a contextual missiology of the spirit - eTheses Repository ...

Being ecumenical, it is able to promote ecumenicity on various levels. A
contextual missiology of the Spirit also aims to engage in spiritual as well as
socio-political transformation. It has the potential to be a public theology as it
seeks the well-being of the public at large.
7.2. Global Implications
The exploration of the complex and dynamic context of Pentecostalism in
Rajasthan may shed light on the issues and problems of the relationship between
history, theology and various other situations faced by Pentecostals across the
globe. The current study seems to have global significance in three important
aspects. First, the study of the origin of Indian Pentecostalism indicates the
significance of a polycentric approach to the history of the origin of global
Pentecostalism, as argued by scholars like Anderson, as discussed in chapter two.
Second, this study also suggests that Pentecostals across the world may be in a
similar missio-ethical dilemma due to local-global tensions. It seems that, as in
Rajasthan, the globalization of Pentecostalism places global Pentecostals in a
missio-ethical dilemma. This globalization has caused significant changes in the
movement. Some believe that Pentecostalism has become a respectable middle-
class movement, even though it sprang up from the poorer strata of society (the
working class) in most parts of the world, especially in the Majority World.
Subsequently, it is argued that in the West, especially in North America,
Pentecostalism tends to embrace the success-oriented, global market culture. This
has caused the theologian Cox to argue that ‘…it is time for a rebirth of that ethic
of simplicity, that suspicion “of the things of this world”, for which the early
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