The Economist Discovers Pentecostalism

AT THE ROAD to the Middle Class we believe that a critical component of the great transition from country life to city life is enthusiastic religion, and most useful of all, enthusiastic Christianity.

Wherever you find people trying to make it in the city you will find a spontaneous upwelling of enthusiastic Christianity.

The reason is simple. Enthusiastic Christianity gives ordinary people the tools they need to succeed in the city. It worked in Britain in the Industrial Revolution. It worked in the United States, and now it is working its magic in Latin America and Africa.

Now, finally, the secular western elite is starting to wake up and figure out what is going on: e.g. The Economist (sub). It has suddenly discovered that there are 500 million Pentecostals out there, out of a total of 2 billion Christians worldwide.

Pentecostalism began with William J. Seymour�s mission on Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1906, about the time that the secular elites were writing religion out of the future in favor of their own secular religions.

The great secular ideologies of the 19th and early 20th centuries�from Marxism to Freudianism�have faded while Seymour's spirit-filled version of Christianity has flourished. Pentecostal denominations have prospered, and Pentecostalism has infused traditional denominations through the wildly popular charismatic movement.
...
Pentecostalism offers a �third way� between scientific rationalism and traditional religion. For many people rationalism is thin gruel. But they are reluctant to return to traditional churches. Pentecostalism offers something different�a religion that is about excitement and emotion, not hierarchy and dogma.
...
Pentecostal churches offer a ready-made community and a source of discipline in an urban society rife with temptations. The churches are full of put-upon women who have dragged their men along, hoping to wean them off drink, gambling and other women.

This is an important point. Secular modernists have made a great point about the helplessness of women down the ages. But Pentecostalism is mainly driven by the needs of women—for safety, for community, for discipline, and for ecstasy.

Who cares if its God and its theology is cross-ways with science and evolution? It is getting the job done for hundreds of millions of people who desperately need to learn how to live in the city.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Civil Society

“Civil Society”—a complex welter of intermediate institutions, including businesses, voluntary associations, educational institutions, clubs, unions, media, charities, and churches—builds, in turn, on the family, the primary instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.
Francis Fukuyama, Trust

Hugo on Genius

“Tear down theory, poetic systems� No more rules, no more models� Genius conjures up rather than learns� ” —Victor Hugo
C�sar Gra�a, Bohemian versus Bourgeois

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Postmodernism

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ’merely relative’, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy

Faith and Politics

As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal focus of her interventions in the public arena is the protection and promotion of the dignity of the person, and she is thereby consciously drawing particular attention to principles which are not negotiable... [1.] protection of life in all its stages, from the first moment of conception until natural death; [2.] recognition and promotion of the natural structure of the family... [3.] the protection of the right of parents to educate their children.
Pope Benedict XVI, Speech to European Peoples Party, 2006

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Religion, Property, and Family

But the only religions that have survived are those which support property and the family. Thus the outlook for communism, which is both anti-property and anti-family, (and also anti-religion), is not promising.
F.A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

US Life in 1842

Families helped each other putting up homes and barns. Together, they built churches, schools, and common civic buildings. They collaborated to build roads and bridges. They took pride in being free persons, independent, and self-reliant; but the texture of their lives was cooperative and fraternal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

mysql close 0