Pentecostals, Peacemaking, and Social Justice

Pentecostals, Peacemaking, and Social Justice

Series Editors: Jay Beaman, Martin Mittelstadt, and Brian K. Pipkin

Mission

Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians comprise approximately twenty-five percent of global Christianity (more than 600 million of 2.4 billion). This remarkable development has occurred within just the last century and has been called the “pentecostalization” of Christianity. Pentecostals and Charismatics experience Christianity and the world in distinctive ways, and this series invites discovery and development of Pentecostal-Charismatic approaches to peacemaking and social justice.

The majority of early twentieth-century Pentecostal denominations were peace churches that encouraged conscientious objection. Denominations such as the Church of God in Christ and the Assemblies of God said “no” to Christian combatant participation in war, and some Pentecostals and Charismatics are exploring this history and working for a recovery and expansion of this witness. The peacemaking aspect of the series focuses on pacifism, war, just war tradition, just peacemaking, peacebuilding, conflict transformation, nonviolence, forgiveness, and other peacemaking-related themes and issues within Pentecostal-Charismatic traditions and from Pentecostal-Charismatic perspectives. We launched the series with a twentieth-anniversary reprint of Jay Beaman’s Pentecostal Pacifism–an appropriate look back to the generative years of the Pentecostal movement when many denominations believed that nonviolence was a hallmark of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Some early Pentecostals also confronted the injustices of racism, sexism, and economic disparity. Others perpetuated the problems. Yet the Holy Spirit leads us now, as then, to confront injustice prophetically and work to redeem and restore. Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians around the world are working for justice in a myriad of ways. This aspect of the series focuses on gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, economics, class, globalization, trade, poverty, health, consumerism, development, and other social justice related themes and issues within the Pentecostal-Charismatic tradition and from Pentecostal-Charismatic perspectives. Some authors may wish to be more directly theological.  Could something be learned by exploring eschatology and social justice, prophecy and social justice, pneumatology and social justice, faith and culture, the relationship of faith and politics, church and society, or even hermeneutics from below. We understand that peace and justice are not separate concerns, but different ways of talking about and seeking shalom–God’s salvation, justice, and peace.

We welcome contributions from theologians, biblical scholars, philosophers, ethicists, historians, social-scientists, pastors, activists, and practitioners of peacemaking and social justice. We encourage both original work and publication of important historical resources. We especially invite both scholarly and praxis-oriented contributions from global south Pentecostals and Charismatics, for this series seeks to explore the ways that Pentecostal-Charismatic Christians can develop, strengthen, and sustain a peace-with-justice witness in the twenty-first century around the world.