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In First World countries, the relationship of "evangelical" churches (that is, non-Pentecostal evangelical churches) with "Pentecostal" churches (evangelical churches that are Pentecostal in expression) is often tinged by suspicion and a sense of theological superiority. Not so in places like Brazil and other parts of the Two Thirds World. While only about two-thirds of evangelical churches in Greater Rio de Janeiro are Pentecostal in orientation, for example, 90 percent of those founded in the last three years are Pentecostal.

Statistics show that the Pentecostal/charismatic element in evangelicalism is becoming an increasingly larger percentage of global Christianity. At the same time, this growing force has generally (though not universally) combined the biblicism of "evangelicals" with the experientialism of "Pentecostals." For our purposes, both groups will be considered overlapping traditions within the larger evangelical movement. With this picture of worldwide evangelicalism in mind, let us look more closely at how the dynamics of the modern phenomenon of globalization shape our movement as we ourselves become more and more global.

One of the most visible dynamics of globalization is multiculturalism—the many straining to be one. The story of the Brazilian brothers leaping across national and cultural boundaries provides one such example—though I should finish the story to illustrate how completely multicultural it was. The musician, Mario Lindstrum, was the son of a Swedish immigrant to Brazil who was brought to a knowledge of Christ by two Japanese Christians in Brazil. The Italian immigrants to whom Lindstrum and Schilro had preached in Australia in turn witnessed to their extended families around the world. This church eventually helped start a Portuguese assembly in Sydney and began sending missionaries to Spain, Portugal, and South America.

Such low-level, yet global-scale activity among evangelical churches has changed the way believers in Latin America and Asia see themselves. It has also changed how evangelicals in the First World view themselves and their Third World brothers and sisters. Western evangelicalism sprang from traditions that depended heavily on nation-states for their identity and strength. Denominations were called the "Established Church of Scotland," for instance, or the "Dutch Reformed Church." Even Wesley, who saw the world as his parish and would unintentionally found a church based on method and not national identity, died a minister of the "Church of England."

Naturally, these groups assumed the cultural and ethnic assumptions of their cradle countries. Anglicans, it was perceived, were English (or in the United States, white, Anglo-Saxon, upper-middle class). Reformed people were Dutch and "plain." Lutherans held surnames like Simpfendorfer. But as the decades rolled by, and as these groups pressed out into the world, their national and ethnic identities became harder to hold together.

Today, an American Episcopal diocese searching for vibrant Anglicanism looks to Uganda to recruit a leader to oversee its missions program. Australian churches adopt Korean cell groups and Samoan prayer summits as models for congregational action while sending song leaders to American congregations. Because of cases like these, observers of the current evangelical/Pentecostal expansion (that began in the 1960s) no longer speak about "this church in that country," but instead use such odd-sounding terminology as "flows of cultural and theological influence."

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November 16 1998, Vol. 42, No. 13