Pentecostalism and Globalization

The Impact of Globalization on Pentecostal Theology and Ministry

Studebaker

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781630877149
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Religione

In little over a century, the Pentecostal movement has emerged from small bands of revival seekers to become one of the largest Christian groups in the world. Primarily a movement within Western Christianity for much of its brief history, it is increasingly characterized as a global movement. Pentecostal theology and ministry in a Western context must engage global Pentecostalism and be willing to rethink its traditional patterns of thought and practice in light of the evolving nature of the movement.The essays in this book come mainly from the McMaster Divinity College 2008 Pentecostal Forum: The Many Faces of Pentecostalism: Pentecostalism and Globalization. The first section outlines the nature of globalization and establishes it as the context for contemporary Pentecostal theology and ministry. The other contributions explore the impact of globalization on traditional areas of Pentecostal theology, such as Spirit baptism and speaking in tongues, and twenty-first-century Pentecostal ministry.

part one

Pentecostalism and Globalization

1

The Roots of Pentecostal Globalization

Early Pentecostal Missions

Allan Anderson

The Missionary Nature of Pentecostalism

Early Pentecostalism was inherently a missionary movement that took its message out into all the world within the shortest possible time. This paper focuses on early Pentecostal missionaries during the first two decades of the twentieth century, their global spread and the extreme difficulties they encountered.1 There is a tendency in telling missionary stories to paint these pioneers in glossy, bright colors, neglecting the dark side of their ministries and the trials they often succumbed to. Early Pentecostals sometimes saw these severe trials as failures inconsistent with the truths they proclaimed. As one example, the Azusa Street revival newspaper Apostolic Faith did not publish the deaths of some of its missionaries and their children. Although some of our methods and medicines have improved since those days, we still face many of the issues encountered by these pioneers who, though dead, yet speak. The astonishing rapidity at which early Pentecostalism spread in the early twentieth century and those responsible for it warrant our attention and give insight into the present global movement now in almost every country on earth.

At least four prominent factors created impetus for the international movement of hundreds of independent Pentecostal migrants in the early twentieth century. First, this was a time of unprecedented communication links, when the extensive migration of peoples was facilitated by the new colonial steamship and railway networks that had made travelling vast distances possible. It has been estimated that European powers together controlled some 85 percent of the world’s surface by 1914. The beginning of the twentieth century was a time when international trade, migration, and capital flows were increasing so that Europe and North America could increase wealth and produce industrial goods for profit at the expense of their colonies.2 As a result of this rampant imperialism, the nineteenth century had seen a single global economy emerge. The movement of goods, people, and money linked the most remote and still pristine parts of the world with the bureaucratic nation-states of Europe and the USA. The development of railway and steamship lines accelerated at the turn of the century, with the result that previously unreachable areas were now accessible to European and American traders, colonizers, and of course, missionaries.

Second, the premillennial eschatology of these Pentecostals posited the urgent task of world evangelism at the end of time before the imminent return of Christ. The demise of postmillennialism in nineteenth-century evangelicalism with its optimistic view of a coming “golden age” of material wealth and progress was replaced by an increasingly pessimistic premillennialism that believed that the world would get progressively worse until the return of Christ. Therefore, the missionary task was to rescue individuals from imminent peril rather than seek to transform society. One missionary writing from China expressed this well, as she said at the beginning of a new year that their hearts were “thrilling with the thought ‘He is coming soon.’ Oh! may we win many souls for the Master. . . . How evident it is that we are in the last days; the general indifference, coldness, deadness, & iniquity waxing worse & worse. Yet, praise God, here & there—a gleam of light.”3 But this premillennialism was not entirely pessimistic, for there was a certain tension between the negative view of the world and the very positive view of the place of Pentecostals in it. The outpouring of the Spirit in the last days made mission and evangelizing the nations possible. The eschatological link between revival and missions was expressed by the founder of the China Inland Mission, James Hudson Taylor, who had apparently declared ten years before his death that “the next great series of events on the world’s stage of action would be a great war between Russia and Japan in which Russia would be defeated. Then would follow the greatest spiritual revival the world has ever known, and soon after would follow the coming of Jesus.”4 This was a remarkable prophecy, but the last part had not been fulfilled, at least not as soon as Taylor thought. Pentecostals believed that they were in that revival and that their mission work was a direct consequence of it. These eschatological expectations motivated them in their task and filled the earliest reports of their activities.5

Third, at least in the case of American Pentecostals, they had a firm belief in their experience of Spirit baptism by which they had been given “foreign languages” to preach the gospel to the nations of the world. This will be considered later.

Fourth, these missionaries often met up with other, more experienced missionaries once in the field, especially when they discovered that God had not given them the ability to speak any language that people could understand. Missionary networks like those of the Christian and Missionary Alliance were very significant in the spread of Pentecostal ideas throughout the world and especially in the largest missionary regions of China and India. The Bridegroom’s Messenger reported the astonishing news from India in December 1908 that sixty missionaries had received Spirit baptism and fifteen missionary societies had “witnesses to Pentecost” in twenty-eight stations throughout the country.6 All this had happened in the space of only one year.

The rapid growth of Pentecostalism is directly attributable to the efforts and vision of its pioneers—who were by no means always Westerners. Pentecostalism was probably more dependent on “national workers” than any other missions were at the time, because of its emphasis on the empowering ability of the Spirit to equip ordinary believers for missionary service without requiring prior academic qualifications. Several of the first Pentecostal missionaries from the Azusa Street mission were African Americans who went to Liberia in 1907—some of them laid down their lives there—but these too have been ignored by historians, until Robeck’s 2006 work.7 Many other early Pentecostal leaders in Africa, India, and China were similarly obliterated from historiography because their mass movements were later regarded as heterodox. Although missionaries from the West went out in independent and denominational Pentecostal missions, the overwhelming majority of missionaries have been nationa...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Globalization, Global Christianity, and Global Pentecostalism
• Part One: Pentecostalism and Globalization
• Chapter 1: The Roots of Pentecostal Globalization
• Chapter 2: The Fruits of Pentecostal Globalization
• Chapter 3: The Impact of Globalization on Pentecostals in Canada
• Part Two: Implications of Global Pentecostalism for Pentecostal Theology
• Chapter 4: Globalization and Spirit Baptism
• Chapter 5: Tongues and a Postmodern Generation of Pentecostals
• Part Three: Globalization and Pentecostal Ministry and Mission
• Chapter 6: Implications of Globalization for Pentecostal Leadership and Mission
• Chapter 7: J. Philip Hogan’s Spirit-Led Vision and the Globalization of Pentecostal Missions in the Twenty-First Century
• Chapter 8: Mission “Made to Travel” in a World without Borders
• Chapter 9: Friends in Mission
• Chapter 10: Assessment and Interaction