The idea that modernity would eventually cause religion to wither away is perhaps a peculiarly European belief. After all the continent is now the most secularised on Earth. But in other parts of the world various beliefs are thriving with their practitioners posing a direct challenge to those who would equate modernity with secularism.
In recent decades, European society has perhaps best experienced this contest through arguments over how to accommodate the continent’s Islamic communities. Yet the fastest-growing rival to the secularists’ vision for the world is not Islam or Hinduism but a movement that emerged from a small church in downtown Los Angeles in 1906.
In her lively new book, Beyond Belief, Australian writer Elle Hardy calculates that the global Pentecostal Christian movement is the fastest-growing denomination in the world. Of the world’s two billion Christians, a quarter are now Pentecostal, up from just 6 per cent in 1980, and fully one billion people – one in 10 of all souls on Earth – are projected to belong by 2050. The movement has long since spread from its US heartlands to make huge inroads in Latin America, once the most Catholic continent of them all, and is spreading rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa. “If demography is destiny, then this movement is the future of Christian belief,” she writes.
Modern Pentecostalism merges into the wider right-wing narrative featuring bands of believers fighting back against demonic plots to take over the world
To anyone unfamiliar with those who would speak in tongues, Hardy’s book is a useful introduction to the Pentecostal phenomenon and timely to boot as it goes on to explore the movement’s political agenda and its role in the rise of the new populist right. Thankfully for the general reader, Hardy eschews wading too deeply into theological questions and keeps the sociological analysis on a tight leash. She instead tells her often eyebrow-raising story by visiting 12 countries on six continents, reporting on modern-day Pentecostalism from places as far-flung as Guatemala and South Korea. She proves to be an empathetic guide. It would have been easy to pour scorn on those who mix a literal interpretation of the Bible with an often crass celebration of what others might call Mammon. But she passes up the opportunity to ridicule those she meets, even when writing about such odd practices as “grave soaking”, that is praying over the dead in an attempt to bring them back to life.
Instead she seeks to understand what is driving the explosive growth of Pentecostalism. At heart, the answer seems to be its ability to offer an intensely personal religious experience at a time when many suffer from a spiritual yearning left unfulfilled by modern life. But crucially this encounter with God takes place in a church environment that is not just comfortable with but celebrates contemporary consumer culture. One wealthy pastor Hardy writes about authored a book titled You Need More Money: Discovering God’s Amazing Financial Plan for Your Life. As she notes: “Believers are enjoined to live their best lives as both disciples and consumers.”
Pentecostalism is seeking to turn its growing social presence in a range of countries into political influence
This individualistic faith that promises gratification in this life as well as the next is expanding at an extraordinary rate in countries where corruption has left many citizens without proper access to basic social services. One can question the means by which they have done so – promoting self-help over social consciousness – but in many places Pentecostal churches have filled a gap. As one study Hardy cites puts it “these churches give vulnerable populations a solidarity network the state has failed to”.
Now Pentecostalism is seeking to turn its growing social presence in a range of countries into political influence. Perhaps the most relevant sections of the book are those that explore the movement’s attempt to march through what it identifies as the key spheres of influence in secular society – education, religion, family, business, government, arts and entertainment. This call to arms was published under the ominous title Invading Babylon: The Seven Mountain Mandate and seeks to reshape the world along biblical lines so Christ can return, even without the need to convert a majority of souls. After all, as one of the authors of Invading Babylon has written: “Minorities of people can shape the agenda, if properly aligned and deployed.”
It is here Hardy argues that modern Pentecostalism merges into the wider right-wing narrative featuring bands of believers fighting back against demonic plots to take over the world, the sort of conspiracy theories that helped spark the storming of the US Capitol in January and which have been politically exploited by reactionary leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. An empathetic observer Hardy may be but she is also a clear-eyed one about the challenge posed to secular societies by these strikingly modern holy warriors.
Tom Hennigan is the South America correspondent of The Irish Times
