Review: Pentecostalism in the U.S. Pt.1

In the next series of posts, I’ll be summarizing and evaluating certain chapters in (although this first one is just a summary):

Patterson, Eric, and Edmund Rybarczyk, eds. The Future of Pentecostalism in the United States. New York: Lexington Books, 2007.

So I’ll begin with chapter 1:

Rybarczyk, Edmund J. “Introduction: American Pentecostalism: Challenges and Temptations.” In The Future of Pentecostalism in the United States, by Eric Patterson and Edmund Rybarczyk, eds. New York: Lexington Books, 2007.

In this chapter, Rybarczyk provides the reader with a very brief overview of the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement.  Due to this book being written with the centennial of the Azusa Street Revival in mind, he primarily focuses on Azusa when talking about the beginnings of the movement.  He also quickly summarizes the various trajectories within the Pentecostal/Charismatic Movement (P/C Movement): Classical Pentecostals, Charismatics, Third Wave.

On a positive note, Rybarczyk observes three major qualities of the P/C Movement: its charismatic ethos, its populist character, and  its “ fresh reappreacation for the role of the experiential, spiritual, existential, and even mystical dimensions of what it means to be human” (3).

On the negative side, he speaks specifically to the state of Classical Pentecostalism, and decries its shift towards what he calls the “American Evangelical pot of goo.”  He seems to have no qualms over the “evangelical” element; he mostly points out the dangers of the “American,” and “pot of goo” elements of this label.  He explains that the “American” element that is troubling features an emphasis on

“the destiny of the United States as God’s favored nation, a form of corporate worship that turns the focus from the Triune God to the individual Christian, and alarming measures of therapeutic sermonizing that borrow variously from pop-psychology, positive-thinking schools of thought, and success-for-living business strategizing that are all routinely passed off as serious pastoral counsel” (7).

The “pot of goo” element features the loss of local church teaching/sermons on Pentecostal distinctives such as the theology and practice of of Spirit baptism, spiritual gifts, eschatology and a prophetic critique of culture.

To remedy this, Rybarczyk calls for an aggiornamento such as the one Roman Catholics issued in the 1960s to reassess their identity, beliefs, and practices, which resulted in Vatican II.  He states:

“We need to ask ourselves aloud, where do we go from here?  This is not a question simply for scholars or even pastors in their local churches.  It is a question that lay people, educators, pastors, church elders, and denominational officials must find a way to address, and that together.  Unless all of these corporately begin to openly, frankly, and humbly assess their movement, to critically reflect upon—without the hollow and neurotic impulses to preserve either the status quo or the extant political machinery—what it means to be Pentecostal, and what about that is worth preserving for future generations, the movement in the United States will wither and die.  Oh, to be sure it will not cease to exist numerically, but it will continue to morph itself away from the eschatological-irrupting beauty it once embodied and become a vapid and vanilla pot of goo” (9).

The two main thoughts that I walk away with from Rybarczyk is that 1) Classical Pentecostals find themselves being assimilated into an “American Evangelical pot of goo,” and 2) his call for an aggiornamento. What do you think?  How does this apply to your church (denominationally and/or locally)?