The rapid global expansion of Pentecostal Christianity is one of the most striking religious
phenomena in our contemporary world. Today Pentecostalism is by no means some marginal or
peculiar denomination within world Christianity. It is not simply a niche product in the global
religious market but the most dynamic and fastest growing religious movement within the
contemporary Christian world. From Singapore over Brazil to Ghana Pentecostal Christians are
historically and presently rooted in many cultural contexts throughout the world. As such
Pentecostalism is a religious movement that is both shaped by globalization processes but also
a major contributor to the globalization of religion. Until recently social-scientific
approaches to Christianity have often been informed by a rather selective understanding of
Christianity stressing its ascetic components premised on a body-spirit dualism and seeing its
importance mainly as a harbinger of secular modernity. Hence where Christianity was studied
outside the West it has usually been peripheral and viewed as an alien intrusion undermining
local cosmologies. However rather than a religious rejection of the world Pentecostalism
accommodates to the world and modernity. It transcends locality by promulgating a universal
imaginary of the world while at the same time incorporating itself successfully into the
socio-cultural contexts of any new cultures it encounters. The fundamental fluidity of the
transnational Pentecostal network is conducive for its flexibility to react on the enormous
upheavals and changes in a globalized world and to accommodate to them in constructive ways.
Thus Pentecostalism can be regarded as a paradigmatic case of a glocalized religion: it has
the ability to adapt itself to local conditions while maintaining and preserving its distinct
religious features at the same time. This study focuses on the different theoretical attempts
made to explain the massive global expansion of Pentecostalism and its relation to broader
processes of globalization. It discusses to what extent and in what complex ways the
Pentecostal movement is interrelated to processes of cultural globalization. By looking at the
internal religious characteristics of Pentecostal discourse and discursive practices and their
articulations within the external circumstances of globalization it tries to untangle some of
the complexities that emerge when theorizing the globalization of Pentecostalism.
