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IN 1906 Ambrose Bierce, one of America's finest satirists, published a guide to bullshit, “The Cynic's Word Book” or, as it was later rechristened, “The Devil's Dictionary”. Bierce reserved his sharpest barbs for religion. To pray, he said, is “to ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy”. Religion is “a daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable”. For Bierce, Christianity was an antiquated superstition with no place in the modern world.

In the same year an itinerant black preacher arrived in Los Angeles. William J. Seymour was “disheveled in appearance”, blind in one eye and scarred by smallpox. He was also on fire with a vision—that Jesus would soon return and God would send a new Pentecost if only people would pray hard enough. He began to preach from a makeshift church in Azusa Street, in a run-down part of town. Soon thousands joined him. People spoke in tongues, floated six feet in the air, or so we are told, and fell to the floor in trances, “slain by the Lord”. The faithful prayed day after day for three years on the trot, and dispatched dozens of missionaries abroad.

At the time, the Azusa Street revival looked like an aberration. Surely the future belonged to the cynical secularists such as Bierce rather than the tongue-speaking preacher like Seymour? Intellectual fashion had turned sharply against religion. Marxists dismissed it as a tool of class oppression; Freudians regarded it as a collective neurosis; economists thought that because it had no market price it had no value; and sociologists, such as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber, pronounced its death rites. The year before, France had passed a tough law banning religion from the public square.

You did not have to be a card-carrying intellectual to think that Azusa Street was a flash in the pan. The Los Angeles Times complained about a “weird Babel of tongues” and a “new sect of fanatics” who “work themselves into a state of mad excitement”. Respectable people were outraged that Seymour encouraged inter-racial worship, particularly given that it involved hugging and ululating. The religious establishment was equally hostile, believing that the future of religion lay in reconciling itself with reason. Fundamentalists condemned Seymour for focusing on the Spirit rather than the Letter. “The last vomit of Satan” was one preacher's verdict on the movement.

Yet, with the possible exception of Europe, history has moved in Seymour's direction rather than Bierce's. The great secular ideologies of the 19th and early 20th centuries—from Marxism to Freudianism—have faded while Seymour's spirit-filled version of Christianity has flourished. Pentecostal denominations have prospered, and Pentecostalism has infused traditional denominations through the wildly popular charismatic movement.

Today there are more than 500m “revivalists” in the world (ie, members of Pentecostal denominations plus “charismatics” in traditional denominations). In a recent survey of Pentecostalism, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life argues that “renewalist movements” are the world's fastest-growing religious movement: the World Christian Database shows that renewalists now make up about a quarter of the world's Christian population compared with just 6% 30 years ago. The evidence of this can be seen everywhere in America and the developing world: in churches the size of football stadiums in Latin America, in 12,000-acre “redemption camps” in Nigeria, in storefront churches in the slums of Rio and Los Angeles. LA's most successful export is not Hollywood but Pentecostalism.

Pentecostals believe in things that set Bierce's teeth on edge. The Pew Forum made a particularly detailed study of ten countries. In all ten large majorities of Pentecostals (ranging from 56% in South Korea to 87% in Kenya) say that they have either experienced or witnessed divine healing. In eight of them majorities say that they have received a “direct revelation from God”. In six countries more than half believe that Jesus will return to earth during their lifetimes—and in all ten more than 80% believe that the faithful will be gathered up before the end of the world and transported to heaven.

Pentecostals take their name from the biblical feast of the Pentecost. Early followers of Jesus who had gathered for the feast were “filled with the Holy Spirit” and able to “speak in tongues”. The curse of Babel was lifted and people from different countries could understand each other. Pentecostals are most akin to Evangelicals in their emphasis on being born again. But they differ from Evangelicals, as well as from other Christians, in their emphasis on the Holy Spirit. They believe not only that the Last Days are coming, but also that the Spirit can enter ordinary mortals and give them extraordinary powers.

Pentecostalism continues to thrive in the land of its birth. Until the 1950s the movement was associated with the margins of American culture—with snake-handlers and rural shacks. Since then it has not only grown—two in every ten Americans see themselves as “charismatics”—but also gone mainstream. In 1974, a thousand people gathered in Washington's respectable-as-it-gets National Cathedral for a service in which many people spoke in tongues. But the movement is at its most vital in the developing world: renewalists make up around 50% of the population in Brazil and Kenya. And in Latin America Pentecostalism has shattered the Roman Catholic Church's monopoly. In Brazil—the world's largest Catholic country and one whose national identity is intertwined with the church—about a seventh of the population is now Pentecostal and a third is “charismatic”. In Guatemala Pentecostalism is sweeping all before it.

The Spirit in Guatemala

The Catholic cathedral still dominates the main square in Guatemala City. But the country is now around 30% Protestant, and six in ten remaining Catholics are “charismatics”. Pentecostal gatherings are ubiquitous in the city. Harold Caballeros, the pastor of El Shaddai, a mega-church with comfortable seats, a bookshop, a café and a broadcasting network, estimates that a new church is born every day, and a whirlwind trip around the city one Sunday suggests that he is right.

Pentecostal services take place everywhere: in respectable hotels (having been kept up most of the night by revellers, your correspondent was woken early on Sunday by the sound of hallelujahs and an amplified rock band); in disused shops in the poor part of town; in huge modern stadiums. The most successful church, Fraternidad Cristiana de Guatemala, is preparing to open a gigantic church, rumoured to be the biggest building in Central America, complete with a “Burger King drive”, seating for over 12,000, parking for more than 3,500 cars, 48 Sunday-school classrooms, a baptism pool with space for hundreds, and a heliport. The building cost $20m, paid in cash.

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From the mega churches to the storefronts, these services have striking similarities, down to the ubiquitous Israeli flag (once the Second Coming has taken place in Israel, the Jews will convert to Christianity). They go on for hours without any obvious beginning or end (worshippers wander out for a chat and a coffee). The band works people up into a frenzy. (“God likes music a lot,” says Alex Gonzalez, the Apostle of Jesus Evangelista Church.) Nobody seems to mind if you burst into tears or start hollering. Women come to the stage to testify about the way God has changed their lives. At some point a preacher appears and delivers a lengthy sermon. And for those whose appetites are not sated by all this worship, there are also Christian television channels, Christian radio channels (25 at the last count), Christian restaurants and, during the workday, company-sponsored religious services.

Why has Pentecostalism been so successful? Part of the answer lies in the internal dynamics of the religion. Luis Lugo, the director of the Pew Forum, calls Pentecostals “turbo-charged Evangelicals”. “Conversion is such an emotional moment that you have to share it,” says Mr Caballeros. “Then the people you convert share it. It's a never-ending process. It's exponential.” And they are very good at it. A Pentecostal service is an unforgettable experience, part religious service, part spectacle, part rock 'n' roll rave.

Pentecostalism fills the “ecstasy deficit” left by cooler religions

Harvey Cox, a professor at Harvard, points to two things that have put wind into the movement's sails. One is the fact that it reconnects people with primitive religion: it taps into a deep substratum of primal spirituality, filling the “ecstasy deficit” left by cooler religions. The movement's emphasis on experience rather than doctrine gives it a remarkable ability to absorb other faiths, from spirit possession in the Caribbean to ancestor worship in Africa, from folk healing in Brazil to shamanism in Korea. As the Pentecostals say, “the man with an experience is never at the mercy of the man with a doctrine.”

The other is that Pentecostalism offers a “third way” between scientific rationalism and traditional religion. For many people rationalism is thin gruel. But they are reluctant to return to traditional churches. Pentecostalism offers something different—a religion that is about excitement and emotion, not hierarchy and dogma.

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Pentecostalism clearly has a powerful internal dynamic. Still, it would be naive to try to understand the spread of a 500m-strong religion without reference to sociology. What are the social reasons for the movement's success? And what is the social impact of this fast-growing religious movement? The ideas of the four founders of social science—Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Adam Smith and Max Weber—offer some possible answers.

The Marxist view is that religion is the opium of the people, a false consolation for life's miseries. There is no doubt that Pentecostalism first took off among the poor and the dispossessed and that it offers some dubious consolations. But it is spreading rapidly among the middle classes and the elites. And far from reconciling people to life's miseries, Pentecostalism tends to send them on a mission to fix things—from giving up drinking to reforming society. Opium it ain't.

The Durkheimian view is that religion can be a solution to “anomie”. This is more promising. The developing world is seeing a huge migration of people from the countryside to sprawling cities: Guatemala City's population has surged to over 2.5m today, for example. Pentecostal churches offer a ready-made community and a source of discipline in an urban society rife with temptations. The churches are full of put-upon women who have dragged their men along, hoping to wean them off drink, gambling and other women.

Smith offers a third view: that Pentecostalism thrives because of the effects of competition. Whereas the Catholic Church is a would-be monopoly, Pentecostals create thousands of competing churches. The barriers to entry are low—almost anyone can set up a church—but the pressure to perform is relentless: if you can't preach a mesmerising service, people will go elsewhere. “We have to work against the competition as well as the devil,” says a young preacher.

One result of this is that Pentecostalism draws on the full talents of the population. The Catholic Church is perpetually short of priests, not least because it limits its recruitment to well-educated celibate males. But Pentecostal churches have a genius for elevating charismatic sheep from the flock. They are particularly good at using female talent. Women not only fill the pews. They get up and testify. And they are increasingly becoming preachers in their own right—a particularly striking development in patriarchal Latin America.

Another result is that Pentecostalism is wonderfully innovative. What other Christian movement can produce churches with names like the Mountain of Fire and Miracles (in Nigeria) and the Church of Christ's Spit (in Brazil)? And what other religious movement can produce “hallelujah robotics”—a sort of frenzied dancing and chanting? Churches also make aggressive use of modern media. With its charismatic preachers, dramatic testimonials and miraculous cures, Pentecostalism is telegenic.

Many churches are therefore superb businesses—honed by competition and obsessed with expansion. The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God in Brazil, which was only created in 1977, has more than 2m members today. Its founder, “Bishop” Edir Macedo, owns one of Brazil's largest television stations as well as radio stations, newspapers and a football team. The “cathedral” of the Jotabeche Methodist Pentecostal Church in Santiago, Chile, can seat 18,000. The Yoido Full Gospel Church is the biggest church in the world: every Sunday 250,000 people turn up to worship.

The final explanation is drawn from Max Weber—that Pentecostalism, like Puritanism before it, is an instrument of modernisation. Peter Berger, the dean of sociologists of religion, argues that “Max Weber is alive and well and living in Guatemala City”. Pentecostalism is making dramatic advances among the upwardly mobile. One of the movement's central messages is self-respect—Pentecostals are “dynamite in the hands of God” rather than deferential servants. Relying on ordinary people to spread the word, the churches are particularly good at conveying the rudiments of management. They teach people to speak in public, organise meetings and, as they become more successful, manage large organisations. The bookshops in the mega churches are full of tomes on management as well as spiritual uplift.

This argument is far from perfect. Weber's God remained aloof whereas the Pentecostals' God reaches down to touch the human heart. Pentecostals are restoring much that the Puritans drove out of Christianity, such as visions, miracles and healing cures. It is clearly backward-looking as well as forward-looking—and in its worst forms it is a licence for fraudsters. Before he was caught with a prostitute, Jimmy Swaggart, an Assemblies of God minister, reached 500m viewers a week and attracted an estimated half a million dollars in donations every day. A number of Latin American preachers have a weakness for silk suits and fancy houses.

The movement has also, at times, had a strained relationship with democracy. Guatemala's first Pentecostal president, Efrain Rios Montt, killed tens of thousands of Mayans (and enjoyed the support of American Pentecostals such as Pat Robertson). The head of Los Israelites in Peru took the titles of the Grand Biblical Compiler, Grand and Unique Missionary General, Spiritual Guide, Prophet of God, Master of Masters, Holy Spirit and Christ of the West. Some famous preachers act as power brokers as well as religious leaders.

Pentecostalism is not only burning through the “cities of the dispossessed”. It is also consuming the elites of the developing world.

No movement as big and fast-growing as Pentecostalism can be captured in a single phrase. Harvey Cox calls it “diverse, volatile and mercurial”. David Martin, a British sociologist, says that it is “a potent mixture of the pre-modern and the postmodern, of the pre-literate and the post-literate, of the fiesta and the encounter group”. Still, the modernising element seems to have the upper hand right now.

Many of the new generation of Pentecostal preachers, particularly in the biggest churches, are notable for their entrepreneurial and intellectual sophistication. Jorge Lopez, the head of Guatemala's Fraternidad Cristiana, preaches the virtues of entrepreneurialism. Mr Caballeros, who has just returned from a term at Harvard, litters his conversation with references to Weber and Michael Porter, a management guru. He argues that Pentecostalism can lift his country out of poverty by teaching individuals to be thrifty and officials to abandon corruption. His church has founded 11 schools and organised rural medical missions. A hot tip for winning the presidency in 2007, he is now handing his ministry over to his wife in order to devote himself to politics.

Mr Caballeros is not alone in his enthusiasm for politics. Brazil's Universal Church has its own political party. Majorities of Pentecostals in nine of the ten countries studied by Pew said that religious groups should express their views on politics—and sizeable minorities (and a small majority in the United States and Nigeria) said that the government should take steps to make their country a Christian country. This is worrying at the best of times, summoning up ghosts of theocracy; it is particularly alarming in sub-Saharan Africa, where supercharged Pentecostal congregations are bumping up against Islam. A recent seminar on Pentecostalism put on by the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, attracted people from the entire Washington political machine, including the National Security Council, the vice-president's office, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

There have been repeated warnings over the years that the Pentecostal fire will burn itself out. How can the faithful preserve this level of emotional intensity? And how can they continue to believe in faith-healing and other miracles in the face of the advance of science? So far the warnings have proved empty. Pentecostalism is not only burning through the “cities of the dispossessed” where Seymour found his home. It is also consuming the business and professional elites of the developing world. As for Ambrose Bierce, “The Devil's Dictionary” was republished a couple of years ago, and continues to sell respectably. At the time of writing, it is number 15,290 on Amazon's bestseller list.