Amos Yong - Theological Education between the West and the “Rest”: A Reverse “Reverse Missionary” and Pentecost Perspective (pp.21-37) (original) (raw)

2021, Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies

Pentecostal theological education is gradually coming into its own, not the least since its seminaries in North America are now in their second generation and accredited at the highest levels. Also, a full range of other institutions of theological education (Bible institutes, colleges, universities, and theological schools) is emerging outside of the EuroAmerican West and across the Majority World.1 Yet the nature of globalization in a post-Enlightenment, post-Christendom, and postcolonial world means that, inevitably, higher educational institutions of all sorts in the Global South (theological schools included) are patterned after those in the West; and this applies also to schools within the pentecostal orbit. In some respects, such is unavoidable not only because many of these schools depend on mission funding that originates in the West, but also because Pentecostals now more than ever realize that they are a part of a worldwide church and that those trained in its theological institutions will serve within the movement and within other churches in the universal body of Christ, including the western hemisphere. Yet the question is still: Will pentecostal theological education around the world remain Euro-American-centric now well into the second pentecostal century?