Pentecostalism as a Modern European Movement

Pentecostalism is a modern movement with deep roots in European religious and intellectual history. Indeed, Pentecostalism would not have emerged or developed in the way it did without its modern European heritage. This history has not been incidental for the movement but has shaped its core identity and enabled it to become “a major metanarrative of global modernity” (Martin 2005, 141). To make the argument that classical Pentecostalism is a modern European movement, I offer first a European genealogy of Pentecostalism. In doing this, I try to show that the same historical forces that formed the classical Pentecostal movement shaped the development of European modernity. Second, after this brief historical narrative, I focus on some of the key features of Pentecostalism. My argument here is that central features of Pentecostalism do not only have a modern legacy but are essentially modern. In fact, even those aspects of Pentecostal spirituality that seem to explicitly oppose aspects of European modernity – such as, the supernaturalism of Pentecostalism in response to modern disenchantment – are informed by modernity and therefore can be seen as modern alternatives to the more positivistic European modernity.