cover image To the Ends of the Earth: 
Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity

To the Ends of the Earth: Pentecostalism and the Transformation of World Christianity

Allan Heaton Anderson. Oxford Univ., $24.95 (304p) ISBN 978-0-19-538642-4

A professor at the University of Birmingham offers a comprehensive historical assessment of the phenomenal rise of global Pentecostalism. A former Pentecostal minister, Anderson nonetheless gives a fair and at times critical assessment of a movement that began little more than a hundred years ago and has since grown to include more than 600 million adherents. His inclusive definition of Pentecostals as those who emphasize “an ecstatic experience of the Spirit and a tangible practice of spiritual gifts” makes room for Charismatics and members of independent churches. Unlike other historians, he argues the Azusa Street Revival may not have been the first, and points to contemporaneous revivals in India and Korea that shared many Pentecostal characteristics. The book mentions a dizzying number of historical figures. Overall, it offers a judicious assessment of a movement that emphasizes healing, miracles, and evangelism “to the ends of the earth,” while raising leaders who have at times lagged in education or training and promulgated controversial “prosperity theology” teachings and flamboyant lifestyles. (Feb.)