How are Canadian Pentecostal Clergy Changing?

Together with Dr. Adam Stewart (Crandall University) and Kevin Shanahan (Environics Research), I recently published a journal article called

“Changes in Clergy Belief and Practice in Canada’s Largest Pentecostal Denomination.”

You can download the article here.

Most readers will be most interested in the second part of the article, which discusses overall changes over the last 30 years. For your convenience, much of the key information can be found in charts. See especially the tables on p. 472-474.

Until recently, I had actually missed seeing that this article had come out. The article appeared in Pneuma: The Journal for the Society of Pentecostal Studies vol. 39 (2017): 457-481. (I am required to include a link to their web page here.)

Here is the abstract for the article:

In 1985/86, Carl Verge conducted a survey of clergy belief and practice within The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (paoc). In 2014, Adam Stewart and Andrew Gabriel conducted a follow-up survey of paoc clergy to determine if any changes to belief and practice had occurred within this group during the last three decades. In this article we, first, describe the methodologies used in both surveys, second, compare and discuss the relationship between graduate education in religion and clergy belief and practice in 1985/86 and 2014, and, third, describe the overall decrease that has occurred in clergy commitment to traditional Pentecostal belief and practice since 1985/86. Finally, we conclude by proposing a theoretical framework developed by the sociologist of religion Peter Berger that helps to explain the change in commitment to traditional modes of pentecostal belief and practice among paoc clergy as part of much broader realignments occurring across numerous religious traditions in late modern society.

Keywords

Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada – clergy – belief – practice – religion and education – religious change – Peter L. Berger – Danièle Hervieu-Léger

Other Research

You can find other research we have published based on the same survey here on our research web page.

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You might also be interested in these posts:

• History of the PAOC Statement of Faith
• What is a Pentecostal?: On PAOC Pentecostal Identity
• Updating the PAOC Statement of Faith: Gender and Language

Andrew K. Gabriel, Ph.D., is the author of Touched by God: Experiencing the Holy Spirit (forthcoming) as well as three academic books, including The Lord is the Spirit. He is a theology professor at Horizon College and Seminary and serves on the Theological Study Commission for the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada. You can follow him on Facebook or on Twitter.