Timothy Samuel Shah is associate director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and is visiting assistant professor in the government department at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In 2005 Shah taught a course on Pentecostalism and globalization for the annual summer school program at Boston University’s Institute on […]

Cecil M. “Mel” Robeck Jr. is a professor of church history and ecumenics and director of the David J. DuPlessis Center for Christian Spirituality at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. Robeck is a leading scholar and commentator on Pentecostalism and author of The Azusa Street Mission and Revival, (Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2006).

Arlene Sánchez-Walsh is a religious studies professor at Azusa Pacific University in Azuza, California. She is an authority on Latino evangelicals, and her current research is on the rise of nonbelief among Latinos and Latinas. Her books include Latino Pentecostal Identity: Evangelical Faith, Self and Society.  

Robin D. Perrin, professor of sociology at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. Specializes in sociology of religion. Has written numerous articles on religion including “Examining the Sources of Conservative Church Growth: Where are the New Evangelical Movements Getting Their Numbers?” for the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion in 1997.

Rodney Harrison is vice president for institutional effectiveness, dean of online education, director of doctoral studies and associate professor of Christian education at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Mo. He is a veteran church planter, having started churches in Minnesota, California and the Dakotas.

Donald A. Luidens, professor of sociology at Hope College in Holland, Mich. (affiliated with the Reformed Church in America), has followed the evolution of denominations and denominationalism in the U.S.

Darren E. Sherkat is a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He studies the intersection of religion, family and politics, and he’s working on a book about marijuana legalization.

Daniel V. A. Olson, associate professor of sociology at Purdue Univeristy. Specializes in sociology of religion and has written about church growth.

The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society entry on Pentecostalism gives an overview of the history and issues facing Pentecostalism.