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13 books about Pentecostalism
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African Pentecostals in Catholic Europe: The Politics of Presence in the Twenty-First Century
Annalisa Butticci
Harvard University Press, 2016
Library of Congress BX8764.2.B88 2016 | Dewey Decimal 289.9408996045

Catholic Italy is a destination for migrants from Nigeria and Ghana, who bring their own form of Christianity—Pentecostalism, the most Protestant of Christian faiths. At the heart of Annalisa Butticci’s ethnography is a paradox. Believers on both sides are driven by a desire to find sensuous, material ways to make the divine visible and tangible.
Expand Description

Fields White Unto Harvest: Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Origins of Pentecostalism
James Goff
University of Arkansas Press, 1988
Library of Congress BR1644.G64 1988 | Dewey Decimal 289.9

With fifty-one million people worldwide actively worshiping in Pentecostal circles, Pentecostalism is not only the single largest movement in Protestantism, but is arguably the single most important religious movement in modern times. But where did these Pentecostals come from? And how did a movement that began obscurely in turn-of-the-century Kansas come to have so much meaning for so many millions of people?

This biographical study of Charles Fox Parham offers a fascinating account of this movement’s origins in the American Midwest and of the one man most responsible for giving that movement its identity. An inspired itinerant preacher from the Kansas prairies, Parham pieced together the unique Pentecostal theology and dedicated his short life to spreading his message of divine hope—a message that was to strike a responsive chord in the hearts of a hard-working people discouraged by frequent economic depression. His story is one of both triumph and defeat, the saga of a sickly farm boy who by the age of thirty-three had converted almost ten thousand followers and yet, less than five years later, had fallen into obscurity, his name besmirched by scandal and his leadership repudiated by the very movement he had struggled so tirelessly to inspire.

Exhaustively researched, Fields White Unto Harvest is an in-depth study of the sociological significance of the Pentecostal movement, its roots in the evangelical thought of the late nineteenth century, and the several directions of its growth in the twentieth. Through Parham’s story, woven into a fascinating narrative by James Goff, we achieve a new understanding of the man behind the movement that would eventually alter the landscape of American religious history.

Expand Description

Filled with the Spirit: Sexuality, Gender, and Radical Inclusivity in a Black Pentecostal Church Coalition
Ellen Lewin
University of Chicago Press, 2018
Library of Congress BR115.H6L48 2018 | Dewey Decimal 289.9408660973

In 2001, a collection of open and affirming churches with predominantly African American membership and a Pentecostal style of worship formed a radically new coalition. The group, known now as the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries or TFAM, has at its core the idea of “radical inclusivity”: the powerful assertion that everyone, no matter how seemingly flawed or corrupted, has holiness within. Whether you are LGBT, have HIV/AIDS, have been in prison, abuse drugs or alcohol, are homeless, or are otherwise compromised and marginalized, TFAM tells its people, you are one of God’s creations.

In Filled with the Spirit, Ellen Lewin gives us a deeply empathetic ethnography of the worship and community central to TFAM, telling the story of how the doctrine of radical inclusivity has expanded beyond those it originally sought to serve to encompass people of all races, genders, sexualities, and religious backgrounds. Lewin examines the seemingly paradoxical relationship between TFAM and traditional black churches, focusing on how congregations and individual members reclaim the worship practices of these churches and simultaneously challenge their authority. The book looks closely at how TFAM worship is legitimated and enhanced by its use of gospel music and considers the images of food and African American culture that are central to liturgical imagery, as well as how understandings of personal authenticity tie into the desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Throughout, Lewin takes up what has been mostly missing from our discussions of race, gender, and sexuality—close attention to spirituality and faith.
Expand Description

The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South
Randall J. Stephens
Harvard University Press, 2008
Library of Congress BR1644.5.U6S74 2008 | Dewey Decimal 280.40975

Today pentecostalism claims nearly 500 million followers worldwide. An early stronghold was the American South, where believers spoke in unknown tongues, worshipped in free-form churches, and broke down social barriers that had long divided traditional Protestants. Thriving denominations made their headquarters in the region and gathered white and black converts from the Texas plains to the Carolina low country. Pentecostalism was, in fact, a religious import. It came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. Adherents formed new churches in the Jim Crow South and held unconventional beliefs about authority, power, race, and gender. Such views set them at odds with other Christians in the region. By 1900 nearly all southern holiness folk abandoned mainline churches and adopted a pessimistic, apocalyptic theology. Signs of the last days, they thought, were all around them. The faith first took root among anonymous religious zealots. It later claimed southern celebrities and innovators like televangelists Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, T. D. Jakes, and John Hagee; rock-and-roll icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard; and, more recently, conservative political leaders such as John Ashcroft. With the growth of southern pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement moved cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different. Many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end. Yet a growing number did so as active political conservatives.
Expand Description

Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture
Grant Wacker
Harvard University Press, 2003
Library of Congress BR1644.5.U6W33 2001 | Dewey Decimal 289.94097309041

In this lively history of the rise of pentecostalism in the United States, Grant Wacker gives an in-depth account of the religious practices of pentecostal churches as well as an engaging picture of the way these beliefs played out in daily life. The core tenets of pentecostal belief—personal salvation, Holy Ghost baptism, divine healing, and anticipation of the Lord’s imminent return—took root in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Wacker examines the various aspects of pentecostal culture, including rituals, speaking in tongues, the authority of the Bible, the central role of Jesus in everyday life, the gifts of prophecy and healing, ideas about personal appearance, women’s roles, race relations, attitudes toward politics and the government. Tracking the daily lives of pentecostals, and paying close attention to the voices of individual men and women, Wacker is able to identify the reason for the movement’s spectacular success: a demonstrated ability to balance idealistic and pragmatic impulses, to adapt distinct religious convictions in order to meet the expectations of modern life. More than twenty million American adults today consider themselves pentecostal. Given the movement’s major place in American religious life, the history of its early years—so artfully told here—is of central importance.
Expand Description

Hunted: Predation and Pentecostalism in Guatemala
Kevin Lewis O'Neill
University of Chicago Press, 2019
Library of Congress BV4460.3.O65 2019 | Dewey Decimal 277.2811083

“It’s not a process,” one pastor insisted, “rehabilitation is a miracle.” In the face of addiction and few state resources, Pentecostal pastors in Guatemala City are fighting what they understand to be a major crisis. Yet the treatment centers they operate produce this miracle of rehabilitation through extraordinary means: captivity. These men of faith snatch drug users off the streets, often at the request of family members, and then lock them up inside their centers for months, sometimes years.

Hunted is based on more than ten years of fieldwork among these centers and the drug users that populate them. Over time, as Kevin Lewis O’Neill engaged both those in treatment and those who surveilled them, he grew increasingly concerned that he, too, had become a hunter, albeit one snatching up information. This thoughtful, intense book will reframe the arc of redemption we so often associate with drug rehabilitation, painting instead a seemingly endless cycle of hunt, capture, and release.
Expand Description

It's a New Day: Race and Gender in the Modern Charismatic Movement
Scott Billingsley
University of Alabama Press, 2008
Library of Congress BR1644.5.U6B55 2008 | Dewey Decimal 277.308208

It’s a New Day chronicles the rise of women and African American evangelists in the independent charismatic movement in post-World War II America. Billingsley observes  current figures such as T. D. Jakes, Joyce Meyer, and Creflo Dollar, who were deeply influenced by charismatic pioneers Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin. The evangelists adopted their ministry-building and prosperity gospel tactics and are notable for megachurches, televangelism, and health-and-wealth doctrines.
 
The modern charismatic movement has grown far more sophisticated and has become a truly international phenomenon, and Pentecostals and charismatics hold a wide variety of views on race and gender.  Charismatic women ministers take to the pulpit, manage publishing empires, and lead the faithful in modern America. Similarly, both black and white charismatic ministers preach to integrated churches and hold integrated revivals, even while racial divides endure in the larger society. It’s a New Day contributes to our understanding and appreciation of one of the most vital sectors in current American religious life.
Expand Description

Mountain Holiness: A Photographic Narrative
Deborah Vansau Mccauley
University of Tennessee Press, 2003
Library of Congress BR1644.5.U6M38 2003 | Dewey Decimal 289.9409769

“A remarkable achievement. Mountain Holiness combines Warren Brunner’s poignant and sensitive photographs with a succinct narrative by Deborah McCauley, the preeminent authority on Appalachian mountain religion. This is a landmark study that sheds light on one of the most neglected subjects in American religion.”—Randall Balmer, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of American Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University

Hidden deep in the hills of central Appalachia, tiny churches have quietly carried on their worship practices in an unbroken chain for two centuries. Harking back to the camp-meeting movement of the early nineteenth century, independent Holiness churches are considered by some to represent Appalachia's single largest religious tradition. Yet it is one that remains uncounted in any census of American church life because of the lack of formal institutions or written records. Through vivid images and perceptive words, this book documents this rich history, showing how these independent churches have sustained both faith and followers.
The authors spent five years interviewing and photographing Appalachia's Holiness people and participating in their services. From thousands of photographs, they have selected nearly three hundred fifty images for this large-format volume. Here are small one-room churches—many built to hold no more than a dozen people—scattered in the hills of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Yet Warren Brunner's striking images depict not only buildings but also the people and their faith practices: river baptisms and homecomings, serpent handling and tent evangelism, radio preaching and special holiday services.

Deborah McCauley and Laura Porter's text combines descriptions of the pictures with the history of the churches and interviews with members. They create a representative window into the material and oral culture of central Appalachia's independent Holiness heritage. Mountain Holiness is a book that will fascinate anyone who cares about these traditions, as well as anyone concerned with the preservation of America's most vital folkways.
Expand Description

Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism
Edited by Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker
University of Illinois Press, 1999
Library of Congress BR1644.5.U6P46 1999 | Dewey Decimal 280.40973

American Pentecostalism began as a culturally isolated sect intent upon announcing the imminence of the world's end. The sect's early millenarian fervor gradually became muted in favor of flag-waving patriotism. At the end of the twentieth century it has become an affluent, worldwide movement thoroughly entrenched in popular culture.
Edith Blumhofer uses the Assemblies of God, the largest classical Pentecostal denomination in the world, as a lens through which to view the changing nature of Anglo Pentecostalism in the United States. She illustrates how the original mission to proclaim the end resulted in the development of Bible schools, the rise of the charismatic movement, and the popularity of such figures as Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles Fox Parham, and David Du Plessis. Blumhofer also examines the sect's use of radio and television and the creation of a parallel Christian culture
 
Expand Description

Political Spiritualities: The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria
Ruth Marshall
University of Chicago Press, 2009
Library of Congress BR1644.5.N6M37 2009 | Dewey Decimal 276.69082

After an explosion of conversions to Pentecostalism over the past three decades, tens of millions of Nigerians now claim that “Jesus is the answer.” But if Jesus is the answer, what is the question? What led to the movement’s dramatic rise and how can we make sense of its social and political significance? In this ambitiously interdisciplinary study, Ruth Marshall draws on years of fieldwork and grapples with a host of important thinkers—including Foucault, Agamben, Arendt, and Benjamin—to answer these questions.

To account for the movement’s success, Marshall explores how Pentecostalism presents the experience of being born again as a chance for Nigerians to realize the promises of political and religious salvation made during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Her astute analysis of this religious trend sheds light on Nigeria’s contemporary politics, postcolonial statecraft, and the everyday struggles of ordinary citizens coping with poverty, corruption, and inequality.

Pentecostalism’s rise is truly global, and Political Spiritualities persuasively argues that Nigeria is a key case in this phenomenon while calling for new ways of thinking about the place of religion in contemporary politics.

Expand Description

Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture
Edith L. Blumhofer
University of Illinois Press, 1993
Library of Congress BX8765.5.A4B59 1993 | Dewey Decimal 289.94

American Pentecostalism began as a culturally isolated sect intent upon announcing the imminence of the world's end. The sect's early millenarian fervor gradually became muted in favor of flag-waving patriotism. At the end of the twentieth century it has become an affluent, worldwide movement thoroughly entrenched in popular culture.
Edith Blumhofer uses the Assemblies of God, the largest classical Pentecostal denomination in the world, as a lens through which to view the changing nature of Anglo Pentecostalism in the United States. She illustrates how the original mission to proclaim the end resulted in the development of Bible schools, the rise of the charismatic movement, and the popularity of such figures as Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles Fox Parham, and David Du Plessis. Blumhofer also examines the sect's use of radio and television and the creation of a parallel Christian culture
 
Expand Description

Spirit on the Move: Black Women and Pentecostalism in Africa and the Diaspora
Judith Casselberry and Elizabeth Pritchard, editors
Duke University Press, 2019
Library of Congress BR1644.3.S65 2019

Pentecostalism is currently the fastest-growing Christian movement, with hundreds of millions of followers. This growth overwhelmingly takes place outside of the West, and women make up 75 percent of the membership. The contributors to Spirit on the Move examine Pentecostalism's appeal to black women worldwide and the ways it provides them with a source of community and access to power. Exploring a range of topics, from Neo-Pentecostal churches in Ghana that help women challenge gender norms to evangelical gospel musicians in Brazil, the contributors show how Pentecostalism helps black women draw attention to and seek remediation from the violence and injustices brought on by civil war, capitalist exploitation, racism, and the failures of the state. In fleshing out the experiences, theologies, and innovations of black women Pentecostals, the contributors show how Pentecostal belief and its various practices reflect the movement's complexity, reach, and adaptability to specific cultural and political formations.

Contributors. Paula Aymer, John Burdick, Judith Casselberry, Deidre Helen Crumbley, Elizabeth McAlister, Laura Premack, Elizabeth A. Pritchard, Jane Soothill, Linda van de Kamp
Expand Description

William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism: A Biography and Documentary History
Gastón Espinosa
Duke University Press, 2014
Library of Congress BX8762.Z8S49 2014

In 1906, William J. Seymour (1870–1922) preached Pentecostal revival at the Azusa Street mission in Los Angeles. From these and other humble origins the movement has blossomed to 631 million people around the world. Gastón Espinosa provides new insight into the life and ministry of Seymour, the Azusa Street revival, and Seymour's influence on global Pentecostal origins. After defining key terms and concepts, he surveys the changing interpretations of Seymour over the past 100 years, critically engages them in a biography, and then provides an unparalleled collection of primary sources, all in a single volume. He pays particular attention to race relations, Seymour's paradigmatic global influence from 1906 to 1912, and the break between Seymour and Charles Parham, another founder of Pentecostalism. Espinosa's fragmentation thesis argues that the Pentecostal propensity to invoke direct unmediated experiences with the Holy Spirit empowers ordinary people to break the bottle of denominationalism and to rapidly indigenize and spread their message.

The 104 primary sources include all of Seymour's extant writings in full and without alteration and some of Parham's theological, social, and racial writings, which help explain why the two parted company. To capture the revival's diversity and global influence, this book includes Black, Latino, Swedish, and Irish testimonies, along with those of missionaries and leaders who spread Seymour's vision of Pentecostalism globally.
Expand Description

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13 books about Pentecostalism
African Pentecostals in Catholic Europe
The Politics of Presence in the Twenty-First Century
Annalisa Butticci
Harvard University Press, 2016
Catholic Italy is a destination for migrants from Nigeria and Ghana, who bring their own form of Christianity—Pentecostalism, the most Protestant of Christian faiths. At the heart of Annalisa Butticci’s ethnography is a paradox. Believers on both sides are driven by a desire to find sensuous, material ways to make the divine visible and tangible.
[more]

Fields White Unto Harvest
Charles F. Parham and the Missionary Origins of Pentecostalism
James Goff
University of Arkansas Press, 1988

With fifty-one million people worldwide actively worshiping in Pentecostal circles, Pentecostalism is not only the single largest movement in Protestantism, but is arguably the single most important religious movement in modern times. But where did these Pentecostals come from? And how did a movement that began obscurely in turn-of-the-century Kansas come to have so much meaning for so many millions of people?

This biographical study of Charles Fox Parham offers a fascinating account of this movement’s origins in the American Midwest and of the one man most responsible for giving that movement its identity. An inspired itinerant preacher from the Kansas prairies, Parham pieced together the unique Pentecostal theology and dedicated his short life to spreading his message of divine hope—a message that was to strike a responsive chord in the hearts of a hard-working people discouraged by frequent economic depression. His story is one of both triumph and defeat, the saga of a sickly farm boy who by the age of thirty-three had converted almost ten thousand followers and yet, less than five years later, had fallen into obscurity, his name besmirched by scandal and his leadership repudiated by the very movement he had struggled so tirelessly to inspire.

Exhaustively researched, Fields White Unto Harvest is an in-depth study of the sociological significance of the Pentecostal movement, its roots in the evangelical thought of the late nineteenth century, and the several directions of its growth in the twentieth. Through Parham’s story, woven into a fascinating narrative by James Goff, we achieve a new understanding of the man behind the movement that would eventually alter the landscape of American religious history.

[more]

Filled with the Spirit
Sexuality, Gender, and Radical Inclusivity in a Black Pentecostal Church Coalition
Ellen Lewin
University of Chicago Press, 2018
In 2001, a collection of open and affirming churches with predominantly African American membership and a Pentecostal style of worship formed a radically new coalition. The group, known now as the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries or TFAM, has at its core the idea of “radical inclusivity”: the powerful assertion that everyone, no matter how seemingly flawed or corrupted, has holiness within. Whether you are LGBT, have HIV/AIDS, have been in prison, abuse drugs or alcohol, are homeless, or are otherwise compromised and marginalized, TFAM tells its people, you are one of God’s creations.

In Filled with the Spirit, Ellen Lewin gives us a deeply empathetic ethnography of the worship and community central to TFAM, telling the story of how the doctrine of radical inclusivity has expanded beyond those it originally sought to serve to encompass people of all races, genders, sexualities, and religious backgrounds. Lewin examines the seemingly paradoxical relationship between TFAM and traditional black churches, focusing on how congregations and individual members reclaim the worship practices of these churches and simultaneously challenge their authority. The book looks closely at how TFAM worship is legitimated and enhanced by its use of gospel music and considers the images of food and African American culture that are central to liturgical imagery, as well as how understandings of personal authenticity tie into the desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Throughout, Lewin takes up what has been mostly missing from our discussions of race, gender, and sexuality—close attention to spirituality and faith.
[more]

The Fire Spreads
Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South
Randall J. Stephens
Harvard University Press, 2008
Today pentecostalism claims nearly 500 million followers worldwide. An early stronghold was the American South, where believers spoke in unknown tongues, worshipped in free-form churches, and broke down social barriers that had long divided traditional Protestants. Thriving denominations made their headquarters in the region and gathered white and black converts from the Texas plains to the Carolina low country. Pentecostalism was, in fact, a religious import. It came to the South following the post-Civil War holiness revival, a northern-born crusade that emphasized sinlessness and religious empowerment. Adherents formed new churches in the Jim Crow South and held unconventional beliefs about authority, power, race, and gender. Such views set them at odds with other Christians in the region. By 1900 nearly all southern holiness folk abandoned mainline churches and adopted a pessimistic, apocalyptic theology. Signs of the last days, they thought, were all around them. The faith first took root among anonymous religious zealots. It later claimed southern celebrities and innovators like televangelists Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swaggart, T. D. Jakes, and John Hagee; rock-and-roll icons Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard; and, more recently, conservative political leaders such as John Ashcroft. With the growth of southern pentecostal denominations and the rise of new, affluent congregants, the movement moved cautiously into the evangelical mainstream. By the 1980s the once-apolitical faith looked entirely different. Many still watched and waited for spectacular signs of the end. Yet a growing number did so as active political conservatives.
[more]

Heaven Below
Early Pentecostals and American Culture
Grant Wacker
Harvard University Press, 2003
In this lively history of the rise of pentecostalism in the United States, Grant Wacker gives an in-depth account of the religious practices of pentecostal churches as well as an engaging picture of the way these beliefs played out in daily life. The core tenets of pentecostal belief—personal salvation, Holy Ghost baptism, divine healing, and anticipation of the Lord’s imminent return—took root in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Wacker examines the various aspects of pentecostal culture, including rituals, speaking in tongues, the authority of the Bible, the central role of Jesus in everyday life, the gifts of prophecy and healing, ideas about personal appearance, women’s roles, race relations, attitudes toward politics and the government. Tracking the daily lives of pentecostals, and paying close attention to the voices of individual men and women, Wacker is able to identify the reason for the movement’s spectacular success: a demonstrated ability to balance idealistic and pragmatic impulses, to adapt distinct religious convictions in order to meet the expectations of modern life. More than twenty million American adults today consider themselves pentecostal. Given the movement’s major place in American religious life, the history of its early years—so artfully told here—is of central importance.
[more]

Hunted
Predation and Pentecostalism in Guatemala
Kevin Lewis O'Neill
University of Chicago Press, 2019
“It’s not a process,” one pastor insisted, “rehabilitation is a miracle.” In the face of addiction and few state resources, Pentecostal pastors in Guatemala City are fighting what they understand to be a major crisis. Yet the treatment centers they operate produce this miracle of rehabilitation through extraordinary means: captivity. These men of faith snatch drug users off the streets, often at the request of family members, and then lock them up inside their centers for months, sometimes years.

Hunted is based on more than ten years of fieldwork among these centers and the drug users that populate them. Over time, as Kevin Lewis O’Neill engaged both those in treatment and those who surveilled them, he grew increasingly concerned that he, too, had become a hunter, albeit one snatching up information. This thoughtful, intense book will reframe the arc of redemption we so often associate with drug rehabilitation, painting instead a seemingly endless cycle of hunt, capture, and release.
[more]

It's a New Day
Race and Gender in the Modern Charismatic Movement
Scott Billingsley
University of Alabama Press, 2008
It’s a New Day chronicles the rise of women and African American evangelists in the independent charismatic movement in post-World War II America. Billingsley observes  current figures such as T. D. Jakes, Joyce Meyer, and Creflo Dollar, who were deeply influenced by charismatic pioneers Oral Roberts and Kenneth Hagin. The evangelists adopted their ministry-building and prosperity gospel tactics and are notable for megachurches, televangelism, and health-and-wealth doctrines.
 
The modern charismatic movement has grown far more sophisticated and has become a truly international phenomenon, and Pentecostals and charismatics hold a wide variety of views on race and gender.  Charismatic women ministers take to the pulpit, manage publishing empires, and lead the faithful in modern America. Similarly, both black and white charismatic ministers preach to integrated churches and hold integrated revivals, even while racial divides endure in the larger society. It’s a New Day contributes to our understanding and appreciation of one of the most vital sectors in current American religious life.
[more]

Mountain Holiness
A Photographic Narrative
Deborah Vansau Mccauley
University of Tennessee Press, 2003
“A remarkable achievement. Mountain Holiness combines Warren Brunner’s poignant and sensitive photographs with a succinct narrative by Deborah McCauley, the preeminent authority on Appalachian mountain religion. This is a landmark study that sheds light on one of the most neglected subjects in American religion.”—Randall Balmer, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of American Religion, Barnard College, Columbia University

Hidden deep in the hills of central Appalachia, tiny churches have quietly carried on their worship practices in an unbroken chain for two centuries. Harking back to the camp-meeting movement of the early nineteenth century, independent Holiness churches are considered by some to represent Appalachia's single largest religious tradition. Yet it is one that remains uncounted in any census of American church life because of the lack of formal institutions or written records. Through vivid images and perceptive words, this book documents this rich history, showing how these independent churches have sustained both faith and followers.
The authors spent five years interviewing and photographing Appalachia's Holiness people and participating in their services. From thousands of photographs, they have selected nearly three hundred fifty images for this large-format volume. Here are small one-room churches—many built to hold no more than a dozen people—scattered in the hills of Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia. Yet Warren Brunner's striking images depict not only buildings but also the people and their faith practices: river baptisms and homecomings, serpent handling and tent evangelism, radio preaching and special holiday services.

Deborah McCauley and Laura Porter's text combines descriptions of the pictures with the history of the churches and interviews with members. They create a representative window into the material and oral culture of central Appalachia's independent Holiness heritage. Mountain Holiness is a book that will fascinate anyone who cares about these traditions, as well as anyone concerned with the preservation of America's most vital folkways.
[more]

Pentecostal Currents in American Protestantism
Edited by Edith L. Blumhofer, Russell P. Spittler, and Grant A. Wacker
University of Illinois Press, 1999
American Pentecostalism began as a culturally isolated sect intent upon announcing the imminence of the world's end. The sect's early millenarian fervor gradually became muted in favor of flag-waving patriotism. At the end of the twentieth century it has become an affluent, worldwide movement thoroughly entrenched in popular culture.
Edith Blumhofer uses the Assemblies of God, the largest classical Pentecostal denomination in the world, as a lens through which to view the changing nature of Anglo Pentecostalism in the United States. She illustrates how the original mission to proclaim the end resulted in the development of Bible schools, the rise of the charismatic movement, and the popularity of such figures as Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles Fox Parham, and David Du Plessis. Blumhofer also examines the sect's use of radio and television and the creation of a parallel Christian culture
 
[more]

Political Spiritualities
The Pentecostal Revolution in Nigeria
Ruth Marshall
University of Chicago Press, 2009

After an explosion of conversions to Pentecostalism over the past three decades, tens of millions of Nigerians now claim that “Jesus is the answer.” But if Jesus is the answer, what is the question? What led to the movement’s dramatic rise and how can we make sense of its social and political significance? In this ambitiously interdisciplinary study, Ruth Marshall draws on years of fieldwork and grapples with a host of important thinkers—including Foucault, Agamben, Arendt, and Benjamin—to answer these questions.

To account for the movement’s success, Marshall explores how Pentecostalism presents the experience of being born again as a chance for Nigerians to realize the promises of political and religious salvation made during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Her astute analysis of this religious trend sheds light on Nigeria’s contemporary politics, postcolonial statecraft, and the everyday struggles of ordinary citizens coping with poverty, corruption, and inequality.

Pentecostalism’s rise is truly global, and Political Spiritualities persuasively argues that Nigeria is a key case in this phenomenon while calling for new ways of thinking about the place of religion in contemporary politics.

[more]

Restoring the Faith
The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture
Edith L. Blumhofer
University of Illinois Press, 1993
American Pentecostalism began as a culturally isolated sect intent upon announcing the imminence of the world's end. The sect's early millenarian fervor gradually became muted in favor of flag-waving patriotism. At the end of the twentieth century it has become an affluent, worldwide movement thoroughly entrenched in popular culture.
Edith Blumhofer uses the Assemblies of God, the largest classical Pentecostal denomination in the world, as a lens through which to view the changing nature of Anglo Pentecostalism in the United States. She illustrates how the original mission to proclaim the end resulted in the development of Bible schools, the rise of the charismatic movement, and the popularity of such figures as Aimee Semple McPherson, Charles Fox Parham, and David Du Plessis. Blumhofer also examines the sect's use of radio and television and the creation of a parallel Christian culture
 
[more]

Spirit on the Move
Black Women and Pentecostalism in Africa and the Diaspora
Judith Casselberry and Elizabeth Pritchard, editors
Duke University Press, 2019
Pentecostalism is currently the fastest-growing Christian movement, with hundreds of millions of followers. This growth overwhelmingly takes place outside of the West, and women make up 75 percent of the membership. The contributors to Spirit on the Move examine Pentecostalism's appeal to black women worldwide and the ways it provides them with a source of community and access to power. Exploring a range of topics, from Neo-Pentecostal churches in Ghana that help women challenge gender norms to evangelical gospel musicians in Brazil, the contributors show how Pentecostalism helps black women draw attention to and seek remediation from the violence and injustices brought on by civil war, capitalist exploitation, racism, and the failures of the state. In fleshing out the experiences, theologies, and innovations of black women Pentecostals, the contributors show how Pentecostal belief and its various practices reflect the movement's complexity, reach, and adaptability to specific cultural and political formations.

Contributors. Paula Aymer, John Burdick, Judith Casselberry, Deidre Helen Crumbley, Elizabeth McAlister, Laura Premack, Elizabeth A. Pritchard, Jane Soothill, Linda van de Kamp
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William J. Seymour and the Origins of Global Pentecostalism
A Biography and Documentary History
Gastón Espinosa
Duke University Press, 2014
In 1906, William J. Seymour (1870–1922) preached Pentecostal revival at the Azusa Street mission in Los Angeles. From these and other humble origins the movement has blossomed to 631 million people around the world. Gastón Espinosa provides new insight into the life and ministry of Seymour, the Azusa Street revival, and Seymour's influence on global Pentecostal origins. After defining key terms and concepts, he surveys the changing interpretations of Seymour over the past 100 years, critically engages them in a biography, and then provides an unparalleled collection of primary sources, all in a single volume. He pays particular attention to race relations, Seymour's paradigmatic global influence from 1906 to 1912, and the break between Seymour and Charles Parham, another founder of Pentecostalism. Espinosa's fragmentation thesis argues that the Pentecostal propensity to invoke direct unmediated experiences with the Holy Spirit empowers ordinary people to break the bottle of denominationalism and to rapidly indigenize and spread their message.

The 104 primary sources include all of Seymour's extant writings in full and without alteration and some of Parham's theological, social, and racial writings, which help explain why the two parted company. To capture the revival's diversity and global influence, this book includes Black, Latino, Swedish, and Irish testimonies, along with those of missionaries and leaders who spread Seymour's vision of Pentecostalism globally.
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