Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Washington, D.C. Every year as the holiday season gets underway, debates break out across the country over the appropriateness of religious displays in public spaces, such as crèches and menorahs placed in town halls. But the so-called “Christmas wars” are only a small part of a much larger debate concerning the proper place of religion […]
Pentecostalism has become a significant part of Latin America’s religious and political landscape in recent years. Especially since the 1960s, the region has witnessed dramatic growth in the number of pentecostals. According to 2005 figures from the World Christian Database, pentecostals represent 13%, or about 75 million, of Latin America’s population of nearly 560 million. […]
Origins and Growth 1910s-1940s: In 1882, an anti-Catholic, liberal president, Justo Barrios, escorts an American Presbyterian minister to Guatemala to encourage Protestant growth. Other Protestant missionaries, with the Central American Mission, Quakers, Primitive Methodists, and Nazarenes, arrive in the late 1890s and early 1900s (Garrard-Burnett 2001: 2-3). Pentecostal missionaries with the United and Free Gospel […]
Origins and Growth 1909-1910: American Methodist missionary Willis Hoover encourages his fellow Methodists to seek charismatic gifts. Hoover reports that his congregations in Valparaíso and Santiago soon began to sing, shout and speak in tongues (Cleary and Sepúlveda 1998: 99). Hoover’s fellow pentecostals break away from the American-founded Methodist church in 1910 to form a […]
Los Angeles, California The Pew Forum held a telephone news conference with reporters across the country to discuss key findings from a new international poll, Spirit and Power: A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals. Speakers: Luis Lugo, Director, The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life John Green, Senior Fellow in Religion and American Politics, The […]
Origins and Growth 1920s-1940s: In 1921, missionaries from the pentecostal United Free Gospel Church, headquartered in Pennsylvania, arrive in the Philippines. An American Assemblies of God (AG) missionary arrives in 1926, followed by Filipinos converted in the U.S. The first resident missionary from the Church of God (Cleveland, Tenn.) establishes the church in the Philippines […]
Washington, D.C. Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to visit Turkey on Nov. 28-30, a trip that has already attracted exceptionally close attention because of the pope’s remarks about Islam during a September speech in Regensburg, Germany. More than 50 Islamic nations have demanded an apology for the speech, which aroused anger in the Islamic world […]
Pentecostalism has become an increasingly prominent feature of Africa’s religious and political landscape. The movement’s growth has been particularly dramatic since the era of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s. According to recent figures from the World Christian Database, pentecostals now represent 12%, or about 107 million, of Africa’s population of nearly 890 million people. […]