(Note to Mieko from Gideon: Something I did moved your original entry, and my limited technical skills do not allow me to put it back under your name. But here it is.)

Pentecostalism in Latin America, Africa and Asia
by Mieko Higashinaka

To begin with, please forgive my excuse. It was a tough (English) reading for me this time. To be honest, I’m not very sure that I understood this reading rightly. I’ll try my best.

1. Our time
This is the time of pluralism and individualism. Pentecostalism in Latin America, Africa and some Asian countries fits to the needs of our time that both Roman Catholic and Methodist could not offer in those countries.

How has Roman Catholic been for people had then? Firstly, Roman Catholic forms centralization of religion and culture. Consequently, it did not allow people to localize and people’s religious and cultural diversity. On the other hand, Pentecostalism pays its attention to the local that cannot be ignored in countries where people have rich cultural diversities. Secondly, Roman Catholic has a hierarchy system. It did not let lay people to work freely in the church and society as well. On the contrary, Pentecostalism offers the equal chance for every lay person to participate to cultural and church work. It vitalizes people who have degraded their own ability and dignity under the oppression of colonization by European countries.

What does then Methodist focus on? It came to those countries much later than Roman Catholic dominated over those countries. We can pay attention to two points here. First, Methodist focuses on personal salvation. Beginning in the time of modernism, Methodist also could not escape from the form of individualism. The second point is its focus on cultural transformation but not political transformation. Since it concerns personal changing, the political change is not necessary for them. Interestingly, even though Methodist could not reach the needs of people, it eventually prepared the way for Pentecostalism in terms of individualism and cultural transformation.

In this way, Pentecostalism that concerns both individual and cultural changing covers “unfinished task” of Roman Catholic and Methodist.

2. Worldview and Global Church
What is the secret of the popularity of Pentecostalism in those countries? Martin points out some key words. I pick up some of them here:

>Adaptability: As noted, Pentecostalism has flexibility to various kinds of cultural forms in those countries.
>Lay participation: it allows both women and men, both young and old, and both the poor and the rich participate to ministry.
>Enthusiasm: Generally speaking, cultures in those countries originally have tendency of enthusiasm and cheerfulness compared to European countries that brought Christianity to them. (This is my comment but not Martin’s. Forgive me if it’s not true!)

The dualistic idea in Pentecostalism is another interesting point in their context. Their dualistic idea is not the dualism between body and soul, rather, moral dualism between in the Christian community and the non-Christian community. They understand that the Christian community should and actually has the higher moral standard compared to the moral outside of the church. Sometimes it goes too far, and some Christians try to exclude, for example, TV and other cultural resources from their life in order to purify their life.

Their indivisible idea between physical and spiritual salvation consequently brings dynamic cultural transformation. They believe that spiritual salvation must bring restoration to the moral of family life and social injustice. As a result, people have sought higher moral standard in their personal, family and social life. This idea also changed their labour view. It calls people “for the street salesman, the hotel waiter, the self-appointed tourist-guide-cum-beggar, or the domestic servant” as well as “for the software engineer, the media professional, or the social worker” [79]. On the other hand, their holistic view on material and spiritual salvation unfortunately brings a disadvantage as well. Some Christians misunderstand that their faith must directly bring material and physical blessings to them.

How does Pentecostalism actually work in their society? They seem to have good contact and cooperative work with other denominations, too, for example, Roman Catholics and other Protestant denominations.