The Evolution of the Sociology of Religion 73
least in a conventional sense) nature of the movement. Martin, in contrast, is concerned
first and foremost with the cultural aspects of Pentecostalism, and more especially with
cultural change. His book is wide ranging, covering the diaspora populations of the
Far East in addition to North America, Latin America, and sub-Saharan Africa. The
movement of Pentecostal Christians from one part of the world to another and the ways
in which their churches enable such migrations (both culturally in terms of motive and
organizationally in terms of welcome) provides an important cross-cutting theme.
As a postscript to this discussion, it is important to note that, in a developed theo-
retical chapter, Martin pays considerable attention to the absence of Pentecostalism as
a widespread and popular movement in both Europe and the United States. Currents
of Pentecostalism do, of course, exist in Europe – both within and outside the histori-
cal churches – but they are not large in numerical terms (nor in consequence all that
influential). In terms of global Pentecostalism, the notion of European exceptionalism
appears to gain a certain credibility.^7 The American case is rather different. Here it is
the vigorous nature of the evangelical constituency that is resistant to newer forms of
Pentecostalism. In other words, the movement exists, but is substantially contained
within the existing denominations; there is no need to “walk out” (Martin’s term) into
new forms of religious organization to find salvation. It follows, however, that neither
the European nor the American experience will be all that helpful in understanding
popular Pentecostalism in other parts of the world; there is a need for more innovative
sociological thinking.
Fundamentalism(s) – whether in the singular or in the plural – is one of the most
controversial and debated terms in both academic and popular discussion. One focus
of this debate concerns the largely unresolved issue of whether a term that was used
initially to describe currents of conservative Protestantism popular in the early twen-
tieth century in parts of the United States can be helpfully transposed to a series of
trends visible in a variety of world faiths some sixty or seventy years later (a theme
that picks up the central argument of this chapter). The fact that the terminology is
difficult should not, however, detract from the evidence that these trends are indeed
taking place – reversing in many ways the expectations of the Western (often European)
observer, who assumed not only decreasing levels of global religiosity as the twentieth
century drew to a close, but that such religion as continued to exist would manifest
increasingly “reasonable” tendencies.
That did not happen, at least not universally. What has happened – in different
places and in different world faiths – has been the emergence of a range of reactive,
conservative religious movements, resisting, in some cases, the modernizing trends
evident within the major faiths (modern biblical criticism, for example) or, in others,
the incursions of modernization (very often associated with secularization) from the
outside. Once again, the scholarly literature is immense. A huge, and – to some extent –
representative set of volumes (although not everyone would agree with its findings)
can be found in theFundamentalism Project, published through the early 1990s by the
University of Chicago Press (Marty and Appleby 1995). For our purposes, two aspects
can be drawn from this vast accumulation of scholarship: First, the discussion of the
(^7) Partial exceptions to the exception exist on the margins of Europe. See, for example, the gypsy
population of parts of central Europe and the interesting case study taken from Southern Italy
quoted in Martin (2002).