It was not my naiveté, but ours.
In college, I fell in love with scholarship—the endless reading, thinking, and writing. With graduation looming, I knew I wanted to study more, partly out of this new love of school, but also fuelled by a desire to contribute to Pentecostal scholarship, which I thought was sorely missing from academic conversations. So I enrolled in grad school.
I was naïve. There is a wealth of Pentecostal scholarship from the last few decades. But Pentecostals are not reading Pentecostal scholars.1 We have Pentecostals writing great things, even Canadian Pentecostals contributing to academic conversations in important ways. Yet, we are not reading them. Therefore, I want to highlight four new books published in 2023 by Canadian Pentecostals, all of which I am very much looking forward to reading. (The books are listed in the order that they were published.)
I met Rebecca Idestrom in 2022 while working on a commentary on the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC)’s newly adapted Statement of Essential Truths (SOET). We were part of the group working on the commentary for the Creation section of the SOET, and I was thankful for the feedback she gave me on my contributions. Since then, I appreciated her commentaries on Habakkuk and Zephaniah in The Book of the Twelve: A Pentecostal Commentary. Her latest book, Show Me Your Glory: The Glory of God in the Old Testament, is the result of years of study on the theme of God’s glory throughout the Old Testament (OT). I am excited to learn from Idestrom’s wealth of knowledge on the OT, as well as her care for the way it continues to speak to us today.
It was at a faculty training day for Master’s College and Seminary in 2018 or so when I first met Stephen Barkley. In no time we were discussing Ecclesiastes, different OT scholars, as well as philosophy—I knew we would get along just fine. At the time, he was beginning work on his Doctor of Practical Theology at McMaster. The result of his efforts was published this year as Pentecostal Prophets: Experience in Old Testament Perspective. I am not as familiar with the discipline of practical theology, but I love the OT prophets—and I know that the work of Abraham Heschel was, at least in part, an inspiration behind this project.
When I moved to Toronto for grad school, I met Aaron Ross at both school and church. He was part of the pastoral team at Stone Church and was in the early stages of a PhD in church history through Wycliffe College. Ross is a true historian, through and through. But he also has a pastoral heart for the Canadian Pentecostal church. His doctoral research has just been published in The Holy Spirit and the Eagle Feather: The Struggle for Indigenous Pentecostalism in Canada. Though confronting history is not always an easy thing to do, I am keen for the insights and challenges presented in this examination of Canadian Pentecostal ministry among indigenous peoples.
As I was thinking about putting together this blog post, I saw another new book announced on Facebook. William Kay, while not Canadian, is the founder of the Centre for Pentecostal and Charismatic Studies at Bangor University. This is where I am currently working on my PhD. Ewen Butler is a Canadian and we interacted a few times when I was pastoring and teaching in Southern Ontario. Pentecostal and Charismatic Education: Renewalist Education Wherever It Is Found will be released in September 2023, and it looks like it examines education in a number of different contexts: home, church, schools, and elsewhere. As someone involved with education as a Pentecostal, it looks intriguing.
1 That our pastors and students are not reading Pentecostals is an issue for another blog post.
Links to books are Amazon Affiliate links. If you want to read those books yourself, using the link will help fund my book addiction.
James M. MacKnight 
Thanks James—you’ve inspired me! I’ll be ordering the other three books on this list.
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Thanks for publishing your work, I’m excited to dive into it this fall.
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