Spirit-Filled World

This book is about African Pentecostalism and its relationship to religious beliefs about a pervading spirit world. It argues that Pentecostalism keeps both a continuous and a discontinuous relationship in tension. Based on field research in a South African township, including qualitative interviews and focus group discussions, the study explores the context of African Pentecostalism as a whole and how it interacts with the concepts of ancestors, divination, and various types of spirit. Themes discussed include the reasons for the popularity of healing, exorcism, the “prosperity gospel,” the experience of the Holy Spirit, Spirit manifestations and practices resembling both traditional and biblical precedents, as well as scholarly discussions on African Pentecostalism from theological and social scientific disciplines. The book suggests that the focus on a spirit-filled world affects all kinds of events and explains the rapid growth of Pentecostalism outside the western world.

“Spirit-Filled World brings an in-depth understanding of African Pentecostalism and its starting point is to appreciate the African spirit world. … Anderson succeeds in demonstrating why Africans are attracted to Pentecostalism. While global classical Pentecostalism claims total breaking with the past, Anderson is balanced to accept that the points of continuity and discontinuity are polarized, but only affirmed through the use of the Spirit to deal with the problems related to the spirit world.” (Nomatter Sande, Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association, July 29, 2020)

“Anderson produces yet another important contribution to the growing body of scholarship by and about Pentecostals; his work deserves wide readership among theologians, sociologists, anthropologists, and historians of Pentecostalism.” (Martin W. Mittelstadt, Religious Studies Review, Vol. 45 (2), June, 2019)

“This book is a penetrating analysis of the characteristics and manifestations of an African pneumatology. I have great respect for Allan Anderson’s approach. We share methodological commitments to empirical research that contributes toward a depth perspective sometimes lacking in studies based on theory rather than experience and observations of the people themselves. Taking seriously the deeper experience and beliefs of the actual people studied results in challenging and valuable insights. Anderson has an identification with and understanding of the interaction among the Spirit, power concepts, and the African spirit world. This interaction inspires increasing receptivity towards the movement of God’s Spirit.” (M.L. (Inus) Daneel, Boston University, USA)

“Working both as an insider and an outsider whose personal experience and academic writing represent ‘continuity and discontinuity’ with the subject of this book, Anderson is a reliable and persuasive exponent of Pentecostalism. In his latest book he marshals field evidence to explore issues of convergence and divergence with African ideas of the spirit world, which he doesn’t reduce to mysticism or immobilize in material objects. The Christian framework captures the dynamic nature of reception and appropriation as a general feature of the Christian movement, with African Pentecostalism a vivid manifestation of it. The book is an instructive model of interpretation anchored in real life situations and conveyed in clear, lively prose. It deserves to be welcomed.” (Lamin Sanneh, Yale University, USA)

“When dealing with the study of Pentecostalism as a global movement, the depth and breadth of knowledge that Allan Anderson brings remains unparalleled.  In this new volume, Spirit-Filled World, he tackles deftly the delicate balance in the intersection—continuity/discontinuity—between Pentecostalism and African traditional cultures.  In doing this, Anderson relies on decades of teaching and experiencing Pentecostalism across cultures to beat for us a new path that will inspire innovative ways in which to encounter, experience, understand and teach Pentecostalism as, currently, the defining religious player in what counts as World Christianity.” (J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Trinity Theological Seminary, Accra, Ghana)

Allan Heaton Anderson is Professor of Mission and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham, England. He is author of many articles and books, including An Introduction to Pentecostalism (2014), To the Ends of the Earth (2013), and Spreading Fires (2007).