@themickey I don't agree with all that goes on in the Pentecostal movement, but I know some of them, maybe a lot of them, are saved and trying to follow God.How Pentecostalism is reshaping America and the world
With 600 million followers, the evangelical born-again Christian movement is deep-pocketed and tech-savvy - and it has big ambitions to reform the society in which we live.
Julie HareEducation editor Jan 29, 2022 https://www.afr.com/world/north-ame...shaping-america-and-the-world-20220126-p59rfp
Scott Morrison may be Australia’s second most famous Pentecostal after his mentor, Hillsong founder Brian Houston, but he is far from the norm. Those who subscribe to the youthful, feel-good, glam-rock, self-help teachings of the Pentecostal church tend not to be white, 50-something and male.
“The Filipina who cleans your house is more your average Pentecostal,” says Elle Hardy, author of a new book on the global rise of the Pentecostal church.
Pentecostal churches are on track to become the world’s dominant faith. AFP
With 600 million followers globally, the Pentecostal movement is shredding traditional religions. In Brazil, which was once considered the most Catholic country on Earth, over 30 per cent of the population now describe themselves as evangelicals, most of whom are Pentecostals.
It’s predicted that by 2032 they will outnumber those who identify as Catholics. Globally, the number of practising Pentecostals is predicted to rise to 1 billion by 2050, that’s one in eight people on the planet.
“In just over a century since its founding, Pentecostalism has grown from a spontaneous outpouring of faith at a small church in downtown Los Angeles to become possibly the fastest-growing religion on Earth,” writes Elle Hardy in her book Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity is taking over the world.
Islam and Hinduism, because of their high birth rates, are “the great competitors in the global race for souls”, says Hardy, but no single denomination is “getting people in the tent quite like the Pentecostals”.
Scott Morrison at his Horizon Church during the 2019 election campaign. AAP
Pentecostalism is an umbrella name for a range of brands and denominations. According to Hardy, they go by the name of Presbyterians in Korea, evangelicos in Latin America and non-denominational in Australia, although Hillsong is by far the best-known.
“While it’s ever more difficult to identify a Pentecostal church by what it might call itself, this is very much in keeping with a faith that has, from its first days, been distinguished by actions rather than rigid doctrine,” writes Hardy.
‘A self-help course from Hillsong’
Scott Morrison, for the record, is a member of the Horizon Church in the Sydney suburb of Sutherland, not Hillsong as is popularly thought. And despite social media posts that have been doing the rounds this week, there are not 13 Pentecostals in his cabinet. In fact, the only other signed-up Pentecostal is his close ally and colleague Stuart Robert, who is a member of Metro Church on the Gold Coast.
What binds the different brands under the Pentecostal umbrella is the unifying belief that the church doesn’t communicate with God on its followers’ behalf but empowers them to feel the Spirit of God within themselves.
“Pentecostalism is very good at the uplift,” says Hardy. “In the old days you might have gone to a priest to confess your sins. Now, you’re buying a self-help course from Hillsong or Bethel [in California] and doing it at home.”
With 600 million followers and rising and the sound of big money from merchandise, music sales and tithing cha-chinging through bank accounts, it is little wonder that some factions of the Pentecostal movement have sights set on global domination.
This is especially true in the US, where something called the Seven Mountain Mandate has made serious headway into the Republican Party.
Apostolic Pentecostals celebrate Easter in a field in Soweto, South Africa. AP
“A plan by a shadowy group of ‘prophets’ and ‘apostles’ to take over the world sounds like the stuff of a bad airport novel, but it is one of the most important ideas in the Pentecostal movement today,” writes Hardy.
“The premise of 7M, as it’s often called, is that the seven pillars of society have been taken over by demonic powers. Believers have to reclaim control of these ‘mountains’ so that Christ can return to rule over the Earth.”
The seven mountains are education, religion, family, business, government and the military, arts and entertainment, and the media.
“So what drives global Pentecostalism today is still the inevitable Judgement Day, only now it’s imbued with the idea that believers can work towards it, and in anticipation of it, they can bring it about through their actions here on Earth,” writes Hardy.
‘Given up on democracy’
Indeed, Pentecostals are increasingly “concerned with the here and now”, says Hardy, and that secular society, or the elites, are taking over the world and they need to fight back.
“Reshaping America and the world so that Christ can return just so happens to look a lot like gaining power in the here and now,” writes Hardy.
And the 7M movement provides “supernatural justification” for the “politics of the Christian right coming to terms with the diminishment of white Christians as a proportion of the US and world population”.
Members of the New York Hillsong church perform a Beatles-themed concert. NYT
Hardy makes the point that Christian Dominionism is about seeing a religiously run America that conforms to Pentecostal values.
“It’s pretty clear that a lot on the religious right in America have given up on democracy, they know they have lost the battle, and you hear instead the line that the US is a republic, not a democracy,” Hardy says.
“It’s about conquering and victory. That’s where the seven mountains come in because if you can control the seven pillars of society, you can transform society.”
War against equality
Donald Trump was a gift to the Pentecostalists. His rise, along with Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, lies in no small part to the rise of Pentecostals. The movement has a penchant for populist, strong-arm leaders with a flair for entertaining the masses, on one hand, while simultaneously scorning the cultural Marxists with their post-modern notions of gay marriage, gender identity, racial and sexual equality.
A 2019 US study found that 53 per cent of Pentecostals agreed that Trump had been anointed by God.
“Long a shelter for the marginalised and the dispossessed, in an age of gross inequality, Pentecostalism is becoming synonymous with an anti-liberal worldview,” writes Hardy.
Along with a raft of other bad actors, Hardy says it comes as little surprise that the “Stop the Steal” storming of the Capitol in Washington DC on January 6, 2021 involved 7M soldiers.
As one pastor who spoke to the crowd that day put it: “We are not just in a culture war, we are in a kingdom war.” At the same time, a Pentecostal magazine put up a Facebook post that said: “There are but two parties right now, traitors and patriots.”
“What happened on January 6 wasn’t only important for its symbolic value, but also in highlighting the value of the whole show – Trump prophecies, deep-state conspiracies, political adversaries possessed by demons – as entertainment,” writes Hardy.
“In the crushing modernity of the Third Pentecostal wave, faith is being gamified. The Seven Mountains Mandate is now part of a cinematic, right-wing Facebook universe, where people can post themselves into a frenzy about good and evil, grand plots to take over the world, and a group of believers banding together to fight back.”
The Pentecostal idea of faith is transactional, says Hardy. These people have been chosen to have the Spirit move through them and they have to use that Spirit.
“They have to work for the ultimate promise to be fulfilled,” she writes. “And when you are called to war, passive faith is no longer an option.”
I have a Pentecostal prayer buddy who puts up with me, probably thinks I am less Spirit-filled since I don't believe the sign gifts are meant for today and also puts up with me because I don't believe in Christians dominating the world.
I believe the world will become a bigger mess, then Jesus physically returns and nobody will ever question the existence of God again, thus there will be world domination, but it doesn't come about by Christians overtaking it.
