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121
Jan A.B.
Jongeneel,
et.
al., Pentecost, Mission,
and Ecumenism: Essays
on Intercultural
Theology: Festschrift
in Honour
of Professor
Walter J.
Hollenweger. (Studies
in the Intercultural History
of
Christianity, 7;
Frankfurt am
Main,
New York: Peter Lang, 1992).
x
+ 376
pp.
$72.80
(plus shipping
and
handling
if ordered from Peter
Lang Publishing, Inc.,
62 West 45th Street 4th Floor,
New
York,
NY
10036).
Reviewed
by Russell
P.
Spittler
Most North American Pentecostal scholars know the Swiss scholar Walter
Hollenweger
as an historian of
global
Pentecostalism
or, possibly,
as a somewhat
suspicious theologian.
The 26
essays
here gathered,
written
by
his students and
colleagues,
broaden that perception by showing
him to be as well an
ecumenist,
a churchman, a poet,
a playwright, a liturgist, a baron of babel
(he
reads 20
languages), a media
scriptwriter,
a sometime
campaign interpreter
for William Branham and
Tommy Hicks,
and
(still)
a practicing speaker in tongues. “My highest ambition,”
he’s
quoted
as
saying,
“is to be remembered as a theologically trained artist.”
The editors and Peter
Lang publishers
can take
pride
in
having put out a model
Festschrift:
a
variety
of
essays
of
broadly
even competence,
a
nearly-complete
50
page bibliography listing
the honoree’s vast
literary output (excluding only unpublished manuscripts and items like radio features and
public speeches),
an annotated list of contributors,
a full
listing
of his four score of mentored doctoral and master’s level students
(some
took both
degrees,
so the number of students is less than the number of
theses)
with their dissertation
topics, an inserted loose-leaf tabula
gratulatoria,
and a useful index of persons mentioned in the
essays.
The
publishers
do
need, however,
to teach their
typesetting computers
better
syllabication
habits than those which
yield
line breaks such as mista-ke
(20),
he-arts
(170),
or inste-ad
(199).
Since the volume enters
as an
English title,
a more
thorough
technical editing
at the
production
level
might
have smoothed the
English
here and there
(“an
universal
figure,”
“ten thousands of
immigrants”)
and more
fully adopted Anglo-American
editorial conventions
(o.c.
is used for
op. cit. ; c./. means what, exactly? [both
on
p. 300];
and a.o. after the first editor’s name on the title
page,
book
cover,
and
spine
comes as a
newly
coined abbreviation for “and
others,” certainly though unconventionally
a translation of et
alia, invariably
left untranslated in English
editorial
style).
Never
understanding
the use of review
space for other than
catastrophic typos,
I have mailed to the
publisher
a list of the half-dozen or so noticed.
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122
The
essays, grouped
into
biographical,
historical and
missiological sections, appear mostly
in English–one of these translated from Dutch (Veenho?,
another
adapted
from an earlier
publication (Kraft).
One of the three
essays appearing
in German was
published
earlier
(Friedli).
In all,
the
essays
offer a real feast indeed.
Readers learn
Hollenweger
tasted
poverty
as a child,
drawing
ridicule from schoolmates when he
appeared
shoeless in the classroom. Classical Pentecostal
rootage
led
through
work with the Swiss financial establishment
(1943-1948)
to ordination and service as a Swiss Pentecostal minister
(1949-1958).
Six
years
with the World Council of Churches
(1965-1971) provided
his
opportunity
for
global
Pentecostal contact.
(“I
convinced
them,”
he himself once told
me,
“that the
only way
I could fill
my
duties as the WCC’s
secretary
for
evangelism
was to visit the Pentecostals round the
world.”)
The same decade saw his ordination as a Swiss Reformed minister in 1962 and the
completion
of a multi-volume Handbuch der
Pfingstbewegung (Handbook
on the Pentecostal
Movement)
as his 1966 Th.D. dissertation at the
University of Zurich. What better
background
for installation as Professor of Mission at the
University
of
Birmingham (October
1971
through September 1989)
than a decade in the Pentecostal
ministry
followed
by a half-dozen
years
as an ecclesiarch
(he might say)
with the WCC? The lists of hundreds of
publications
and scores
of completed
student theses attest a stellar
performance.
This career
zenithed,
it can be
observed, just
as the Pentecostal and charismatic movements reached a size that outnumbered
global
Protestantism.
After a brief
biography
of
Hollenweger (P.
van der
Laan,
who also prepared
the
bibliography),
he is described as a theologian (R. Friedli), an ecumenical
(W. Ustorf),
a professor
(E. Lartney
and G.
Mulrain),
a contributing
founder of a center of interracial
cooperation (R. Gerloff), a
poet (M. Heuberger-Gloor).
The historical section
yields kaleidoscopic glimpses
of Pentecostalism: black roots
(I. MacRobert), William Durham
(D. Faupel), early
Pentecostal social concern
(C. Robeck),
Mexican Oneness
(K. Gill),
T.B. Barratt and
Norwegian Pentecostal
origins (D. Bundy),
Netherlands
(C.
van der
Laan),
David du Plessis
(M. Robinson),
South Africa:
apartheid
and the AFM
(J. Horn),
Korea
(B-W Yoo),
Indonesia
(I. Haire),
and the state of statistics
(D. Barrett)
and
global plans
for
evangelization (T. Johnson). Missiological topics
cover inculturation as
self-emptying (T. Sundermeier), power
encounter
(C. Kraft),
the
Spirit
and mission
(J. Jongeneel), play as
a paradigm for Pentecostal
liturgy (J.J. Suurmond), ecumenical
theology
and Pentecostalism
(P. Staples),
ecumenical progress (D. Conway),
and the
significance
of the charismatic renewal for both ecumenical Protestants
(J. Veenhoo
and Roman Catholics
(P. Hocken).
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123
Academics who mine these shafts will surface with
jewels galore, attending specially
to the ones that attract them.
Hollenweger
in fact was not the first
professor
of mission in Britain
(32,
note
2).
His
trilogy on intercultural
theology
is en route into
English (36).
He wrote a commemorative
stage production
for the 700th
anniversary
of Switzerland
(69). Fully
half of the world’s Pentecostals and charismatics live in slums
(Barrett, 193).
Pentecostal and charismatic global evangelistic designs
for
century’s
end
surprisingly
do not
target the world’s least
evangelized peoples (Todd, 201). “Teamspirit”
as a (playful?)
name for the
Holy Spirit (Suurmond,
256–whose interface of play
with Pentecostal
worship
offers a
very
fruitful
suggestion
for Pentecostal
theologizing)?
Given
Hollenweger’s
bent for
poetry
and
liturgy,
it is no accident that two of the
essays
end with
quotations
from his lines
(22, 32).
One of
them,
The
Frog’s Prayer,
sounds
subtly autobiographical.
A
frog laments its double existence:
sitting
on the
lily pad
till the sun overheats, diving
into the water till the need for air forces to surface. Amid
Christians,
too
many questions
awaken dark
suspicions. Among unbelievers,
belief in Jesus
marginalizes.
The final line
gives
a
prayer faintly
discernible in the croaks of
many
ecclesiastical
amphibians: Mach mich zu einemfrdlichen Frosch–Lord, Make me a happy frog!
The
Festschrift
offers an
altogether fitting
salute to the
patriarch
of university
academic Pentecostals.
Russell P.
Spittler
is Professor of New Testament and Director of the David du Plessis Center for Christian
Spirituality
at Fuller
Theological Seminary, Pasadena,
California.
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