The story of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity is not simply a Protestant story. It is a story of the demise of white European Christianity (whether Catholic, fundamentalist, or mainline) and the rise of a new multi-ethnic Christianity that celebrates folk culture. Continue Reading »
In 1941, after fleeing Hitler, the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig wrote a book called Brazil, Land of the Future. The title became a cliché, tiresome to many Brazilians. On an official visit in 2011, President Obama declared: “This is a country of the future no more. The people of . . . . Continue Reading »
This Present Darkness by frank e. peretti crossway, 375 pages, $14.99 As a teenager, I was convinced that a spirit of false prophecy had attached itself to my neck. This spirit’s name—according to one of our youth group leaders—was Python, after the Pythia, or Oracle of Delphi. I did . . . . Continue Reading »
The revelation is said to have occurred on Willoughby Street in Ebute-Metta, a slum on the Lagos mainland. In 1952, Josiah Akindayomi, then an illiterate peasant, fell into a trance while praying with friends. When he emerged, he saw he had scrawled something on a blackboard, short lines of text he . . . . Continue Reading »
The annual “Status of Global Christianity” survey published by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research is a cornucopia of numbers: Some are encouraging; others are discouraging; many of them are important for grasping the nature of this particular moment in Christian history. Continue Reading »
A recent joint statement by a number of Italian evangelical groups indicts the Roman Catholic Church as an “imperial” church and its call for evangelicals to “unionist initiatives that are contrary to Scripture and instead renew their commitment to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the whole world.” Continue Reading »
As a movement firmly planted in the revivalist tradition of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, global Pentecostalism emerged from a number of “revival” centers scattered throughout the world. Historians generally agree that events like the Welsh revival led … Continue Reading »
At a recent crusade in Argentina, Alberto Mottesi, the Billy Graham of Latin America, thundered to the crowd, “Before we go to be with the Lord, our eyes will see the greatest evangelistic harvest in all the history of Christianity. We are living the greatest days in the history of the Church.” . . . . Continue Reading »
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
