A Liberating Spirit Pentecostals and Social Action in North America

by Wilkinson, Michael; Studebaker, Steven M.

• ISBN13: 9781608992836
• ISBN10: 1608992837
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-09-01
• Publisher: Pickwick Pubns

Summary

The historical ambivalence among Pentecostals about their relationship to culture and society needs evaluation. How do we understand Pentecostal engagement with society, and how are Pentecostals in North America engaging issues of race, class, gender, and ecology? What theologically motivates North American Pentecostals to respond to social issues? What categories best explain Pentecostal responses to social issues in North America? How do they compare to Pentecostal responses elsewhere? Recently, scholars of global Pentecostalism have proposed that the experience of the Spirit among Pentecostals has elicited the development of a Pentecostal "theology of liberation," which has implications for understanding Pentecostal responses to social issues. These projects primarily explore the Pentecostal response to cultural issues in areas outside of North America and especially focus on Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This volume assesses whether the categories of social liberation applied to non-Western Pentecostalism characterize Pentecostalism in North America. Is there evidence of a Pentecostal "theology of liberation" that explains Pentecostal engagement in North America? Do social-liberation categories fit the North American Pentecostal responses to social issues or are others more suitable? These and other important questions about the relation between liberation theology and North American Pentecostalism are thoroughly explored in this important collection of essays.

Author Biography

Michael Wilkinson is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Religion in Canada Institute at Trinity Western University. His is the author of The Spirit Said Go (2006) and the editor of Canadian Pentecostalism (2009). Steven M. Studebaker is Assistant Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology at McMaster Divinity College. He is the editor of Defining Issues in Pentecostal Theology (Pickwick, 2008).

Table of Contents

Series Preface	p. vii
List of Contributors	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xiii
Pentecostal Social Action: An Introduction	p. 1
Issues of Race and Ethnicity
Recovering Black Theological Thought in the Writings of Early African-American Holiness-Pentecostal Leaders: Liberation Motifs in Early African-American Pentecostalism	p. 23
The Rhetoric of Pentecostal Racial Reconciliation: Looking Back To Move Forward	p. 53
Pentecostalism among Canadian Aboriginal People: A Political Movement?	p. 85
Issues of Class
Waxing and Waning of Social Deprivation as a Model for Understanding the Class Composition of Early American Pentecostalism: A Theological Assessment	p. 113
Re-Visioning the Disinherited: Pentecostals and Social Class in North America	p. 136
Issues of Gender
Your Daughters Shall Prophesy (As Long as They Submit): Pentecostalism and Gender in Global Perspective	p. 161
Acts 29 and Authority: Towards a Pentecostal Feminist Hermeneutic of Liberation	p. 185
Issues of Ecology
Globalization and the Environment as Social Problem: Assessing a Pentecostal Response	p. 213
Looking the Wrong Way: Salvation and the Spirit in Pentecostal Eco-Theology	p. 231
Creation Care as "Keeping in Step with the Spirit"	p. 248
Name Index	p. 265
Subject Index	p. 271
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