Comparative research on world Christianity has proliferated in recent years. Two new edited volumes, Spirit and Power and Christian Higher Education, are welcome additions to this literature. The two books reflect the poles of the long-standing Christian balancing act of praying and worshipping with both "spirit" and "understanding" (1 Cor. 14:15). That each collection focuses on one of these goals reflects the difficulty of fully integrating heart and mind. The tone of the former volume is more optimistic than that of the latter. This difference may suggest that Christianity's prospects are stronger where the tension between spirit and understanding resolves in the direction of spirit.
Spirit and Power is primarily a narrative of growth, as reflected in the subtitle: The Growth and Global Impact of Pentecostalism. The book is organized thematically, using particular regions and countries as examples. The contents are weighted towards Latin America, with moderate consideration of Africa and Asia but little attention to North America, Europe, or Oceania. The collection begins with the historical origins of missionary expansion; seeks sociological explanations of Pentecostal growth; probes connections between Pentecostalism and politics, social engagement, transnational networks, gender, and power; and concludes with a contemporary global perspective informed by large-scale quantitative research. Section introductions clearly and concisely articulate the contributions of the following chapters and their relationship with each other and the section theme, as well as provide a narrative arc for the volume as a whole. The editors recruited a number of the foremost experts in their particular fields; the resulting book brings together in-depth case studies with broader reflections on the origins, engines, and trajectories of Pentecostal growth. Many of the insights reported are already familiar to scholars of Pentecostalism. This is in part because a majority of the volume's contributors have been quite prolific in disseminating their research findings. Nevertheless, this volume aids readers in navigating debates among scholars of Pentecostalism and in putting area studies together within a broader framework.
The volume begins with a now thoroughly documented observation: the Christian churches that are expanding the most rapidly worldwide tend to be Pentecostal, charismatic, or some other form of "renewalist"—in other words, churches that affirm the ongoing exercise of gifts of the Holy Spirit. These congregations privilege spiritual gifts such as supernatural healing and—contrary to persistent stereotypes—place relatively less emphasis on speaking in unknown tongues; as previous studies have similarly noted, divine healing and deliverance are recurrent themes in accounting for Pentecostal growth and vitality. The Pentecostals treated in this volume also fail to align with other stereotypes: they are not generally anti-medical or disproportionately poor, uneducated, or female compared to other religionists; Pentecostalism has neither been a great boon nor a hindrance to democracy, since many Pentecostals are "basically pro-democratic political novices." Poor people and women do, however, experience empowerment as Pentecostals engage in missions in ways that "neither require a great deal of money nor much formal education," and churches in less wealthy or powerful countries such as those in Africa act as "creators—not merely passive consumers—of contemporary Christian culture." Contrary to caricatures of "health-and-wealth" or "prosperity" preaching, many of the churches considered devote substantial resources to meeting the practical needs of poor people through social ministries—including mercy ministries, emergency services, education (especially day care and primary schools), counseling, medical assistance, economic development, training in the arts, and policy change.
From start to finish, the contributors to this collection argue that powerful demonstrations of Spirit matter more than disciplined education of understanding. The churches considered here are emphatically not those that are "today entrapped in various legalistic practices that place a premium on proper 'beliefs' (the 'fundamentals' of the Christian faith), deemphasizing religious experience." Indeed, "at the heart of vital Pentecostal and charismatic churches is religious experience, rather than formal liturgy, creedal statements, or abstract theological doctrines." And the types of "experiences" foregrounded do not merely involve positive emotional feelings (though emotionally charged music does play a significant role) but also (prominently) "supernatural healing," including people being "raised from the dead," and deliverance from "demons"—envisioned as literal, not metaphorical, spiritual beings. Chapters also note the importance for Pentecostal growth of missionaries and media (especially lower-cost print and radio), local pastors who belong to the same socioeconomic class as church members, dissatisfaction with other religious alternatives, and urbanization and globalization processes. As the introduction summarizes, "the simplest explanation for the growth of Pentecostalism is that it is outperforming the competition …. More hierarchical and mediated forms of religion have a difficult time competing with churches that have vibrant music, a compassionate community of caring people, visionary preaching, affirmation of one's dignity as a child of God, and life-changing encounters with the sacred." It is these life-changing encounters with the sacred, often through experiences of healing from sickness and deliverance from demons, that emerge as playing the most distinctive role in Pentecostalism as compared with other forms of Christianity.
The book's conclusion offers the relatively tame recapitulation that "taken together, the chapters in this volume would suggest that a combination of greater religious freedom and some form of a market economy that encourages individualism work together to create the social, political and economic contexts in which Pentecostalism thrives," though "in addition" Pentecostalism flourishes by maintaining "a place for the supernatural, in which miracles can, and often do, happen." But if such contextual factors largely explain Pentecostal growth, why has Pentecostalism not been more successful in North America, Europe, or Oceania, and why not devote more volume space to regional comparisons? Indeed, appendices report that more than a fifth (23 percent) of the U.S. population are renewalists, and 62 percent of U.S. Pentecostals (compared with 28 percent of other Christians) recount divine-healing experiences. The book might also have said more about Pentecostalism in Europe (Western and Eastern) and Oceania. For example, a single sentence describes the Embassy of God church (short for Embassy of the Blessed Kingdom of God for all Nations), founded by Nigerian Sunday Adelaja in Kiev, Ukraine, as the "largest church in Europe." This Pentecostal church boasts 20,000 members and sends missionaries to Western Europe, the United States, and India. Likewise, a solitary sentence references Hillsong Church in Australia. This Pentecostal megachurch attracts 30,000 attendees to annual conferences; sells millions of musical albums; and telecasts weekly services in 150 countries. These examples suggest a larger, even more global story of an emphasis on Spirit and Power fuelling the growth of world Christianity.
By contrast, Christian Higher Education privileges understanding over spirit. The book is both broader and narrower in scope than Spirit and Power, embracing not just Pentecostals but a spectrum of Protestants and Catholics, though focusing on a single theme. The book's subtitle, A Global Reconnaissance, encapsulates its cautiously exploratory rather than triumphalist tone. The volume is organized by region and country, rather than by theme, though recurring themes do emerge. The book proceeds from Africa to Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America (offering a short bibliography for Oceania). Sponsored by the International Association for the Promotion of Christian Higher Education with a grant from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, this book has a more overt agenda than Spirit and Power. Yet, this agenda appears to predispose the authors to self-criticism more than self-congratulation. There is a growth dimension to their story, since more than 30 percent of the 579 non-North American Christian universities surveyed were founded after 1980. But the authors also tell a declension narrative of the "secularization of religiously founded universities." One of the central problems interrogated is whether Christian universities can "serve the needs and goals of their Christian sponsors while also serving the interests of the government." The editors recruited an exceptionally diverse group of contributors, several of whom have academic positions in non-Western universities. The volume accordingly does not re-tread familiar terrain but uses its contributors' on-the-ground knowledge to present a wealth of new information and analysis.[1]
Christian Higher Education identifies global patterns and regional variations. Outside North America and Western Europe, the "main crisis in higher education worldwide is how to meet the huge and growing demand for a university education with anything resembling university-quality teaching and learning." Common challenges include inadequate funding, increasing student populations, lack of qualified faculty, and poor-quality facilities and instructional conditions. Christian universities have proliferated especially rapidly in Africa, with 46 new institutions emerging between 1990 and 2010. Since funding for private Christian universities in countries such as Nigeria and Kenya comes largely through school fees, there is pressure to admit unqualified paying students, and many classes are taught by part-time lecturers from secular public universities. Likewise in Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico, private schools have tended to be lower-quality and consumer-driven, focused on technical subjects. In Asian countries such as China and South Korea, government regulations have jeopardized the distinctively Christian identity of universities. Although on a global scale education is becoming increasingly privatized, Western European governments have retained strict state control of education, and state institutions have "abandoned their Christian identities." By contrast, post-Communist Eastern European governments have relaxed control of private institutions, facilitating the growth of Christian universities, and have, moreover, allowed Christianity to play a role in some state universities. Whereas Christian higher education is relatively unknown in Canada outside a narrow Christian subculture, there has been a "renaissance of Christian higher education" in the United States.
The book's excellent conclusion, which goes well beyond summary, draws large-scale inferences of an analytical as well as a prescriptive nature. The chapter identifies a common pattern: Christians, often members of religious orders or mission societies, "start a school for basic education and theological training"; as it blossoms into a university, the state nationalizes it and "Enlightenment-inspired secular rationalism" comes to predominate. Protestant universities have proven more susceptible to this progression than Catholic institutions. Notably, "not one Protestant-founded university anywhere in the world that was started before 1817 still proclaims a Christian identity." Although political secularization of nation-states has sometimes opened space for private Christian institutions, the two-part process of nationalization followed by secularization has "most often worked against Christian purpose and mission within universities." This has not, however, occurred through "some sort of natural or inevitable sociological pattern, but through the concerted actions of political and intellectual agents and agencies." The trend toward privatization has resulted in less state control, but also more pecuniary motivations and instrumentalization, or emphasis on technical skills, with Christian universities generally remaining "fallbacks" as opposed to first-choices for most students.
Christian Higher Education raises intriguing questions, especially when read alongside Spirit and Power. Both volumes recount a narrative of Christian institutions growing in number, size, and influence largely outside Western Europe and North America. Christian Higher Education observes that the "remarkable vigor and growth of Christianity in the global South and East is an obvious driver behind the rise of new Christian universities." It would be worthwhile to ask how the Pentecostal character of churches in the global South is affecting the nature of the universities being established, and the relative priority placed on higher education as compared with other concerns—that Southern Pentecostals may identify as more crucial to Christian mission. Although Pentecostal leaders in the global South may have relatively less formal theological training than Northern Christians, they are generally more theologically and morally conservative. Rather than adopting a defensive stance against the intellectual and social challenges of evolutionary science, biblical-historical criticism, and liberalizing social mores, Pentecostals in the global South appear to validate the facticity of biblical narratives through experiential demonstrations of miracles like those described in the Bible. The experiences of Christians described in Spirit and Power suggest that a solution to the secularization lamented by Christian Higher Education may be more a matter of Spirit and Power than of understanding.
1. Editor's note: See also Rick Ostrander, "The Next Revolution," in the May/June 2014 issue of Books & Culture, which touches on this book and another volume bearing on global Christian higher education.
Candy Gunther Brown is professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University. Among her recent books are Global Pentecostal and Charismatic Healing (Oxford Univ. Press) and Testing Prayer: Science and Healing (Harvard Univ. Press.
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