Customer Reviews

Fire From Heaven: The Rise Of Pentecostal Spirituality And The Reshaping Of Religion In The 21st Century

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Cox's Fire From Heaven does bring some sense of legitimacy to Pentecostalism among the liberal academy of theologians and religionists who still view the movement as full of backwater American blacks and whites. However, in playing up the idea that Pentecostalism may be little more than a Christian "mask" over indigenous spiritualities, I think he may have played into the hands of religious right fundamentalists who attack a charismatic christianity as heretical and into the hands of intellectual universalists who don't wish to see a distinct contribution from the Christian Pentecostal movement as a unique form of religious spirituality. Cox writes with the ease and clarity of a novelist, but the story is more fiction than fact. He could site actual examples of Pentecostalism in Africa, for instance, rather than making the eurocentric generalization that all African Christianity, or indigenous churches there, are just another form of Pentecostalism. Very little attention is given to the interpretive issues in Pentecostalism (oneness vs trinity, wesleyan sanctification vs keswick baptistic) nor is adequate attention given to the continuing distinction among class and race in the American movement. That someone from Kirkus Reviews could have actually have read the book and still view the Azusa Street Revival as a meeting of poor black domestic workers shows that the ecumenical and ethnic diversity of that early 20th century movement still have not been made crystal clear.

Professor Cox has, indeed, contributed to the ever-widening area of Pentecostal/charismatic studies with "FIRE FROM HEAVEN." His breadth of experience, reflected in the book, is to be admired; but it wasn't wide enough. As a life-long Pentecostal, I could identify with only a few parts of his "experience" and have wondered why the "main-line" denominations weren't included more than they actually were. Why did Cox not visit Times Square Church, or the Brooklyn Tabernacle, or any number of other biblically-sound congregations, and see what effective Pentecostal churches are all about? After reading, and re-reading the book, I felt that I was getting a treatise on the "fringe" elements of Pentecostalism, and not the "mainstream." It is worthy of being read...but not very balanced,in the light of world-wide Pentecostalism.

Harvey Cox, the former head of Harvard Divinity School, does some magnificent work giving insight to pentecostalism and putting it into context with information I have not seen elsewhere. He traveled the world speaking to academics and attending services on almost every continent. He pushed his ten page list of citations to the back to make it more accessible to the non-academic and provides a fourteen page index.

He successfully explains the unique hidden power wielded by women in pentecostal churches in Latin America and the intricate historical relationship between American fundamentalists and pentecostals. He also does well describing the neo-pentecostal and how all three fit into the Religious Right's political agenda. The history he provides on the degeneration into gender bias is well researched. But his best work is exposing the American pentecostal automatic acceptance of government policies that permitted despots to "disappear" pentecostals. These pentecostals were in essence delivered up by their own sisters and brothers in America.

But there are at least two serious errors in this work such that it must be read with caution. He continues that Anglo-centric myth that pentecostalism took off in 1906 on Azusa Street in Los Angeles from which it spread to the world. And he totally misrepresents pentecostalism in Africa - particularly Zimbabwe.

In a 1996 article in Church History, Joe Creech mines one of the earliest histories of of Azusa St (Bartleman, 1925[1980] Bridge Publishing) to show that the historical and theological biases of the time are responsible for the current assumption of The Myth.{This is a correction to my original review - thanks to Nelson Banuchi, May 2008.} Had Cox followed this lead, he would have learned that Fire(s) had started in India in 1860, Korea in 1903, and another one in India in 1905 before Azusa missionaries had reached the continent. There are many instances of the Fire appearing in various locales untouched by pentecostal missionaries - such as the Ivory Coast and parts of China. Accepting the murky history of pentecostalism in favor of the Azusa myth is disappointing in a scholar with such a great reputation.

His interpretation of pentecostalism in Africa is also a disappointment.
In Zimbabwe the author witnesses several different services and common to them was the confession of sins against the earth "...These include any activities that lead to soil erosion, fouling the water supply, or chopping down trees without replacing them." This awareness in African communities certainly pre-dates the current Christian Anglo wakeup to proper stewardship of the earth. Here the author slips into the stereotypical view of African Christians as essentially primitive by connecting this ecological awareness to "the throbbing universe of African primal religion."

Cox basically views pentecostal African Christianity as syncretistic even using drumming and dancing as evidence instead of seeing it as a common indigenous practice incorporated into the church. This is in spite of mentioning in the same sentence the command from the Psalms to praise God with timbrel and lyre and then describing King David dancing at the ark. One needs to add that King David was known to even dance unclothed in public - and not to God's displeasure according to the same Psalms.

Of one of the African pentecostal church founders mentioned, John Maranke is lumped in with other leaders and is exalted as a Mandela type figure leading Zimbabwe to independence. But his church "The Maranke Vapostori", founded in 1932 is considered by common African pentecostals to be un-orthodox in both origin and current practice. This is one example of where African Pentecostals appear to have the spiritual and intellectual wherewithal to distinguish syncretism from indigenous practices - but Cox fails to acknowledge this.

This is likely caused in part by Cox's almost exclusive reliance on historiography written by the educated - a method that is now being challenged as the sole method of retrieving history. Oral historiography, deconstruction of myths and other methods are considered necessary to more accurately capture a complete history - if such a thing is possible.

Fire From Heaven is a well written, objective look at the Pentecostal movement both in America and abroad. Harvey Cox does a great job explaining the history of this movement in a way that shows both its bright points as well as its spots and blemishes. I would definitely recommend this book for any minister, church historian or lay person looking for an unbiased look at various movements that have taken place in the Christian faith.

This book is an odd mixture of personal narrative and some history. This may be an important point, since from a research perspective its practically useless. On the flip side, this makes the book an easy, smooth read. Its weird that the title seems to present this as some kind of important academic work, it reads more like the memoir of a religion professor, without the footnotes and research that would make it academically useful.

I think the book was very good because it let you know where the pencostal came from and it do tell you something about the origin of the penecostal.

What is the source of the enormous appeal of pentecostalism? When William Penn founded Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, the Quakers were an ecstatic sect. Pentecostalism is the experiential brand of Christianity. It may account for one in four Christians. It proliferates in gigantic cities. It is a kind of ecumenical movement. Pentecostalism, the Azusa Street revival, arose among the disenfranchised. Religions struggle with order and chaos. The Azusa Street revival lasted for three years. William Joseph Seymour had no formal education. In Houston he saw a woman speaking in tongues. He was introduced to Charles Fox Parham. Seymour was invited to settle in Los Angeles to preach by Julia Hutchins.

Los Angeles was cosmopolitan and had a high tolerance for spiritual innovators. The congregation of the Azusa Street revival was interracial. A rival group organized the Assemblies of God. The Church of God in Christ became a pentecostal denomination. A conference at Cleveland, Tenn., caused another group, Church of God, to become pentecostal. Mainline churches disliked the pentecostals and fundamentalists loathed them. In the disputes it was a case of the spirit versus the letter. The movement did not gain adherents between the wars, but rose up again following World War II.

While a college student, the author attended a service at the New Order of the Latter Rain. Speaking in tongues has a theological purpose. Speaking in tongues is taken as evidence of spiritual baptism. Speaking in tongues is an example of ecstatic utterance. Aimee Semple McPherson drew on popular culture in the work of her International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, (Jesus as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer, and Coming King). Pentecostals believe in direct revelation through vision. Testimonies are a kind of folklore. Women are the principal carriers of pentecostalism. The author is taken with the parallel development of jazz, he plays the saxophone, and pentecostalism. Both depend upon heartfelt enthusiasm.

In South America the pentecostals tell people they need to change and can change. Some followers are political activists. Pentecostalism counteracts the anomie produced by rapid urbanization. It supplies coherence and a new set of rules for living. The faith forbids drunkenness, carousing, infidelity. Despotism in the leadership of some of the groups in South America should be of concern. On the other hand, some groups practice democracy. Pentecostalism is paradoxical.

Attendance at the traditional churches in Europe is low, but pilgrimages to sites associated with apparitions and other mysteries have increased. Sicily has a large number of pentecostals. Pentecostalism in Korea incorporates many elements of shamanism. Many of the independent African churches are pentecostal. Indigenous churches insist the gifts of the spirit are still available.

I have sent my review on "Fire from Heaven"by Harvey Cox, which you have put on the column.I am very thankful for this.But I am sorry there are some misspellings in my review. Will you kindly replace the former review by the following one which I have corrected?

I highly value this book mainly for three reasons. First this is the first and only significant research on the Pentecostal spirituality so far published. Based on his own "field work" method, the author both encourages and warns concerning the future of the spiritual movement. Secondly he is keenly aware that the movement has potential power to overcome racial discrimination (at least in its origin). Thirdly as myself one of the tongue-speaking people in Japan, I agree with the author who envisages this spiritual movement will eventually develop into various types of Christianity and will enrich the general trend of world religions.

So with the end of slavery in the U.S.A., most black Christians set up their own churches, and later some of these churches gave birth to the massive Pentecostal movement, which deeply influenced many white churches and swept over much of the world. Cox traces this growing movement down the decades and over several continents. He deals in stories of seemingly ordinary people who caught a passion for breaking down walls between hearts. Many of these are women, such Lucy Farrow, Marie Burgess, Florence Crawford, Maria Woodworth-Etter, or Aimee Semple McPherson, who walked out of a church which could not respect her gifts, and built her independent Church of the Four Square Gospel in the 1920s, which had over 25,000 affiliated churches in 74 countries by the 1990s.

The movement Cox describes is different in spirit than fundamentalism. Though it is subject to corrupt leaders or cheap commercialization, it is also full of local heroes like evangelical politician Benedita da Silva, who stresses Jesus' promise to the slum dwellers of Rio de Janeiro: "Imagine, we will do greater things than he did". (p. 166) In all, Cox gives a report which is properly respectful for the power and magnitude of popular religion, made down home in local people's hearts.

-author of Correcting Jesus

The book is absolutely in great condition, just like new! Last owner even included personal notes about the book topic on a separate sheet of paper. Awesome product and deal