Nikolaj Christensen's book on the early history of Pentecostalism in Denmark is a significant contribution to the field. A product of Allan Anderson's prodigious work at Birmingham University, it not only opens up a story about a minority revivalist tradition in a secularising setting (with the necessary scholarly nods to the opposing poles of secularisation theory), it contributes to two of the largest ‘moot’ questions which afflict the literature on the area. Indeed, its contributions in the latter are perhaps more significant than those debates of yesteryear which remain in circulation as prentice pieces for young scholars. The real contributions lie in its facility with Pentecostalism as a cross-cultural reality, and secondly, the remarkable impact (in a globalising world) of minority traditions across distributed networks. As much of the source base on Pentecostalism is either oral, or in languages other than English, Christensen (along with many of Anderson's students) demonstrates the subtle inflexions in national stories which push back against the Anglo-American narrative, and gives the lie to assessments based purely on numbers. This is a Western story, but one with a difference.
Secondly, the case studies of those Danish Pentecostals who were propelled by their faith to break out of the state Lutheran bubble and to work all around the world are excellent. Indeed, they perhaps say more about the norm they left than the author has had space to explore in this book. The tendency to want to answer the question about numerical growth (or not) in various places misses the point that these studies communicate. It answers a question important to European research funders, but which perhaps was less important to Pentecostals themselves. Pentecostalism after all is a rhizomatic, mobilising form which propagates across boundaries. To be surprised that it did not propagate as well within boundaries – either formal, as in Lutheran state religion, or the tacit boundaries imposed by low levels of pluralisation – is to prove the positive case without exploring the alternatives. This is not really a question for Christensen's book, of course – he is laying the basis for a scholarly discussion yet to come. It is an important conversation to have, however, as much for what is has to say for Italian, Romani, German or other European Pentecostalisms, as for the number crunchers in ivory towers. The author is to be commended for an excellent work.
