Listen to the Word!

Synopsis

It is as modern as Marconi, as global as Coca-Cola, as race-blind as Benetton and as troubling to authority as Marxism once was. Pentecostalism is a religion that is, very simply, beating modernity at its own game. The Richard Dawkins of this world may think of religion as some throwback to earlier times but Pentecostalism was invented at the beginning of the twentieth century and is the very model of a modern Christianity - disturbing not only to hard-line atheists but even to the Catholic Church and the Chinese Communist Party.

Nearly one quarter of the 2 billion Christians in the world are Pentecostals - and counting... This feature will explore just what it is that has made Pentecostalism the indispensable form of today's Christianity.

Presenter Philip Dodd explores its extraordinary global reach - from the backstreets of Yorkshire's Grimethorpe to Korea's Seoul, home of the largest Pentecostal church in the world, from Sao Paolo to Washington. He also explores its love affair with modernity - not for nothing was it founded in Los Angeles the same year Marconi experimented with a wireless voice; not for nothing is the mobile phone how it recruits and keeps its believers.

The programme also highlights its challenge to the rationalism of the Enlightenment through its loyalty to people's experience of God, unmediated by either the authority of the Word or the reason of secularism. Along with Disney, Pentecostalism is a central part of the contemporary 'experience economy'.

Above all, this programme will show that, no less than radio itself, Pentecostalism is committed to the absolute power of the voice.

Presenter: Philip Dodd

Producer: Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.