mission's publication, The Apostolic Faith, have been edited by Wayne Warner as the Azusa Street Papers (Foley, Ala., 1997). Larry Martin is reprinting many of the earliest accounts of the movement in an ongoing series, titled the Complete Azusa Street Library (Joplin, Mo., 1994–), which covers more than the title suggests. James R. Goff's Fields White unto Harvest (Fayetteville, Ark., 1988), a biography of Charles F. Parham, is an important study of the first prominent leader of the movement. The African and African American influences are explored in Iain MacRobert's The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the U. S. A. (New York, 1988). The origins of what is the largest African American Pentecostal church in America is explored by Ithiel C. Clemmons in Bishop C. H. Mason and the Roots of the Church of God in Christ (Bakersfield, Calif., 1996). Also important is the sociological study of Arthur E. Paris, Black Pentecostalism: Southern Religion in an Urban World (Amherst, Mass., 1982), which shows how Pentecostalism serves the needs of rural-to-urban migrants, and the perceptive study by an insider, Cheryl J. Sanders' Saints in Exile: The Holiness Pentecostal Experience in African American Religion and Culture (New York, 1996). For more information about membership statistics for the Pentecostal/charismatic churches, see the World Christian Encyclopedia, edited by David B. Barrett, (New York, 2d ed., 2001).

The development of the largest Finished Work church is perceptively related in Edith L. Blumhofer's Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture (Urbana, Ill., 1993). In Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), Grant Wacker describes what it was like to be a Pentecostal in the early years; it is a valuable work despite its insupportable contention that first generation Pentecostals were a "cross section of the American population."

Mickey Crews's The Church of God: A Social History (Knoxville, Tenn., 1993), Vinson Synan's The Holiness Pentecostal Tradition (Grand Rapids, Mich., 2d. ed., 1997), and Dennis Covington's Salvation on Sand Mountain: Snake Handling and Redemption in Southern Appalachia (Reading, Mass., 1995) are important histories of the Second Work wing. For the "Jesus Only" wing, see Talmadge L. French's Our God Is One: The Story of the Oneness Pentecostals (Hazelwood, Mo., 2000).

The origins of the Pentecostal movement in Europe may be found in Nils Bloch-Hoell's The Pentecostal Movement (Oslo, 1964), which is best on Scandinavia. Donald Gee's Wind and Flame (London, 1967), on the United Kingdom, should be supplemented by Peter D. Hocken's Streams of Renewal (Washington, D.C., and Exeter, U.K., 1997); both treatments are theological as well as historical. The life and writings of the founder of the movement are found in The Work of T. B. Barratt (New York, 1985), edited by Donald W. Dayton.

For the New Order of the Latter Rain movement of the 1940s, see Richard M. Riss's Latter Rain (Mississauga, Ontario, 1987). The story of the Deliverance and charismatic revivals is told with scholarship and verve in David Edwin Harrell, Jr.'s All Things Are Possible (Bloomington, Ind., 1975), and his Oral Roberts: An American Life (Bloomington, Ind., 1985). Also important is C. Douglas Weaver's The Healer-Prophet: William Marion Branham (Macon, Ga., 2d ed., 2000).

Indispensable on the charismatic revival are Richard Quebedeaux's The New Charismatics II (San Francisco, Calif., 1983) and the collection of essays edited by Russell P. Spittler, Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1976). Historical and theological assessments of the Catholic charismatic movement include Edward D. O'Connor's The Pentecostal Movement in the Catholic Church (Notre Dame, Ind., 1971) for the American scene, and René Laurentin's Catholic Pentecostalism, (Garden City, N.Y., 1977) for the European. The resurgence of the more extreme forms of Pentecostalism is explored in "Toronto" in Perspective (Waynesboro, Ga., 2001), edited by David Hilborn. The affinity of many Pentecostal/charismatics for right-wing politics is examined in David Edwin Harrell, Jr.'s Pat Robertson (San Francisco, Calif., 1987).

Among the many important studies of world Pentecostalism are David Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Oxford, and Malden, Mass., 2002), Simon Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity: Spreading the Gospel of Prosperity (Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2000), Stephen Hunt et al., eds., Charismatic Christianity: Sociological Perspectives (New York, 1997), Andre Corten and Ruth Marshall-Fratani, eds., Between Babel and Pentecost: Transnational Pentecostalism in Africa and Latin America (Bloomington, Ind., 2001), and, from the Pentecostal perspective, Murray Dempster et al., eds. The Globalization of Pentecostalism (Irvine, Calif., 1999).

Latin American Pentecostalism has attracted more scholars than any other region, and they have produced an impressive body of work, beginning with Emile Willems, Followers of the New Faith (Nashville, Tenn., 1967), and Christian Lalive d'Epinay, Haven of the Masses (London, 1969) who first laid bare the social roots of Latin American Pentecostalism, and by extension, those of Pentecostalisms throughout the Third World. Among other studies are Edward L. Cleary and Hannah Stewart-Gambino, eds., Power, Politics, and Pentecostals in Latin America (Boulder, Colo., 1998), R. Andrew Chesnut, Born Again in Brazil (New Brunswick, N.J., 1997), Frans Kamsteeg, Prophetic Pentecostalism in Chile (Lanham, Md., 1998), Karl-Wilhelm Westmeier, Protestant Pentecostalism in Latin America (Madison, N.J., and London, 1999), and Barbara Boudewijnse et al., eds., More than Opium: An Anthropological Approach to Latin American and Caribbean Pentecostal Praxis (Lanham, Md., 1998).

The mainstream Pentecostal position on Spirit Baptism and the charismata is presented by the first-generation Pentecostal Ralph M. Riggs in his work The Spirit Himself (Springfield, Mo., 1949). More moderate charismatic positions are laid out by the Presbyterian J. Rodman Williams in The Gift of the Holy Spirit Today (Plainfield, N.J., 1980), and the Roman Catholic theologian Donald L. Gelpi in Pentecostalism (New York, 1971).

The clinical psychologist John P. Kildahl, in his The Psychology of Speaking in Tongues (New York, 1972), presents a generally favorable assessment of the mental health of glossolalists. In Speaking in Tongues (Chicago, Ill., 1972), the anthropologist Felicitas D. Goodman concludes on the basis of her cross-cultural study that the practice involves an altered mental state. The sociolinguist William J. Samarin's Tongues of Men and Angels (New York, 1972) demonstrates the nonlinguistic character of the phenomenon and views it as learned behavior.

Robert Mapes Anderson (1987 and 2005)