Any account of the modern expansion of Christianity worldwide
must pay respectful attention to Pentecostal and charismatic
forms of worship. In Latin America, and most conspicuously in
Brazil, this tradition accounts for virtually all of the vast
growth of Protestant churches in the past 30 years. But here is
a riddle. If, as all the histories tell us, the Pentecostal
movement began with a revival in California in 1906, why is it
that some of the shrewdest and most historically informed
commentary on the phenomenon appears in a Brazilian book written
several years before that date? Historical curiosity apart,
reading Os Sertões, or Rebellion in the Backlands (1902), by
Euclides da Cunha, forces us to rethink the modern Pentecostal
movement.