Global Pentecostal Renaissance? Reflections on Pentecostalism, Culture, and Higher Education

Pneuma Review Spring 2013

Introduction

Not long ago, I attended Commencement exercises at the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. I was there to see a student named Kofi receive his law degree and to celebrate with his mother, Afi.¹

Afi came to the United States from Togo with her husband more than twenty years ago so they could pursue graduate studies in Los Angeles. Her husband and I were classmates at the University of Southern California and they invited me to join them for a home-cooked African dinner. We became close friends. They had three children when they came from Togo, and two more were born after their arrival. Their fifth child, Mensah, has Down Syndrome.

In 1990, when Mensah was not yet a year old, Afi’s husband completed his dissertation and traveled to Togo, stating his intention to get things ready for his family’s reentry home. He never returned. Afi did everything in her power to find him, enlisting the support of friends to write letters and seek him out, but it became increasingly clear that he had abandoned his family.

Prioritizing the needs of her children, Afi determined that she would stay in Los Angeles in order to find the support and education for Mensah that she would not be able to find in Togo. With five children ages thirteen and younger, living in an apartment in Los Angeles, Afi called on God to help her.

The journey of the next seventeen years was marked by hardships beyond description, including heart problems, battles with the Los Angeles Unified School District, immigration hearings, threatened deportation, and all the issues faced by children and youth coming of age in urban America.

Afi speaks to God with the same passion and honesty as the Psalmist David: “My children are Your children. Do not let them die. Don’t abandon us, as my husband did. We trust in You. Deliver us and bless us and make us a blessing!”

Seventeen years after she was abandoned by her husband, Afi and her children and grandchildren watched Kofi walk across the stage, shake hands with the Dean of the Law School, and receive his Juris Doctor degree. God had answered. Kofi is not the only success story in this family. Afi’s eldest daughter is a nurse. Her second daughter graduated from medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, and is now a surgeon. The son who follows Kofi graduated from an Ivy League university and is now in medical school. Mensah is now in his twenties and is thriving.

Afi embodies, for me, a kind of “Global Pentecostal Renaissance.” She is a woman of profound and unshakable faith. She believes that God is the highest purpose of life, without whom nothing is possible. She sees visions. She does battle in spiritual realms. She prays in tongues. She does not doubt that Satan is out to destroy her and her family and that God is her shield and refuge. Not only does God defend her, He goes on the offensive and leads her to victory over death, hell, and the grave. She can tell you stories of miracles without which she would be dead and her family would be lost.

Afi is also a woman of learning. She earned a Ph.D. in French at UCLA. She teaches at a community college. She demanded that her children take advantage of every educational opportunity and would not take “no” for an answer. When Kofi was fourteen, he decided he wasn’t going to go to school any more. She called the police and said, “I need you to make my son go to school.” He relented. She refused to let her children be crippled by self-pity related to their father’s departure. Her faith and her commitment to education are inextricably linked.

As an African, Afi embodies the trends in global Christianity in general and global Pentecostalism in particular. Her faith is not bound by any particular culture or national agenda, but draws on cultures from around the world. She is trilingual and teaches a language at the college level that is not even her first language. She finds ways to serve redemptively, whether as a professor in a community college classroom, an advocate for Mensah in public school, or a Christian neighbor praying with a friend in need.

Pentecostal Christianity, at its best, looks like Afi, integrating a passion for God with a passion for learning and a passion for loving service.

In this extended reflective essay, I contemplate the potential of Pentecostalism as a global learning movement and the potential of Pentecostal higher education to be a catalyst for a Global Pentecostal Renaissance.²

Global Pentecostal Renaissance is here defined as a Spirit-empowered awakening among Christians worldwide that integrates a passion for God, a passion for learning and creative expression, and a passion for redemptive service and mission.³ In order to explore this idea, the study is organized around four essential questions: What are Pentecostal attitudes toward learning? What internal resources does Pentecostalism have that make it a learning movement (and what are some possible impediments)? What Biblical and historical precedents are there for a Global Pentecostal Renaissance? How might Pentecostal higher education contribute to a Global Pentecostal Renaissance?

What are Pentecostal attitudes toward learning?

In order to assess Pentecostal attitudes toward learning, one must reflect on how learning is related to education and to culture. If one imagines culture in the broadest sense, it can be described (following Andy Crouch in Culture Making: Recovering our Creative Calling) as “What we make of the world.”⁴ This includes both how people interpret the world and tell stories of its meaning, as well as the products people create in the world, products like language, family systems, technological inventions, forms of art and music, and even pots and pans.

Education is the process by which we come to learn the cultures into which we are born and which surround us in the world. Education can be formal, as when we attend school and are introduced to elements of our culture through a formal curriculum, or informal, as when our parents read us a story, or teach us what clothes to wear in a particular setting, or non-formal, as when we participate in a structured learning experience, like Sunday School, not directly linked to a formal schooling system.

Learning is, in one sense, inevitable. We come into the world completely ill-equipped to navigate its demands, and must learn from our earliest moments in order to survive. Different societies structure learning experiences for children in various ways, informal, non-formal, and formal, whether in the home, in community associations, or in formal school settings. In the past two hundred years, formal schooling has become quasi-universal in much of the world, as has literacy. A nation’s level of development is often measured by the percentage of its children who receive formal schooling and become literate, and by what levels of proficiency they achieve with regard to the objectives of that formal schooling system.

To ask about Pentecostals’ attitudes toward learning, then, is to pose a complex question. Few people, if any, are opposed to learning, as such. Groups of people, and groups of religious people, differ, though, in how much they value formal education. One would be wrong to say that the Amish, for example, oppose learning. It would be accurate to say, however, that the Amish are suspicious of formal school systems, especially those run by the state, and consequently the Amish typically believe formal schooling through the eighth grade is sufficient. Amish theological views of the broader external culture, that it is generally hostile toward their faith and tends to lead their children astray, makes their skepticism about formal schooling understandable.

How then shall we assess Pentecostals attitudes toward learning (and, by extension, toward formal education and culture in general)? A full assessment of this kind is beyond the scope of this essay, but consider the following experience as possibly descriptive of what many young Pentecostals have encountered.

Following my graduation from Evangel College (an Assemblies of God [AG] institution now known as Evangel University), I received a Rotary Foundation Graduate Scholarship for International Understanding to study for a year at l’Universite Mohamed V in Rabat, Morocco. From an academic point of view, I felt well-prepared to begin my studies of international relations and beginning Arabic. I hoped to build friendships with my Moroccan Muslim classmates and perhaps have opportunities to share with them my faith in Christ.

I was not prepared, however, to be on the receiving end of their evangelistic efforts. In stark contrast to American stereotypes of the Arab world, the Moroccans I met were kind and hospitable. They invited me to their homes and shared their couscous and tagine cuisine. They wanted to know about life in America and were happy to show me the souks, the beaches, and the historical sites of their North African home. Regularly, they shared with me their deep feelings of faith and wondered if I believed in God.

My religious and cultural assumptions were challenged by this experience in a deeper way than they might have been had I encountered overt hostility to my Christian faith. As a 22-year-old who had grown up in a missionary household, I had to ask myself whether my beliefs about God and about the exclusive claims of Christianity were really true and to what degree they were simply products of my subculture. My Moroccan friends wondered how Christians could be so shocked by Islamist violence when we ourselves had perpetrated violence against Muslims and others during the Crusades and the Inquisition. As Christians, we had not spoken out against European imperialism, but had in fact been complicit in the conquest, allowing the cross to accompany the flag during wars throughout the world. And what about the centuries of slavery, which many Christians had justified by reference to Scripture?

Their questions sent me on a new quest to understand my own beliefs and to try to sort out what was genuinely of Christ and what was bound up in uncritical cultural loyalities. During that year, I read books like Edward Said’s Orientalism, which challenged Western scholarly characterizations of “the East.” I read La Rose de l’Imam (The Rose of the Imam), written by Marius Garau, a Catholic priest who made it his mission to build bridges to Muslim neighbors.

It was a year of intense reflection, prayer, and uncertainty. At times, it felt like the pillars of my faith were crumbling. And yet I felt God was with me. My Pentecostal college had given me the intellectual and spiritual tools to dig deep, and had taught me that “All truth is God’s truth, wherever it is found.” So I did not shrink from exploration, or retreat to safe and unexamined assumptions. My Pentecostal faculty members at Evangel had embodied an integration of faith, learning, and life that I wanted to live out. They had encouraged me to believe that my mind was the ally of my spirit in the quest to be faithful to God. So I read. I thought. I prayed.

As I shared this quest with friends through letters (this was long before email), the reactions varied greatly. Two general orientations toward my situation are captured by two particular responses I received.

One missionary friend wrote: “Continue to inquire, to question yourself, to search again and always (and you will never finish doing so). But it is in this way that you will become yourself, that is infinitely more than simply the product of your milieu…Be faithful to God.” I would identify this as a generally positive orientation toward inquiry, toward learning, toward the formal education I was pursuing, even in a non-Christian setting, and toward the benefits that may arise when one’s cultural assumptions are challenged.

Another missionary friend had a different perspective. With genuine affection and concern, she wrote: “Don’t think so much. Have faith.” I understood what she was getting at. Her comments drew on Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” She was pointing out that our ability to understand the complexities of this world are limited, exceedingly so. Faith involves a conversation with God in which we often come to the end of our understanding and learn to walk with Him in the darkness. If we insist on having absolute answers to all our questions, we can end up fabricating answers that exclude God and these answers can be less credible than the ones we started with. While there was legitimate caution in her counsel, her letter brought back comments that I sometimes heard in Pentecostal churches as a child. “Your thoughts will lead you astray. If you try to figure things out, you’ll lose your faith. Your mind will deceive you. Don’t ask so many questions.” This orientation might be described as a generally skeptical view of inquiry, which is often associated with skepticism about formal education and wariness about the influence of culture and cultures on our faith.

Both this generally positive orientation toward inquiry, education, and culture, and this generally skeptical orientation toward inquiry, education, and culture have been a part of Pentecostal discourse from its earliest years. I would argue that both have legitimacy.

Some have characterized the skeptical orientation as “anti-intellectual,” but I would suggest that this label oversimplifies what is a more complex response. Given that Pentecostalism was born in the era of the modernist-fundamentalist conflict, the education that Pentecostals were skeptical of was often hostile toward the supernatural in ways that completely contradicted what Pentecostals were experiencing of God’s real and transformative presence in their lives. It should not be surprising, then, that Pentecostals would be skeptical of naturalistic, materialistic, and atheistic orientations in higher education. One could not accurately interpret this skepticism as being opposition to learning, as such, or to intellect, as such, or even to education, per se. This was, rather, being anti-naturalist, or anti-materialist, but not necessarily anti-intellectual.⁵

Still, this skepticism, while well placed in certain contexts, sometimes became what Crouch refers to as a “posture,” that is an orientation that, while appropriate in response to specific educational trends in particular contexts, gets generalized to education more broadly, toward cultures and cultural phenomena that are not familiar to one’s particular subculture, and even toward thinking, reflection, and inquiry. This can lead to the advice: “Don’t think so much.”

I did not find this advice helpful. In the years that followed my sojourn in Morocco, I was able to walk with God into a deeper faith that jettisoned many assumptions and cultural trappings and became even more profoundly committed to Christ and His Gospel. Had I not experienced the integrated approach to life and learning that was the legacy of my education at a Pentecostal college, the outcome might have been different.

This dichotomy between the generally positive orientation to inquiry, learning, culture, and education, on the one hand, and the skeptical orientation, on the other, is illustrative of the divided attitudes toward learning within the Pentecostal movement, which will be fleshed out more in the next section.

What internal resources make Pentecostalism a learning movement (and what are some possible impediments)?

At its core, Pentecostalism has the resources to be a genuine “learning movement.” Inherent in the Azusa Street revival, for example, are four orientations to life that might enable Pentecostalism to experience a kind of global renaissance. I think of these as the Azusa Street DNA, but they have also characterized other Pentecostal revivals both before and after.⁶

First, Pentecostalism is exploratory. Pentecostals at Azusa Street, like the first-century Christians who experienced the coming of the Holy Spirit, were willing to go out on a limb, to attempt the impossible, to seek God in new ways, to come to fresh understandings, and to challenge conventions.

Second, Pentecostalism is global. On the day of Pentecost, people who had gathered in Jerusalem from every nation heard the word of God being spoken in their own languages as the Spirit fell on the disciples. Three thousand came to faith that day, and millions since, from every nation, have joined. Likewise, Azusa Street was an inter-racial, cross-cultural, gender-inclusive revival that gathered people from many nations and sent them back out to the whole world. This global character brings with it a cultural pluralism that is evident in the indigenization of Pentecostal churches across nations and cultures and the contextualization of Christian beliefs and experiences. Pentecostals have come to many different ways of understanding the world and even the supernatural phenomena that accompany the coming of the Holy Spirit. When Pentecostals met to establish fellowships, they sought common understandings that would allow them to organize themselves in the missionary-sending enterprise, but they were modest even in their claims about their agreements. No one in Pentecostalism spoke ex cathedra, especially when it came to non-essentials. The global diversity of Pentecostalism is such that today there are thousands of distinct Pentecostal groups sharing a common commitment to Christ, to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, and to missions, while retaining the right to differ on the subpoints.

Third, Pentecostalism is, at its best, holistic or integrational. The Azusa Street revival encouraged people to engage their emotions, soul, and body with their mind in worship to God and in the quest to know Him. At their best, Pentecostals have attempted to build on their core faith commitments to understand all the dimensions of their lives in terms of the real and dynamic Lordship of Christ.

Finally, Pentecostalism is Christ-centered, rooted in a radical experience with God through the work of the Holy Spirit. This experience of Christ’s real presence transforms and shapes our perspective of the world. All of life is animated by our experience of and core commitment to Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. This core commitment to Christ inspired in those at Azusa Street, like those who have followed, an enthusiastic desire to know Christ through prayer and other spiritual disciplines, as well as study of the Bible. Pentecostals are animated by a love of Scripture and a commitment to the priesthood of all believers (including women), necessitating personal responsibility for searching the Scriptures and bringing one’s mind into alignment with the mind of Christ. There should be no “secular” domains of life where the Pentecostal believer puts his or her faith on the shelf.⁷

As an exploratory, global, holistic, and Christ-centered movement, Pentecostalism has encouraged learning and growth for generations of people, many of whom came into the movement and into the experience of the Holy Spirit from backgrounds with limited economic and educational opportunity.

Though these elements are all part of the Pentecostal ethos, they are not always in evidence in practice. Over time, movements can lose their exploratory dynamics, can dichotomize mind and spirit, and can lose their rootedness in Christ and adopt postures toward culture and education that are undiscerning. Impediments to Pentecostalism as a learning movement might include loss of a passion for God, lack of appreciation for learning and creative expression, and growing indifference toward redemptive service and mission.

In order to better understand these dynamics, it is helpful to expand on the notion of orientations toward culture. Crouch offers a taxonomy of these orientations, or modes of engagement (he calls them “gestures”) toward culture and reflects on how Christians in the United States have lived out these various responses over the past century.⁸ Note that Pentecostals at various times and in various settings have adopted each of these approaches.

Cultural condemnation is an approach that was adopted by many fundamentalists at the turn of the twentieth century, when modernism rose as a dominant force in many Christian institutions, including church-related colleges and universities and even seminaries. The rise of modernism, with its accommodation of naturalist and materialist views of the world, was viewed by fundamentalists as undermining core (“fundamental”) Christian commitments to the veracity of Scripture, the divinity of Christ, and the supernatural and miraculous presence of God in the world. As American and higher education cultures became increasingly hospitable to modernist views, it seemed increasingly inhospitable to Christian fundamentals, with the result that many conservative Christians, including many Pentecostals, withdrew from many domains of the larger culture (entertainment, higher education, politics, and the like). The focus of these Christians became to offer a lifeboat for those who would abandon the sinking ship of modern culture.

Cultural critique was a second approach, one that re-engaged evangelicals (who became uneasy with the connotations of withdrawal and condemnation associated with the term “fundamentalist”) with culture. Evangelical thinkers like Carl F. H. Henry and Francis Schaeffer taught a new generation of post-fundamentalist evangelicals to take culture seriously, but to identify its assumptions, including its falsehoods and failings, so as to serve as more effective witnesses to those living without Christ and under the sway of mainstream cultures. Many Pentecostals, but perhaps not as often as other evangelicals, joined the project of cultural critique.

Cultural copying became much more common with the rise of the Jesus movement in the 1960s and ‘70s, as young evangelicals (many, if not most, of them Pentecostals) threw off the cultural condemnation approach and adopted forms of popular music and dress so as to introduce the Christian message to new generations of secularists (or nominal Christians). This approach resumed a practice that Christians had used for many centuries to advance the Gospel through the idiom and creative expression of the local culture.

Cultural consumption was the most common form of cultural engagement of modernist Christians in the early twentieth century and has become a very common approach among evangelicals (and many Pentecostals) in the early twenty-first century. Having seen the limitations of condemnation (which has often led to legalism), critique (which can seem intellectually arrogant and socially disengaged), and copying (which can seem superficial), many Christians adopt a more open, but too often uncritical, approach to culture and its goods and expressions.

Crouch argues that each of these four “gestures” toward culture has its time and place. Condemnation is the only reasonable response to cultural phenomena like pornography and sex-trafficking. Critique is a reasonable approach to works of art, film, philosophy, or literature that are meant to engage serious thought. Copying is an inevitable and often useful way to communicate the eternal ideas of the Gospel in accessible form. Consumption is a reasonable response to all of the good things that remain a product of common grace in all its cultural forms, such as great cuisine, or riding a bike, or using an iPhone, or attending a baseball game.

The problem, according to Crouch, comes when these gestures become “postures,” as described above. Whether we are condemning all things, or critiquing all things, or copying all things, or consuming all things, we will fail to draw important distinctions informed by Biblical wisdom. Instead, Christian should be discerning about what approach to culture is relevant in a given cultural situation.

According to Crouch, Christians should recapture two approaches too often neglected, especially in twentieth century American Christianity, which are at the heart of God’s intention for humanity from the beginning (and, I would add, essential for a Global Pentecostal Renaissance): creation and cultivation. As makers of culture, we commit ourselves to creating products, processes, designs, messages, mechanisms, institutions, and works of art that honor God, in whatever domain we work. As cultivators of culture, we seek out, nurture, and preserve cultural expressions that glorify God, and such expressions exist in cultures around the world because God’s image is stamped on all people and their cultures, in spite of the distortions and evils brought about by sin. An example of cultural creativity arising from the Pentecostal movement is Teen Challenge, a ministry launched by David Wilkerson in 1958 to help people find freedom from drug addiction through faith in Christ. More than one thousand Teen Challenge centers now operate in more than ninety-three nations.⁹

In summary, Pentecostals have rich internal resources, such as those characteristics identified as the Azusa Street DNA: exploratory, global, holistic, and Christ-centered. Pentecostals have at various times and places taken diverse approaches toward culture, sometimes condemning, sometimes critiquing, sometimes copying, and sometimes consuming. At times, these approaches have hardened into postures that have limited discerning engagement with culture. Impediments may arise when Pentecostals lose touch with the passion brought about by dynamic encounter with the Holy Spirit. But evidence of an emerging “Renaissance,” often characterized by creativity and cultivation, bode well for the future. Pentecostals are now constructively engaged in virtually every domain of society in nations around the world: hundreds of thousands of teachers in both the public and private sector; school principals and superintendents at every level; doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals; responsible business people creating excellent products and services, building up their communities, and treating their employees with dignity; lawyers and government officials advocating for justice; social workers and community advocates seeking to strengthen families and cities; engineers, scientists, mathematicians, and technologists researching, discovering, and applying in all the domains of the physical world; professors and university administrators both in church-related and secular institutions mentoring the next generation of leaders; entertainers, media professionals, and other communicators bringing their faith to bear on the formation of people’s hearts and minds; pastors, missionaries, and aid workers in every community of the nation and every nation of the world, extending the Gospel and sharing the Pentecostal experience of the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Many Pentecostals are embracing learning every day both for the sheer joy of knowing God and God’s world and for practical preparation to serve in God’s love.

What Biblical and historical precedents are there for a Global Pentecostal Renaissance?

I have defined Global Pentecostal Renaissance as a Spirit-empowered awakening among Christians worldwide that integrates a passion for God, a passion for learning and creative expression, and a passion for redemptive service and mission.

How might the Pentecostal movement draw on the DNA that was evident at Azusa Street to grow as a learning movement that can impact the world in ever greater ways, including the domains of education and artistic and creative expression? To answer this question, it is important to look at Biblical and historical precedents (I’ll describe promising current initiatives in the concluding section of the paper) upon which we can draw as we move in this direction.

“In the beginning, God created …” Genesis 1 describes the breathtaking panorama of God’s creative genius, a world which He assesses as good, good, good, good, good, good, and very good. God’s creation culminates in the creation of human beings, male and female, created in God’s image (imago Dei). The imago Dei has been variously and inexhaustibly interpreted, but given the context it must at least include sharing in God’s creative impulse and genius. What do humans create? Humans create culture, and they do so from their earliest commissioning by God, Who sets them in a garden to cultivate it, gives them stewardship over the earth and all its living creatures, and invites them to use their new gift for culture making, language itself, to name the animals.¹⁰

This is an extraordinary vision of humanity called to culture making, sometimes called “the cultural mandate,” in partnership with God.

This mandate was violated when humanity sinned, but the mandate was never abrogated and continues to be our calling. This mandate, this calling to create and cultivate in partnership with God, begins at birth when a child begins to learn the language and cultural patterns of his or her family and continues with education in the home, in the community, through the media, and at school.

Pentecostal theologian Frank Macchia has written: “The biblical precedent for linking pneumatology and learning is vast.”¹¹ The literary forms of Scripture themselves bear powerful witness to the calling to learning and culture-making. Under the inspiration of the Spirit, the writers of Scripture employed genres of many kinds (poetry, history, epistle, parable, proverb) to communicate the messages of God to humans in their languages and cultural settings.

Many other examples could be offered to illustrate this cultural mandate in action, but I will highlight the story of Bezalel, in whose case artistic expression and teaching are explicitly shown to be a means of living out God’s mandate under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Then Moses said to the Israelites, “See, the Lord has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills—to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts. And he has given both him and Oholiab son of Ahisamak, of the tribe of Dan, the ability to teach others. He has filled them with skill to do all kinds of work as engravers, designers, embroiderers in blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen, and weavers—all of them skilled workers and designers.¹²

Filled with the Holy Spirit, and with wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and artistic genius, Bezalel and his colleagues created the Tabernacle, a place for the presence of God among God’s people. The relevance for a Global Pentecostal Renaissance is that the infilling of the Spirit of God awakens followers of Christ to works of creativity across the entire spectrum of human activity and God is glorified in the fulfillment of our cultural mandate as well as our missionary mandate.

For historical precedent, one could choose myriad instances of God’s empowering presence enlivening followers of Christ to integrate vibrant faith with avid learning, creative expression, and redemptive service. I will focus here on one such example: Jan Amos Comenius and the Unitas Fratrum, also known as the Moravian Brethren, a movement that was also exploratory, global, holistic, and rooted in a transformative experience of Christ. The Moravians foreshadowed and laid spiritual groundwork for the Pentecostal movement in ways that merit our attention.

Key figures of the Protestant Reformation were advocates for learning and education and laid groundwork upon which Comenius built. John Wycliffe (c. 1320-1384) was an Oxford professor who completed the first translation of the Bible into English and called for an end to the corruption and political dominion of the Church. John Hus was born to peasant parents near Prague in Bohemia, in the present day Czech Republic, around 1370 and eventually became the leader of the University of Prague. Embracing the ideas of Wycliffe, Hus began to preach about the authority of Scripture and to preach against the corruption of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy of that era. Hus was excommunicated and then burned at the stake when he refused to recant in 1415.

Czech reformers who followed Hus kept alive his reformation message and from that movement was born the Unitas Fratrum, an early Protestant church (predating Luther by two generations) centered in the twin Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia. This church was one of the first to advocate education for all children.

The leader of the Unitas Fratrum in the first half of the seventeenth century was Comenius (1592-1670). Comenius was a product of both the Renaissance and Reformation and his work and that of his Moravian church initiated a global renewal of education and a global missionary movement.

Comenius pursued higher education in Heidelberg, and returned to Moravia to become a pastor, teacher, and principal of a Christian school. The Counter Reformation was in full force, however, and the armies of the Catholic Church defeated a Protestant army at White Mountain at the beginning of The Thirty Years War in 1620. The Moravian Brethren and other Protestants in the region were imprisoned, scattered into exile, or forced to go underground. As the spiritual and educational leader of this community, Comenius led a group of the Brethren out of Moravia and into exile in Poland.

It was in the early years of persecution and exile that Comenius wrote The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart, an autobiographical allegory along the lines of Pilgrim’s Progress, in which he examines the ways of humanity and finds corruption and suffering in all his endeavors, until he comes to Christ and finds there the peace, the hope, and the purpose for which he had been searching. The book ends with this statement of faith:

Lord, lead me, hold me, that I may not stray and fall. Grant that I may love you with an eternal love and love nothing beside yourself except in you and for your sake, O endless love! But what else shall I say, my Lord? Here I am, I am yours; I am your own, yours eternally. I renounce heaven and earth that I may have you alone. Only do not withhold yourself from me, and I have enough. To all eternity, unchangeably, I have enough in you alone.¹³

Drawing on the love and empowerment of God, Comenius became a teacher and leader of extraordinary influence during his forty-two years in exile. During those years, he moved frequently from nation to nation in Europe, serving as an educational counselor to Princes and Kings, writing 154 books in the process. He introduced a fresh approach to education focused on the inherent value and preciousness of each student, in contrast to the heavy-handed and often brutal methods of previous generations. His book entitled The Great Didactic brought this new pedagogy to teachers, influencing systems of education around the world. His book Orbis Sensualium Pictus (The Visible World in Pictures) was the first textbook to incorporate illustrations, a phenomenon we take for granted, but which was a revolutionary idea at the time. Such was his influence that Comenius was invited to be the first President of Harvard College, but refused the invitation in order to remain with his people in exile.

Comenius believed that all truth was God’s and that Christians should eagerly seek to understand God’s world. He encouraged an experimental, empirical, and scientific approach to learning that incorporated all the senses. He attempted a grand synthesis of ideas by gathering knowledge from all domains into a “pansophic” (all wisdom) encyclopedia. This encyclopedia was never completed, though he worked on it for decades. Another battle of The Thirty Years War destroyed many of his unfinished manuscripts when he was in his sixties.

He served as a mediator between warring Catholics and Protestants and called for peace and unity among all Christians, decrying the idea of war in Christ’s name. Comenius influenced all subsequent generations of European and world education with his holistic methods of education. No less an educator than Jean Piaget wrote the introduction to a collection of Comenius’s works published by UNESCO in the 1950s.¹⁴

Comenius, serving as Bishop, kept the Moravian Church alive in spite of great personal suffering. He died in 1670, with the Moravian believers still in exile. To fully appreciate Comenius’s contributions, and appreciate the relevance of his work for the idea of a Global Pentecostal Renaissance, one must describe the ways in which his influence extended into subsequent generations and centuries.

Fifty years after Comenius’s death, a nineteen-year-old count from Germany stood in a Dusseldorf museum looking at a painting by Dominico Feti entitled Ecce Homo, or “Behold the Man.” The painting depicted a suffering Christ at the time of His crucifixion. Underneath the painting, an inscription read: “This is what I have done for you. What will you do for me?” Struck by this question, Nicolas von Zinzendorf committed himself and his resources to Christ. During his studies of law, he met the grandson of Comenius and heard the stories of the Moravians. Not long afterward, he invited the scattered Moravians and other persecuted Christians to take up residence on his vast lands in Germany. The Moravians established a community called “Herrnhut,” or “The Lord’s Watch.”

Zinzendorf helped the Moravians, who had survived in small groups and were suspicious of others, to begin to live together and establish a renewed sense of Christian community. Zinzendorf read Comenius’s Ratio Disciplinae, which informed the development of a “new brotherly agreement” to guide the life and faith of the Moravian church. The Moravians began to pray together, with Zinzendorf as their leader. In 1727, during a communion service, the gathered believers at Herrnhut experienced a powerful visitation of the Holy Spirit and what is described as “the Moravian Pentecost” followed, including glossolalia, healings, a calling to missionary service, and a round-the-clock prayer vigil that lasted for one hundred years.¹⁵

Out of this Moravian Pentecost arose one of the earliest Protestant missionary movements, with emissaries of Herrnhut circling the globe in missionary work, including ministry among the people enslaved in the Americas and the establishment of thriving churches in Africa.

Zinzendorf became known as an advocate for a “heart religion” that went beyond what he perceived as dry intellectualism in the state Lutheran church. Just as an emotional religious experience that does not affect the mind or behavior can become a distortion, so an intellectual faith that makes no room for emotion and no impact on behavior can become like “a whitewashed tomb.”

Zinzendorf, like Comenius, encouraged an exploratory approach to life and a holistic Christian faith that integrated heart, mind, soul, and strength through the power of the Holy Spirit. The Moravians experienced the transformative power of Christ, which became the basis for all their actions. The results were stunning and global. George Whitefield, who along with Jonathan Edwards was the most notable preacher in the American First Great Awakening, housed the Moravians as they established themselves as missionary communities in America. Whitefield and Edwards were the fathers of the Evangelical movement in the United States. John and Charles Wesley, fathers of the Methodist revival and churches, were discipled by the Moravians. The Evangelical and Wesleyan movements laid the foundations for the Pentecostal revival that began in the early years of the twentieth century and mirrored the Pentecostal experience of the Moravians at Herrnhut.

In what sense does Comenius serve as a model for a “Global Pentecostal Renaissance”? Note the ways in which Comenius embodied what is referred to above as the Azusa Street DNA.

First, Comenius embodied an exploratory approach to life and faith. He saw education and learning as an expression of love for Christ and faithfulness to His calling. Comenius advocated for the education and development of all people, giving special opportunity and attention to women. Consequently, women came to occupy key leadership roles in the Moravian movement.

Second, the scope of Comenius’s mission and the character of his movement were global, as he sought to give witness to Christ and mediate conflicts across Europe. Comenius worked to build a Christian community of love and trust that welcomed the hurting, the exile, and the stranger and reconciled all within the body of Christ. The Moravians became the forerunners of the modern missionary movement .

Third, Comenius’s approach to education was holistic and integrational. He advocated for education and learning as keys both to understanding God’s world and to serving that world through acts of compassion, witness, and artistic and literary expression.

Fourth, his life and philosophy and work were Christ-centered, rooted in a passionate love of Jesus Christ and a desire to obey and serve Him. Comenius laid the groundwork that encouraged the Moravians to receive the empowerment of the Holy Spirit as the basis for community and service.

Comenius modeled for the Moravians and the whole church a spirituality that integrated body, mind, and spirit under the Lordship of Christ, enduring hardship without losing faith.

Ultimately, Comenius’s interest was not in building the Moravian Church, per se, or in spreading Moravianism. He loved his people and served as their bishop, but he had a larger vision rooted in his global perspective and his faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. He wrote:

To all Christian churches together I bequeath a lively desire for unanimity of opinion and for reconciliation among themselves, and for union in faith, and love of the unity of spirit. May the spirit which was given to me from the very beginning by the Father of spirits be shed upon you all, so that you would desire as sincerely as I did the union of all who call upon the name of Christ in truth.¹⁶

The Moravian Church is only a small part of the legacy of Comenius (and Zinzendorf). The far greater part of their legacy belongs to the whole church of Christ, in the form of an integrated faith, empowered by the Spirit, reaching the whole world, and even to the world beyond the church, in the form of education systems that consider every child to be precious and worthy of our best efforts (even where societies have lost the underlying faith that every human is created in the image of God).

This also is a lesson for Pentecostalism from Comenius: the purpose of Pentecostalism is not its own perpetuation or institutionalization. The purpose of Pentecostalism is, like the purpose of Pentecost, to bring the reality, redemption, and reconciliation of God in Christ to the world, empowering all who call on Him to fully become the people He created them to be. A Global Pentecostal Renaissance will help us remember our core identity and our core mission.

How might Pentecostal higher education contribute to a Global Pentecostal Renaissance?

Though the Pentecostal movement was born among people of few means and, in general, little formal education, it has had remarkable success in establishing institutions of higher education, and these institutions have played a major role in the development of the movement. Here we consider the potential role Pentecostal higher education might play in the emergence of a Global Pentecostal Renaissance. To this end, a review of the roots of Pentecostal higher education is in order.

The first of the Pentecostal institutions of higher education were short-term Bible schools focused on training people for church ministry and missions. Eventually, these short-term schools expanded the range of their curriculum to become multi-year Bible institutes and Bible colleges, many with residential facilities for students. Many of the people who graduated from these institutions went on for further study at seminaries and universities and some became intellectual leaders in the Pentecostal movement. For example, Dr. Russell Spittler, who started at Southeastern Bible College (now Southeastern University), went on to earn his Ph.D. at Harvard University and to become Provost at Fuller Seminary and Vanguard University. While Pentecostals were initially skeptical of seminaries (often likening them to “cemeteries”), in recent years Pentecostals have established numerous seminaries and “advanced schools of theology” around the world.

Beginning in the 1950s and ‘60s, Pentecostals began to establish regionally-accredited liberal arts colleges, sometimes as new institutions (such as Evangel College) and sometimes as the next stage of development for existing Bible colleges (such as Southern California Bible College, which became Southern California College, and is now Vanguard University). This movement toward multi-major colleges responded to a desire among Pentecostals for a kind of higher education in which their children could prepare for careers outside the church, but in an environment that was not hostile to their Pentecostal experience and Christian faith.¹⁷ Not only the AG, but also the Church of God (Cleveland, Tennessee), the Foursquare Church, and the International Pentecostal Holiness Church, among others, have established Christian colleges staffed largely by Pentecostal faculty and staff.

In the past decade, many of these Pentecostal colleges have refashioned themselves as universities, following the lead of Oral Roberts University, established in the 1960s as the first American university in the Pentecostal tradition.¹⁸ Ten such Pentecostal universities are now functioning in the United States alone, with others being established in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.¹⁹

With the launch of liberal arts colleges, Pentecostals began to engage a broader world of learning in domains beyond the traditional Biblical studies curriculum. They were faced with the age-old question posed by second century theologian Tertullian: “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem? What concord is there between the academy and the church?”²⁰

To answer that question, Pentecostal leaders in higher education looked to older Christian intellectual traditions and began to bring the ideas forged by others into a Pentecostal context. Of particular influence were ideas from evangelical institutions like Wheaton College. Schools like Wheaton, in turn, drew on centuries of Christian reflection on the relationship of faith and learning, rooted in Christ’s command to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.”²¹

To early Christian educators, loving God with all one’s self meant, among other things, participating in the cultural mandate. God provided humanity with stewardship responsibility for the world that God made and called “very good.” While nature is for our use, that use is to be made responsibly and with care, given that we are sub-rulers (or stewards) over the Creation that God made and rules in an ultimate sense. As humans have filled the earth, we have often failed to steward God’s creation, with devastating effects both for ourselves and the earth. Human stewardship for God’s creation cannot simply be accomplished by an individual. It is within human societies governed by the shared beliefs of human cultures that decisions are made and actions are carried out that either care for the creation (including human beings) or destroy creation (and human life).

In order to care for God’s world, we must seek to understand it. That quest for understanding takes many forms, through many “modes of inquiry,” including the study of Scripture, the study of humanity (hence, “humanities” and “social sciences”) and the study of the natural world (hence “the natural sciences”).

One of the early debates within Christianity was about whether the ideas and writings of non-Christian thinkers on matters such as these were appropriate subjects of study and inquiry for Christians. Tertullian urged caution, though he had a deep education in the pagan writings.²² Clement of Alexandria (c. AD 150-215) embraced learning that would enrich Christians’ understanding of God’s world, whatever the source of that learning might be.

Clement, Origen, Augustine, and other early Christian educators laid foundations on which Catholic monks and others built during the Middle Ages, culminating in Thomas Aquinas’s ambitious efforts to draw on Aristotelian thought in constructing a Christian philosophy. During the Middle Ages, though, the seeds were sewn for a conception of knowledge that would dichotomize the “sacred” realm (inhabited by those with a religious vocation) and the “secular” realm (inhabited by everyone else).

Great gains in Christian education were made during the Renaissance and Reformation when Christian thinkers and artists like Dante, Chaucer, Petrarch, Erasmus, and Luther, each in his own way, advocated for learning. While a branch of Renaissance humanism eventually veered off into secularism and Enlightenment skepticism, many of the heirs of the Renaissance and Reformation, like Comenius and John Milton, championed Christian education. Milton wrote: “The end then of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him.”²³

In the centuries preceding the birth of the contemporary Pentecostal movement many Christian institutions of higher education were established, though many later departed from their Christian mission for reasons of market, status, or philosophy.²⁴ Some retained and continuously renewed a commitment to a deeply Christian approach to higher education.

According to Arthur Holmes, “The Christian believes that in all that he does intellectually, socially or artistically, he is handling God’s creation and that is sacred.”²⁵ Moreover, “The student must realize that his education is a Christian vocation, his prime calling from God for these years, that his education must be an act of love, of worship, of stewardship, a wholehearted response to God.”²⁶

While some have criticized Holmes’ approach as being “too rationalistic” and not giving sufficient importance to the emotions, the intuition, and the Spirit in the learning process, he helped to lay foundations for the academic enterprise that have been of great value to Pentecostal educators.²⁷

Pentecostals in higher education seek to cultivate more than a cognitive worldview. Pentecostal integration seeks to weave faith, learning, and life together in all dimensions of our humanity, such that they constitute a “life way” and not merely a worldview, shaping not only the mind, but also the affections.²⁸ Drawing on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostals have the resources to live lives that are holistic and exploratory, in communities that are global and diverse, and to experience a transformative relationship with Christ that reshapes all facets of life through the guidance of the Holy Spirit who leads us into all truth.

Still, Pentecostal educators are now faced with a new set of challenges. With graduate and professional programs now growing, many Pentecostal institutions, some with more than two thousand students enrolled, now face this question: “What does it mean to be a Pentecostal university?” How, indeed, might Pentecostal higher education contribute to a Global Pentecostal Renaissance?

Just as Comenius strove to integrate a learning renaissance and a spiritual renaissance in the seventeenth century so Pentecostal educators in the twenty-first century are seeking to cultivate the minds and spirits of their students at scores of Pentecostal institutions of higher education around the world.

The challenges to Pentecostal higher education are many. The 2011 closure of Bethany University, affiliated with the AG, illustrates the seriousness of the financial challenges. In addition to these financial challenges, and related to them, are the governance and organizational challenges that institutions face as they seek to change in response to changing demographics, changing accreditation requirements, and changing markets, including new competition from “for-profit” institutions, and changing modes of delivery, such as the explosion of online learning.

Given that widespread involvement in higher education is a relatively recent development for Pentecostals, the number of Pentecostal candidates qualified and applying for positions in a variety of fields is limited, presenting a challenge for Pentecostal colleges or universities seeking to fill positions in departments like Chemistry or Sociology.

With changes in types and varieties of academic programs and, in many cases with a more denominationally diverse student bodies and faculties, Pentecostal colleges and universities are sometimes challenged to maintain a strong partnership with their sponsoring denominations, and this relationship must be constantly nurtured or risk becoming unproductive for both college and church.

However, challenges such as these are to be expected and are not unique to Pentecostal institutions. Serious efforts are being made by the colleges and their partner churches to navigate these challenges so that the powerful calling of Pentecostal higher education can be fulfilled.

A few examples will suffice to illustrate how Pentecostal colleges and universities are, in fact, contributing to a Global Pentecostal Renaissance in a variety of domains. These are just a few of the myriad examples that could be provided and are weighted toward those institutions I know best. The brief descriptions below are accompanied by references to websites where the reader can learn more about these institutions and their initiatives.

Pentecostal colleges contribute to Global Pentecostal Renaissance through theology and ministry preparation. Pentecostal colleges and universities of all kinds have a rich history of preparing ministers and contributing to theological reflection in institutions around the world. These range from the powerful preparation being provided in two-year programs like the Associate degree program in Bible and Ministry at Latin American Bible Institute in La Puente, California²⁹ to the internationally influential scholarship being carried out by faculty in programs like Regent University’s Ph.D. in Renewal Studies.³⁰ Global University is pioneering the use of Kindle devices to provide full theological libraries and programs of study in e-book format for pastors in nations with limited or no access to theological libraries or seminaries.³¹

Pentecostal colleges contribute to Global Pentecostal Renaissance through the liberal arts. Many Pentecostal colleges and universities offer strong liberal arts programs, such as the newly revised “Frameworks” curriculum at Evangel University, which features thematic, interdisciplinary courses including one entitled simply “Pentecost.”³² Humanities faculties at Pentecostal institutions include notable poets, playwrights, fiction writers, and historians.

Pentecostal colleges contribute to Global Pentecostal Renaissance through music and fine arts. Many outstanding music programs are making an impact on students’ lives and on the world at Pentecostal colleges and universities. The highly-regarded Lee University choir was invited to sing at this year’s Presidential inauguration.³³ Vanguard University’s Theatre program is one of only two Council of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) institutions accredited by the National Association of Schools of Theatre.³⁴ Vanguard’s Music program frequently ministers internationally and travels regularly to China for concerts.³⁵ Increasingly, Pentecostal universities are also offering programs in film production and digital media.

Pentecostal colleges contribute to Global Pentecostal Renaissance through science and technology. Regent University College of Science and Technology in Accra, Ghana, is perhaps the first Pentecostal institution launched specifically to prepare students in the sciences.³⁶ Scientific research is being carried out at a number of Pentecostal institutions, as is deep reflection on the interface between science and Pentecostal Christianity, as evidenced by the publication of Science and Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences.³⁷ A number of Pentecostal institutions such as Northwest University, Oral Roberts University (ORU), and Vanguard University are leading the way in preparing nurses and other students who seek to serve in health fields. ORU’s engineering program is sending engineering students on international missions trips.³⁸

Pentecostal colleges contribute to Global Pentecostal Renaissance through social and behavioral sciences. Graduates of Bethany University and Vanguard University were instrumental in launching Latin American Child Care (which educates tens of thousands of children in Christian schools) and Enlace (which has created a powerful model of church-based community development in El Salvador).³⁹ Convoy of Hope (an international relief agency)⁴⁰ was launched by brothers who graduated from Evangel University and Bethany University. Vanguard’s Global Center for Women and Justice⁴¹ is making a phenomenal contribution to AG efforts to combat human trafficking. Outstanding programs in Psychology prepare counselors at many Pentecostal institutions and a number of these engage students in service in the United States through organizations like Royal Family Kids Camps (an organization ministering to thousands of foster children, founded by an alumnus of a Pentecostal institution),⁴² and internationally.⁴³

Pentecostal colleges are also contributing to Global Pentecostal Renaissance through programs in business, education, student development, spiritual formation and many other programs too numerous to catalog here.⁴⁴ The reader is encouraged to visit the website of the Alliance for AG Higher Education⁴⁵ and the individual websites of Pentecostal colleges and universities not mentioned above (such as the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, Pentecostal Theological Seminary, Emmanuel College (Georgia), Life Pacific College, North Central University, Southeastern University, Southwest Assemblies of God University, Valley Forge Christian College, and many others), as well as those in other countries (like Hansei University [South Korea], West African Advanced School of Theology [Togo], Universidad Cristiana de las Asambleas de Dios [El Salvador], and Asia Pacific Theological Seminary [Philippines]),⁴⁶ for regular updates on initiatives of the kind described above.

Pentecostal institutions of higher education offer a unique environment for integrating a passion for God with a passion for learning and creative expression and a passion for redemptive service and mission.

In the midst of the significant challenges they must navigate, Pentecostal institutions of higher education continue to equip students to commit their lives and God-given gifts to His glory and for the transformation of people’s lives, whatever their field and wherever they serve around the world.

One final reflection on the contribution of Pentecostal colleges and universities has to do with a possible objection to the use of the term “Renaissance” and the emphasis of this essay on higher education. One might suspect that this term implies a kind of elitism. Given that Pentecostals now have opportunities to participate in higher education and other social and cultural institutions from which they were previously excluded, the temptation to status consciousness is real. Drawing on The Lord of the Rings imagery, I have elsewhere referred to this as the temptation of the Ring, or the temptation to grasp at educational achievement as a pathway to social power on terms defined by secular society rather than as an opportunity to serve Christ and His kingdom.⁴⁷

A true Global Pentecostal Renaissance, however, must be inclusive of all, recognizing in authentic Pentecostal fashion that all people receive gifts to share and must be welcomed and encouraged to do so. A Global Pentecostal Renaissance encourages all believers to express their gifts with confidence, as illustrated by this personal example.

My son Ben, like Afi’s son Mensah, is a young man with Down Syndrome. Ben is also on the autistic spectrum, and for him participation in regular church settings is difficult. Ben has many gifts to share, but the conditions under which he is able to share them must be sensitively designed. When Ben became a teenager, my wife and I needed help from our local AG church in order to facilitate Ben’s participation in the church community. Ultimately, that help came from two graduates of an AG college, one in special education and another in nursing, who volunteered to create a special needs Sunday School class for teenagers who are not able to thrive in regular classes or services. By integrating their learning with their faith in their domains of study and service, these women creatively opened doors for Ben and other teens with special needs, so that they, too, could share their gifts with the people of God. Multiply this local expression of the Spirit’s empowerment for redemptive service a hundred thousand times over in churches and communities around the world, and one can imagine what Global Pentecostal Renaissance looks like in a very practical sense.

Conclusion

Pentecostals have experienced the presence, love, and power of God in a life-transforming way. The natural response to that experience is to seek to follow God in all facets of one’s life. A passion for God can and should be integrated with a passion for learning and creative expression and a passion for redemptive service and mission.

While Pentecostals have sometimes been leery of higher education, this paper suggests that Pentecostalism, a truly global movement, has within its DNA the resources to be a learning movement. Pentecostalism, as exemplified by the Azusa Street revival, is exploratory, global, holistic, and Christ-centered. Pentecostal institutions of higher education play a vital role in encouraging these characteristics among Pentecostals and are contributing to a Global Pentecostal Renaissance, defined as a Spirit-empowered awakening among Christians worldwide that integrates a passion for God, a passion for learning and creative expression, and a passion for redemptive service and mission. Such an awakening will bless not only Pentecostals, but may also encourage and inspire Christians from other traditions with whom we partner to bless the world.

The future of global Pentecostalism will be bright if Pentecostal educators will partner with churches and families to bring that passion for God, passion for learning and creative expression, and passion for redemptive service and mission to bear on all human relationships across cultures and in all domains of life.

PR

Footnotes appear in the full digital issue of Pneuma Review Spring 2013 and in the book from which this excerpt is derived.