Pentecostalism or classical Pentecostalism is a Protestant Charismatic Christian movement that emphasizes direct personal experience of God through baptism with the Holy Spirit. The term Pentecostal is derived from Pentecost, an event that commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles.
The Church of the Nazarene is a Christian denomination that emerged in North America from the 19th-century Wesleyan-Holiness movement within Methodism. It is headquartered in Lenexa, Kansas. With its members commonly referred to as Nazarenes, it is the largest denomination in the world aligned with the Wesleyan-Holiness movement and is a member of the World Methodist Council.
The Holiness movement is a Christian movement that emerged chiefly within 19th-century Methodism, and to a lesser extent influenced other traditions such as Quakerism, Anabaptism, and Restorationism. The movement is historically distinguished by its emphasis on the doctrine of a second work of grace, which is called entire sanctification or Christian perfection. Churches aligned with the holiness movement additionally teach that the Christian life should be free of sin. For the Holiness movement, "the term 'perfection' signifies completeness of Christian character; its freedom from all sin, and possession of all the graces of the Spirit, complete in kind." A number of evangelical Christian denominations, parachurch organizations, and movements emphasize those beliefs as central doctrine.
David Herbert Donald was an American historian, best known for his 1995 biography of Abraham Lincoln. He twice won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for earlier works; he published more than 30 books on United States political and literary figures and the history of the American South.
Harvard Divinity School (HDS) is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school's mission is to educate its students either in the academic study of religion or for leadership roles in religion, government, and service. It also caters to students from other Harvard schools that are interested in the former field. HDS is among a small group of university-based, non-denominational divinity schools in the United States.
Harold Vinson Synan was an American historian, author, and alliance leader within the Pentecostal movement. Synan published a total of 25 books, a majority related to Holiness, Pentecostal, and Charismatic movements. He served as General Secretary of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church and later as Chair of the North American Renewal Service Committee from 1985 to 2001. From 1994 - 2006 he served as Dean of the School of Divinity at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Virginia. In 2016, Synan moved back to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to re-join the faculty of Oral Roberts University as Interim Dean of the College of Theology and Ministry, where he served for two years. Following that he served as Scholar in Residence at Oral Roberts University where he worked closely with William M. Wilson, the president of ORU, the World Pentecostal Fellowship, and Empowered21.
Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and multidisciplinary scholar who directs a doctoral program at Northwind Theological Seminary and the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He formerly taught for sixteen years as a tenured professor at Northwest Nazarene University in Nampa, Idaho and before that a philosophy professor at Eastern Nazarene College. Oord is the author or editor of more than thirty books and hundreds of articles. He is known for his contributions to research on love, open theism, process theism, open and relational theology, postmodernism, the relationship between religion and science, Wesleyan, holiness, Nazarene theology.
Karl Willard Giberson is a Canadian physicist, scholar, and author, specializing in the creation–evolution debate. He has held a teaching post since 1984, written several books, and been a member of various academic and scientific organizations. He formerly served as vice president of the BioLogos Foundation.
Raymond Joseph Hoffmann is a historian whose work has focused on the early social and intellectual development of Christianity. His work includes an extensive study of the role and dating of Marcion in the history of the New Testament, as well the reconstruction and translation of the writings of early pagan opponents of Christianity: Celsus, Porphyry and Julian the Apostate. As a senior vice president for the Center for Inquiry, he chaired the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, CSER, where he initiated the Jesus Project, a scholarly investigation into the historicity of Jesus. Hoffmann has described himself as "a religious skeptic with a soft spot for religion".
Donald A. Yerxa is an author, editor, and historian.
Olive May Winchester (1879–1947) was an American ordained minister and a pioneer biblical scholar and theologian in the Church of the Nazarene, who was in 1912 the first woman ordained by any trinitarian Christian denomination in the United Kingdom, the first woman admitted into and graduated from the Bachelor of Divinity course at the University of Glasgow, and the first woman to complete a Doctor of Theology degree from the divinity school of Drew University.
George Lyons is a scholar and retired professor of New Testament studies at Northwest Nazarene University. Dr. Lyons began teaching at Olivet Nazarene University in 1977.
Timothy Lawrence Smith was a historian and educator, known as the first American evangelical historian to gain notoriety in research and higher education.
Protestantism is the largest grouping of Christians in the United States, with its combined denominations collectively comprising about 43% of the country's population in 2019. Other estimates suggest that 48.5% of the U.S. population is Protestant. Simultaneously, this corresponds to around 20% of the world's total Protestant population. The U.S. contains the largest Protestant population of any country in the world. Baptists comprise about one-third of American Protestants. The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest single Protestant denomination in the U.S., comprising one-tenth of American Protestants. Twelve of the original Thirteen Colonies were Protestant, with only Maryland having a sizable Catholic population due to Lord Baltimore's religious tolerance.
Amos Yong is a Malaysian-American Pentecostal theologian and Professor of Theology and Mission at Fuller Theological Seminary. He has been Dean of School of Theology and School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Seminary, since July 1, 2019.
Floyd Timothy Cunningham is an American historian and ordained minister, who has been a global missionary in the Philippines for the Church of the Nazarene since 1983, who served as the fifth president of Asia-Pacific Nazarene Theological Seminary from July 1, 2008, until April 3, 2013. Cunningham serves currently as Distinguished Professor of the History of Christianity at APNTS, and is the author of Holiness Abroad: Nazarene Missions in Asia, the editor and co-author of Our Watchword & Song: The Centennial History of the Church of the Nazarene, and the author of dozens of articles in academic journals and magazines. Cunningham is a Life member of the Philippine National Historical Society, a member of the American Society of Church History, the Wesleyan Theological Society, and the American Historical Association since 1980.
Allan Anderson is a British theologian and the Professor of Mission and Pentecostal Studies at the University of Birmingham. He is frequently cited as one of the foremost scholars on Global Pentecostalism.
Choon-Leong Seow, known as C. L. Seow, is a distinguished biblical scholar, semitist, epigrapher, and historian of Near Eastern religion, currently as Vanderbilt, Buffington, Cupples Chair in Divinity and Distinguished Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University. An expert in wisdom literature, Seow has written widely in the field of biblical studies.
Daniel L. Overmyer was a Canadian historian of religion and academic who was Professor Emeritus in the Department of Asian Studies and the Centre for Chinese Research at the University of British Columbia. Overmyer was a pioneer in the study of Chinese popular thought, religion, and culture; popular religious sects of the late traditional and modern periods and their texts; and local rituals and beliefs practiced in villages, especially North China.
C. Douglas Weaver is an American author, historian, and Professor of Religion. A Baptist, Weaver has taught at Baylor University and Mercer University. He has authored multiple books on the history of Pentecostalism and the Baptist church.
