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Key Words Pentecostalism, religion, cultural change, modernity
Abstract Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c), the form of Christianity in which believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit, is rapidly spreading and can be counted as one of the great success stories of the current era of cultural globalization. Literature on P/c presents a paradoxical picture of the cultural dynamics accompanying its spread. Many scholars argue that P/c is markedly successful in replicating itself in canonical form everywhere it spreads, whereas others stress its ability to adapt itself to the cultures into which it is introduced. Authors thus use P/c to support both theories that construe globalization as a process of Westernizing homogenization and those that understand it as a process of indigenizing differentiation. This review argues that approaches to P/c globalization need to recognize that P/c posesses cultural features that allow it, in most cases, to work in both ways at once. After considering definitional and historical issues and explanations for P/c's spread, the review examines how P/c culture at once preserves its distinctness from the cultures into which it comes into contact and engages those cultures on their own terms. Also discussed are the conceptions that allow P/c to establish locally run and supported institutions in a wide range of settings. A final section considers the nature of the culture P/c, in its homogenizing guise, introduces, examining that culture's relation to modernity and its effects on converts' ideas about gender, politics, and economics.
INTRODUCTION
The form of Christianity in which believers receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and have ecstatic experiences such as speaking in tongues, healing, and prophesying is one of the great success stories of the current era of cultural globalization. Commonly called Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity (P/c), its origin can be traced to early twentieth-century developments within Christianity in the West, particularly in North America. Yet despite its originally Western provenience, just a hundred years after its birth two thirds of P/c's 523 million adherents live outside the West in areas such as Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania, as do most of the nine million people who convert to it each year (Barrett & Johnson 2002, p. 284). Although some question these statistics (Corten 1997, p. 313; Levine 1995, p. 157;...
