Pentecostalism

It is about the experience of God, not about abstract religious ideas, and it depicts a God who does not remain aloof but reaches down through the power of the Spirit to touch human hearts in the midst of life's turmoil. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that in our present time of social and cultural disarray, and with another century - indeed a new millennium - about to begin, Pentecostalism is burgeoning nearly everywhere in the world.

Pentecostalism, while it looks to many like a narrow cult, is actually a kind of ecumenical movement, an original - and highly successful - synthesis of elements from a number of other sources, and not all of them Christian. Today some of their most visible representatives have become ostentatiously rich, and some even preach a gospel of wealth.

According to most accounts of the origins of Pentecostalism, an outbreak of glossolalia in a Bible college in Topeka , Kansas , was followed by the ' Azusa Street ' revival in Los Angeles in 1906, initiated by the black evangelist William J. Seymour. On 18 April of that year, a Los Angeles Times reporter described the Azusa Street Revival incredulously as a 'Weird Babel of Tongues', indicating the scepticism and hostility with which it was received in wider, polite society. Much in the faith appeared to have black, slave roots, including its orality, musicality, narrativity in theology and witness, emphasis on maximum participation, inclusion of dreams and visions in worship, understanding of correspondence between body and mind and antiphonal character of worship services. Extensive criticism, frequently from fellow Christians, of their supposedly indecorous fanaticism encouraged some believers to form separate churches where they could worship as they wished.

Thus some conservatives have accommodated to the anti-institutional, therapeutic, cultural preferences of baby boomers. In Britain, meanwhile, Walker states: 'The sociological distinctions we might have made, even ten years ago, between classical and neo- Pentecostal are now diffcult to sustain in the light of new Charismatic alignments and the syncretistic tendencies of late Pentecostalism. ' Older Pentecostals may dislike the worldliness of newer charismatics, but they are increasingly likely to see such tendencies within their own congregations.

For Percy, the contemporary period is one of dislocation from earlier eras. He describes early forms of Pentecostalism as expressing a relatively homogenous response to secular modernism. Contemporary revivalist forms, however, appear to compete with and borrow from a post-modern world of healing movements, the New Age, materialism and pluralism. Percy may be exaggerating the unity of classical Pentecostalism. The point remains, however, that older boundaries between charismatic life styles and those of the wider world do appear to be shifting and becoming increasingly permeable.