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INTRODUCTION The Unexpected Modern—Gender, Piety, and Politics in the Global Pentecostal Surge ROBERT W. HEFNER It is by now a commonplace in sociology, anthropology, and comparative religious studies to observe that Pentecostalism is the fastest growing religious movement in the contemporary world. Over the past several years, demographers of religion have refined their estimates and concluded that the worldwide communion of Pentecostals and charismatic Christians may include as many as 500 or even 600 million people.1 Even if only approximate , this figure bespeaks an extraordinary change in global Christianity. It means that more than one-fourth of the world’s Christians are Pentecostal or charismatic;2 among Christian denominations, Pentecostalism is second only to Roman Catholicism in its demographic girth; and Pentecostalism is the majority variant of Protestant Christianity professed in the global south. Confounding those who saw it as an antimodern throwback destined for the dustbin of history, Pentecostal Christianity has turned out to be one of the great religious globalizations of our age. Just why this is so, the changes Pentecostalism has undergone in the course of its worldwide expansion,and what further refiguring this faith tradition may experience as it steadies itself in the twenty-first century are the questions at the heart of this book. The speed of Pentecostalism’s spread appears all the more remarkable when one recalls in how short a period of time this Christian movement has achieved its global scale. Although the scholarly consensus today sees Pentecostalism and its charismatic cousins as having had multiple births rather than just one (at LosAngeles’sAzusa Street revival in 1906,see below), the North American variety of Pentecostalism goes back no further than the first decade of the twentieth century.No less striking,the spike in Pentecostal numbers across the global south is even more recent: since the 1970s in Latin America, the 1980s in Africa, and the 1990s in China and Southeast Asia. Of course demography can be an unsubtle measure of religious change, and its gauge is especially imprecise when the phenomenon in question is as theologically and sociologically multifarious as Pentecostalism. Should our estimates of Pentecostal growth include the illiterate women healers in 2 Robert W. Hefner rural China today who draw on indigenous traditions of spirit mediumship as well as early twentieth-century Chinese Pentecostalism?3 Should our 500 to 600 million include the African-Independent Churches (AICs) that, several generations back, declared their organizational independence from European overseers?4 Or, to cite one last example, does Pentecostalism include the tens of millions of charismatic Catholics and Protestants, as well as a smaller number of Christian Orthodox, who otherwise identify with a mainline congregation (and are thus not “Pentecostal” in a denominational sense) but observe a faith marked by gifts of the Holy Spirit,including prophecy , spiritual healing, and speaking in tongues?5 There is as yet no scholarly consensus on just where to draw Pentecost­ alism’s borders,and there probably does not need to be,in any too-tidy sense. As observers as varied asAllanAnderson and Harvey Cox in Church studies, David and Bernice Martin in sociology, and Birgit Meyer and Joel Robbins in anthropology have all emphasized, it is more realistic to speak not of one but many Pentecostalisms. Because they are concerned primarily with the sociology and ideals of Pentecostalism’s contemporary globalization rather than demarcating theological borders, the contributors to this volume identify Pentecostalism in inclusive terms, ones closer to and revelatory of, we hope,the varied understandings and practices of local religious practitioners. With this working ambition in mind,our characterization of Pentecost­ alism begins broadly, with three of the faith movement’s most conspicuous experiential characteristics. These are, first, an emphasis on the achievement of a personalized and self-transforming relationship with Jesus Christ (being“born-again,”an experience that Pentecostals share with many among their Evangelical cousins); second, ritual performance that highlights the ever-present power of the Holy Spirit (“baptism in the Holy Spirit,”a practice given far greater emphasis in Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity than in most other modern varieties of Christianity); and, third, religious enthusiasm centered on the experience of charismata (“gifts of the Holy Spirit”), including prophecy, exorcism, miraculous healing, and speaking in tongues (glossolalia). Put simply, Pentecostalism is an affectively expressive, effervescent Christianity that takes literally the wondrous miracles described in the New Testament’s Acts of the Apostles (2:1–4), and proclaims their availability and importance for believers today. Just what role these experiential...

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