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

Cox, Harvey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0306810492 ISBN 13: 9780306810497

Publisher: Da Capo Press, 2001

Synopsis

It was born a scant ninety-five years ago in a rundown warehouse on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. For days the religious-revival service there went on and on-and within a week the Los Angeles Times was reporting on a "weird babble" coming from the building. Believers were "speaking in tongues," the way they did at the first Pentecost recorded in the Bible?and a pentecostal movement was created that would, by the start of the twenty-first century, attract over 400 million followers worldwide. Harvey Cox has traveled the globe to visit and worship with pentecostal congregations on four continents, and he has written a dynamic, provocative history of this explosion of spirituality?a movement that represents no less than a tidal change in what religion is and what it means to people.

About this title

About the Author:

Harvey Cox, Victor Thomas Professor of Religion at Harvard University, is the author of more than ten books, including The Secular City. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews:

One of the country's preeminent theologians offers a probing examination of the dynamics of religious fundamentalism. Cox (Religion/Harvard; Religion in the Secular City, 1984, etc), who shot to prominence in the 1960s by speaking of a coming ``postreligious'' age, now looks back at why the predictions he made then were inaccurate. Far from becoming an artifact, religion is reasserting itself in American public life and discourse. Much of this religious revival has centered on conservative Christianity (often termed ``fundamentalism'') in general and Pentecostalism in particular. Pentecostalism, an outgrowth of the holiness movement within Methodism, stresses the fruits of the Holy Spirit given to Jesus' disciples at Pentecost and related in the biblical book of Acts. It also looks forward to the imminent return of Christ to earth, ushering in the millennium. Cox contrasts the World Parliament of Religions, a universalist gathering of the faiths of the world in 1893, with a Pentecostal revival held in 1906 at an abandoned church on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. The first event was attended predominantly by upper-class whites, and it promised that humanity could build a heavenly kingdom on earth. The Los Angeles event, which raged for months, was attended largely by African American manual laborers. It promised that if people prayed hard enough and long enough God would send a new Pentecost upon them. From Azusa Street, the new movement spread rapidly. Today it is a vital force in American and world Christianity; one in four Christians is a Pentecostal. Recently, it has made inroads in largely Catholic Latin America and among white middle- and upper- middle-class Americans. It stresses speaking in tongues, dreams, visions, and faith healing. While Pentecostalism is often scoffed at by more mainline Christians, Cox treats it with utter seriousness. With debates about the ``religious right'' raging, this timely book sheds light on an important but often misunderstood religious movement. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Da Capo Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0306810492
• ISBN 13: 9780306810497
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 372