of Pentecostal believers in order to hear, understand, and appreciate their
theological voices. 7 Jeff Astley has said that as much as we can learn from
social scientists, it is theologians who need to do this work because it is
theologians who can hear the theological resonances or their theological
meanings. 8
If we are not careful, we can misunderstand oral statements as well as
literary texts because they are not understood in their theological context.
For example, take the text from Matthew’s Gospel (26:41). In the garden
of Gethsemane, Jesus says to his disciples: “Watch and pray so that you will
not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the fl esh is weak.” The
phrase, “The spirit is willing but the fl esh is weak,” was recently typed into
one of those online Russian translation tools and then the Russian transla-
tion was retranslated back into English.
When this was done the same phrase was translated as “The vodka is
good but the meat is bad!” Presumably, this occurred because the Russian
translation tool lacked a theological vocabulary. That is the problem with
any interpretation—you need a working understanding of theological
concepts to make sense of the language. Theological texts need theologi-
cal contexts to make sense of them. This means that theological knowledge
is required to understand, appreciate and use indigenous, oral theologi-
cal voices, such that they become meaningful theological texts, however
rooted in experiences of the Holy Spirit. This is why theologians should
make the best interpreters of religious experience and practices, especially
among groups with which they are theologically familiar.
E MPIRICAL STUDIES OF PENTECOSTALISM
Over the years there has been some excellent social science empirical work
researched and published. I am thinking in particular of David and Bernice
Martin, Stephen Hunt, Margaret Poloma and Michael Wilkinson, as well
as Don Miller, to name but a few. 9 However, as Cheryl Bridges Johns
once said to me, “Pentecostals feel they have been victimized by social
scientists.” In other words, they have not been taken seriously: neither the
sacred ground upon which they stand nor their explanations of their expe-
riences have been appreciated. Not only have the beliefs and practices of
Pentecostals not been respected but they have been explained by theories
that have been fundamentally hostile to the Pentecostal worldview. One
has only to look at the early accounts of glossolalia to see just how things
were explained. 10 A fair amount of social science research was biased and
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