What is Charismatic, or Pentecostal, Christianity? If you want an answer to this and thousands of other related questions you could do no better than consult Diarmaid MacCulloch’s amazingly comprehensive and eye-opening book A History of Christianity (2009). There we read that “charisma” means a gift of grace, something associated with what MacCulloch calls the Trinity’s “Cinderella,” the Holy Spirit, and manifested in the direct expression of religious emotion by its adherents (calling out, rolling on the floor and spontaneous singing).
“The rise of Pentecostalism and its Charismatic offshoots,” he writes, “was one of the greatest surprises of twentieth century