A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America. Edited by Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker. Pentecostals, Peacemaking, and Social Justice Series 2. Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2010. xiv + 275 pp. $25.60 paper.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Over the past decade, scholarship on pentecostal and charismatic movements expanded rapidly as historians, anthropologists, and sociologists have charted the worldwide proliferation of traditions and analyzed the implications of this exponential growth for political, economic, and cultural in both local and global contexts. Path-breaking works in this genre such as Harvey Cox's Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995), Philip Jenkins's The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), and Allan Anderson's An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004) drew attention to the dramatic spread of Spirit-filled faith in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, and called upon scholars of Western religion to reevaluate their assumptions about the origins and orientations of pentecostalism in and beyond Europe and the United States. The essays in A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America contribute to a growing body of literature that responds to this appeal. Building on recent studies that explore the relationship between Spirit-filled faith and social action worldwide--especially Donald E. Miller and Tetsuano Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007)--contributors to A Liberating Spirit ask whether pentecostals in North America are developing a theology of liberation or a progressive approach to issues of race, class, gender, and ecology.In their introduction to the volume, Wilkinson and Studebaker assert that traditional North American often understood the freedom of the Spirit in personal terms and therefore has not had a strong propensity toward social (7). Hoping to amend this individualistic orientation and to challenge scholarly interpretations that stress the movement's inherent otherworldliness, detachment, and/or political conservatism, the authors aim to identify historical and theological resources from within the pentecostal tradition that can enable contemporary North American practitioners to develop a vision of redemption that encompasses both the personal and social dimensions of human life (7). A Liberating Spirit , the editors explain, takes on two inter-related tasks: first, to assess whether a Progressive Pentecostalism currently exists in North America and, second, to promote a Spirit-filled Christianity that liberates human persons both from perpetrating and suffering social evil (12).The ten essays that follow seek to fulfill these ambitions through a variety of methodological frameworks. Some employ sociological, anthropological, or historical analysis in an effort to critically evaluate the participation of diverse North American pentecostal groups in efforts to resist, overcome, and/or endure racial injustice, economic marginalization, gender oppression, and environmental crisis. Several of the contributions--especially Pamela Holmes's attempt to construct a Pentecostal Feminist Hermeneutic of Liberation and the three essays on ecology--are more explicitly theological in their approach. Given this methodological multiplicity, the collection as a whole is somewhat unwieldy. An epilogue highlighting key themes, underscoring how these disparate but sometimes overlapping essays (the two contributions on class are remarkably similar) build on one another or contribute to a common conversation and drawing conclusions based on the analysis presented would have added to the volume's value. Rather than requiring readers to synthesize this rather uneven body of data, the editors might have emphasized how A Liberating Spirit engages broader issues in the study of religion and reflected on the extent to which the book answers the myriad questions they pose at the outset: Is there evidence of a 'theology of liberation' that explains engagement in North America? …