Pentecostalism
|
|
The Pentecostal movement within Protestant Christianity places special emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostalism is similar to the Charismatic movement, but developed earlier and separated from the mainstream church. Charismatic Christians, at least in the early days of the movement, tended to remain in their respective denominations.
| Contents |
Theology
Theologically, most Pentecostal denominations are aligned with Evangelicalism in that they emphasize the reliability of the Bible and the need for conversion to faith in Jesus. While there is cross pollination with other movements, Pentecostals differ from Fundamentalists by placing more emphasis on personal spiritual experience and, in most cases, by allowing women in ministry.
Pentecostals embrace a transrational worldview. Although Pentecostals are concerned with orthodoxy ("correct belief"), they are also concerned with orthopathy ("right affections") and orthopraxy ("right reflection or action"). Reason is esteemed as a valid conduit of truth, but Pentecostals do not limit truth to the realm of reason.
Dr. Jackie David Johns, in his work on Pentecostal formational leadership, states that the Scriptures hold a special place in the Pentecostal worldview in that the Bible is held as a book in which the Holy Spirit is always active; to encounter the Scriptures is to encounter God. For the Pentecostal, the Scriptures are a primary reference point for communion with God and a template for reading the world.
One of the most prominent distinguishing characteristics of Pentecostalism that separates it from Evangelicalism is its emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit. Speaking in tongues, also known as glossolalia, is the normative proof of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Most major Pentecostal churches also accept the corollary that those who don't speak in tongues have not received the blessing that they call "The Baptism of the Holy Spirit" (this claim is uniquely Pentecostal and is one of the few consistent differences from Charismatic theology).
Some ministers and members admit that a believer might be able to speak in tongues, but for various personal reasons (such as a lack of understanding) might not. This would be the only case where a believer would be filled with the Holy Spirit, but not exhibit the so-called "initial physical evidence" of speaking in tongues. This, however, would be a minority perspective.
Critics charge that this doctrine does not mesh well with what they believe to be Paul's criticism of the early Corinthian church for their obsession with speaking in tongues (see 1 Corinthians, chapters 12-14 in the New Testament). Advocates say that the Pentecostal position aligns closely with Luke's emphasis in the book of Acts and reflects a more sophisticated use of hermeneutics.
The idea that one is not saved unless one speaks in tongues is rejected by most major Pentecostal denominations.
Some Pentecostal churches hold to "Oneness theology", which decries the traditional doctrine of the Trinity as unbiblical. The largest Pentecostal Oneness denomination in the United States is the United Pentecostal Church. Oneness Pentecostals, are sometimes known as Jesus-Name, "Apostolics", or by their detractors as "Jesus only" Pentecostals. This is for their belief that the original Apostles baptized converts in the name of Jesus. They also believe that God has revealed Himself in different roles rather than three distinct persons. The major trinitarian Pentecostal organizations, however, including the Pentecostal World Conference and the Fellowship of Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches of North America, have condemned Oneness Theology as a heresy and refuse membership to churches holding this belief. This same holds true for the Oneness Pentecostal towards trinitarian churches.
History
Modern Pentecostalism began around 1901. Although the 1896 Shearer Schoolhouse Revival in Cherokee County, North Carolina might be regarded as a precursor to the modern Pentecostal movement, the commonly accepted origin dates from when Agnes Ozman received the gift of tongues (glossolalia) at Charles Fox Parham's Bethel Bible College in Topeka, Kansas in 1901. Parham, a minister of Methodist background, formulated the doctrine that tongues was the "Bible evidence" of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Parham left Topeka and began a revival ministry which led to a link to the Azusa Street Revival through William J. Seymour whom he taught in his school in Houston, although because Seymour was African American, he was only allowed to sit outside the room to listen.
The expansion of the movement started with the Azusa Street Revival, beginning April 9, 1906 at the Los Angeles home of Edward Lee, who experienced what he felt to be an infilling of the Holy Spirit during a prayer session. The attending pastor, William J. Seymour, also claimed that he was overcome with the Holy Spirit on April 12, 1906. On April 18, 1906, the Los Angeles Times ran a front page story on the movement. By the third week in April, 1906, the small but growing congregation had rented an abandoned African Methodist Episcopal Church at 312 Azusa Street and organized as the Apostolic Faith Mission.
The first decade of Pentecostalism was marked by interracial assemblies, "...Whites and blacks mix in a religious frenzy,..." according to a local newspaper account. This lasted until 1924, when the church split along racial lines (see Apostolic Faith Mission). When the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America was formed in 1948, it was made up entirely of Anglo-American Pentecostal denominations. In 1994, Pentecostals returned to their roots of racial reconciliation and proposed formal unification of the major white and black branches of the Pentecostal Church, in a meeting subsequently known as the Memphis Miracle. This unification occurred in 1998, again in Memphis, Tennessee. The unification of white and black movements led to the restructing of the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America to become the Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches of North America.
During the beginning of the twentieth century, Albert Benjamin Simpson became closely involved with the growing Pentecostal movement. It was common for Pentecostal pastors and missionaries to receive their training at the Missionary Training Institute that Simpson founded. Because of this, Simpson and the C&MA (an evangelistic movement that Simpson founded) had a great influence on Pentecostalism, in particular the Assemblies of God and the FourSquare Church. This influence included evangelistic emphasis, C&MA doctrine, Simpson's hymns and books, and the use of the term 'Gospel Tabernacle,' which evolved into Pentecostal churches being known as 'Full Gospel Tabernacles.'
From the late 1950s onwards, the Charismatic Movement, which was to a large extent inspired and influenced by Pentecostalism, began to flourish in the mainline Protestant denominations, as well as the Roman Catholic church. Unlike "Classical Pentecostals," who formed strictly Pentecostal congregations or denominations, Charismatics adopted as their motto, "Bloom where God planted you."
In the United Kingdom, the first Pentecostal church to be formed was the Apostolic Church. This was later followed by the Elim Church.
In Sweden, the first Pentecostal church was Filadelfiafrsamlingen in Stockholm. Pastored by Lewi Pethrus, this congregation, originally Baptist, was expelled from the Baptist Union of Sweden in 1913 for doctrinal differences. Today this congregation has about 7000 members and is the biggest Pentecostal congregation in northern Europe. As of 2005, the Swedish pentecostal movement has approximately 90,000 members in nearly 500 congregations. These congregations are all independent but cooperate on a large scale. Swedish Pentecostals have been very missionary-minded and have established churches in many countries. In Brazil, for example, churches founded by the Swedish Pentecostal mission claim several million members.
The history of pentecostalism in Australia has been documented by Dr Barry Chant in Heart of Fire (1984, Adelaide: Tabor, 382 pages).
Size
The largest Pentecostal denominations in the United States today are the United Pentecostal Church, the Church of God in Christ, Church of God (Cleveland) and the Assemblies of God. According to a Spring 1998 article in Christian History, there are about 11,000 different pentecostal or charismatic denominations worldwide.
The size of Pentecostalism in the U.S. is estimated to be more than 20 million and also including approx 918,000 (4%) of the Hispanic-American population, counting all unaffiliated congregations, although exact numbers are hard to come by, in part because some tenets of Pentecostalism are held by members of non-Pentecostal denominations in what has been called the charismatic movement.
Pentecostalism was conservatively estimated to number around 115 million followers worldwide in 2000; other estimates place the figure closer to 400 million. The great majority of Pentecostals are to be found in Third World countries (see the Statistics subsection below), although much of their international leadership is still North American. Pentecostalism is sometimes referred to as the "third force of Christianity." The largest Christian church in the world is the Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea, a Pentecostal church. Founded and led by David Yonggi Cho since 1958, it had 780,000 members in 2003. The True Jesus Church, an indigenous church founded by Chinese believers on the mainland but whose headquarters is now in Taiwan. The Apostolic Church is the fastest growing church in the world.
Statistics
- Africa: 41.1 million
- Nigeria: 12.1 million
- Kenya: 4.1 million
- South Africa: 3.4 million
- Ethiopia: 2.6 million
- South America: 32.4 million
- North America: 21.5 million
- United States: 20.2 million
- Mexico: 2.7 million
- Canada: 1.3 million
- Asia: 15.3 million
- China: unknown; believed to be several million
- Indonesia: 5.0 million
- India: 3.9 million
- South Korea: 1.7 million
- Europe: 4.3 million
- Sweden: 0.1 million
- United Kingdom: 0.9 million
- Oceania: 3.3 million
- Papua New Guinea: 0.4 million
- Australia: 0.4 million
Source: Operation World by Patrick Johnstone and Jason Mandryk, 2000, unless otherwise indicated.
Leaders
Precursors
Early history
- Smith Wigglesworth
- David du Plessis
- Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929) Father of Modern Pentecostalism
- William J. Seymour (1870-1922) Azusa Street Mission Founder
- Aimee Semple McPherson(1890-1944) American Female Evangelist and organizer of the Four Square Gospel Church
- Kathryn Kuhlman (1907-1976) American female evangelist who brought Pentecostalism into the mainstream denominations
- William M. Branham (1909-1965) Healing Evangelists of the mid 20th century.
- Jack Coe (1918-1956) Healing Tent Evangelist of the 1950s.
- A. A. Allen (1911-1970) Healing Tent Evangelist of the 1950s and 1960s.
- Oral Roberts (b.1918) Healing Tent Evangelist who made the transition to televangelism
- Rex Humbard (b.1919) The first successful TV evangelist of the mid 1950s, 1960s, and the 1970s and at one time had the largest television audience of any televangelist in the U.S.
Theologians
- Donald Gee (1891-1966)
- Derek Prince (1915-2003) - probably the world's best-known Pentecostal theologian.
- Rufus Hollis Gause (born 1925)
- Gordon Fee - New Testament Scholar
Additional Pentecostal theologians are listed in the article entitled, "Renewal Theologians".
Radio preachers and televangelists
- Jim Bakker
- Dan Betzer
- Morris Cerullo
- Kenneth Copeland
- Kenneth Hagin Sr.
- Kathryn Kuhlman
- Oral Roberts
- Pat Robertson
- Jimmy Swaggart
- C. M. Ward
Authors
- David Wilkerson (1931-) - author of The Cross and the Switchblade and numerous other books. Currently Associate Pastor of Times Square Church, New York
Pastors and evangelists
- David Yonggi Cho (1936-) - Senior Pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, Korea.
- Jack Hayford - Founding Pastor of Church on the Way in Van Nuys, California.
- Luis Cabral (1965-) - Portuguese evangelist, now based in New Zealand.
- Reinhard Bonnke (1941-) - German evangelist known for his huge crusades, mostly in Africa but also elsewhere. In 2002, he conducted the largest known evangelistic crusade in history, in Lagos, Nigeria, attended by six million people.
- Wayne Hughes - Senior Pastor of the Takapuna Assembly of God, New Zealand.
- Brian Houston - Senior Pastor of Hillsong Church in Sydney, Australia.
- Ouriel de Jesus - Senior Pastor of World Revival Church (http://www.godsrevival.com), the center of the revival in Boston, MA, and the president of the 70 some odd congregations planted by his ministry around the world
- Larry Schoonover - Senior Pastor of New Life Pentecostal Church (http://newlife-apostolic.com) in Puyallup, Washington. Larry Schoonover is also Senior editor of the Apostolic Herald (http://apostolicherald.com).
- Sophia Tan Luang Keng - Founding and Senior Pastor of Living Spring Fellowship, based in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.
- Vincent Leoh [1957- ]- General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God of Malaysia; Senior Pastor of Glad Tidings Assembly of God, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.
- Rev Mohan - Pastor New Life Assemblies Of God Church, chennai, India.
- Luis & Aileen Torres - Pastors of Centro De Adoracion Nuevos Comienzos, Passaic, New Jersey, US.
Politicians
- John Ashcroft - former Attorney-General of the United States
- Frederick Chiluba - former President of Zambia
- Stockwell Day - prominent Canadian politician
- Andrew Evans - Founder and most influential member of the Family First Party and Member of the South Australian Legislative Council.
- Steve Fielding - Family First Party Leader and Senator from Victoria
- Andrea Mason - leader of the Family First Party of Australia in the Federal Election of 2004.
- Al Sharpton - American politician, civil rights activist, and Pentecostal minister
See also
- Apostolic Church
- Charismatic
- Christian views of women
- Christianity
- Criticisms of Pentecostal and Charismatic belief
- Full Gospel
- List of Pentecostal Denominations
- Montanism
- Religious pluralism
- Apostolic Faith Mission
Studies
- Walter Hollenweger The Pentecostals (1972)
- Walter Hollenweger Pentecosalism (1997)
External links
Academic - Centres and Journals
- Encounter: Journal for Pentecostal Ministry (http://www.encounterjournal.com) is a published by the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary (AGTS)
- Hollenweger Center (http://www.hollenwegercenter.net/) for the interdisciplinary study of Pentecostal and Charismatic movements at the Free University of Amsterdam
- PentecoStudies (http://www.hollenwegercenter.net/page3.html): Online Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements fromthe Hollenweger Centre
- Pentecostal-Charismatic Theological Inquiry International (http://www.pctii.org/)
- Cyberjournal for Pentecostal Charismatic Research (http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/index.html)
- Encounter of Western Pentecostalism with Native Pentecostalism in Kerala (http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj10/paulson.html)
- Cyberjournal for Pentecostal Charismatic Research (http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/index.html)
- Holy Spirit Research Center (http://www.oru.edu/university/library/holyspirit/) at Oral Roberts University Library
- Religious Movements at the University of Virginia
- Pentecostalism (http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/penta.html)
- Lecture on "Pentecostalism" (http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/lectures/Pentecost.html)
- Pentecostalism (http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/penta.html)
- Map showing Percentage of Pentecostal Population in USA by county (http://www.valpo.edu/geomet/pics/geo200/religion/pentecostal.gif) from Valparaiso University
Pentecostal Affiliated
- Apostolic Herald (http://apostolicherald.com) Online newsletter sharing Pentecostal and Apostolic concepts written primarily by pentecostal authors.
- Life Media Productions (http://lifemediaonline.com) - produces and distributes high definition DVD's of Bible based ministry of kingdom concepts for today's committed Christian. Pentecostal Preachers and Speakers from around the world.
- View From the Lighthouse (http://www.truth-not-tradition.com/the_view/index.html) Quarterly newsletter promoting Apostolic/Pentecostal End Time Beliefs from the Post-Tribulation viewpoint and Oneness Theology
- United Latin American Pentecostal Church (Iglesia Pentecostal Unida Latinoamericana) (http://www.ipul.us/quienes.htm)
- Pentecostal Conference of the North American Keralites (http://www.pcnak.org)
- Inter Collegiate Prayer Fellowship (http://www.icpf.org)
- "The Oneness of God" (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pentecostal/One-Top.htm) by David K. Bernard (Series in Pentecostal Theology, Volume 1) from United Pentecostal Churchda:Pinsebevgelsen
de:Pfingstbewegung es:Pentecostalismo fi:Helluntaihertys fr:Pentectisme ja:ペンテコステ運動 nl:Pinkstergemeente no:Pinsemenigheter pl:Pentakostalizm pt:Pentecostalismo ru:Пятидесятники sv:Pingstrrelsen