Encore: Pentecostalism is taking over the world of Christianity

Episode SummaryWe’ve talked a lot on Theory of Change about the political manifestations of fundamentalist Christian viewpoints in American politics, but the religious origins of these ideas are also important to understand. And right now there is no bigger force within American Christian fundamentalism than Pentecostalism, a movement of unaffiliated churches that together represent the fastest growing Christian sect in the world.But Pentecostalism is a broad movement with no centralized authorities handing down doctrines and many church organizations with history of labeling themselves as Pentecostalism now are refusing to do so. To the extent that many people know anything about Pentecostalism, it’s through ministers who are famous for scandals or for their feel-good music.Joining the program to talk in much greater depth about Pentecostalism, its origins, and its rapid growth is Elle Hardy. She’s a freelance journalist whose book Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is Taking Over the World was published recently.A transcript of the edited audio follows. It’s computer-generated so may have some errors.(This episode previously aired on June 7, 2022.)TranscriptMATTHEW SHEFFIELD: Thanks for being here today.ELLE HARDY: Thanks for having me.SHEFFIELD: All right. So, as I said in the intro, I think a lot of people are aware that Pentecostalism exists, but in terms of what it believes or more particulars about it, I think people generally, unless you’re adjacent to it don’t know a lot about it. When did Pentecostalism get started? It got started in the United States and it’s been growing all over the world, but just tell us a little bit about the early history and what you found with that.HARDY: The person who is essentially considered the founder of Pentecostalism, William J. Seymour, the son of freed slaves from Louisiana. He had a revival called the Azusa Street Revival in 1906 in Los Angeles, and that’s considered the founding moment of Pentecostalism.But I actually think that his mentor, who was a white man in Kansas actually probably has a better claim. Pentecostalism was really coming out of the very American nature of religion in the late 19th century, where Mormonism and other things came from. It was people moving across the country, that frontier culture bringing in new ideas. But it really came out of Methodism, and it was really about harnessing a, for want of a better word, the power of the Holy Spirit.And it was new and radical and it was speaking to people’s needs at the time. And it’s speaking to people’s needs now. And that’s really what is behind this explosive growth. It speaks to people’s needs here now. And largely from, 1901-1906 through to now, it’s the idea of health and wealth. It’s the idea that you can have a good life in this life too.So it really is the faith of the global working poor, and when it started with William J Seymour, these were pretty radical ideas, it was speaking in tongues, it was having the Holy Spirit descend upon you. So you’re born again, accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior and have a full immersion baptism usually, but then they filled again with the Holy Spirit and that comes comes through things such as you got the nine gifts of the holy spirit. Prophecy, miracles, healing, and most notably speaking in tongues.And that’s what the Pentecostals were really keen on. And that’s what they’re most famous for today, even though definitely not as many people speak in tongues anymore.SHEFFIELD: But just for those who don’t know what that concept is, what is the idea of speaking in tongues?HARDY: So it means that you’re filled with the Holy Spirit and that spirit is speaking through you in a language that you don’t understand, or that you might only understand in that moment.The original Pentecostals thought that they were being given the tongues to go and preach and convert people in foreign lands. That’s what happened in the Bible. That’s where the Day of Pentecost comes from, when the Holy Ghost 50 days after Jesus rose from the dead, the Holy Ghost came down to the disciples and gave them his gift of tongues to go out and convert people in foreign lands.And so the original Pentecostals thought that’s what they were getting. They thought they were speaking in Chinese. And a lot of them set sail for places like China and died horrible deaths of dysentery and other things because they were so ill-prepared. They really thought that they’d been given this gift and the end of days were coming and they had to come out and help all these poor people who hadn’t heard the good news.These days, it’s much more of a personal commune with God or, God speaking through you or a personal conversation that you’re having. And it definitely doesn’t have that power over people anymore. But often because it is a part of that conversion process– and the conversion being born again is really significant for ...