Italian American Pentecostalism and the Struggle for Religious Identity

This book covers both the historical and theological aspects of the birth and diffusion of Italian Pentecostalism across the Atlantic world, from the movement's origins to the present day.The Italian Pentecostal movement was born in 1907 in the North Avenue Mission of Chicago, a storefront church connected to the Holiness movement in the early twentieth-century United States. In that mission, which had attracted a group of Italian immigrants affiliated with another nearby Holiness mission in the Near North Side of Chicago, the evangelist pastor William H. Durham bore testimony of the spiritual awakening he had experienced the year before on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. Under Durham's ministry, this breakaway group of Italians and their followers experienced a new “baptism in the Holy Spirit,” a life-changing experience that they sought to spread across the world. Within a year, Italian evangelicals brought their message and their experiences back to their homeland and later across North and South America. Indeed, they founded the Christian Churches of North America (CCNA), the Assemblee di Dio in Italy (ADI), the Congregação Cristã no Brasil, and the Asamblea Cristiana of Argentina and the Iglesias de Dios in Argentina and Uruguay. In 1936, the two Italian Pentecostal denominations in the United States had a membership of 11,114 individuals, located mostly in urban areas (63, 67), to whom Pentecostalism offered a “means to overcome socioeconomic deprivation,” “an environment within which they could overcome the psychological void separation from kin had induced,” and a strong spirituality and fervor that helped them cope with their new surroundings (63).The book is divided into two parts. The first delves into the history and diffusion of the movement. Chapter 1 traces the roots of Pentecostalism in a vast array of different groups and religious cultures, from early Christian spirituality to Francis of Assisi, from Dante to the Waldensians, from the folklore of peasants in Southern Italy to the impact of the Holiness movement in the United States. Chapter 2 examines the origin of the movement in the United States. The focus here is on the trajectory that brought the famous revival, ignited in a Los Angeles African Methodist Episcopal church on 312 Azusa Street in 1906, to the Holiness mission at 943 North Avenue in Chicago one year later. First among the mission's “baptized in the Spirits” there was a group of Italian immigrants who later proselytized across America, including Rosina and Luigi Francescon, Pietro Ottolini, and Massimiliano Tosetto. Chapter 3 first describes the social conditions of Chicago's “migrant contadini” (52) and then charts the initial expansion of the movement to Italy and across the United States by the 1930s. Chapter 4 reconstructs the challenges that the first converts faced both within the larger Pentecostal movement and outside of it, in particular in the Italian Catholic community and in mainstream American Protestant denominations. Chapter 5 tracks the early efforts to structure the movement and give it denominational stability, and chapter 6 looks at the establishment of the Assemblee di Dio and that movement's troubled life through the Fascist era and the anti-Protestant policies in post–World War II Italy. Chapter 7 covers the expansion in South America, especially Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.The three chapters in the book's second part illuminate the theology of Italian Pentecostalism. Palma examines its three historic confessions (attached in an appendix)—the “Articles of Faith” of the CCNA/International Fellowship of Christian Assemblies, the “We Believe” statement of Italian Pentecostal Church of Canada/Canadian Assemblies of God, and the “Articoli di Fede” of the ADI—and then integrates them with Italian hymnals, personal interviews, and scholarship. Chapter 8 describes the doctrinal foundations of the movement, which include a “biblical literalism and narratival approach” (153) to scripture, considered to be inspired and infallible, and the centrality of the Spirit. Chapter 9 describes the soteriology (doctrine of salvation) of the movement, in particular, what are often considered to be the “stages” of the Pentecostal faith: conversion, sanctification, and Spirit baptism. Chapter 10 explores the ecclesiology and ecclesiastical life of the Italian Pentecostal churches, covering the sacramental, ecclesial, and ethical practices. Chapter 11 highlights some current trends and characteristics of Italian Pentecostalism. Finally, located between Parts I and II, a photo essay illustrates the world of Italian Pentecostalism from 1945 to 1989 (144–149).The strength of Palma's book resides, first of all, in his ability to highlight the richness, diversity, and fluidity of an important segment of the religious experience of Italian immigrants. Moreover, in tracking these experiences across and beyond the Atlantic, he engages in intriguing “genealogy work” that reveals the astonishing global, social, and institutional network that the first Chicago converts—who were mostly poor and illiterate—were able to build over decades. Palma's book is also praiseworthy because, in a field of study without a solid historiography or clear historical framework, his detailed and richly sourced work will certainly open the doors to further research.At the same time, however, two weaknesses should be noted. The first concerns his analysis of the roots of Italian Pentecostalism. Palma's thesis is that the Italian Pentecostal movement has its roots in types of “other like-minded renewal” in Italy (10). Here, however, his long list of Italian influences on the movement is not only much too inclusive (early Christian spirituality, Italy's patron saints, Thomas Aquinas, Catherine of Siena, Dante Alighieri, the Waldensians, “and modern revivalist currents” [10]) but also contains situations, historical figures, and religious cultures very different from each other and poorly contextualized. To retrace the movement's “allusion to the ‘fire’ of the Holy Spirit” (20) in Thomas Aquinas or Dante cannot be enough to consider them valid influences. A similar concern arises in his treatment of the alleged Waldensian roots of Italian Pentecostalism—here the portrait of the Waldensians (21–22) refers to a romanticized, simplistic, and in the end distorted view of their religious life in Italy during the nineteenth century, as in his claim that “the Valdesi attest to the manifestation of divine power through visions, prophecy, speaking in unknown tongues, healing, and deliverance” (21). Finally, although Palma's ability to uncover the inner story of the movement and its self-narrative enriches the whole book, he does not often seem to question its claims or to contextualize them into a larger universe of historical facts and interpretations.

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