Signs and Wonders

FOREWORD Since I am what many Pentecostals would call an "outsider" to their cultures and theologies, I have to introduce myself. For over fifty years I have been teaching and writing books and articles about Christianity (and sometimes other faiths). Most of the research and writing has dealt with North American Christianity, and includes some accounts of the rise and development of Pentecostalism and various charismatic movements. More recently my attention turned to a larger scene as I wrote a smallish book, The Christian World: A Global History. In the latter chapters of the book, as sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America became the focus, Pentecostalism-though I had to treat it all too briefly-showed up as a face of the future of much of Christianity. One cannot deal fairly with twenty-first century Christian history without giving an ever-greater place to Pentecostalism. Dazzled as I am by stories of Pentecostal growth and success, I remain outside the movement. Being the "other" at many kinds of Christian gatherings is not a new situation. There are 38,000 Christian denominations at latest account, but every few minutes that number changes. While many of these denominations represent families of churches or are parts of coalitions, councils, or partnerships, the number of Christian phenomena remains almost incomprehensibly huge. When I attended and reported on the Second Vatican Council, though I share the basic faith and the creeds and stories, I was a "non-Catholic" presence. In the Eastern world, the Orthodox think of me as "the other," and, vice versa I have to add. When I am part of a convention or congress self-labeled "Evangelical," I get introduced as "this year's non-Evangelical representative." I respond by noting that ordinarily I am the only person in the room who belongs to a church body with the word "Evangelical" in it-the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. That may be more autobiography than you need or want, but I hope those paragraphs help set the stage for what follows, and can serve as a kind of invitation to an audience that does not share all the presuppositions of the actors on stage. Similarly, I hope that those readers who are Pentecostal will remember that their word and world and workings need translation-which is what Paul Alexander's book offers-if that audience is to make some sense of Pentecostalism. My guide in these matters is the philosopher Spinoza, who wrote that when he set out to understand complex phenomena, he made a sedulous effort not to laugh, not to cry, not to denounce, not to judge, but to understand. In that spirit I have read much Pentecostal literature, met with Pentecostal scholars, attended gatherings, always sympathetically, but never to the point that I am led to shared convictions. Perhaps some winced when I described myself as an "outsider." The Pentecostal reach, scope, and mission is generous and expansive, and in many ways it may not want to condemn anyone to outsiderhood or the status of the stranger. One can almost hear a hearty "y'all come!" from Pentecostals and a quiet narrative base invitation from Professor Alexander. What I meant by stressing the "stranger" status is to remind readers of the hermeneutical situation. By hermeneutics here is meant an endeavor to understand a phenomenon-and Pentecostalism is certainly a phenomenon!-by observing carefully, parking one's presuppositions at the door insofar as that is possible-and by being aware of how such differing presuppositions color what is said and done. To take an illustration of ecumenical importance. Christians believe in baptism-I am speaking of what Pentecostals would call "the first baptism," with a second one to follow-but they bring different interpretations of the biblical narratives, commands, and promises. Give all the biblical texts that allude to baptism to a Christian from an infant-baptizing community on one hand and the same text to one who believes that only older children and adults should be baptized by immersion. Give the same text to believers in "Catholic" and "mainline" Protestant traditions who baptize in various forms, though always with water. Have some of each attend the same seminary, the same conferences, the same gatherings, and let them then converse. A year goes by, and then a lifetime. Some from either camp may convert to the other, and all will profit from joint study. But assumptions that participants bring color what they find and how they interpret it. It is not that only one set is prejudiced and the other not. Nor, let me hasten to add, is there seldom movement from one camp to another, though conversions do occur; how else could Pentecostal movements gain new millions, not all of them babies! It is urgent that Christians everywhere work (and are graced) to understand "the other." In their various bodies they make up one-third of the population of the world, and pray and engage in mission to gain more to the fold. If they are ignorant of each other, mistrustful of others, unwilling to keep each other in prayer, grieve at the losses of others, or fail to celebrate the joys and victories of others, they harm the Christian cause and stand in the way of the movement of the spirit. Does this spirit of understanding and welcome undercut the efforts to clarify and expound the faith? Do friendly reaches across boundaries mean that conviction has to be lessened, and that everything has to turn soft and mushy? Not at all. Whoever confesses participation in the Body of Christ, and who celebrates "one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all" can turn his or her back on others or fail to accept the gift and share the tasks with others, misses out on so much and thwarts the movement of the spirit. A committed Lutheran, I am also a committed ecumenist. Some would say that it is important to draw boundaries. We all know, tragically, that there are boundaries between and among Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals. These can become barriers on both and all sides of these sects, and schisms, spite, and even hatred can rule. Asked why I am curious about Pentecostalism, am awed by its appeal (especially in the "poor world," where growth is so impressive), and beguiled by the diversity it represents, I answer, "for the same reason I am interested and hope to feel welcome in the circles of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and other parts of the church which are not my natural home." So I urge the reading of Paul Alexander's Signs and Wonders as a second-best introduction to Pentecostalism, the first being "being there." He offers a clear narrative line, issues helpful explanations, and gives something of the experience one recognizes at Pentecostal events or in Pentecostal ventures. While I have studied the Pentecostal experience as it has been analyzed by biblical scholars, theologians, philosophers, historians, psychologists, anthropologists, phenomenologists, and liturgiologists-what a cluster of scholarly "sects" we have engendered and enjoyed-most of them keep the reader or observer at a distance. They tend to be "objective" and "reductionist ," meaning that they "reduce" what they are studying to something else. (So Pentecostalism is reduced to something being explicable as a movement of the poor or, formerly, the uneducated, or the psychologically needy.) Alexander is not "objective," though he is fair-minded, and he is not a "reductionist ," because he takes Pentecostalism seriously on its members' own terms. That is why one may learn, or why I learned, much from it. Not that I left my analytical hat and skeptical spectacles in the next room as I read. "Try the spirits!" is a biblical command and an injunction to historians, who are not to be gullible, nor to accept every conflicting thing because somebody utters it or claims it. So I have to say that I winced in some stories, winked when some explanations asked too much of me, kept my fingers crossed as I turned pages-and yet was strangely moved and, again, figuratively taken by the hand and walked through Pentecostalism in the Bible, in Christian history, around the globe. The book is simple but not simplistic, moving as it does between technical subjects made comprehensible and obvious topics rendered subtly. In a couple of cases the author talks about Pentecostal swindles or scandals; there have been enough of these to embarrass the movement. Still, when hundreds of millions of Christians are part of it, one has to expect some shocks. Think of the Catholic-clergy sexual scandals, also a blight on a part of the church which numbers a billion faithful and semi-faithful. In a couple of cases he seems unconvinced of the authenticity when something drastically beyond the norm occurs, as in the case of some healing. Yet at other times he reports sympathetically and shows that he regards a phenomenon as valid and compelling. He is especially good at accounting for Pentecostal surges and successes. I might have liked some more attention to the works of mercy, and sometimes of justice, which characterize Pentecostal congregational and individual lives in many places. Maybe they'll receive their due in a Volume II. For those of us who keep our guard up as we hear extravagant claims, it is valuable to read someone who drops his guard. In the nineteenth century it was said of a skeptical modernist theologian that it is frustrating to be told in advance what to believe. Alexander does not frustrate, and allows the believers to speak for themselves as they witness to and manifest what will strike fair-minded "other" Christians as signs of the Spirit.  
Martin E....