I defended my dissertation one week before the pandemic shutdown. Five years of focused work finally concluded. The plan was to take some time, perhaps work on turning my research …
Category: Bible & Theology
You Don’t Have the Right! Religious Freedom and COVID-19
If the pandemic has taught us one thing, it is that everyone is keen to protect what is theirs. We hoard toilet paper, stockpile ammo, and demand our rights. Yet, perhaps this pandemic is also an opportunity for some Christians to relearn and relive a core gospel truth: that real freedom only comes when we cease fighting for ourselves and start living for others.
Pentecostal History 101 : Tongues
Pentecostal History 101 is a thematic dive into the history of the pentecostal movement. Each post picks up a historical theme and asks what that history means for today. At …
Basics: Have we gotten evangelism and missions wrong?
With mission trip season in full bloom, we’d be wise to step back and survey Pentecostal-Christian faith related to evangelism and missions. What is the “Great Commission” and why do …
Global Pentecostalism – Of, For & By the Poor: Final Thoughts
Harvey Cox and others have observed that Pentecostalism’s gift to the world was the gift of the poor. Perhaps something of the inverse can also be said: A gift from the poor to the world has been the Pentecostal movement.
Basics: Palm Sunday
My next few posts are dedicated to Christian basics like Palm Sunday (today’s topic), the validity of tithing, evangelism, and inter-religious interaction. Communal Beginning with Palm Sunday, we are presented …
Global Pentecostalism – Of, For & By the Poor: Challenges and Developments
Here, I will divide my observations into two categories. First, those challenges that I see as primarily internal to the Pentecostal movement and then I will move finally to the issue of the so-called “prosperity gospel”.
Global Pentecostalism – Of, For & By the Poor: Social Action
For most Pentecostals, social responsibility has been primarily limited—with some notable exceptions—to the spheres of mutual help and some forms of social and material assistance to neighbors in need. But in other situations, Pentecostal efforts at social transformation has led to the defense of human rights and other forms of social and political activism.
Global Pentecostalism – Of, For & By the Poor: The Option of the Poor
It has perhaps become something of a simplistic quip or cliché, but the observation has been made by several authors[10] that in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s, while liberation theology there developed its “preferential option for the poor”, the poor opted for the Pentecostal churches.
Global Pentecostalism – Of, For & By the Poor: People of the Book
Pentecostals take quite literally Jesus’ injunction to be filled with the Spirit and to be witness to the ends of the earth