Pentecostal History Research Articles

Writing the Pentecostal history of Africa, Asia and Latin America

This article examines the writing of Pentecostal history and in particular, the biases and presuppositions associated with it. The problem of sources and the neglect of the important role of indigenous (‘native’) workers in the historiography of Pentecostalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America is the main focus. It refutes the idea of an American ‘Jerusalem’ and urges a rewriting of this history from the perspective of those who ‘received’ the Pentecostal missionaries from the West.

PENTECOSTALS, HEALING AND ECUMENISM

AbstractThe significant Pentecostal participation in the recent (2002‐3) conferences on faith and healing in Ghana and Chile is placed within the historical context of Pentecostal ecumenical involvement throughout the history of Pentecostalism. Pentecostals have dialogued and cooperated with‐the ecumenical movement, with whom there has sometimes been an uneasy (and even hostile) relationship. However, Pentecostalism has not lived up to the high ecumenical ideals of its founders. Real ecumenism is defined by the unity of all Christians, and Pentecostalism's tendency to exclusivism and divisiveness on the one hand, and the World Council of Churches' (WCC) reluctance to involve them on the other have impoverished the global church. These problems have been exacerbated by Pentecostal identification with “conservative” evangelicalism and by the ostracism of those Pentecostal) who have participated in the ecumenical movement. Yet, the Charismatic movement since the 1960s, and an increasing number of joint dialogical conferences have weakened the polarisation.The subject of healing, particularly that of “divine healing” of physical illness, has always been central to Pentecostal beliefs and practices, but it is one where there are at least as many questions as answers. This was reflected in the consultations. The differences were surprisingly few, and both Pentecostal and older church representatives expressed serious concerns regarding the practices of dome Charismatic “healers”. The WCC, which historically has tended to concentrate on medical missions, has long recognized the importance of Pentecostalism to the subject of healing. This was especially true in the South, where healing is far more important to the Christian community than it is in the North. In the Accra consultation, this was illustrated by the exposure visits undertaken by participants to healing and “deliverance” centres, and the case studies presented of healing practitioners.

The Holy Spirit as Transforming Power Within a Society: Pneumatological Spirituality and Its Political/Social Relevance for Western Europe

AbstractBoth British and American Black Pentecostals as well as Latin American ones have begun to to develop a social ethic based on a pneumatological perspective. Their liberating and empowering experience of the Spirit has provided them with new categories and options to institute social change. By contrast, Western European Pentecostals have been predominantly silent in this regard. This article argues that a pneumatological spirituality has socio-political relevance also for Western European Pentecostals. Both the experience of the Spirit, as reflected in Luke—Acts and 1 Cor. 12-14, as well as the history of Pentecostalism, underline this thesis. However, in order to recover this social/political dimension of their Spirit-experience, Western European Pentecostals need to recover the community and social dimension of the kingdom of God over against a Western individualistic, internalized and spiritualized definition thereof.

Visions of Glory: The Place of the Azusa Street Revival in Pentecostal History

As news of the great Welsh Revival of 1904 reached Southern California, Frank Bartleman, an itinerant evangelist and pastor living in Los Angeles, became convinced that God was preparing to revitalize his beloved holiness movement with a powerful, even apocalyptic, spiritual awakening. Certain that events in Wales would be duplicated in California, Bartleman reported in 1905 that “the Spirit is brooding over our land.… Los Angeles, Southern California, and the whole continent shall surely find itself ere long in the throes of a mighty revival.” In 1906 he speculated that theSan Francisco earthquake “was surely the voice of God to the people on the Pacific Coast.” Bartleman indeed witnessed such a revival, for in early April 1906, this “Latter Rain” outpouring had begun to fall on a small gathering of saints led by William J. Seymour, a black holiness preacher. At a vacant AME mission at 312 Azusa Street, countless pentecostals received the baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in other tongues—a “second Pentecost” replicating the first recorded in Acts 2. Bartleman, who also experienced this, would soon become integral to the revival's growth by reporting the events at Los Angeles within a vast network of holiness and higher life periodicals. As during other religious awakenings, such reports not only generated the perception of widespread divine activity but also provided an interpretive scheme for understanding the meaning of such activity. For Bartleman, Azusa was the starting point of a worldwide awakening that would initiate Christ's return. He reported: “Los Angeles seems to be the place, and this the time, in the mind of God, for the restoration of the church to her former place.”

Three Generations on: The Methodology of Pentecostal History

I propose to discuss in this paper some of the problems which arise in the writing of Pentecostal history and, in doing so, to relate these to church history generally and to secular history. In addition I also intend to suggest methodological solutions to these problems, though I cannot pretend to have solved all the difficulties which arise and, in some cases, I have done no more than point to most intense areas of most intense intractability.

A Synopsis of Norwegian Pentecostal History

A Synopsis of Norwegian Pentecostal History

Explosion, Motivation, and Consolidation: The Historical Anatomy of the Pentecostal Missionary Movement

In 1986 America's oldest Pentecostal denomination will celebrate its centennial, and the events at Azusa Street in 1906 will be recalled in an eighty-year celebration. It is significant, then, that this article recalls some of the early dynamics of the beginnings of the modern Pentecostal movement. The article demonstrates how the Pentecostal movement was decidedly missionary from its birth and asserts that the history of Pentecostalism cannot be rightly appreciated and understood apart from its missionary vision. Some of the theological motivations which produced the missionary fervor of early Pentecostals are integrated with a synopsis of how the movement eventually was consolidated into more organized missions structures.