Fruitful In This Land Pluralism, Dialogue And Healing In Migrant Pentecostalism

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 31 (2009) 105-160

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André Droogers, Cornelis van der Laan, and Wout van Laar, eds., Fruitful in this Land: Pluralism, Dialogue and Healing in Migrant Pentecostalism (Zoetermeer: Uitgeverij Boeken- centrum, 2006). 173 pp.

Philip Jenkins has brought attention to the shift of the centre of gravity in Christianity, as well as to the “Pentecostalisation” of southern Christianity. Fruitful in this Land reﬂ ects on a further consequence of this development: the increasing presence of migrant Pentecostal churches in the West; in this speciﬁ c case in the Netherlands.

Today the Christian faith is to a lesser degree spread through missionaries from Western Europe traveling South. Instead the exchange between North and South is more about “them” coming “here,” not necessarily through organized missionary enterprises but instead as refugees or simply to work.” A far from average but still telling example is that of the Brazilian or African soccer players who celebrate a goal by ﬂ ashing a t-shirt with words like “Jesus saves”: by profession they are athletes, but as Christians missionaries. T is spontane- ous lay-evangelism resulting from a migration propelled by hardships at home has, as Clau- dia Währisch-Oblau point out, many similarities to that of the early church. (One diﬀ erence being that soccer ﬁ elds nowadays seem to have replaced the Coliseum as the most promi- nent place for public witnessing!)

The articles in the book are divided into three themes: pluralism, dialogue and healing. Allan Anderson ﬁrst outlines the great varieties of Pentecostalisms in the world, moving from continent to continent. T en Claudia Währisch-Oblau categorizes diﬀ erent types of “mission churches” — as she claims they should be called, instead of “foreign” or “migrant” churches — and also their mission theology. In an article of similar orientation, Cornelis van der Laan presents a survey of the diﬀ erent migrant churches (as he calls them) in Holland, and also reﬂ ects on their relation to the Dutch churches and society. In the ﬁ nal article of part I, Huibert Zegwaart presents the diﬀ erent Pentecostal denominations in Holland and wonders whether ecumenism within the Pentecostal movement is possible in view of this variety — an ending that ensures a tidy transfer to the book’s next part on dialogue.

The articles in this ﬁrst section provide much useful and “hard” data, but one could have wished for more in-depth analysis of the facts presented. Of particular interest is Währisch- Oblau’s contribution: her categorization of four types of mission churches is helpful and has a strong empirical grounding.

The dialogue-part begins with Huibert van Beek on the relationships between what are perhaps the two most signiﬁ cant Christian movements in the twentieth century: the ecu- menical and the Pentecostal. This is followed by a short but thought-provoking article by Cheryl Bridges Johns on the Pentecostal contribution to the mainline churches. She presents Pentecostalism in a postmodern lingua as an ongoing deconstructive (Derrida) carnival (Bachtin) that sweeps the faithful into the ecstasy of the Triune God (countless mystics). After this, Paul van der Laan provides practical guidelines for dialogue, before Cornelis van der Kooi from a Reformed perspective reﬂ ects on theological contributions from the Pentecostals.

The section on healing begins with a contribution from Wout van Laar, who emphasizes the natural place of healing in church services in more holistic cultures as opposed to the

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Book Reviews / Pneuma 31 (2009) 105-160

Enlightenment attitude of “soul in church — body at hospital” that tends to dominate in the West. This is followed by an appeal by Richard Shaull to the churches to be among the poor, and to be open to their witness — which is often one of healing and restoration. Part III ends with a personal witness of experiencing and leading others to a personal heal- ing by pastor Daniel Himmans-Arday.

The relation between Pentecostalism — especially in its “migrant” form — and the western, Enlightenment culture is an interesting theme in this book, and also touched upon by André Droogers in his concluding “Prospective Epilogue.” Lately, religion has been heavily criticized by “new atheists” such as Christopher Hitchens in America or Michel Onfray in France. How will they, and the people inspired by them, react to this growing inﬂ ux of people completely unfamiliar with “neutral” standpoints such advocating the separation of the “private” and “public” spheres? To many immigrants the Western, rationalistic culture appears harsh, and here the migrant churches have an important part to play as havens in an inhospitable world (as Cornelis van der Laan points out). How would they be welcomed by Hitchens or Onfray? If the trend of migration that inspired Fruitful in this Land contin- ues it should soon become obvious to western intellectuals that what they are debating is not philosophical positions in the abstract, but rather diﬀ erent cultural positions and atti- tudes in and to the world. It must also be considered that while Hitchen’s target might be a powerful American Religious Right, his rhetoric also strikes at marginalized immigrants in an already vulnerable position.

Fruitful in this Land can be recommended to anyone interested in a wide variety of ques- tions: pluralism, dialogue, and healing, and related themes such as migration and integra- tion, of course, but also discussions concerning modernity and pre/post-modernity. I personally would have liked to see an article reﬂ ecting on the challenge — or even desirability — of integrating migrant Pentecostals into the existing Pentecostal congrega- tions and denominations. The fact that Pentecostals form migrant churches, which is not usually the case with, for example Roman Catholics, is also a question that could have deserved further reﬂ ection. On the more practical side one could have wished for bibliog- raphies and an index. Tese remarks should however not obscure the fact that this is an interesting and up-to-date book on a highly relevant topic that one hopes will ﬁ nd its way to many readers and perhaps even to some course reading and literature lists.

Reviewed by Joel Halldorf

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