Richard Shaull and Waldo Cesar, Pentecostalism And the Future of the Christian Churches (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), xiv +236 Pps.
The authors combine an in-depth study of the social reality from the perspective of faith with theological and biblical reflection. They intend to study what the Pentecostal movement is and is not doing for the poor in society.
I did not find too much interesting in this text, as they mostly just cited Hollenweger and then added some sociological analyses from Cesar. The theological portion by Shaull was really nothing but Hollenweger in new wineskins, so to speak. In speaking of the P. movement and ecumenism, Cesar noted that Hollenweger emphasized the ecumenical awakening of P. by pointing out five types of Pentecostalism: Black oral, Evangelical, Catholic, critical, and ecumenical. Cesar claims that H. says only the last two are underdeveloped; but the characteristics of the first (among them orality, narrative theology and witness, maximum participation, prayer for the sick, and dreams and visions in both public and personal forms) made it possible to overcome racial, social, and linguistic barriers, contributing to an “ecumenical holistic understanding of Pentecost as a body of Christ” (Hollenweger, “The Pentecostal Elites and the Pentecostal Poor – A Missed Dialogue?,” in Charismatic Christianity as a Global Culture, ed. Karla Powe [Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1994], pg. 201). This one quote by Hollenweger made this book worthwhile.