The Spirit of Praise: Music and Worship in Global Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity

This is an important collection that gathers together a huge range of material and perspectives. It has the potential to take many of the current discussions on music and worship to a very different level.

--Jeremy Begbie, Duke University

The Spirit of Praise explores a burgeoning religious phenomenon rapidly expanding across the globe. Based on a cultural studies approach, it addresses global pentecostal-charismatic Christian worship and its discursive practices in relation to globalization, transculturation, theology, and secularization in the sociocultural contexts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. What emerges is a work focused on the dynamic roles of music and worship in Christian renewal, theologizing, healing, and marketplace mediation, in light of the pervasive impact of worship in transforming Christian traditions worldwide.

--Roberta R. King, Fuller Theological Seminary

The academic attention now being paid to the phenomenon of worship is long overdue. It is beginning to help scholars understand that congregations, and the individual religious and spiritual experiences that believers report, are shaped just as much by what is sung in worship as what might be professed in any creed. Indeed, the 'dramaturgy' of worship is what mostly forms the 'grammar of assent' for believers, as they gather in praise and prayer. There is no doubt that Monique Ingalls and Amos Yong, now two of the leading scholars in this field, have brought us a superlative, groundbreaking collection of essays. Here, pentecostal-charismatic music and worship are addressed, assessed, and analyzed with attentiveness and acuity. Ingalls and Yong, through this stunning collection, have set a future course for the study of worship that is intriguingly interdisciplinary, rich in wisdom, and deep in scholarship--and yet also accessible to a wide range of academics and practitioners. In short, this is already one of the leading books in the field, and it will help guide our future studies in this vital area of scholarly enterprise.

--Martyn Percy, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

Pentecostal-charismatic Christianity has demonstrated itself to be an explosive, diverse, and resilient religious movement in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. This collection of essays reflects pentecostalism's global reach, combined with its extraordinary adaptability and capacity for indigenization. Music, likewise common to all of us yet capable of wonderful adaptability within different cultures and contexts, is an ideal unifying theme for the book, as well as an illuminating prism through which to understand this important religious phenomenon. The powerful combination of sociology, anthropology, cultural studies, religious studies, and theology in this volume demonstrates how these disciplines can work together and sheds new light on the fastest-growing religious movement in recent history.

--Mark Jennings, Murdoch University

The Spirit of Praise is a fresh and timely collection of essays on the role of music in pentecostal-charismatic Christian practice. The editors have done a superb job of organizing the material, and the contributors approach their topics with remarkable sensitivity and rigor. Represented here are the voices of both scholars and practitioners, who write from well-grounded perspectives. The volume challenges its readers by insisting that they grapple with overlapping yet sometimes dissonant points of view. It shows us that music is much more than a mere appendage to religious practice; rather, music is often inextricably linked to the theological and political realms. The Spirit of Praise makes an inspiring contribution to our understanding of the role of music and worship in the contexts of Christian practice and everyday life.

--Melvin L. Butler, University of Chicago

This edited collection will delight pentecostal-charismatic scholars, students, and lay readers alike in its focus on a neglected but important dimension of pentecostalism. Over the past couple decades, scholars from different disciplines have taken due note of pentecostalism's rapid global growth, analyzed its structural features, traced its history, and discussed its beliefs and rituals, but they have rarely gone beyond footnoting the important place that music plays in pentecostal worship. Through the skillful editorial work (including but not limited to the excellent introduction and conclusion) of an ethnomusicologist (Ingalls) and a prominent pentecostal theologian (Yong), this collection of articles takes the reader on the 'enormously rewarding journey' toward a better understanding of what is arguably the heartbeat of pentecostalism.

--Margaret M. Poloma, University of Akron

In view of the enormous impact of Pentecostal-Charismatic worship on worship renewal, this book offers a long overdue multi-disciplinary perspective on the role of music in Pentecostal-Charismatic worship. . . . This book belongs on the shelf of any musician and theologian who wants to understand seriously the manifold dynamics of music in contemporary worship.

--Daniel Dangendorf, Evangelical Review of Theology

Monique M. Ingalls is Assistant Professor of Church Music at Baylor University.

Amos Yong is Professor of Theology and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary.