Editorial Allan Anderson As the New Editor of This Interdisciplinary

[PS 12.1 (2013) 5–7] PentecoStudies (print) ISSN 2041-3599 http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/ptcs.v12i1.5 PentecoStudies (online) ISSN 1871-7691 Editorial Allan Anderson University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT UK [email protected] As the new editor of this interdisciplinary journal, in my first editorial six months ago I lamented the lack of social scientific articles. As if to make up for that, we have five thought-provoking articles for you in this issue – two from religious historians and three from social scientists. They cover four continents, and their subjects, though different, are related in the ways I will indicate. The first two articles are revisions of the Walter J. Hollenweger Occasional Lectures given at the University of Birmingham in June 2012. Both provide us with historical accounts of Pentecostals and Charismatics in comparatively little-known regions of North America and Australia, respectively. Dan Ramírez, social historian from the University of Michigan, has a fascinating account of early Mexican Pentecostals in the borderlands between the southern United States (mostly southern California) and Mexico, people displaced and marginalized in Pentecostal historiography. This article really forms a prolegomena for a ground-breaking book that will appear in a year or so. The “perennial xenophobia” of some sections of the US white population (and, for that matter, the erstwhile US governments) has recently been vividly demonstrated in the presidential elections, but the plight of Mexicans and Mexican Americans has been largely hidden. Ramírez’s particular research among Oneness Pentecostals of the Apostolic Assembly (in the US) and the related Iglesia Apostólica in Mexico brings this hidden history to light. I have chosen to lead with this article because although it describes the many decades-long repatriation challenges facing Mexican migrants in the United States, it also has much wider relevance. It touches significant issues: xenophobia and injustice (and selective, discriminatory so-called “justice”); uprooted asylum seekers seeking a better life; religious migrants in the borderlands between human boundaries that are not merely geographical; the importance © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013, Unit S3, Kelham House, 3 Lancaster Street, Sheffield, South Yorkshire S3 8AF. 6 PentecoStudies of gathering oral histories from marginalized peoples, and of exploring the cultural and religious dimensions of migrant life; and debating and condemning the persecution faced by Pentecostals in those parts of the world where freedom of religion is absent. Mark Hutchinson, historian from the University of Western Sydney in Australia, follows with an interesting account of the beginnings of the Charismatic movement in the very different context of Australia. If Ramírez shows from his perspective that, from its beginnings, early Oneness Pentecostalism did not begin in a single event but was in a long process of formation, then Hutchinson’s thickly descriptive account of Charismatic Christianity is equally in support of a theory of multiple origins. From this perspective, Pentecostalism did not have a distinct beginning in Los Angeles (whether from William Seymour or Dennis Bennett half a century later), nor was it a movement based on a particular doctrine – it was rather a series of movements that have taken many years and different formative ideas and events to consolidate. As Hutchinson puts it here, Pentecostalism is “multicentred in origin and divergent in development”. The Charismatic movement in Australia demonstrates “both global flows and local difference”, or, as some would have it, “glocalization”. He traces the careers of two leading lights in the Australian movement – Alex Reichel, a Catholic layperson, and Alan Langstaff, a Methodist minister – and their transnational and interde- nominational (especially Catholic) connections. Staying with Australia, we then look at transnationalism more deeply, and from a social scientific perspective. Cristina Rocha is an anthropologist from Brazil, also working at the University of Western Sydney. Her article on a Brazilian Pentecostal church in Sydney and the influence of one of Australia’s leading Pentecostal churches, Hillsong, provides a hybridity that is attractive to young Brazilian students, and acts as a bridge between Brazilian and Australian cultures. At the same time, Brazilians returning to their homeland carry with them a type of Australian neo-Pentecostalism; a “social remittance” to Brazil. Once again the theme of the polycentric nature of Pentecostalism comes to the fore. The church is founded in Australia by Brazilian Baptists who begin in the Brazilian Assemblies of God in Sydney; they then secede over conservative practices that characterize the Brazilian church; the new church is supported by the Australian Assemblies of God (now called Australian Christian Churches and the second largest denomi- nation in the nation after the Catholic Church); the new Brazilian church is particularly influenced by the Hillsong Church in Sydney, the © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013. Allan Anderson Editorial 7 largest ACC congregation; Brazilians attend Hillsong events and their college, returning to Brazil to influence churches there with Australian Pentecostal culture. Something a little different is found in the last two articles, which are related. The fourth article is by Travis Warren Cooper, an anthro- pology doctoral researcher at Indiana University (Bloomington). His article tackles the subject of Pentecostal revivalism in the southern United States, through examining the award-winning documentary film on the child evangelist Marjoe Gortner, who in later life exposed his own chicanery. Cooper states that the film on Gortner is “perhaps one of the most vehement criticisms of Pentecostal praxis” in the history of Pentecostalism in the US. Gortner was a self-confessed imposter, and Cooper traces his life and the making of the film, using cognitive theories that inform the discipline of psychology, and involving the processes termed “trance”, “re-entry” and “structural coupling”. He discusses Gortner’s role as a religious imposter who nonetheless is an indispensable part of the whole ritual enactment of revivalism. In the process of examining the controversial film, Cooper concludes that we learn “as much about human consciousness and social formation as … about Pentecostal praxis and experience”. This is a highly critical article, but one that should give us pause in these days of super-powered televan- gelists and prosperity preachers who prey on both the gullible and the vulnerable in societies all over the world. The fifth and final article before the book reviews is by Jonathan Burrow- Branine, a doctoral student in American studies and a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Kansas. Using a similar methodology to Cooper, he bravely tackles the subject of “possession” by the Spirit, which he subjects to social-scientific scrutiny using Emma Cohen’s concepts of executive and pathogenic possession. Burrow-Branine suggests that these heuristic concepts make it possible to compare different cases, specify characteristic features of Holy Spirit possession in different Pentecostal communities, and analyse “spirit possession” in other religions. Like Cooper, he uses terms like “altered state of consciousness”, “possession” and “trance” to describe the phenomena he discusses. Some theologians will be uncomfortable with the use of these terms and the comparative analyses that are made, but that is the nature of a multidisciplinary journal, after all. Scholars must have the freedom to express their views both inside and outside of a faith commitment, provided their arguments are given in a scientifically sound manner. Enjoy the controversy, and write an article in response, if you like! © Equinox Publishing Ltd 2013..

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