Pentecostal Christianity, which emphasizes the immediate experience of God through speaking in tongues, trance and ecstatic bodily motion, is not a backward-looking movement, declares Harvard theologian Cox (The Secular City), but an ecumenical force that speaks to the spiritual emptiness of our time by tapping the core of human religiousness. The author describes his visits to Pentecostal churches from Boston to Rio de Janeiro to Seoul. He delineates the movement's interracial beginnings in Los Angeles at the turn of the century, tracks its lightning spread around the globe and explores the pivotal role of women, which led, he asserts, to a conception of a nonjudgmental God with "distinctively feminine" qualities, making Pentecostalism a force challenging patriarchal cultures around the world. In Fire From Heaven, one of the most widely read theologians of our time explores the fastest-growing form of worship on earth: the vibrant, primal spirituality of Pentecostalism.