Pentecostal styles of worship and spirituality have come to pervade mainstream Christianity, as Larry Eskridge points out. And as Edith Blumhofer reminds us, Pentecostals are the second-largest Christian group in the word, trailing only Roman Catholics. Still, many of us in the mainline churches would have to admit we don’t know that much about the movement.
When Paul Pressler and Paige Patterson launched a revolution within the Southern Baptist Convention, they found an eager soldier in Ron Phillips.
Phillips, 58, has been pastor of Central Baptist Church of Hixson, Tennessee, near Chattanooga, since 1979—the year the so-called “conservative resurgence” began within the SBC. In the early 1990s, Phillips served as chair of the Home Mission Board, since renamed the North American Mission Board.
The images abound in stock video footage accompanying stories on evangelicals, the religious right, megachurches and the culture wars—the obligatory shots of middle-class worshipers, usually white, in corporate-looking auditoriums or sanctuaries, swaying to the electrified music of “praise bands,” their eyes closed, their enraptured faces tilted heavenward, a hand (or hands) raised to the sky.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8, NRSV).
As the message of Pentecost spread, it adapted to fit existing cultures. Korean Pentecostals, for instance, frequently climb “prayer mountains” for pre-sunrise prayer services, a reflection of a pre-Christian past. At Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, reputedly the world’s largest church, parishioners recite the Apostles’ Creed, pray or sing the Lord’s Prayer, and pray for the reunification of Korea every Sunday, reflecting something of the old Presbyterian majority.
I was raised in a tiny Pentecostal denomination, the Open Bible Standard Churches, founded in part by disillusioned followers of 1930s revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson. My parents were Open Bible pastors, many of my uncles and aunts were missionaries, and one uncle served as the denomination’s president.