Emmett contributes to missional pentecostal historiography through bringing a pre-eminent figure in early British Pentecostalism into the limelight. He shows how Pentecostalism in Belgian Congo was pioneered by W.F.P. Burton alongside local agency. Central to Burton's contradictory and complex personality was a passionate desire to see the emancipation of humankind from the spiritual powers of darkness believing only Spirit-empowered local agency would enduringly prove effective. Burton's faith believed for Spirit intervention in church communities converting lives, bringing physical healing and transforming regions. In the maelstrom following Congolese Independence, Burton's belief in his own brand of indigenisation made him an outlier even among Pentecostals. Burton's pentecostal faith engendered an idealism which frustratingly conflicted with those not sharing it in the way he pursued it. This book thus serves Pentecostals and historians by clarifying Burton's ideals and revealing the reasons for his frustrations.

The full significance of Cecil Henry Polhill (1860-1938), the wealthy squire of Howbury Hall, is known to few, yet he was one of the founding fathers of the Pentecostal-Charismatic tradition in Britain, and his impact and legacy stretch far beyond British shores to North America, the Far East and elsewhere. In Cecil Polhill: Missionary, Gentleman and Revivalist John Usher comprehensively connects Polhill's early life and former experiences as an Evangelical Anglican missionary in China, a member of the Cambridge Seven, with his time as a pioneer of early Pentecostalism, and in doing so reveals a much more richly contoured and multifaceted picture of the development of early Pentecostalism than previously achieved.