Pentecostal Imagination and the Retrieval of Identity

Pentecostal Imagination and the Retrieval of Identity
Author: Paul S. Baker
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2023-01-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 166674851X

How does identity survive the passage of time? How can we be sure that our church community in the present is a faithful representation of the originating community in the past? This book explores how Pentecostalism—the world’s fastest-growing expression of Christianity, since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century—can identify as the same community that birthed the church in the first century. A community that spans two millennia of church history presents numerous challenges, which raise crucial questions. In the case of Pentecostalism, these questions concern the criteria we might employ in order to recognize various instances of that community: both in the present, and throughout the past. The Pentecostal emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the founding force behind the early church suggests some exciting possibilities. By bringing together Pentecostal theology and hermeneutical philosophy, this volume develops a model which attempts to discern the Pentecostal Spirit from within history. Rather than arriving at a historical survey of various theologies of the Spirit, this book instead advances a historiography which is itself inherently Spirit-oriented: a pneumatology of history.

Prophecy and Politics in South African Pentecostalism

Prophecy and Politics in South African Pentecostalism
Author: Mookgo Solomon Kgatle
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 309
Release: 2024-01-29
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 3031491599

This book is an interdisciplinary study of the relationship between prophecy and politics in South African Pentecostalism. The role and the power of prophecy in enhancing the presence of politicians in the church square are unpacked through historical examples, as well as case studies of contemporary prophets. Solomon Kgatle argues that the influence of prophecy in politics has the potential to weaken the prophetic voice of the church in general and the Pentecostal movement in particular. He proposes a Pentecostal political theology of prophecy. This theology is developed by taking into cognizance the theoretical and theological frameworks of prophetic imagination and pneumatological imagination. In addition, this theology seeks a balance between prophecy and power and prophecy and sovereignty.

Pentecostal Imagination and the Retrieval of Identity

Pentecostal Imagination and the Retrieval of Identity
Author: Paul S. Baker
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 222
Release: 2023-01-27
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666748536

How does identity survive the passage of time? How can we be sure that our church community in the present is a faithful representation of the originating community in the past? This book explores how Pentecostalism--the world's fastest-growing expression of Christianity, since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century--can identify as the same community that birthed the church in the first century. A community that spans two millennia of church history presents numerous challenges, which raise crucial questions. In the case of Pentecostalism, these questions concern the criteria we might employ in order to recognize various instances of that community: both in the present, and throughout the past. The Pentecostal emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the founding force behind the early church suggests some exciting possibilities. By bringing together Pentecostal theology and hermeneutical philosophy, this volume develops a model which attempts to discern the Pentecostal Spirit from within history. Rather than arriving at a historical survey of various theologies of the Spirit, this book instead advances a historiography which is itself inherently Spirit-oriented: a pneumatology of history.

African Pentecostal Theology

African Pentecostal Theology
Author: Mookgo Solomon Kgatle
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2023-12-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666953679

African Pentecostal Theology: Modality, Disciplinarity, and Decoloniality explores research methodology, theological disciplines, and contextualization as important aspects in the process of studying Pentecostal theology in an African context. Mookgo Solomon Kgatle outlines different data collection and data analysis methods, including the skills of interpreting and presenting research findings in a responsible manner. This book illustrates that Pentecostal theology, given its pneumatological approach, goes beyond conventional theological disciplines in transdisciplinary research. The development of knowledge in African Pentecostal Theology should recognize African Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS), African oral and traditional cultures, and African indigenous languages to be relevant to Africans. Pentecostal theologians from different theological disciplines in Africa and globally will find this book a worthwhile read.

Sanctified Imagination

Sanctified Imagination
Author: Ivan L. Hartsfield
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2023-07-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666754331

The first of its kind, this seminal work charts the unlikely theological quest for Christian holiness by founder Charles Harrison Mason and the Wesleyan-Holiness Pentecostal tradition known as the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States. Through fresh research and critical analysis, this book challenges existing assumptions by scholars and reveals how little-known black renewal movements informed Mason’s theological understanding and that of the movement. The rich theological resources of this historically marginalized movement are not primarily accessible in academic journals, position papers, or theological treatises. Instead, these resources function as “lived religion,” where the theological presuppositions are embedded in primitive worship, ecstatic religious practices, and countercultural distinctives. By unpacking the “lived religion” of this self-professed sanctified church, this book explores how sanctification and the practice of Christian holiness shaped and empowered the COGIC, its people, and its practices in creative and profound ways—resulting in a radical holiness ethic that emerged from an inexhaustible exilic vitality with personal, social, and political implications. Given the challenge of Christian nationalism today, this book provides a framework that informs Christian identity and faithful living for the broader Christian community.

Toward an Anabaptist-Pentecostal Vision

Toward an Anabaptist-Pentecostal Vision
Author: Joseph C. L. Sawatzky
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2023-03-28
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 166673912X

What does Pentecostalism, the fastest-growing Christian expression worldwide, have to do with Anabaptism, whose Mennonite adherents have sometimes been called "the quiet in the land?" In this groundbreaking study, Joseph C. L. Sawatzky explores a mission history of North American Mennonites working with African Initiated and Pentecostal-type churches in southern Africa, illuminating points of divergence and convergence between Anabaptist and Pentecostal streams. Placing testimonies of African and North American participants in this history within a broader biblical and theological framework, this study proposes bases for an emerging Anabaptist-Pentecostal vision, with implications for the church, its leadership, and its witness in the world. This lively, interdisciplinary study will interest students of mission, interculturality, and the Christian faith itself.

Refuge Reimagined

Refuge Reimagined
Author: Mark R. Glanville
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Total Pages: 277
Release: 2021-02-16
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0830853820

Mark R. Glanville and Luke Glanville offer a new approach to compassion for displaced people: a biblical ethic of kinship. Challenging the fear-based ethic that often motivates Christian approaches, they demonstrate how this ethic is consistently conveyed throughout the Bible and can be practically embodied today.

The Dialogical Spirit II

The Dialogical Spirit II
Author: Amos Yong
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2024-09-05
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1666705284

The Dialogical Spirit II is a second collection of essays that demonstrates the dialectical contours of Amos Yong's critical pentecostal theology. It is a montage of constructive engagements with various thinkers and ideas in the promotion of theological plurality for the third millennium. With essays on Hegelian dialectics, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, pneumatic missiology, etc., voice is generated for the renewal of relationality and the revival of imagination. Free from the imposition of traditional boundaries, Yong makes his way across differing landscapes of truth in a global environment, gleaning from the activities of reflection and understanding therein. Providing snapshots of Yong's theological development over decades of work, The Dialogical Spirit II further evidences the vitality of pentecostal theology to emerging conversations in constructive and comparative venues.

The Crisis of Conversion

The Crisis of Conversion
Author: J. August Higgins
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 175
Release: 2024-06-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN:

This book attempts to identify a central problem within the North American evangelical imagination around the issue of religious experience and its relationship to the basic hermeneutical stance of biblical and theological interpretation. The relatively recent emergence of the academic discipline of Christian spirituality offers a new set of methodological insights that may help to mediate the theological impasse between more conservative and progressive perspectives concerning the appropriate role of human experience for evangelical thought and practice. Specifically, we will explore the experience of religious conversion that lies at the center of evangelical spirituality in critical dialogue with the challenges and opportunities brought about by recent philosophical discourse and the postmodern turn, variously understood.

I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die

I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die
Author: Sarah J. Robinson
Publisher: WaterBrook
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0593193539

A compassionate, shame-free guide for your darkest days “A one-of-a-kind book . . . to read for yourself or give to a struggling friend or loved one without the fear that depression and suicidal thoughts will be minimized, medicalized or over-spiritualized.”—Kay Warren, cofounder of Saddleback Church What happens when loving Jesus doesn’t cure you of depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts? You might be crushed by shame over your mental illness, only to be told by well-meaning Christians to “choose joy” and “pray more.” So you beg God to take away the pain, but nothing eases the ache inside. As darkness lingers and color drains from your world, you’re left wondering if God has abandoned you. You just want a way out. But there’s hope. In I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die, Sarah J. Robinson offers a healthy, practical, and shame-free guide for Christians struggling with mental illness. With unflinching honesty, Sarah shares her story of battling depression and fighting to stay alive despite toxic theology that made her afraid to seek help outside the church. Pairing her own story with scriptural insights, mental health research, and simple practices, Sarah helps you reconnect with the God who is present in our deepest anguish and discover that you are worth everything it takes to get better. Beautifully written and full of hard-won wisdom, I Love Jesus, But I Want to Die offers a path toward a rich, hope-filled life in Christ, even when healing doesn’t look like what you expect.