In recent years, there has been a marked improvement and increase in scholarly writing on Christianity in South Asia. More recent works written by scholars such as Rowena Robinson, Mathew Schmalz, and the late D. Dennis Hudson have moved beyond earlier studies that were mostly historical, semihagiographical, and/or denominational. The tools of anthropology, religious studies, and area studies have helped shed new light on Christianity in South Asia and beyond, fruitfully demonstrating the agency of indigenous peoples as well as points of interaction and exchange between religious communities. There is in this postcolonial era a move away from mission histories toward the study of contemporary instantiations of what is now called “world Christianity,” or of what this reviewer prefers to call “global Christianities.” Michael Bergunder's work can be situated within this newer milieu, although it lacks some of the analytical depth of these other works. Nevertheless, the book fills a serious lacuna in our knowledge of Pentecostalism in South India, some 20 percent of the region's Protestant Christian population—and growing.

The text is essentially bipartite: Part I focuses on the history of Pentecostalism in South India, broken down by individual state histories, part II explains common beliefs and practices, and a rather slim final chapter examines “Pentecostalism and Contextualization of Christianity.” Most helpful are the appendices: The first presents selected bibliographies of Indian Pentecostal leaders, the second presents helpful South Indian church and Pentecostal statistics, and the third lists a staggering number of interviewees, demonstrating the wide and estimable scope of Bergunder's work. A bibliography follows, allowing for further study. Unfortunately, the map of India on page 357 does not reflect the new northern states established in 2000.

The author argues that Pentecostalism, or the “Pentecostal Movement,” was global (as opposed to American and British) from its inception and spread largely through preexisting evangelical missionary networks to eager Brazilians, Koreans, Africans, and Indians in the early twentieth century. “The beginning of Pentecostalism is neither a creed, an institution, nor a place, but a vast and vague international network; and in that specific sense Pentecostalism was a global movement right from its beginnings” (p. 11). In postmodern fashion, the author rejects an essential Pentecostalism in favor of “historical connections and synchronous interrelations” (p. 12). Such a descriptive definition forces the author to spend too much time showing historical connections between individuals and institutions, to the detriment of an understanding of the meaning of these connections.

Examining this text's historical section, some questions arise. So often in South India, the advent of Pentecostal churches can be ascribed to splits between religious leaders. The typical story line goes something like this: “Pastor X was born into a Christian family. At age twenty-five, he met the Assembly of God missionary from America, Rev. Y and was ‘baptized in the Spirit.’ After five years together in ministry, tensions arose, causing Pastor X to begin his own congregation. After years of hardship and testing, Pastor X experienced growth of his ministry and founded a new organization.” But one must wonder, given the sheer number of such stories, what was the exact nature of the tension and eventual splits between individuals, churches, denominations, and ministries? The answers to these questions promise to shed further light on Indian Protestantism generally and Pentecostalism in particular. Unfortunately, this more penetrating analysis is largely absent. But questions abide: What role have money, power, and prestige played in the growth of Pentecostalism in South India? What do we make of parallels between India's economic liberalization beginning in the 1990s and the rising popularity of a “prosperity gospel” during the same period? To what extent is Pentecostalism primarily an intra-Christian phenomenon, given that the vast majority of Pentecostal leaders appear to come from mainline Protestant Christian denominations?

In terms of beliefs and practices, Bergunder provides a sense of lived Pentecostalism in chapters dedicated to “Ethics,” “Gifts of the Spirit,” “Church Life,” and so on. But at the end of all this, one is left with the feeling that too much weight is given to influential pastors, evangelists, and what we might call “religious entrepreneurs.” In other words, inordinate attention is given to the “big man” (Tamil, periyavar) and his institutions, to the exclusion of laypeople, mostly women, for whom Pentecostalism presents an encounter with the divine power, shakti, suffusing the cosmos, and a negotiation of that power for what a Westerner would denominate as this-worldly and other-worldly concerns. What is the relationship between Pentecostalism and indigenous South Asian notions of power and the exchange between devotee and divinity? How might we compare Hindu notions of possession to charismatic manifestations among Indian Pentecostals? Too often, the scholar makes what amount to intimations, sacrificing depth for breadth in a study that will, even with its shortcomings, serve as a resource in years to come.