The Two Souls of Pentecostalism
Early Pentecostal preachers railed against elites and uplifted the oppressed — a far cry from their recent efforts to elect right-wing populists like Donald Trump. There are deep contradictions at the heart of Pentecostalism, and they aren’t resolved yet.
Because Pentecostalism is a decentralized, grassroots form of evangelical Christianity, both structurally and theologically, its politics are difficult to pin down. (Geron Dison / Unsplash)
Pop quiz: Which right-wing populist heads of state identify as Pentecostals?
The answer is not as many as you think. Donald Trump is a Presbyterian, at least on paper; Jair Bolsanaro claims Catholicism; and Viktor Orbán has been called “the world’s most powerful Calvinist.” The two Pentecostal international leaders are Australia’s prime minister, Scott Morrison, and Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, neither of whom can be considered right-wing populists.
If that sounds counterintuitive, it’s because the liberal media loves to pin Trumpism on Pentecostals. They’re not totally wrong. The Pentecostal clergy and the ex-president have been in a mutually beneficial relationship for years. Trump ham-handedly courted some high-profile ministers like Rodney Howard-Browne and Paula White-Cain for his advisory board — which was alarming, as they fused strains of QAnon with Christian millennialism to prophesy that Trump was an Old Testament king reborn or that he would trigger the Rapture. Many evangelical voters ate it up.
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