The Center for the Study of World Christian Revitalization Movements

      A fruitful way to approach renewal and revitalization historically is to trace recurring themes. Identifying themes helps interface interests among persons working in a wide range of revitalization movements.     Pentecost is a particularly fruitful theme. Certainly Pentecost and its attendant language, such as Spirit baptism, has been a predominant emphasis in the Pietist, Wesleyan-holiness, and Pentecostal movements. Discussions in the Wesleyan Theological Society reveal a diversity of viewpoints. Donald Dayton identifies Pentecost as a prevailing motif of the nineteenth-century Wesleyan holiness movement in America and contrasts this with the more “Christological” emphasis of the Wesleys. Laurence Wood on the…