# Pentecostalization of Global Christianity ## Intro In April 1906 a small, mostly Black congregation led by a one-eyed preacher named William J. Seymour began meeting in a run-down building on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. People there spoke in tongues, prayed for the sick, and worshiped across racial lines at a time when that was almost unheard of in America. Newspapers mocked it. Within a few years missionaries from that meeting had carried its message to every inhabited continent. A little over a century later, Pentecostal and charismatic Christians number in the hundreds of millions. Researchers count differently, so estimates vary, but a common figure is roughly a quarter of all the Christians in the world. Most of them live in Africa, Latin America and Asia, not in Europe or North America. Historians call this the *Pentecostalization* of global Christianity: the faith did not just grow, it grew in a Spirit-emphasizing, experience-rich, mostly non-Western form. This matters for apologetics because for most of the twentieth century educated opinion assumed religion was fading away. Karl Marx expected it to wither. Sociologists predicted that modern, educated, urban societies would leave faith behind. Instead, the fastest-growing kind of Christianity on earth is the kind that most loudly insists God still acts, speaks and heals today. That does not prove Christianity true. It does falsify a confident prediction that the critics of faith built their story on. Christians also read the movement against [Acts 2:17-18](/codex/acts-2-17-18/), where Peter quotes the prophet Joel: God will pour out his Spirit "upon all flesh." The early church already read "all flesh" as "all nations," and the present shape of world Christianity looks a great deal like that promise being worked out. ## In full The **Pentecostalization of global Christianity** names the twentieth- and twenty-first-century transformation in which (1) classical Pentecostalism, emerging from the Topeka (1901) and Azusa Street (1906-1909) revivals, spread worldwide within a generation; (2) charismatic renewal movements carried Pentecostal spirituality into the historic Protestant, Catholic and Anglican churches from the 1960s; (3) independent and indigenous "neo-charismatic" churches multiplied across the Global South; and (4) the demographic center of Christianity shifted southward, so that the typical Christian of the twenty-first century is more likely to be an African, Latin American or Asian believer in a Spirit-emphasizing congregation than a European in a state church. The page treats the movement historically (origins, the early Oneness split, the three waves), demographically (growth estimates and their limits, with the Pew Research Center's 2006 *Spirit and Power* survey and Philip Jenkins' *The Next Christendom* as anchor sources), sociologically (David Martin, Jenkins, Harvey Cox, Peter Berger and the collapse of the classic secularization thesis), theologically (the Joel-Acts promise and its patristic reading), and apologetically (what the data does and does not prove, and how it bears on [New Atheism](/codex/new-atheism/) and [Secular Humanism](/codex/secular-humanism/)). ## Origins ### Topeka, 1901 Pentecostal historians usually begin with Charles Fox Parham, a Holiness preacher who ran a small Bible school in Topeka, Kansas. In the first days of January 1901 a student there, Agnes Ozman, spoke in tongues, and Parham went on to teach that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. That doctrine became a defining mark of classical Pentecostalism. See [Tongues as Evidence of the Spirit](/codex/tongues-as-evidence-of-the-spirit/) for the exegetical debate. ### Azusa Street, 1906 **William J. Seymour** (1870-1922), born in Louisiana to formerly enslaved parents, heard Parham's teaching in Houston in 1905, reportedly from a seat outside the classroom door because of segregation. Invited to preach in Los Angeles early in 1906, he was locked out of the church that had called him over his teaching on tongues and began holding prayer meetings in a home on Bonnie Brae Street. In April 1906 participants began speaking in tongues, the crowds outgrew the house, and the meeting moved to a former church building at 312 Azusa Street, renamed the Apostolic Faith Mission. Features that marked the revival: - **Daily meetings for roughly three years** (1906-1909), often running from morning to late night, without a fixed order of service. - **Interracial worship.** Black, white, Latino and Asian worshipers prayed together under Black leadership. Frank Bartleman, an early participant and chronicler, famously remarked that at Azusa the color line was washed away. Critics, including Parham himself, attacked the racial mixing. - **Hostile press.** The *Los Angeles Times* ran a mocking front-page report describing a weird babel of tongues, published in mid-April 1906, the same week as the San Francisco earthquake, which many participants took as an apocalyptic sign. - **Missionary sending.** Seymour's paper, *The Apostolic Faith*, circulated by the tens of thousands, and Azusa visitors carried the message to Scandinavia, Britain, India, China, South Africa, Liberia and Latin America within a few years. Several of the largest Pentecostal bodies trace their spiritual origin to Azusa. Charles Harrison Mason, co-founder of the Church of God in Christ, received Spirit baptism there in 1907 and led COGIC into the Pentecostal movement. The Assemblies of God was organized at Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914 by ministers shaped by the same revival. ### The "New Issue" and the Oneness split (1913-1916) The young movement fractured almost immediately over the doctrine of God. At the 1913 Worldwide Camp Meeting at Arroyo Seco near Los Angeles, R. E. McAlister observed in a baptismal sermon that the apostles in Acts baptized in the name of Jesus rather than with the Trinitarian formula of [Matthew 28:19](/codex/matthew-28-19/). Frank Ewart and Glenn Cook rebaptized each other in Jesus' name in 1914, and the "New Issue" spread rapidly. In 1916 the Assemblies of God adopted a Trinitarian Statement of Fundamental Truths, and the Oneness ministers left to form their own bodies, the ancestors of today's United Pentecostal Church International and Pentecostal Assemblies of the World. The split matters for evaluating the movement. Pentecostal growth is not uniformly orthodox growth: Oneness Pentecostalism denies the Trinity and is treated in its own right at [Oneness Pentecostalism](/codex/oneness-pentecostalism/), [Trinity vs Oneness vs Modalism vs Arianism](/codex/trinity-vs-oneness-vs-modalism-vs-arianism/) and [Unitarian Oneness Binitarian Objection Defeater](/codex/unitarian-oneness-binitarian-objection-defeater/). The great majority of Pentecostals and charismatics worldwide are Trinitarian. ## The three waves Scholars commonly describe the movement in three overlapping streams. The labels are imperfect but useful. 1. **Classical Pentecostals.** Denominations born directly from the early revivals: the Assemblies of God, the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the Foursquare Church, the Apostolic Church, and their mission offspring. Brazil's Assemblies of God, planted by Swedish missionaries in 1911, grew into one of the largest Protestant bodies in the world. 2. **Charismatic renewal.** From about 1960, when Episcopal priest Dennis Bennett of Van Nuys, California, announced his experience of Spirit baptism, Pentecostal-style spirituality spread inside the historic churches. Catholic charismatic renewal began among students at Duquesne University in 1967 and became one of the largest renewal movements inside Roman Catholicism. Charismatics typically stayed in their own churches rather than joining Pentecostal denominations. 3. **Neo-charismatic or independent churches.** A vast, diverse category: African independent and initiated churches, Chinese house-church networks with charismatic features, Latin American independent churches, the Vineyard movement associated with John Wimber, and countless unaffiliated congregations. Many do not call themselves Pentecostal at all, which is one reason counts vary so widely. ## How big is it? The numbers and their limits Every figure here depends on definitions. Does a Catholic who attends a charismatic prayer group count? A Chinese house church with no denominational label? Surveys that ask whether people have spoken in tongues or witnessed healing produce different totals from surveys that count denominational members. With that caution stated: - **Pew Research Center, *Spirit and Power* (2006).** The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life surveyed ten countries (the United States, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, India, the Philippines and South Korea) and estimated that Pentecostals and charismatics together made up at least a quarter of the world's roughly two billion Christians, that is, something on the order of half a billion people. The survey found Pentecostal and charismatic believers especially concentrated in Latin America and Africa, and found that large shares of them reported having witnessed divine healings. - **Pew Research Center, *Global Christianity* (2011).** A later Pew report put Pentecostals and charismatics together at a little under 600 million, again about a quarter of all Christians. - **World Christian Database.** The Center for the Study of Global Christianity (Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary), using a broader definition that includes independent neo-charismatics, reports higher totals, in the range of several hundred million and rising. A responsible summary: Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity grew from essentially nothing in 1900 to somewhere around a quarter of the world's Christians by the early twenty-first century, the fastest expansion of any Christian movement in history. Estimates vary, and exact figures should be used cautiously. ## The southward shift **Philip Jenkins, *The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity* (2002; revised editions 2007 and 2011),** brought the demographic shift to wide attention. Jenkins argued that the center of gravity of Christianity has moved decisively from Europe and North America to Africa, Latin America and Asia; that the growing churches of the South tend to be theologically conservative, supernaturalist and biblically literalist by Western liberal standards; and that much of their growth is Pentecostal or charismatic in character. He predicted that by the mid-twenty-first century the typical Christian would be a woman living in a village in Nigeria or a favela in Brazil. Regional highlights: - **Africa.** Christianity in sub-Saharan Africa grew from a small minority in 1900 to several hundred million adherents, and by many counts Africa now holds more Christians than any other continent. Pentecostal and charismatic churches, together with African initiated churches, are among the fastest-growing parts of that growth: Nigeria's Redeemed Christian Church of God, Ghana's Church of Pentecost, and countless independent congregations. This is not simply a colonial import; Christianity has ancient African roots, which the codex treats at [Christianity in Africa](/codex/christianity-in-africa/), [African Christianity Pre-Colonial](/codex/african-christianity-pre-colonial/) and [Ethiopian Orthodox Church](/codex/ethiopian-orthodox-church/). - **Latin America.** Historically almost entirely Catholic, the region saw Pentecostal Protestantism grow from a tiny minority to a substantial share of the population in countries such as Brazil, Guatemala and Chile over the late twentieth century. At the same time, Catholic charismatic renewal spread within the Catholic majority. - **Asia.** South Korea's Yoido Full Gospel Church, founded by David Yonggi Cho, became widely cited as the largest single congregation in the world. In China, Christianity grew dramatically after the end of the Cultural Revolution, much of it in house churches with charismatic features; estimates of the number of Chinese Christians range widely, from several tens of millions to around a hundred million. India, Indonesia and the Philippines also have large Pentecostal and charismatic populations. The Chinese case is especially striking because it followed the most aggressive attempt in modern history to eradicate religion. See [State Atheism Regimes (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot)](/codex/state-atheism-regimes-stalin-mao-pol-pot/). ## Sociological readings ### David Martin The British sociologist **David Martin** (*Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America*, 1990; *Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish*, 2002) was among the first major scholars to take the movement seriously. His central readings: - Pentecostalism is a **voluntary, lay-led, portable** form of faith that thrives among the mobile poor, migrants moving from villages to cities, and people outside established structures. - It functions as a **free social space**: in a congregation, a poor man or woman can preach, lead, organize and acquire skills denied them elsewhere. - It often produces **moral discipline and family reform**, especially by redirecting men away from drinking, gambling and machismo toward household responsibility, with measurable effects on families' economic fortunes. - Martin repeatedly compared it to **early Methodism** in England and America, another enthusiastic, lay-driven, Spirit-emphasizing revival that grew among the working poor and reshaped a society from below. ### Philip Jenkins Jenkins frames the movement within a broader global argument: Western observers who equate Christianity with declining European churches are looking at the wrong continent. Southern Christianity is growing, young, supernaturalist and missionary-minded, and in coming decades it will increasingly shape the global church, including through migration back into Europe and North America. ### Harvey Cox and Peter Berger: two notable reversals - **Harvey Cox** of Harvard had celebrated religion's retreat in *The Secular City* (1965). Thirty years later, in *Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twenty-First Century* (1995), he argued that the expected secular age had not arrived and that Pentecostalism was the most dynamic religious movement of the century. - **Peter Berger**, once a leading theorist of secularization, publicly revised his view. In *The Desecularization of the World* (1999), which he edited, he argued that the world as a whole was as furiously religious as ever, with Western Europe and a thin Western-educated elite as the main exceptions. He cited evangelical and Pentecostal expansion as a prime example. ## Apologetic relevance ### The secularization thesis did not hold The classic secularization thesis held that modernization (urbanization, education, science, rising wealth) would steadily erode religious belief worldwide. [Karl Marx](/codex/karl-marx/) expected religion to disappear when the social conditions that produced it were removed, and much twentieth-century sociology assumed a softer version of the same trajectory. The [New Atheism](/codex/new-atheism/) of the 2000s and [Secular Humanism](/codex/secular-humanism/) generally narrate religion as a holdover in retreat before reason. The global data do not fit that story: 1. **Religion did not decline globally; in many regions it grew.** The fastest-growing form of Christianity is the most supernaturalist one, the opposite of what the thesis predicted for modernizing societies. 2. **Growth came through urbanization, not despite it.** Pentecostalism spread fastest in the very megacities of Lagos, São Paulo, Seoul and Manila where modernization was most intense. 3. **Leading secularization theorists revised their own views** (Berger, Cox), which is unusual intellectual honesty and strong evidence the data were not marginal. 4. **The Western European exception became the thing needing explanation**, rather than global faith being the anomaly. ### What this does and does not prove Honest deployment needs limits: - **Growth is not proof of truth.** Islam has also grown; so have other movements. The argument is defensive, not a direct proof: it removes the claim that history is carrying humanity away from faith. It is a corrective to a sociological prophecy, not a demonstration of the resurrection. - **Not all growth is orthodox.** Oneness theology, extreme prosperity teaching, and authoritarian personality-led ministries all exist within the broad movement. Pentecostals themselves are often the sharpest critics of these excesses. - **Experience must be tested.** Scripture commands both openness and discernment: "Quench not the Spirit; despise not prophesyings; prove all things; hold fast that which is good" ([1 Thessalonians 5:19-21](/codex/1-thessalonians-5-19-21/), ASV), and "believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God" ([1 John 4:1](/codex/1-john-4-1/), ASV). The classic Protestant treatment of how to test revival is Jonathan Edwards' *Religious Affections* (1746), written in the aftermath of the First Great Awakening; see [Jonathan Edwards](/codex/jonathan-edwards/) and [Christian Discernment](/codex/christian-discernment/). Granting those limits, the movement still bears on several live arguments: the [Argument from Religious Experience](/codex/argument-from-religious-experience/) (hundreds of millions report direct encounters with God), the [Argument from Transformed Lives](/codex/argument-from-transformed-lives/) (Martin's documentation of moral and family reform among converts), and the "Christianity is the white man's religion" objection, which collapses when the typical Christian is African, Latin American or Asian (see [Black Christian Agency](/codex/black-christian-agency/)). ## Acts 2:17-18 and the "all flesh" reading Peter interpreted the outpouring at [Pentecost](/codex/pentecost/) as the fulfillment of Joel's prophecy ([Acts 2:16-21](/codex/acts-2-16-21/); [Joel 2:28-29](/codex/joel-2-28-29/)): > And it shall be in the last days, saith God, I will pour forth of my Spirit upon all flesh: And your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, And your young men shall see visions, And your old men shall dream dreams: Yea and on my servants and on my handmaidens in those days Will I pour forth of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. ([Acts 2:17-18](/codex/acts-2-17-18/), ASV) Three observations on the text and its reception: 1. **"This is that."** Peter says the Joel promise is being fulfilled at Pentecost itself ([Acts 2:16](/codex/acts-2-16-21/): "this is that which hath been spoken through the prophet Joel"). The "last days" began with the coming of the Spirit after Christ's ascension. Any later outpouring is the continuing extension of that one fulfillment, not a second, separate one. 2. **"All flesh" means across every human boundary.** The promise names sons and daughters, young and old, servants and handmaidens: age, sex and social class are all crossed. Peter extends it "to all that are afar off" ([Acts 2:39](/codex/acts-2-39/)), and Jesus had already set the horizon "unto the uttermost part of the earth" ([Acts 1:8](/codex/acts-1-8/), ASV). 3. **The Fathers read it as all nations.** Irenaeus took the promise to mean the Spirit sent to the whole human race: > The God, therefore, who did promise by the prophet, that He would send His Spirit upon the whole human race, was He who did send; and God Himself is announced by Peter as having fulfilled His own promise. (Irenaeus, *Against Heresies* III.12, ANF 1, PDF p. 343) Tertullian glossed the same verse in one phrase: > Of what promise? That which was made through Joel: "In the last days will I pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh," that is, on all nations. (Tertullian, *Against Marcion* V, ANF 3, PDF p. 360) **Two Christian readings of the modern movement.** Many Pentecostals read their movement as a "latter rain," a renewed end-time outpouring of the same Spirit given at Pentecost, and see in its spread among the poor of every nation a vivid image of Joel's "all flesh." Christians with cessationist convictions affirm the Pentecost fulfillment but deny that the sign gifts continue in the same form, and they attribute the growth to ordinary gospel preaching rather than to restored apostolic gifts. Both sides can agree on the more modest point the data support: the multinational, multiethnic church that now exists looks much more like the "great multitude, which no man could number, out of every nation and of all tribes and peoples and tongues" ([Revelation 7:9](/codex/revelation-7-9/), ASV) than the European Christendom that secularization theorists expected to be the faith's last home. ## See also - [Pentecost](/codex/pentecost/), the Acts 2 event the movement is named after - [Oneness Pentecostalism](/codex/oneness-pentecostalism/), the anti-Trinitarian branch that split off in 1913-1916 - [Tongues as Evidence of the Spirit](/codex/tongues-as-evidence-of-the-spirit/), the initial-evidence doctrine examined - [Christianity in Africa](/codex/christianity-in-africa/), the deep African roots of the faith now growing fastest there - [African Christianity Pre-Colonial](/codex/african-christianity-pre-colonial/), Christianity in Africa before European colonialism - [Black Christian Agency](/codex/black-christian-agency/), answering the "white man's religion" charge - [Karl Marx](/codex/karl-marx/), whose prediction of religion's disappearance the global data falsify - [New Atheism](/codex/new-atheism/), the movement whose secularization narrative the data contradict - [Secular Humanism](/codex/secular-humanism/), the worldview that expected faith to recede before reason - [State Atheism Regimes (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot)](/codex/state-atheism-regimes-stalin-mao-pol-pot/), why Chinese church growth after Mao is so striking - [Argument from Religious Experience](/codex/argument-from-religious-experience/), the experiential argument the movement feeds - [Argument from Transformed Lives](/codex/argument-from-transformed-lives/), conversion and moral reform as evidence - [Christian Discernment](/codex/christian-discernment/), testing spiritual experience by Scripture - [Jonathan Edwards](/codex/jonathan-edwards/), the classic Protestant theologian of revival and its discernment - [Pneumatology](/codex/pneumatology/), the doctrine of the Holy Spirit - [Church History](/codex/church-history/), parent hub ## Further reading - Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, *Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals* (2006) - Pew Research Center, *Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population* (2011) - Philip Jenkins, *The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity* (2002; 3rd ed. 2011) - David Martin, *Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America* (1990); *Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish* (2002) - Harvey Cox, *Fire from Heaven* (1995) - Peter L. Berger, ed., *The Desecularization of the World* (1999) - Allan Anderson, *An Introduction to Pentecostalism* (2004; 2nd ed. 2014) - Vinson Synan, *The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition* (1997)
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What was the Azusa Street Revival?** A revival that began in April 1906 in Los Angeles under William J. Seymour, a Black Holiness preacher, first in a home on Bonnie Brae Street and then at 312 Azusa Street. It ran daily for about three years, featured speaking in tongues and prayer for healing, worshiped across racial lines, and sent missionaries worldwide. Most historians treat it as the launching point of the global Pentecostal movement. **Q: How many Pentecostal and charismatic Christians are there in the world?** Estimates vary with definitions, but a common figure is roughly a quarter of the world's Christians. The Pew Forum's 2006 *Spirit and Power* survey put Pentecostals and charismatics at at least a quarter of about two billion Christians, and a 2011 Pew report counted a little under 600 million. Broader counts from the World Christian Database run higher. **Q: Why is Christianity growing in Africa, Latin America and Asia?** Scholars point to several factors: Pentecostal and charismatic churches are lay-led, portable and suited to people moving from villages to cities; they offer community, dignity and leadership roles to the poor; they address felt needs such as healing and spiritual protection directly; and converts often report deep moral and family change. Christians add that the growth fits the promise of the Spirit poured out on "all flesh" ([Acts 2:17-18](/codex/acts-2-17-18/)). **Q: Does the growth of Pentecostalism disprove the secularization thesis?** It falsifies the strong version, which predicted that modernization would steadily erode religious belief worldwide. Faith grew fastest in rapidly urbanizing societies, and leading theorists such as Peter Berger and Harvey Cox revised their earlier views. It does not by itself prove Christianity true; it removes the claim that history is carrying humanity away from faith. **Q: Is Oneness Pentecostalism the same as Pentecostalism?** No. Oneness Pentecostalism split from the wider movement in 1913-1916 over the "New Issue," teaching baptism in Jesus' name only and denying the Trinity. Most Pentecostal and charismatic Christians worldwide are Trinitarian. See [Oneness Pentecostalism](/codex/oneness-pentecostalism/). **Q: What does Acts 2:17 mean by "all flesh"?** It means the Spirit is given across every human boundary: sons and daughters, young and old, servants and handmaidens, and, as Peter adds, "all that are afar off" ([Acts 2:39](/codex/acts-2-39/)). The early church read it as all nations; Tertullian glossed "all flesh" simply as "on all nations." The fulfillment began at Pentecost and continues as the gospel reaches every people. **Q: Is the growth of a religion evidence that it is true?** Not on its own. Many movements have grown, and Christians should not use numbers as a proof. The growth matters apologetically as a defeater for the claim that modern people inevitably abandon faith, and as a body of testimony relevant to arguments from religious experience and transformed lives.