The South Indian Pentecostal Movement in the Twentieth Century
Michel Bergunder
Eerdmans 2008 380pp paperback ISBN 978-0-8028-2734-0
Reviewed by Murdoch MacKenzie
Translated from the German text this amazingly detailed book represents a real labour of love on the part of the author. The appendices include biographies of 79 leaders of the Pentecostal movement in South India and a list of 191 interviewees whose stories and testimonies vividly bring the text to life. The introduction sketches the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement in the twentieth century until within a hundred years it comprised between 15 and 25 percent of the world-wide Christian population. Its global roots within nineteenth-century popular American evangelicalism and to some extent the British evangelical mission movement, represented by the Welsh Revival, the Keswick Convention and the China Inland Mission, leading to the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910 and John R. Mott’s motto “the evangelisation of the World in this generation”, are sketched out. By 1908 the Pentecostal movement had taken root in around 50 countries all over the world. The diffuse nature of Pentecostalism and the lack of scholarly research into the Pentecostal movement in India means that although 20 percent of south Indian Protestants are Pentecostals hardly anything is known about them.
Bergunder seeks to remedy that, with the first part of the study tracing the history of the movement and the second part presenting a systematic profile relating to various beliefs and practices including Gifts of the Spirit, Ethics, Ministry, Church Life and Ecumenical Relations. The final short section on Prospects comments on Pentecostalism and the Contextualization of Christianity. The historical section is a catalogue of conflicts and power struggles. From the early beginnings in Kerala, with western missionaries and western money calling the shots, splits and turmoils and inter-personal rivalry were the order of the day with conflicts being dragged out into years of legal dispute. By the mid-1930s four groups were operating independently of each other, namely Assemblies of God, Ceylon Pentecostal Mission, Indian Pentecostal Church and Church of God. Leaders vied with each other developing personality cults with people like D.G.S. Dhinakaran becoming Pentecostal wonder workers akin to ‘ popular Hindu gurus who, as a rule, perform similar healing miracles.’ Healing and exorcism play an outstanding part in ensuring the success of the Pentecostal movement. Popular Hinduism attributes to evil spirits illness and untimely death as well as anything else which threatens life or security. Pentecostals have taken over the demonology of popular Hinduism and Pentecostal pastors and evangelists most often speak in tongues when they are engaged in healing or exorcism. When Paulaseer Lawrie, an extremely successful Pentecostal healing evangelist, broke with the Pentecostals at the beginning of the 1970s after describing himself as Son of Man, he was thereafter venerated as a Hindu guru and avatara.
But Pentecostalism becomes, as Bergunder points out, what local people make of it. For example when the Ceylon Pentecostal Mission came under indigenous leadership, it was centralized, rejected Western medicine, and its full-time workers, Sisters and Brothers alike, sold their property, giving the proceeds to the church, and adopted celibacy. The Indian Pentecostal Church, which broke away from it, was also indigenously led, and became the strongest Pentecostal church in Kerala. The connection between holiness and unworldliness has safeguarded the south Indian Pentecostal movement from preaching a prosperity gospel but with the appearance of the Faith Movement in the 1980’s propagating ‘the financial aspects of the gospel’ the idea of a prosperity gospel has struck a chord with many south Indian Pentecostal congregations. Whilst the idea of radical holiness brings with it an anti-intellectualism, whereby the Indian guru-shishya system was preferred, most new pastors now receive a certain amount of formal education. Most pastors live in very simple conditions as part of the ‘lower middle class’ whilst the living standard of the Pentecostal leadership corresponds largely to that of the ‘upper middle class.’ At least 66 percent have spacious private houses and 80% of those interviewed use a car. 40 percent owe their living standard to powerful overseas sponsors only. Whilst the south Indian Pentecostal movement maintains a traditional attitude of rejecting social engagement some have found it a convenient way of obtaining visas and residential permits for missionaries from the USA and elsewhere because they were coming to manage a social institution.
As regards membership and growing churches 15 to 20 percent are former Hindus. Converts from Islam are extremely rare. The majority of their adherents come from established Protestant or Syrian Orthodox churches with only 5 percent being former Catholics, the latter having their own strong Charismatic movement. Bergunder quotes very clear data which illustrates that healing and exorcism play a central part, not only for Hindus but also for Christians of the established churches, in their conversion to Pentecostalism. The obvious neglect by mainline churches of the ministry of healing and exorcism is highlighted in a quotation from Bishop M. Azariah, former CSI bishop in Madras. By contrast Pentecostalism has capitalized on this neglect becoming, in the words of Professor Allan Anderson:
‘probably the fastest growing religious movement or movements of the twentieth century.’ Bergunder concludes by referring to the way in which ecumenical theology is still struggling for meaningful concepts of inculturation and contextualisation and suggests that a distinctive Pentecostal voice within that debate might have a stimulating effect on academic theology in general. He cites helpful early signs of this being evidenced by some Pentecostals’ interest in Dalit theology. We can be grateful to him for dispelling our ignorance of the south Indian Pentecostal movement in such a refreshing way.
The Rev. Murdoch MacKenzie was ordained in the Church of South India, worked in Madras Diocese for 12 years, is a former Ecumenical Moderator of Milton Keynes Mission Partnership and Research Advisor at WCC Bossey.
Michel Bergunder
Eerdmans 2008 380pp paperback ISBN 978-0-8028-2734-0
Reviewed by Murdoch MacKenzie
Translated from the German text this amazingly detailed book represents a real labour of love on the part of the author. The appendices include biographies of 79 leaders of the Pentecostal movement in South India and a list of 191 interviewees whose stories and testimonies vividly bring the text to life. The introduction sketches the rise of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement in the twentieth century until within a hundred years it comprised between 15 and 25 percent of the world-wide Christian population. Its global roots within nineteenth-century popular American evangelicalism and to some extent the British evangelical mission movement, represented by the Welsh Revival, the Keswick Convention and the China Inland Mission, leading to the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910 and John R. Mott’s motto “the evangelisation of the World in this generation”, are sketched out. By 1908 the Pentecostal movement had taken root in around 50 countries all over the world. The diffuse nature of Pentecostalism and the lack of scholarly research into the Pentecostal movement in India means that although 20 percent of south Indian Protestants are Pentecostals hardly anything is known about them.
Bergunder seeks to remedy that, with the first part of the study tracing the history of the movement and the second part presenting a systematic profile relating to various beliefs and practices including Gifts of the Spirit, Ethics, Ministry, Church Life and Ecumenical Relations. The final short section on Prospects comments on Pentecostalism and the Contextualization of Christianity. The historical section is a catalogue of conflicts and power struggles. From the early beginnings in Kerala, with western missionaries and western money calling the shots, splits and turmoils and inter-personal rivalry were the order of the day with conflicts being dragged out into years of legal dispute. By the mid-1930s four groups were operating independently of each other, namely Assemblies of God, Ceylon Pentecostal Mission, Indian Pentecostal Church and Church of God. Leaders vied with each other developing personality cults with people like D.G.S. Dhinakaran becoming Pentecostal wonder workers akin to ‘ popular Hindu gurus who, as a rule, perform similar healing miracles.’ Healing and exorcism play an outstanding part in ensuring the success of the Pentecostal movement. Popular Hinduism attributes to evil spirits illness and untimely death as well as anything else which threatens life or security. Pentecostals have taken over the demonology of popular Hinduism and Pentecostal pastors and evangelists most often speak in tongues when they are engaged in healing or exorcism. When Paulaseer Lawrie, an extremely successful Pentecostal healing evangelist, broke with the Pentecostals at the beginning of the 1970s after describing himself as Son of Man, he was thereafter venerated as a Hindu guru and avatara.
But Pentecostalism becomes, as Bergunder points out, what local people make of it. For example when the Ceylon Pentecostal Mission came under indigenous leadership, it was centralized, rejected Western medicine, and its full-time workers, Sisters and Brothers alike, sold their property, giving the proceeds to the church, and adopted celibacy. The Indian Pentecostal Church, which broke away from it, was also indigenously led, and became the strongest Pentecostal church in Kerala. The connection between holiness and unworldliness has safeguarded the south Indian Pentecostal movement from preaching a prosperity gospel but with the appearance of the Faith Movement in the 1980’s propagating ‘the financial aspects of the gospel’ the idea of a prosperity gospel has struck a chord with many south Indian Pentecostal congregations. Whilst the idea of radical holiness brings with it an anti-intellectualism, whereby the Indian guru-shishya system was preferred, most new pastors now receive a certain amount of formal education. Most pastors live in very simple conditions as part of the ‘lower middle class’ whilst the living standard of the Pentecostal leadership corresponds largely to that of the ‘upper middle class.’ At least 66 percent have spacious private houses and 80% of those interviewed use a car. 40 percent owe their living standard to powerful overseas sponsors only. Whilst the south Indian Pentecostal movement maintains a traditional attitude of rejecting social engagement some have found it a convenient way of obtaining visas and residential permits for missionaries from the USA and elsewhere because they were coming to manage a social institution.
As regards membership and growing churches 15 to 20 percent are former Hindus. Converts from Islam are extremely rare. The majority of their adherents come from established Protestant or Syrian Orthodox churches with only 5 percent being former Catholics, the latter having their own strong Charismatic movement. Bergunder quotes very clear data which illustrates that healing and exorcism play a central part, not only for Hindus but also for Christians of the established churches, in their conversion to Pentecostalism. The obvious neglect by mainline churches of the ministry of healing and exorcism is highlighted in a quotation from Bishop M. Azariah, former CSI bishop in Madras. By contrast Pentecostalism has capitalized on this neglect becoming, in the words of Professor Allan Anderson:
‘probably the fastest growing religious movement or movements of the twentieth century.’ Bergunder concludes by referring to the way in which ecumenical theology is still struggling for meaningful concepts of inculturation and contextualisation and suggests that a distinctive Pentecostal voice within that debate might have a stimulating effect on academic theology in general. He cites helpful early signs of this being evidenced by some Pentecostals’ interest in Dalit theology. We can be grateful to him for dispelling our ignorance of the south Indian Pentecostal movement in such a refreshing way.
The Rev. Murdoch MacKenzie was ordained in the Church of South India, worked in Madras Diocese for 12 years, is a former Ecumenical Moderator of Milton Keynes Mission Partnership and Research Advisor at WCC Bossey.
