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ABSTRACT
This article identifies Walter Hollenweger as the leading scholar of Pentecostal historiography. His contributions to an understanding of Pentecostal history are analyzed primarily through the lens of his signature monographs, The Pentecostals (1971) and Pentecostalism (1997) which bookend his academic career and research on the Pentecostal movements. These publications reveal Hollenweger’s historical sensitivities and the subsequent development of his understanding of the movement. The argument is developed around Hollenweger’s well-known list of the ‘roots’ of Pentecostalism. The author’s personal interactions with Hollenweger are interspersed throughout the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This title of ascribed to him appears among other places on the web site of the Hollenweger Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of Pentecostalism and Charismatic Movements that is housed in the Faculty of Religion and Theology at the Universiteit of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
2 The first academic history of the Pentecostal Movement was Shumway, “A Study of the Gift of Tongues”, followed by idem, “A Critical History of Glossolalia.” The most comprehensive study of Pentecostalism to appear prior to Hollenweger’s groundbreaking work was Nils Block-Howell, The Pentecostal Movement: Its Origin, Development and Distinctive Character (Oslo: Universitesforlaget, 1964).
3 I once had copies of most of Hollenweger’s English publications, and many are housed with the David W. Faupel papers in the archives at Fuller Theological Seminary.
4 In referring to material found in The Pentecostals, I will also often include material that was in his 10-volume original dissertation.
5 The essay “The American Pentecostal Movement: A Bibliographical Essay,” first appeared in the 1972 edition of The Proceedings of the American Theological Library Association and later in booklet form as a joint publication of The Society for Pentecostal Studies and the B. L. Fisher Library Bibliographic Series, available at http://www.asburyseminary.edu/firstfruits.
6 At the time I had less than one year of German. I found my attempts at translation sufficient to gain the scope and magnitude of his work and get some sense of his approach to Pentecostal history, but I was left with large gaps which I tended to fill in with my creative imagination.
7 In the preface I had stated that I planned to revise the essay and asked readers to send me corrections of any mistakes they had found.
8 I had planned to do a Ph.D. in Library Science. One dissertation topic was to analyze a genre of literature. I asked Hollenweger what he thought about such a project on Pentecostal literature. His response was: if you want to do that, don’t do it in Library Science, come do it under me.
9 Mr. Chips is based on a character by Heinrich Mann in 1904 and the novel by James Hamilton, Goodbye Mr. Chips (1934). For a summary of writings on Mr. Chips see Lynne Price, Theology out of Place, 24, 84–89. See, for example, Hollenweger, “Mr. Chips Looks for the Holy Spirit.”
10 In addition to Block-Howell, see also Frodsham, With Signs Following: The Story of the Latter Rain Pentecostal Revival; Gee, The Pentecostal Movement; Kendrick, The Promise Fulfilled: A History of the Modern Pentecostal Movement; Nichol, Pentecostalism 1966; Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States.
11 Most if not all the earlier historians had noted the missionary nature of Pentecostal origins. But Hollenweger was the first to write from that perspective, dedicating only 22 pages to Pentecostalism in the United States and 230 pages to its impact on the rest of the world. In his doctoral work he traced with meticulous detail every Pentecostal group he found in every country of the world, including its approximate membership, organizational structure, statement of faith, leadership, and primary publications. Barrett’s, World Christian Encyclopedia popularized what Hollenweger established.
12 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 1, citing D. William Faupel, “Wither Pentecostalism? 22nd Presidential Address, Society for Pentecostal Studies.”
13 Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 21. This discovery is normally attributed to Vinson Synan whose work, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States, demonstrates this assertion convincingly. The monograph which was also based on his doctoral dissertation appears to be unaware of Hollenweger’s earlier discovery and was written quite independently of Hollenweger’s work. The works prior to Hollenweger and Synan argued that Pentecostalism emerged unexpectantly de novo at the turn of the twentieth century based on the experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit rather than as a development of a theological tradition. Dayton’s, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism later traced the theological development of Pentecostalism from Wesley through Methodism and the Holiness Movement. Hollenweger also mentioned a number of nineteenth-century Proto-Pentecostals, including Charles Finney, T. C. Upham, and Asa Mahan.
14 Ibid. See also Dayton, Discovering an Evangelical Heritage.
15 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 144.
16 Ibid., 146–7.
17 Ibid., 149.
18 Ibid., 145.
19 Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 385–6.
20 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 143.
21 Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 1, 22–23.
22 Hollenweger, “Pentecostal Theology and Implications for the Third World,” 11. Unfortunately, the papers of the annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies were not printed until the 12th annual meeting in 1982. Prior to that time, all papers were taped and made available for sale. The David du Plessis archives of Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena CA, which hosts the Society’s records and papers, have been unable to locate a copy of the tape. A search of the Hollenweger bibliography noted in footnote 6 above, suggests that this address has never been published. Hollenweger’s Pentecost between Black and White also highlights this theme.
23 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 23.
24 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 18–19.
25 Hollenweger presented Seymour as the first African American to bring Wesleyan theology and African orality together. I would privately argue with him that this was not the case pointing out that Richard Allen certainly brought the two streams together in forming the African Methodist Episcopal Church and that such groups as the Church of God (Anderson, IN) and the Metropolitan Church Association (Burning Bush) had long committed their groups to bringing about an integration of the races. Since then, this has been firmly established in Joseph L. Thomas, Perfect Harmony: Interracial Churches in Early Holiness-Pentecostalism. Hollenweger subsequently acknowledged this. His larger point, however, remains that Pentecostalism has been deeply influenced by the African American religious tradition.
26 See Hollenweger’s foreword to MacRobert, The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the USA, xi–xiv.
27 Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 3–20.
28 Ibid., 505.
29 Ibid., 506. It is ironic that the Edinburgh conference of 1910 that gave rise to the Ecumenical Movement was taking place just as the initial Pentecostal revival was ebbing. Rather than recognizing this to be a move of the Spirit, the Pentecostals firmly rejected it. As Hollenweger notes the Pentecostal leadership, for the most part, saw the World Council of Churches that ultimately emerged from the 1910 conference as the Antichrist, ibid., 438. See, however, Robeck, “The Assemblies of God and Ecumenical Cooperation,” 107–50.
30 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 334–54.
31 Ibid., 355–88.
32 See Wolfgang Vondey, Pentecostalism and Christian Unity, vol. 1, Ecumenical Documents and Critical Assessments and vol. 2, Continuing and Building Relationships.
33 J. Roswell Flower, The Pentecostal Evangel, (August 8, 1956), 23, cited in Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 41. The citation reads
We can say like Paul, ‘I am a fundamentalist, of the strictest sect of the fundamentalists am I one.’ But that is not enough. Paul was more than a Pharisee. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection; they believed in angels’ they believed in the supernatural – but it was all in the past. Paul believed in it – the past and in the present also. We are fundamentalists, but we are more than that.
34 See, for example, Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, 40–41; 291–301.
35 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 182–85. For his analysis, Hollenweger drew mainly on the work of Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism in which such early Reformed Holiness leaders as Asa Mahan, Charles Finney, Theodore Weld, William Boardman, Robert Pearsall and Hannah Whitall Smith, received their sanctification experience at the Tuesday meetings conducted by Methodist laywoman Phoebe Palmer, and propagated the doctrine of sanctification at Oberlin College and later through the Keswick Convention. He also drew on Dayton’s reprint series of significant books that ties the Holiness, Keswick and Pentecostal movements together in terms of their historical development. See Dayton, The Higher Christian Life, 50 volumes.
36 See Spittler, “How are Pentecostalism and Fundamentalism Related?”; “Are Pentecostals and Charismatics Fundamentalists?”
37 Faupel, “Wither Pentecostalism,” 9–27.
38 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 194. At its 10th annual convention in 1928 the Fundamentalists went on record as opposing the Pentecostalism with one of its leaders, G. Campbell Morgan.
39 Hollenweger, Pentecostalism, 192. See Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel, 309.
40 This becomes an explicit theme only in Hollenweger, “The Critical Tradition of Pentecostalism” in 1992.
41 Hollenweger, “The Critical Tradition of Pentecostalism”; MacRobert, The Black Roots and White Racism of Early Pentecostalism in the USA, xii.
42 Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, xxi.
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Notes on contributors
D. William Faupel
Retiring after 34 years as Professor of the History of Christianity and Librarian at Asbury Theological Seminary and Wesley Theological Seminary, D. William Faupel now serves as Priest-in-Charge at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Bonita Springs, Florida.