Although part of a worldwide Christian spirituality, Pentecostals and Charismatics in the UK are rooted in British religiosity dating back to at least the 1920s. However, the emergence of migrant communities from the Caribbean and Africa since the 1950s has tended to attract popular attention and consequentially has come to represent the popular public face of Pentecostals and Charismatics in Britain. Latterly, however, an intellectual base has begun resisting the anti-intellectual reputation that has attached itself to Pentecostalism. This book draws upon the scholarship of eminent academics and practitioners in the field of Pentecostal and Charismatic studies, who together consider the history of pentecostal and charismatic movements, their relationship with mainline Christian churches and their engagement with the social, economic and political world. Topics covered include: the theological and doctrinal marks in British Pentecostalism, Anglican-Pentecostal relations, and the impact of the Vineyard movement on Charismatic and Pentecostal worship in the UK. Contributors include: Professor Anne E. Dyer (Mattersey Hall), Professor William K. Kay (Chester University), Professor David Hilborn, (Moorlands College), Dr R. David Muir (University of Roehampton) and Dr Babatunde A. Adedibu (Redeemed Christian Bible College, Nigeria). With a foreword by Justin Welby.

This book explores the Pentecostal and charismatic movements, tracing their development and their variety. Hocken shows how these movements of the Holy Spirit, both outside the mainline churches and as renewal currents within the churches, can be understood as mutually challenging and as complementary. The similarities and the differences are significant. The Messianic Jewish movement possesses elements of both the new and the old. Addressing the issues of modernity and globalization, this book explores major phenomena in contemporary Christianity including the relationship between the new churches and entrepreneurial capitalism.

This is the first comprehensive book on Anglican and Pentecostal ecumenical relations. It introduces both movements with a particular focus on their approaches to ecumenism, before exploring sacraments, ministry, ecclesiology, pneumatology, and mission with respect to both traditions. As well as providing more theological and historical discussion, the book also offers personal accounts of local, national, and international ecumenical engagement by both Anglicans and Pentecostals. It is written predominantly—although not exclusively—from a British perspective. Even so, as the first major published dialogue between these two global Christian traditions, the book will be of value to all interested in Anglicanism, Pentecostalism, and ecumenism.

Global Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity in all its diversity is the fastest expanding religious movement in the world today. Allan Anderson, a former Pentecostal minister and a leading authority on global Pentecostalism, aims to make more visible the 'non-western' nature of Pentecostalism without overlooking the importance of the movement emanating from North America. Offering an innovative interpretation of Pentecostalism, he takes seriously the contributions of the Majority World to its development and, concentrating on its history and theology, reflects on the movement's development and significance throughout the world. Anderson also examines those theological issues that helped form a distinctive spirituality and how this relates to different peoples and their cultures. Finally, Anderson discusses the development of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in the different countries from its origins at the beginning of the twentieth century to its theological emphases in the present, together with the impact of the processes of globalization.

Pentecostals (traditionally) do not think theologically so much as do it practically. This book will present Pentecostal theology as well as the particular style of Pentecostal thinking and praxis that makes it different. Pentecostalism is not just distinctive because of its belief base but also because of the worldview it owns. The latter is based on a certainty that a religion that does not work is not worth much. Consequently, they look for expressions of life and vitality in their faith. These dominate, rather than an expression of the cerebral, though this is changing. Nevertheless, the sense of the immediate, the God of the now not the distant past, underlie how they do theology. Pentecostal theology tends to be seen through the eyes of people, not theologians; through the community, not traditions (though they have them); through their faith and worship, not ancient creeds. It is a theology of the dynamic, seen through the lens of experience. It is a functional theology that exists to operate; to incorporate an experiential dimension. Pentecostal theology does not operate as other theologies which often only detail a list of beliefs; it does this but also and (more) importantly, it explores them in the context of praxis. Thus, this volume incorporates praxis as part of the enquiry relating to theology.

Building on long-time research and extensive interviews, this ground-breaking study offers a portrait of pentecostal / charismatic immigrants from the global South who do not define themselves as victims but as expatriate agents with a calling to change Europe.

Nigeria presents an enthralling case study for understanding developing architypes in interreligious encounters in Africa. The global community needs a cultural understanding and sensitivity for productive engagement with the Arab and non-Arab Muslim world. The Nigeria religious exigencies provide a requisite intelligence into the challenges facing a global community seeking to foster peace. Without a domain of tolerance, love, equity and justice, Nigeria will continually be immured by pessimism, parochialism, cynicism and mutual suspicion. Despite being the largest economy in Africa and the most populous Black country, Nigeria demonstrates incessantly an uncommon fault-line between Christianity and Islam. The significance of this goes beyond the borders of Nigeria but has become a global showcase anywhere the two religions exist contemporaneously. Nigeria is the nexus between west and central Africa. Rooted in the dusty Sahel of the north, the savannah plains, the rich rainforests of the Atlantic coast, the rocky hills of the West, and the oil-filled swamps of the Delta. Nigeria is the beauty, sound, vision, passion and the soul of the African continent. In Nigeria, the Nigeria Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement possesses a distinctive flair that demands a holistic understanding of the movement’s historical, cultural, fundamental and religious dimensions in a multifarious religious landscape. The disquisition of the movement’s political cognizance, identity, power, authority, theology, popular culture, ethics and missiological impact in northern Nigeria presents a fine embroidery of their trials, frustrations and challenges, but inveterate in faith, hope and love that opens up innovative panoramas of peaceful dialogical prospects and coexistence between Christians and Muslims in northern Nigeria. In Nigeria - Politics, Religion, Pentecostal-Charismatic Power and Challenges, Akintayo Emmanuel reconnoiters the complex missiological hindrances challenging the Nigerian Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement. Their contextual missional landslide disheveled with complicated paradoxes in the way the Christian majority have responded to Muslims in northern Nigeria is anatomized. The Nigerian Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement’s puissance to solve some of Nigeria political, ideological, cultural and spiritual dimensions of crisis and sectarian violence is achievable if the movement can mitigate her missiological hindrances. The responses of Nigerian Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement to Nigeria’s socio-political and ethno-religious complexities can construct a great future for the soul of Nigeria. They do not only have the capacity to provide the Christian alternatives to Nigeria’s peculiarities, they can also stimulate Nigeria’s deification among other nations by continuing to disentangle from unscrupulousness and atrociousness embedded within—a reproach and opprobrium to any people.

This volume’s essays are an ecumenical ensemble of the best scholars and leading practitioners in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements from all four corners of the world. The contributors bring together various denominational perspectives and dialogue for understanding the present momentum of these Spirit movements in the world church. Their diverse methodologies transverse the traditional and new approaches to studying these movements. Pointing the way forward, the authors highlight some of the lessons learned in their scholarly engagement with Spirit movements. These lessons offer significant insight and viewpoints for the academy in the historical analysis of these movements. They also serve as a good guide for pastoral discernment and accompaniment for God’s people in their daily lives, as well as for social ministries in the world church. This volume addresses questions of salvation and eschatology, health and healing, prosperity and poverty, suffering and death, fear and faith, despair and hope. Other topics include the conflict between charism and institution and the tension between cultic clericalism and the affirmation and use of the gifts and talents of lay members of Christ’s faithful in the church.

Since colonial days, religious work in American has happened through denominations. At least since the start of the twentieth century, these religious bodies consisted of a fairly tight, intra-denominationally connected system of congregations, regional judicatories, and national offices. This system was the product of more than two centuries of consolidation among Americanbs historic immigrant and indigenous churches. The vast majority of these structures are still in place, retain some semblance of internal coherence, have considerable social and religious significance, and will be with us for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the stresses upon them today clearly indicate that they are entering an unsettled period of transition. The purpose of this book is to examine the national structures of eight diverse Protestant denominations as a part of that shift. The frame of this study is the relationship between the theological and organizational nature of national denominational structures as they adapt to the changing situation of the twenty-first century.

There has been substantial church growth in Britain between 1980 and 2010. This is the controversial conclusion from the international team of scholars, who have drawn on interdisciplinary studies and the latest research from across the UK. Such church growth is seen to be on a large scale, is multi-ethnic and can be found across a wide range of social and geographical contexts. It is happening inside mainline denominations but especially in specific regions such as London, in newer churches and amongst ethnic minorities. Church Growth in Britain provides a forceful critique of the notion of secularisation which dominates much of academia and the media - and which conditions the thinking of many churches and church leaders. This book demonstrates that, whilst decline is happening in some parts of the church, this needs to be balanced by recognition of the vitality of large swathes of the Christian church in Britain. Rebalancing the debate in this way requires wholesale change in our understanding of contemporary British Christianity.