Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture.

By Grant Wacker. (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2001. Pp. [xvi], 364. $35.00, ISBN 0-674-00499-X.)

Of the many important movements in early-twentieth-century America, the rise of Pentecostal religion is surely one of the least understood. Many historians probably could not even define the movement, much less offer a story of its origins. A lively and thorough exploration of the range and meanings of Pentecostalism during its early years, Grant Wacker's Heaven Below is a work American historians--not just historians of religion--should read.

Two arguments dominate the book. The first is that Pentecostals sought and often found in their new religion a depth and beauty that they saw as "heaven below." Along with more broadly evangelical beliefs in the centrality of the conversion experience and the impending return to earth of Jesus, Pentecostals were distinctive in their concentration on two things: Holy Ghost baptism (and forms of worship, such as "speaking in tongues" [p. 5], that were part of that experience) and divine healing. Wacker's second argument concerns the "productive tension" between directly experiencing the power of God and putting into place pragmatic programs to expand churches and other institutions that understood that power. As Wacker summarizes, "Pentecostals' distinctive understanding of the human encounter with the divine, which included both primitivist and pragmatic dimensions, enabled them to capture lightning in a bottle and, more important, to keep it there, decade after decade, without stilling the fire or cracking the vessel" (p. 10).

Wacker does not attempt to explain the rise of Pentecostalism, at least in part because previous attempts have claimed the movement emerged as compensation for people left out of the other benefits of American life. The great strength of Wacker's work is his description of the lives of Pentecostals. What did it mean to speak in tongues? To be filled with the Holy Spirit? How did those experiences affect issues of personal morality, social relations, work, and ideas about community? Primary sources, especially from numerous Pentecostal periodicals and from diaries, sermons, and life stories of preachers, missionaries, and lay leaders, convey the day-to-day feeling of a movement excited, at times almost gleeful, about enjoying "heaven below" and working hard to spread it as far and as fast as possible. In fact, given the sheer joy expressed in some of the sources, one sometimes wonders why more people did not join.

As a broad study, the work leaves a few important questions unresolved. Wacker is thoughtful but cautious on issues of race and gender in early Pentecostalism. On both topics the movement has a reputation for egalitarian potential, with African Americans and whites sharing revival pulpits and with women often welcomed as inspired speakers. Wacker shows the settings in which women joined men and blacks joined whites, as well as the settings in which they did not. His conclusions are well considered but not always helpful; sometimes Pentecostals were egalitarian, sometimes they were not. The work could have also done more to explain the southern aspects of the movement. Wacker seems almost defensive in stressing that it was not exclusively southern and that, as he begins the book, "[i]t started in the American heartland" (p. 1). But instead of simply showing diversity within a broadly American context, it might be more useful to show the connections and also the differences between southern Pentecostal churches--like the Church of God in Christ, the Cleveland, Tennessee-based Church of God, and the Pentecostal Holiness Church--and groups outside the region.

Heaven Below is a thorough and thoughtful work that should serve both as an introduction to an important topic and as a starting point for other works that will show the variations and changes in Pentecostal religion.

TED OWNBY
University of Mississippi