Jarod Marshall

Disciples Of All Nations: Pillars Of World Christianity

Lamin Sanneh

Chapter One

Christianity is a translated religion. 25

“If we try to disentangle Christianity from culture we hit a roadblock…in part because the language we use is what gave us the subject of our inquiry in the first place. What has occurred in the contemporary Christian resurgence should throw in high relief the many centuries of unjustified wanton attack on ethnic cultures”. 26

Sanneh proposes that the strength of Christianity’s ability to become a world religion was in the fact that it affirmed claims that were originally non-Christian. From the beginning, it was multi-cultural and multi-lingual. It “broke the back of cultural chauvinism. 27 

Christianity’s appeal was an appeal to the indigenous milieu. Converts were twice so in the sense that membership in the church was paralleled by membership in one’s natural community. 27

It also explores how the expansion of Christianity into Europe took place under a policy that assimilated local religious practices and not condemning them outright. Religious temples were not torn down, but rather they were consecrated with holy water and rededicated. 45

Chapter Two 

Sanneh traces the origins of christian and muslim relations and explores why Christianity did not spread thoroughly into Arab cultures as it did through so much of the rest of the known world. It is known that the Roman Church resisted the translation of Scripture into the arabic language and it is thought that this had an irreversible effect that resulted in the rise of Islam. 

“Saying the absence of any sense of a founding territorial warrant condemned Christians to dealing with religion as a social construction rather than as divine command.” By the turn of the millennium, Islamic teaching said that Christianity was a spoiled religion because it had been taken out of the land of its origins and was changed into something else by Roman and Greek culture. Islam could claim that its origins and language of Holy Scripture was not broken over time. 79-80

Chapter Three

Chapter three outlines the growth of Christianity in the New World. The Church itself faced insurmountable challenges as it was associated too closely with conquering nation states. However, the veracity of Christianity as a religion of the people began to make it’s way into the local cultures that circumvented the official routes of the institutionalized Church. 

Chapter Four

Chapter four again shows the role of the Scripture in the vernacular played in the development of Christianity in the colonial world. There was a tension between the colonist’s use of christian missionaries and what respected missionary figures like David Livingstone stood for. As Scriptures came to be represented in the vernacular, there was an understandable movement against colonization. As Christianity was assimilated into the African cultures, there were ongoing tensions between the Western culture and African contextual interpretation of Scripture. The authors view is that colonial Christianity was largely unsuccessful. While Christianity continued to spread in places, it was mostly the European version that could not maintain itself in other contexts. 

Chapter Five

The author explores the backlash against colonial christianity. In Africa, missionaries supported the dominance of colonial powers while the message of the missionaries taught freedom from oppressors. This is quite possibly the beginnings of resistance against church tradition in cross-cultural contexts. 

Chapter Six

Chapter six addresses the conflict that existed between christian mission efforts and the traditional cultures and spiritism of Africa. 

Chapter Seven

This chapter addresses how the influence of christian mission hit a wall of modern civilization. As cultures developed faster and faster, the church chose not to integrate. 

Chapter Eight

This chapter outlines the efforts and influence of christian mission in China. 

Chapter Nine

This chapter considers the implications for current changes happening in world mission and the growth of Christianity. 

Global Pentecostalism - The New Face of Christian Social Engagement

Donald E. Miller And Tetsunao Yamamori

The Introduction

The introduction gives a rational for the project and research behind the book. The authors argue that while they are personally coming from a very different background, Pentecostalism is a worldwide phenomenon that is worth attention. The focus of their research was on a movement within Pentecostalism that the authors call Progressive Pentecostalism. These are charismatic and “Spirit-filled” christians who are heavily involved in social issues. The authors postulate that this increasingly growing and maturing distinctive of Pentecostalism is proving to be a critical force for change in many troubled societies. 

Chapter One

Chapter 1 gives an overview of the worldwide trends in Pentecostalism as a movement. They explain that the movement has many different variations–some are described as ecstatic and other-worldly, others as prosperity driven–all of which seem to be maturing towards a more balanced position of social involvement. The authors discount that secularization thesis, explaining that Pentecostalism is growing rapidly among the middle class and the engagement of religious practices occur in groups holding spirituality close the center of the community. The authors contend that “the realm of the Spirit should be taken seriously in trying to understand what motivates people”. 38 

Chapter Two

The assumption underlying holistic ministry is that it is impossible to divorce moral and spiritual needs from physical and economic needs. 62

The two are inextricably linked. As already indicated, many Pentecostals we interviewed said it is wrong to preach to people about the state of their soul when they are  hungry, homeless, or ill. These same individuals argue, however, that simple meeting people’s physical needs seldom provides a long-term solution to their problems. When the food or medicine stops, they often are back in the same condition as when the charity was first being offered. 62

The hallmark of Progressive Pentecostals, however, is precisely their attempt to maintain a holistic view of the people served in their various social ministries. 64

In many ways, Pentecostals are the “new kids” on the block. In the last decade, they have started to move out of their otherworldly bunkers and into the world. This is an emergent phenomenon. Not all Pentecostals are engaging their communities in acts of compassion and service. there are many Pentecostal churches that are mired in legalism and prefer to pray for the salvation of the world rather than to transform it through their actions. on the other hand, some of the more creative programs that have evolved in the last decade have been implemented by Pentecostal churches. 

The major challenge for Pentecostals is whether they can move beyond and individualistic model of social service. 

One driver in this direction is faith-based NGOs, with many of them believing that the best way to give a future is to create a healthy community. 67

Individual charity is noble, but it needs to be married to an understanding of how social system work. 67

The authors believe that pentecostal christians are those that practice holistic ministry. 

Chapter Three

The authors refer to their encounter with the Holy Spirit or the presence of Christ. “Whatever the ontological reality of these encounters, the affective role they played is palpable. If one were to remove this element, it is doubtful that many individuals would have made the dramatic lifestyle changes they did. 86

The Christian communities function like an extended family. Also, communities are effective in transforming the libidinal energies of teens and young adults into the act of worship. The authors claim that this may be the unique genius of Pentecostalism. 87

The authors also refer to the contribution that Pentecostalism makes toward upward social mobility. Instead of spending 20-30% of their income on alcohol, it is spent on education, housing, and business activities. 87

Researchers have called this model “authoritative communities” in the lives of children. According to these studies, individuals who grow up outside the boundaries of parental authority and the moral demands of structured communities actually develop different neural pathways in the brain when compared with children who are reared in loving environments that provide age-appropriate moral guidance. Each program we visited focused on building character by surrounding children with loving affirmation while communicating to them that there are values that supersede individual want and desire. 97

The task of the church is to communicate a vision of human possibility and then serve as a vehicle for implementing this vision. 97

Chapter Four - Practicing the Faith

Two elements that are pervasive are unconditional love and supernatural intervention. In worship these dual elements were expressed very directly through physical touch. Their belief was that the Holy Spirit had entered the individual and was performing a process of spiritual transformation. 104

The authors are following what they call a new kind of Pentecostal; one that embrace the tradition of the power of the Holy Spirit and the emphasis on personal transformation, but they also engage the world around them. This emergent group reflect the maturation of the Pentecostal movement. It is no longer a backwater phenomenon of primarily lower-class people who need to create prohibitions against the material world… They are reexamining the life of Jesus and seeing that his teaching was often manifested in his healing ministry and compassion for the poor, prostitutes, and children. Some are are even discovering the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament in which the pursuit of justice is seen as a prerequisite to the practice of worship. 127

Chapter Five - Encounters with the Holy Spirit

The authors give a rationale and explain the role of worship in Pentecostal churches. 

The authors ask: Is there a connection between the Pentecostal style of charismatic worship and the creation of a civil society? 132

The authors claim that the root of Pentecostal social engagement is the experience of collective worship. It is the divine-human encounter that empowers people to help their immediate neighbor as well las engage in various community-building activities. It is also this encounter that humbles people, enabling them to be, in the view of believers, the “servant of others.” 132

Worship also has the potential to energize people. Rather than following their own self-interest, believers view themselves as agents of God, carrying out his will and desire for their lives. 

The authors agree with Emile Durkheim. The social function of religious ritual is to reinforce in  group members’ minds the values that unite them. 133

“Collective effervescence” in which their individuality falls away and they feel such union with the group that they come to believe that, indeed, there is “something more” than the sum of the individuals who are present. This “something more” is interpreted as God or the divine, although in reality Durkheim posited that it is merely the collective values of the group. 133

The sacred for Durkheim is utterly human: it is the collective sentiments that bind a group together. Therefore, religion has a functional reality, and it is important even if it does not have a metaphysical basis. 134 q

For Pentecostals, worship is an internal experience. It does not require a lot of external props. Hence, little attention seemed to be given to creating a mood through religious art or architecture. Music is important, but it is the music that the people make together. The building, if it exists, is merely the shell where the Holy Spirit reportedly comes to dwell. 136

The goal of worship is to take one from the profane world of everyday life into a sacred moment where one can touch God, and then back out to the profane world of work and institutional maintenance and construction. 139 This seems like a terrible thing to me. Why would it not create a sub-culture that is viewed as a higher form of existence. Why would the experience of worship not create a drug like effect that renders “the world” a depressing place to be? 

While Pentecostalism is frequently understood as a reversion to primitivism––and from a Western perspective that honors mind-body dualism, this interpretation makes sense––it is also possible to reverse the picture and argue that Pentecostalism is ironically postmodern rather than primitive. It encourages people to merge mind and body into a unified expression that honors emotional and physical expressions as integral elements of worship. 142

Unlike many forms of New Age religion, which are individualistic, Pentecostalism is simultaneously a communal experience and an individual encounter with the spiritual dimension. 

In Pentecostal worship, prayer becomes an occasion for collective experience, with the needs of individuals being raised up for the entire community’s consideration, and thanks being offered for common celebration. Prayer is a means of externalizing concern for others as well as communicating theological reflections to members of the community. At a purely personal level, prayer may also have a cathartic function, enabling individuals to voice feelings and concerns that otherwise would not find an audience, either human or divine. 145-146

The authors conclude the chapter by saying that to acknowledge the role of the Holy Spirit does not fit into any modern sociological theories of religion. However, it may actually explain a lot of things that standard social science theories do not explain. 159

Chapter Six - Born in the image of God

The authors emphasize that Pentecostals tend to experience upward social mobility in cultures where the opposite is generally the norm. They compare Pentecostal ethics with the well known phenomenon of Protestant ethics that teaches the believer is “honest and transparent in all personal and business relations, one works diligently at whatever God commands one to do, one is a responsible and loving spouse, and one acts compassionately toward all people, both within the Christian fold and outside of it, attempting to follow the example of Jesus…Consequently, Pentecostal converts who are not wasting their money on alcohol, drugs, and partying now have surplus capital that they can invest into their business or the education of family members. Furthermore, their businesses gain a reputation for honest transactions, and this in itself leads to a greater volume of exchange, since customers know that they will not be cheated. 165

The authors also note that financial gain is an unintended consequence of a changed life. “As individuals become more disciplined in their spiritual lives, they establish patterns that contribute to their work life and business activities. This new ethic, however, does not exist in a vacuum; it is supported by a number of associated factors that strengthen the link between Pentecostalism and economic advancement. 169

The authors also say that Pentecostalism is rooted in the priesthood of all believers. Everyone is of equal value in God’s sight. While church organizations may have an organizational hierarchy in which members have different callings, everyone has equal access to God. Anyone can pray in public; the Holy Spirit is available to everyone in equal measure. In fact, Pentecostalism has been one of the more egalitarian movements within Christianity. 177 This is the reason that Pentecostalism is highly democratic in nature. The democratic value that says everyone has the right to vote rests on the assumption that all people are equal regardless of race, income, or social background. Since everyone is equal in God’s sight, the vote of the poor should count the same as the vote of the wealthy. 178

There may be a parallel between the right to full participation by Christians in Pentecostal worship and the right of all citizens to participate in the democratic process. 178 q

In many ways Pentecostalism is a populist religion. 178

The authors conclude by stating that Pentecostalism is still missing an appropriate emphasis on social justice. 183

“Charismatic Christians focus on the individual and ignore the fact that these individuals live within a community that, in turn, is part of a larger society. The result is that they never get to the root of the problem, which in his view is structural. Consequently, religion may in fact function as an “opiate” at the individual level. 181

Chapter Seven

An explanation of how Pentecostal leadership is organized. Pentecostals tend to be led by very charismatic and authoritative personalities. However, lay people are empowered to move into ministry quickly. Most people are involved in a church because they believe that the leader has a god given vision and they want to be part of it. The authors feel that there is some benefit to benevolent autocratic rule. It gives churches a competitive advantage over congregations that are mired in bureaucracy. 185

Chapter Eight

The authors conclude by summarizing their thesis: “Pentecostal are increasingly engaged in community-based social ministries… There is an emergent movement within Pentecostal churches worldwide that embraces a holistic understanding of the Christian faith. Unlike the Social Gospel tradition of the mainline churches, this movement seeks a balanced approach to evangelism and social action that is modeled after Jesus’ example of not only preaching about the coning kingdom of God but also ministering to the physical needs of the people he encountered. This movement reflects the increasing maturation of Pentecostalism as it develops from being an other-worldy sect to a dominant force in reshaping global Christianity”.