Miracles, Missions & American Pentecostalism

Overview

WINNER, PNEUMA BOOK AWARD, SOCIETY FOR PENTECOSTAL STUDIES

"Historical scholarship at its best."--Grant Wacker, Duke University Divinity School

"This book will go a long way in helping missiologists from other Western churches to gain a greater appreciation for the reasons why Pentecostalism is growing so rapidly around the world . . . "--Dale T. Irvin, New York Theological Seminary

Miracles, Missions & American Pentecostalism examines the historical, theological, and missiological context and development of American Pentecostal missions, including the expectation of miracles and how this fits into the mission scene of the twentieth century. Gary McGee shows this movement emerging from the ranks of nineteenth-century radical evangelicalism as a renewal movement that achieved a global impact.

The first five chapters move historically from the expectation of miracles from the time of the ancient church to the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. The next five chapters provide a superb analysis of the theological underpinnings of Pentecostalism. Though alienated from other Christians by their insistence on glossolalia, Pentecostals carried the gospel in a supernaturally-wrapped package that fit well with the worldviews of peoples outside the milieu of the North Atlantic / West and helped this charismatically-inclined spirituality become predominant today among "Majority World Christianity."

The late Gary B. McGee, the author of seven previous books, including Introducing World Missions (with A. Scott Moreau and Gary R. Corwin), was distinguished professor of churchHistory and Pentecostal studies at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri.