lousy one is Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement by Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori.Jenkins, who is credited with being the first to notice that the center of gravity of Christianity moved from the white western northern hemisphere to the non-white south (and Asia) a few years ago, here argues that Christians of the "Global South" don't just read the Bible differently than northern types, but read a different Bible. Passages and entire books which leave Northern Christians cold resonate powerfully with the life experiences of Southern Christians, who are familiar with famine, poverty, political oppression, animal sacrifice, polygamy, paganism and rumors of witchcraft. The Global South loves the Old Testament, especially books like Proverbs. In the New Testament, the Epistle of James is particularly beloved. Jenkins argues that the Bible has particular power for communities which have recently converted, especially if the Bible is translated into their language and is one of the first books they know - since they are "neo-literate," and still have the mindset of oral cultures.
The cases he discusses (mostly from Africa and Asia) are fascinating, and raise a lot of questions he carefully avoids addressing until the end, and then just barely. If Christianity will indeed be a primarily African and African-diaspora religion by the middle of this century, what does that mean? Should African and other Global South interpretations trump those of the more secularized but also more experienced North (more experienced also with Christianity, with understanding how it changes and doesn't over time)? He doesn't say so. It's hard to resist that argument that those people who read more of the Bible should have pride of place over those who leave aside much of it, but that doesn't mean that those who manage to take more of it literally - because their world is like that of the people of Israel and the early church - should have pride of place over those who read it figuratively or historically. Jenkins comes close to equating these two. And yet the challenge is real. How does one accept these changes in global Christianity and learn from them?
The other book - the lousy one - is an exercise in wishful thinking. Miller and Yamamori are Christian but not Pentecostal, and approach Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in the Global South as social scientists. They think they've discovered a new kind of Pentecostalism which they call Progressive Pentecostalism: instead of focusing exclusively on individual salvation (since Jesus is thought to be coming back any minute now), these Pentecostals are engaging in the needs of the world, taking care of each other and the needy. While they don't do anything as nerdy as listen to the theological claims of their research subjects the way Jenkins does, they commend something like what he finds:
a "holistic" understanding of salvation which doesn't distinguish between the salvation of individual souls and the care of their bodies and communities. Now all that's missing is political and social engagement..."Progressive Pentecostalism" makes Miller and Yamamori happy - it looks more like the kind of Christianity (liberal Protestantism) they are familiar with, and they can't help predicting that the rest of Pentecostalism will soon go that way too, though their evidence is still sketchy. (Jenkins on the other hand describes social outreach as a normal part of the Christianities of the Global South.) If Pentecostalism does indeed take up some of the causes abandoned by the withering away of liberal Protestantism and the eclipse of Liberation Theology, Miller's and Yamamori's kind of Christianity has a future! Their relief at this discovery is so palpable it undermines their argument.
What's annoying about their book is its vague assertion that the phenomenon of Pentecostalism shows that secular social scientists are "ideologues" for ignoring what they coyly call the "S" factor (is the spirit visible in Pentecostal life the [capital-S] Spirit?). Pentecostalism suggests to them that there are religious "realms of experience" which secular accounts of human nature don't take into account and can't explain. What's infuriating is not that they're making this argument, but that they are so wimpy about it - they hardly seem persuaded themselves. A case in point: [s]imply reducing the animation that occurs in ecstatic worship to what Émile Durkheim called collective effervescence … seems to us to be highly reductive, or at least a bit arrogant (219) Don't the words "or at least" imply that the argument is not excessively reductive? And the phrase "a bit arrogant" is no argument - it's a way of resisting an argument. (My students do it all the time when they can't find a flaw in an argument whose conclusion they don't like: "Hume is so arrogant!") In fact, Miller and Yamamori don't really show any need for a religiously-open social science:
[sociological accounts] fail to address the issue of whether individuals in the movement sometimes encounter a reality that is more than compensation for the trials of life or more than the ecstasy of group celebration. ... scholars within the social sciences often write as if they have offered comprehensive explanations when, in fact, sociological generalizations are just that—they are generalizations about trends and causation that avoid specific cases, which of course are where the Spirit operates (i.e., in deep encounters with individuals). (220-21)
"Of course" is another of my bugbears - it points as clearly as "obviously" or "plainly" or "simply" to a flaw or gap in the argument. Miller and Yamamori feel the Spirit at work "deep" in Pentecostalism, but are content for its workings to remain below the radar of secular social science. How very discreet of the Holy Spirit to leave our secular social scientific pieties intact even as it whispers our name. It'll change your life but none of your social scientist friends need ever know. Miller and Yamamoti claim too much for the Spirit and too little! Why bother?
Obviously (sic!) their argument gets me so upset because I am struggling with the same questions. It's easy to accuse others of lacking nerve when they don't make the argument you haven't the nerve to make yourself... I picked these books up hoping to be swayed, moved, turned around by the Spirit at work in global Christianity. It's harder than I realized, too many potentially mitigating factors. They do, however, show the excitement of the challenge of world Christianity (Jenkins) and the difficulty of really being changed by what one thinks one has learned from it (Miller and Yamamori).
