Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture

Abstract

Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture Karla Poewe, ed. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. xiv + 300 pp. $34.95 (cloth) Reviewer: Joan B. Townsend University of ManitobaFocussing on charismatics, this excellent interdisciplinary collection addresses both Pentecostalism and Charismatic Christianity as global movements, and deals with the history, spread and characteristics of both. Several underlying themes run through the book: (1) Charismatic Christianity is global. Not merely a Western export, it has evolved in a number of places and is experiential, idealistic, biblical, and oppositional (p. xii); (2) The concept of metonym facilitates analysis. Poewe defines metonym as seeing a simple happening as an aspect of a whole that caused it, even when the whole itself is but tacitly known (p. 235); (3) Charismatics and Pentecostals emphasize the experience of Gifts of the Holy Spirit (e.g., healing, speaking in tongues), thus validating the belief that God is present; and (4) The relation of Pentecostals to Charismatics is worthy of examination.Poewe's Introduction is particularly useful, enabling the reader to see immediately the overall organization and interrelations of the individual studies included in the compilation. She not only provides a synopsis of the papers, but places them in the broader context of the book, and critiques various points raised by their authors. She also provides a history of the threads of the Charismatic movement in Noah America and elsewhere, noting that the Charismatic movement is not new (as of the 1960s), but rather has roots in established traditions. In the Methods and Models section, Andre Droogers addresses problems related to the degree to which researchers and their subjects regard religious experiences as normal, and he presents a model for studying religious phenomena without merely explaining them away. Irving Hexham and Karla Poewe, studying South African Charismatic churches, critique methods of studying Charismatics that often result in biased results. Anthropological methods of participant-observation of interactional networks, combined with life histories of practitioners, they argue, will provide a better understanding of the movement than survey-type questionnaires. Parallel inventions and diffusion, they note, should also be considered when studying Charismatic origins.In section 2, Regional Overviews and Variations, David Martin carries on a theme, found throughout the book, that religion has been mistakenly taken to be of little significance. In his descriptive analysis of the development of Evangelical and Charismatic Christianity in Latin America since the 1950s, he stresses its significance as a gauge for disintegration and a form of popular reorientation which carries potentially major implications for society, culture, economy and politics (p. 74). Mark Mullins continues the global and syncretic focus by examining two aspects of Korean Pentecostalism: (1) the synthesis of Korean shamanism and folk religion with Pentecostalism, and (2) the missionization to Japan by Korean Pentecostals. …

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