by
Ted Daniels, Ph.D.
Electronic version copyright © Ted Daniels 1997. All rights reserved
Originally published in Millennialism: An International Bibliography
by Garland Publishing New York, 1992. Reproduced here by permission.
URL for this article is http://www.
Anderson, Robert Mapes. Visions of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979.
According to T.L. Smith's (1982) review this is a "comprehensive account" dealing with every major Pentecostalist group. However, Anderson never tests insider vs. outsider accounts of these groups and does not consider the possibility of outside influence, in particular that of Adventist and other millenarisms. Smith argues that Anderson is too quick to adopt theories of trance which "diminish the religious significance" of charismatic experience. He ignores theological thought on the question of spiritual gifts, which holds them to be "an intelligible grasp of both the will and the love of God." The expansion of conservative churches refutes the thesis that ecstacy is an attempt by the disinherited to attain union with God; the former attracted the same groups as the Pentecostalists.
Grant Wacker's review (1982) finds that this is a "central landmark" in Pentecostalist history but finds serious fault with Anderson's arguments about the nature of the movement. It is difficult to find a moment in history that was not "anxious," which is one of the preconditions of the strain hypothesis. Anderson supposes that religious rewards are intrinsically less desirable than secular ones, but he fails to show that Pentecostalists ever defined themselves in terms of social status; Anderson shows quite the reverse—most Pentecostalists appear to have striven for religious, not worldly, success. Psychological explanations of religious enthusiasm are inherently reductionist, making victims of believers. Pentecostalism in fact flourished in times when social strain appears to have been minimal. Further, in attributing religious enthusiasm to disaster, it is necessary to demonstrate a failure in the traditional meaning system, which ordinarily manages such discrepancy as social strain. Finally, it remains to be shown that social frustration and anxiety were in fact "sublimated in purely symbolic and economically nonproductive behavior." The reverse appears to be the case, for Pentecostalism taught middle-class behavior and appears to have increased the stability of its members' lives.
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