Page 149 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1450 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

constitutes the largest predominantly black Pentecostal Catholics in the 1960s. Demos Shakarian established
group in the world, the Assemblies of God has evolved, the Full Gospel Business Men in 1952, and David J. du
with its present headquarters in Springfield, Missouri, Plessis, a South African–born Assemblies of God pas-
into the largest Pentecostal group in the world. Several tor in Connecticut, established connections with main-
years later, Canadian-born Aimee Semple McPherson stream churches by joining the World Council of Churches
broke away from the Assemblies to establish her con- in 1954 and attending the Vatican II conference as the
gregation in Los Angeles, which was incorporated in sole Pentecostal observer. Although the Assemblies of
1927 as the International Church of the Foursquare God excommunicated him for these actions in 1962,
Gospel. Some Pentecostals, particularly those associated du Pleissis served as an important catalyst in sparking
with the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World and the the charismatic movement in mainstream churches.The
United Pentecostal Church International, emphasized charismatic movement also received an infusion of
the oneness of God and baptism in the name of Jesus, energy in the form of the Jesus People movement, a
rather than in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy young people’s revival that began in California. Jim
Ghost. By the end of the twentieth century several hun- Bakker, an Assemblies of God minister, and Jimmy Swag-
dred Pentecostal sects, many of them African American, gart, also an Assemblies of God minister, joined Oral
had emerged in the United States alone. Both African Roberts as highly visible and influential charismatic
American and European American Pentecostalism have televangelists.
had a rich history of colorful and even flamboyant evan- The Pentecostal movement within Catholicism began in
gelists. In the 1940s, Oral Roberts, a Pentecostal Holi- the spring of 1967 at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh,
ness Church evangelist, created a healing and radio min- but later spread to North Dame University and Michigan
istry based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “Sweet Daddy” Grace, State University.Although members of the Catholic Pen-
the founder of the United House of Prayer for All Peo- tecostal movement initially called themselves “Pentecostal
ple, functioned as one of the “gods of the black metropo- Catholics” or “Catholic Pentecostals,” they later referred
lis.” Kathryn Kuhlman, a white Presbyterian, and Bishop to themselves as “Catholic charismatics” for class reasons
Ida Robinson, an African American and the founder of (McGuire 1982, 4).
the Mt. Sinai Holy Church of America, testified to the
ability of women to rise to positions of leadership in the The Global Diffusion of
Pentecostal movement, despite the efforts of males to Pentecostalism
assume dominance. Pentecostal sects also have tended Pentecostalism has spread from its roots in the United
to attract a higher percentage of women than have main- States to many other parts of the world, including the
stream denominations. Caribbean, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast
Asia, South Korea, Britain, and even eastern Europe..
The Development of the David J. Barrett and Todd M. Johnson, renowned statis-
Charismatic Movement ticians of Christianity, maintain that by 2000 there were
While Pentecostalism proper has catered largely to lower- 525 million Pentecostals/charismatics, composing 27
middle- or working-class people, neo-Pentecostalism, or percent of the Christian population in the world, as cited
the charismatic movement, has tended on the whole to in Wacker, Heaven Below (2001), making Pentecostalism
cater to more affluent people, ranging from the lower- the single largest Christian category after Catholicism.
middle class to the upper-middle class. The charismatic Large independent Pentecostal congregations sprang up
movement first spread among some members of main- in large numbers in Latin America and America, partic-
stream Protestant churches (e.g., Episcopalians, Luther- ularly during the 1980s and 1990s. Massive conversion
ans, and Presbyterians) in the 1950s and among Roman to Protestantism, particularly of a Pentecostal variety, has