[REVIEW] Problems With The End Of Power (Update)

187 pages late, Moises Naim does properly cite Spirit and Power- A 10-Country Survey of Pentecostals correctly. It is a segment that is almost directly copy-pasted from his earlier statement on pages 8-9. (My original problems with this are detailed here; my problems with The End of Power's editing will be covered in a future blog post.)

As detailed in that blog post, a lack of proper citation is not the only problem with the way Moises Naim uses this study. While he adopts the terminology of the survey ("Renewalist") he never explains to the reader that this umbrella term, for the purposes of the survey, happens to include a fair number of Catholics. This has a direct impact on his argument.

What's worse is that India was omitted from his earlier passage, but not in this later segment. Moises Naim writes on page 195, "Even in 'non-Christian' India, renewalists make up 5 percent of the population."

From the Survey Methology section of Spirit and Power: "In India, the survey was conducted in three states believed to have among the highest percentage of Christians in India: Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Meghalaya. Within the three selected states, districts with the highest proportion of Christians were first selected, and then sampling points were randomly selected from these districts. This survey is NOT representative of the general population of India, nor is it representative of the population of the three Indian states in which it was conducted." My emphasis is in bold. Total Christian share of the Indian population (all denominations) is likely to be substantially less than 5%. In 2001, it was only 2.4%. The 2011 Indian Census Data on religion has not yet been released- although forecasts emphasize the growth in Muslim's share of the population, not that of Christians.

Moises Naim's publisher has still not answered my email about why this study was not properly cited at its first appearance in the text, nor have they explained where the 5% number for 1960 comes from and what it was actually measuring.

Some may say I am nitpicking, but small things like this make me think there is either shoddy research in his book or, worse, an intentional reworking of facts to fit his thesis. Religious demographics may just be the one thing I could catch him on.