Grant Wacker’s work, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture, gives an insightful glimpse into particular aspects
of the tradition that many find to be mysterious and bewildering. His chapter on Pentecostal worship is a good example of Pentecostalism as a whole, in that the freedom and energy of its worship
practices, which to the outsider appeared as overtly emotional and fanatic, were seen by the adherents as ordered chaos and reasonable expressions of vital faith, although they did not exert much effort theorizing about these practices or explaining them. Therein lies much difficulty for the historian, as Wacker must do much of this development himself, examining the motivation behind early Pentecostal worship and deciphering the reasons they did what they did, in order to piece together what might have been the early Pentecostal statement of faith regarding worship practices. Throughout the bulk of the chapter, Wacker argues that the worship practices were indeed more regularized that the outsiders believed. He describes the freedom in the Spirit afforded worshippers, but also standard occurrences, both explicit and implicit, that characterized and lent continuity to early Pentecostal worship. After categorizing the freedom and regularization of Pentecostal worship, he continues into a discussion of how these worship practices were the lifeblood of the
movement, sustaining its existence and seeing to its proliferation. He describes the cohesive, family-like units that formed among the devotees in which they were nurtured and everyone was given and equality of status in the spirit, ultimately giving the Pentecostal movement some stability, vitality, and outright staying power. Wacker’s sources are a hodgepodge of contributions, the bulk of which are primary. He quotes periodical sources and writings of early Pentecostal leaders for their explicit descriptions of scenes that occurred at these meetings, such as the near-deafening noises or the strange physical movements. There are a few instances in which he draws on other scholar’s work for their explanations of the common occurrences in early Pentecostal worship. While these citations form Wacker’s evidence of the goings-on in meetings, he does not lean heavily on them in the formation of his argument. A particular strength of this chapter is that it presents well-researched and defended and, thus, effective argument as a whole. As an insider himself in the later manifestations of this movement, Wacker brings a sympathetic viewpoint to a tradition that has time and time again been disparaged and dismissed by mainline Protestant assertions. Working without a great deal of hard evidence of the Pentecostal theories regarding worship, he is left to sift though the existing records and piece together the implicit philosophy of worship of early Pentecostals. The task is made even tougher by the fact there seemed to be no firm consensus among the early Pentecostal leaders as to proper worship practices, as they differed as to the manner of worship most pleasing to the Spirit. Additionally, Wacker’s summary at the end of the chapter provides a strong conclusion. He declines to stop after assessing the tension between spontaneity and order and discusses its importance to the movement as a whole. This greatly strengthens and enhances the argument and makes it a better contribution to the work as a whole.