15 - The holiness/pentecostal/charismatic extension of the Wesleyan tradition

Summary

The twentieth-century explosion of holiness, pentecostal, and charismatic movements may be the most significant recent development in world Christianity. By some estimates, pentecostalism in particular, which recently marked the centenary of its birth in a boisterous revival in Los Angeles in 1906, now comprises nearly one-fourth of Christians worldwide. This amounts to about half a billion people. The only larger Christian group is Roman Catholicism. The phenomenal growth rate of these movements is only part of the story. They are changing the face of global religion. Scholars have begun to study the “pentecostalization” of world Christianity. Describing the rapid spread of pentecostal and charismatic groups in the southern hemisphere, the historian of religion Philip Jenkins notes: “these newer churches preach deep personal faith and communal orthodoxy, mysticism and puritanism, all founded on clear spiritual authority.” For such initiates, “prophecy is an everyday reality, while faith-healing, exorcism, and dream-visions are all basic components of religious sensibility.”