over the last two decades. And this decline has izing, non-Western countries that are bestirred by not happened painlessly. In fact, the drama has the equally potent force of free-market capitalism. played out most vividly through a conflict between This southward shift in the center of religious gravity two ministries to youth—the bellwether of global means that formerly “un-churched” peoples now Catholicism’s future. The Youth Shepherd move- play a bigger role in shaping Christian belief and ment, shaped by the folksy ethos of ’60s-era socially practice than do their co-religionists in the late- engaged Catholicism, has lost ground to Jesus colonial powers that first missionized them. Youth, a product of Catholic Charismatic Renewal. Closer to the ground, a number of more recent “Just like many of the marginal groups we want developments become apparent. Neo-Pentecostal them to try to help, our young people criticize or “next generation” churches like Igreja Renacer are social engagement for just talking and not changing now outpacing the growth of traditional Pentecostal anything,” said Boareto. “Charismatic Renewal is churches, particularly among the emerging middle changing their realities, but the question is whether classes. Unlike older denominations, many of which that experience inside the church will really change have opened Bible colleges and seminaries to train the social reality.” pastors, these newer expressions of the Pentecostal movement tend to be highly organized without being “True” Christians tied to orthodox ideas about liturgy or theology— The wave of religious renewal that has swept in fact, they tend to eschew most formal theological through Campinas and the rest of the developing and denominational labels. Thus they have been world over the past quarter-century has likewise able to attract highly capable, mission-minded brought upheaval to established Protestant institu- leaders like Renata Strohmenger, a successful graphic tions like the Evangelical Church of the Lutheran designer, who considers her profound experience of Confession, which claims about 1 million members calling to ministry as her primary qualification for in Brazil. During her tenure as a minister and parish holding the pulpit. administrator, Rev. Neusa Tezner witnessed the The Catholic Charismatic movement, by contrast, long arc of the event first-hand. has been largely absorbed by the organizational She said that the appropriation of charismatic structure of its two-millennia-old parent institution. music and worship styles by some pastors and their Charismatic retreat centers in Africa, the Middle congregations was acceptable to her and other East and South Asia now host thousands of mostly members of the denominational hierarchy. But the lower-class retreatants as well as priests and nuns, very ecumenism that allowed Brazil’s Lutheran who are regularly dispatched to them for periods of establishment to absorb some of the energy of spiritual renewal. the Pentecostal movement also put it at odds with But if established Protestant and Catholic com- another of that movement’s common features: munities have begun to find their equilibrium after the notion that believers who have experienced the the tumult of what might eventually be considered gifts of the Holy Spirit must be re-baptized as a sign the First Global Great Awakening, Pentecostal and that they have become “true” Christians. charismatic missionizing of non-Christian religious Tezner’s denomination acknowledges baptisms groups is sending even broader ripples through from all Christian traditions as valid, and she developing societies that are already in a state of said that pastors who practiced re-baptism were flux. The cell-group strategies of renewalist “church- considered “contaminated.” During this period of planters” in India, China and tribal regions of Indo- polarization, which culminated in an administrative nesia and Brazil often disturb deeply established housecleaning in 2002, about 15,000 people left structures of kinship and belief—a process that the fold. exposes tensions between the values of religious “I’m happy that era is over,” Tezner said. “It was freedom and social stability. a painful process. But it strengthened the core of The following pages explore these issues in the Lutheran church.” greater depth and detail, looking frequently at how That, in a sense, is what religious renewal is the interplay between Christian renewal movements all about. and the particular elements of a given cultural landscape influence developments in politics, Renewal Movements and economic equality, gender relations or sexuality. Christianity’s Southward Shift With any luck, the reader will have acquired, by the How are these trends shaping the religious land- end, a clearer sense for what believers mean by scape in other parts of the global South? For about “Pentecostal”—and for the consequences of the 10 years the headlines have read something like increasing dominance of that form of belief in this: Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity is the parts of the world that are changing at a breakneck fastest-growing religious movement on the planet, pace. i and it is flourishing most vigorously in rapidly urban- 9 87509_USC_r1.indd 9 5/17/13 12:02 PM ORIGINS and growth The Los Angeles Times was not pleased religious fervor last night… Men and epidemic—cholera, typhus and even by events unfolding at the Apostolic women embraced each other in an bubonic plague—roiled Southern Cali- Faith Gospel Mission. Under the head- apparent agony of emotion. Whites fornia and other parts of the country. line “Women With Men Embrace” in the and negroes clasped hands and L.A. itself was undergoing difficult newspaper’s edition for September 3, sang together. The surprise is that growing pains—the city had tripled in 1906, the writer for the Times cata- any respectable white person would size during the first decade of the 20th logued several “disgusting scenes”: attend such meetings as are being century, the plan to establish a steady conducted on Azusa street. water supply for the arid region was still Muttering a jargon of unintelligible just “Mulholland’s Dream” and a boom- sounds which no man can interpret, Even apart from the overt Caucasian and-bust economy had created a huge, the worshipers in the barn-like male chauvinism apparent in the article, restive underclass. negro church on Azusa street worked the L.A. of that time was very different themselves into paroxysms of from the relatively stable, suburban- ized metropolis of today. Racial unrest, violent labor protests and the threat of 11 87509_USC_r1.indd 11 5/17/13 12:02 PM h Cidade de Refúgio (City of Refuge), an LGBT-inclusive Pentecostal church in Many Pentecostal and charismatic communities in São Paulo, Brazil Korea, Fiji, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere nurture origin stories that offer a counter- narrative to the assumptions that underlie the Azusa Street origin story. 12 87509_USC_r1.indd 12 5/17/13 12:02 PM Iconoclastic Religion trace their roots to Los Angeles and the In the midst of this turmoil an unortho- Azusa Street Revival. But the charis- dox black preacher named William J. matic impulse in American Christianity Seymour appeared. Seymour’s testi- has a much older lineage—including mony about the spiritual transformation the camp meetings at Cane Ridge, Ken- that followed the believer’s personal tucky in the early 19th century and other experience of the Holy Spirit connected events associated with the First and a radically individualist form of Christi- Second Great Awakenings. Members of anity to the event at Pentecost—an ac- renewalist movements often locate the count in the New Testament that serves source of their theology and practice as a touchstone for both Pentecostals even farther in the past, identifying and their Catholic counterparts, Charis- their cultivation of ecstatic experiences matic Renewalists. During the Pentecost with the spiritual fervor of Christianity’s event, which is supposed to have oc- earliest apostolic age. And many Pente- curred 50 days after Jesus’ resurrection, costal and charismatic communities in his key disciples and scores of other Korea, Fiji, Latin America, sub-Saharan followers were visited by the Holy Spirit, Africa and elsewhere nurture origin an ecstatic encounter that bestowed stories that offer a counter-narrative to abilities like healing, prophesy and the assumptions that underlie the Azusa supernatural speech—or “speaking in Street mythology. tongues.” For example, the Mukti revival in Seymour’s church on Azusa Street India occurred concurrently with events drew motley throngs that alarmed in Los Angeles. And in West Africa, in- members of a civic and religious digenous evangelists William Wade Har- establishment who saw little to like in ris and Garrick Sokari Braide sparked an African-American preacher leading Pentecost-inspired revival movements an interracial flock that engaged in a in the early 20th century that had only noisily emotional form of worship. But the most tenuous relationships to Pen- along with the promise of direct access tecostalism in the global North. to divine power through the Holy Spirit, the emphasis on emotion in Pentecos- Networks and Empowerment talism was, arguably, the primary rea- But if there were near-simultaneous son it proved so attractive. Traditional eruptions of renewalist fervor during Protestant and Catholic movements what might be called the First Global of that era defined themselves largely Great Awakening,