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An Introduction to Pentecostalism. By
Anderson Allan. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2004. xiii + 302 pp. \$65 cloth;
\$23.99 paper.
Edith L. Blumhofer
Church History / Volume 75 / Issue 01 / March 2006, pp 238 - 240
DOI: 10.1017/S0009640700088806, Published online: 28 July 2009
Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/
abstract_S0009640700088806
How to cite this article:
Edith L. Blumhofer (2006). Church History, 75, pp 238-240 doi:10.1017/
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238 CHURCH HISTORY
part, however, just as one laments that Curran has left something out, one
discovers that in fact she has not.
The Ludwigstrasse in Munich occupies an absolutely crucial role in
Curran's study. The Bavarian State Library and the Ludwigskirche, both built
under and for Ludwig I of Bavaria, stand in particular among the most
important formative influences in the Romanesque revival. This book holds
special fascination for me because I worked in Munich early in my academic
career, ascending and descending the grand central stairway of the library,
little suspecting that in its early years it was hailed as the most beautiful of its
kind in the world. That this architecture was meant to be imposing comes as
no surprise to one who, as a young medievalist, worked in a world where the
library building conspired with at least some of the librarians to intimidate its
users. The first time I was there, I was so deeply awed by the structure that,
without fully entering, I turned around, went out, and made sure I was
properly attired before daring to return. King Ludwig and his architect
would no doubt have been deeply pleased at my reaction.
Richard Kieckhefer
Northwestern University
Holiness Abroad: Nazarene Missions in Asia. By Floyd T. Cunningham.
Pietist and Wesleyan Studies 16. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow, 2003. xii + 317
pp. $59.00 cloth; $39.95 paper.
This study of Church of the Nazarene missions in Asia offers a model that
could be emulated by others. The author, Floyd T. Cunningham, is dean and
professor of Christian history at Asia Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary
in the Philippines. The book is organized in six chapters plus a conclusion.
Chapter 1 presents an important synthesis of holiness teaching and theories
that informed the developing philosophies and policies that would guide
Nazarene missions. The next five chapters trace the development of these
missions in India, Japan, China, Korea, and The Philippines.
Throughout, Cunningham maintains a sympathetic but critical view of his
subject. He gives due consideration to the role of strong-minded missionaries
who often did not work well with colleagues. He astutely assesses the
administrative impact of Nazarene polity on the denominational missions.
In the concluding chapter he examines some of the main themes that have
preoccupied missions since 1800 within Nazarene practice. For example, a
staple of modern mission theory has been the goal of establishing indigenous
churcheschurches that were self-financing, self-propagating, and self-
governing as early as possible. The author demonstrates that Nazarenes were
formally committed to this goal but failed in practice to achieve it due to a
series of stock qualifications. This superb analysis is relevant to many other
Protestant missions.
Wilbert R. Shenk
Fuller Theological Seminary
An Introduction to Pentecostalism. By Allan Anderson. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2004. xiii + 302 pp. $65 cloth; $23.99 paper.
Pentecostal forms of Christianity are thriving in many places around the
globe. They manifest a wide range of practices and polities and, according to
BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES 239
Allan Anderson, are united more by an emphasis on experiential spirituality
than by specific theological claims. Anderson introduces this multifaceted
global Pentecostal movementa daunting undertaking by any measure
using two approaches: an historical overview in part 1 and contextualized
theological reflections in part 2. As an organizational approach with the
potential to enable both overview and analysis, the idea has merit. Unfortu-
nately, Anderson's work falls far short of a compelling introduction to a
movement with undeniable influence on contemporary Christianity, espe-
cially in the Global South. Anderson's underlying assumption is on target:
any introduction to modern Pentecostalism must integrate the movement's
varied global expressions into a narrative whole. But Anderson presents
neither a compelling story nor a contextualized analysis.
Most of Anderson's work relies on secondary rather than on primary
sources. Chapters lack internal narrative cohesion. They attempt to cover too
much, and so they listoften with confusing acronymsthe emergence of
denominations and associations, jumping from country to country without
transitions to help readers make sense of the mass of information. In some
sentences, the placing of words confuses meaning, and historical inaccuracies
are numerous. For example, D. L. Moody's Northfield Conferences were not
prophecy conferences; Aimee Semple McPherson did not move from Hong
Kong to Los Angeles in 1911, nor did she marry Harold McPherson there. She
married McPherson in Chicago, lived with him in Providence, and arrived in
Los Angeles only at the end of 1918 after establishing herself on the national
revival circuit. Harold Bredesen was a Dutch Reformed, not a Lutheran,
clergyman. The invitation to the founding meeting of the Assemblies of God
was not addressed exclusively to whites: rather, a general call to a convention
appeared in Pentecostal periodicals inviting all interested participants to a
convention. The accumulation of such mistakes raises questions about the
reliability of the whole, and the misrepresentation of the founding of the
Assemblies of God distorts the North American story in basic ways.
Anderson's overview of Christian history leaves much to be desired. His
unnuanced harsh judgment of pre-Reformation Catholicism's rejection of
spiritual gifts ignores, for example, the mystical tradition represented by
Hildegard of Bingen. He fails to cite the only published history of speaking
in tongues and related spiritual gifts, a work by Harvard church historian
George H. Williams that, though dated, offers a reasonably nuanced view of
charismatic experiences in the Christian past. Anderson often cites scholars
by their last names offering no context for them or their work. This way of
writing presumes that readers have a grasp of a specific historiography, an
assumption inappropriate to an introductory history.
This book breaks no new ground: rather, Anderson repackages the per-
spective on Pentecostalism of his mentor, Walter Hollenweger and draws on
the work of other Hollenweger students to support the basic ideas
Hollenweger first published in English in the 1970s. Hollenwegera theolo-
gian, not a historiangives centrality to African American spirituality as a
source for Pentecostalism and sees racial harmony as a core Pentecostal
value. Anderson elaborates on a few often cited primary sources that suggest
easy racial mingling at the mythical Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, but
he neglects to mention the bitter disharmony between African Americans and
Latinos that forced a Latino exodus from the mission. Anderson's larger
240 CHURCH HISTORY
conceptualization of the North American religious scene is shaped largely by
those who place Wesleyan movements at the center of American Christian
history. On other matters pertaining to American religion, Anderson is in-
fluenced by a handful of people prominent in the Society for Pentecostal
Studies. He does not effectively situate his story in the larger scholarly study
of Christian history or explain his choice of one interpretive line over another.
Anderson takes issue especially with the way North American historians of
Pentecostalism have conceptualized the movement. While the telling of the
story of American Pentecostalism is becoming more nuanced, until recently
it has not evolved primarily with reference to a global context. Awareness of
that context and access to a growing body of sources should be-and are
changing the way that historians of North American Pentecostalism render
their narratives and make historical claims about Pentecostalism's early
history. On the other hand, those who study American Pentecostalism should
not be criticized for focusing on a North American story if they do not use
that story to generalize about the global movement. From the start, many
Pentecostals in Europe and elsewheresome of whom enjoyed wide influ-
ence among American Pentecostalsmanifested differences from their
American counterparts. When North American scholars wrestle with the
problem of defining "Pentecostal," they privilege tongues speech; in other
parts of the world, exorcisms, spiritual gifts, or healings may be more
prominent. The problem of definition is acute: Western scholars, like their
cohorts beyond the West, do well not to claim too much.
Anderson's work lacks the breadth of context that could effectively situate
Pentecostalism in the larger narrative of world Christianity or global history.
The historians and theologians on whose writings he relies most heavily tend
to focus their work, too, exclusively on Pentecostalism without much refer-
ence to larger contextual questions. They interact most often with each other.
Two exceptions among Anderson's sources are Grant Wacker and Harvey
Cox. Rather than reading Anderson, those who are curious about Pentecos-
talism might peruse Wacker's Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American
Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001) to learn about
North American Pentecostals and Cox's Fire from Heaven (Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley, 1995) to probe the movement's significance for global
Christianity and modern spirituality.
An introduction to world Pentecostalism that explores the movement in
the framework of modern historical and religious realities (and then explains
why it all matters) remains to be written.
Edith L. Blumhofer
Wheaton College
Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World. Edited by Holger
Bernt Hansen and Michael Twaddle. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002.
x + 307 pp. $44.95 cloth; $22.95 paper.
This fine collection of essays is a valuable contribution to the growing list
of studies that plumb the ambiguities of Christian mission during the modern
era of Western colonialism. Rather than condemning missionary activity as
the pawn of colonialism and imperialism, the twenty-one articles in this