BOOKS
Embracing Our Roots: Rediscovering the Value of Faith, Family, and Tradition (Wipf and Stock, 2021)
Drawing from Palma’s background as an Italian American evangelical, Embracing Our Roots considers the significance of rediscovering our ancestral history in a society where many are forced to repress, ignore, or reject their heritage. A nation of immigrants, every American is, in some sense, an “ethnic” American and stands to gain from considering how the people and places they come from make them unique.
“In Paul J. Palma’s latest work, faith, family, and tradition unite in a celebration of both past and present. Embracing Our Roots is a go-to guide for Christians who seek to strengthen their faith as it is connected to their family’s background. This book demonstrates that, like the quest for a hidden treasure, the discovery of one’s heritage can have a variety of twists and turns that bring a person home to themselves and, ultimately, to God.”
–Stephanie Longo, Instructor of history, Lackawanna College
NOW AVAILABLE in paperback, hardback, and e-book! Visit Wipf and Stock or Amazon (for your Kindle edition).
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Italian American Pentecostalism and the Struggle for Religious Identity. Routledge Studies in Religion series, 2020.
While many established forms of Christianity have seen significant decline in recent decades, Pentecostals are currently one of the fastest growing religious groups across the world. This book examines the roots, inception, and expansion of Pentecostalism among Italian Americans to demonstrate how Pentecostalism moves so freely through widely varying cultures.
NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK! Visit Routledge.com and enter code FLY21 at checkout for the 20% discount offer.
Check out the Book Launch video.
GRASSROOTS PENTECOSTALISM IN BRAZIL AND THE UNITED STATES: MISSIONS, MIGRATIONS, AND MOBILITY. NEW YORK: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, FORTHCOMING, 2022.
To be featured in the Christianity and Renewal – Interdisciplinary Studies series, edited by Wolfgang Vondey and Amos Yong.
This book offers an historical and comparative profile of classical pentecostal movements in Brazil and the United States in view of their migratory beginnings and transnational expansion. Pentecostalism’s inception in the early twentieth century, particularly in its global South permutations, was defined by its grassroots character. In contrast to the top-down, hierarchical structure typical of Western forms of Christianity, the emergence of Latin American Pentecostalism embodied stability from the bottom up—among the common people. While the rise to prominence of the Assemblies of God in Brazil, the Western hemisphere’s largest (non-Catholic) denomination, demanded structure akin to mainline contexts, classical pentecostals like the Christian Congregation movement cling to their grassroots identity. Comparing movements with similar European and US roots, this book considers the prospects for classical Brazilian pentecostals in light of the issues of church growth, polity, gender, and politics.
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** For a complete list of publications, see my CV.
Paul J. Palma 