Spring 2026 · Vol. 55 No. 1 · pp. 128–131
Book Review
Organizing Spirit: Pneumatology, Institutions, and Global Imagination
London, UK: T & T Clark, 2025. 198 pages.
Jamie Pitts, in Organizing Spirit, the latest volume in the T&T Clark Studies in Anabaptist Theology and Ethics (edited by Paul Martens and Laura Schmidt Roberts), asks the penetrating question whether and how the Holy Spirit can be associated with institutions, even those with global reach, and not just with local community enterprises. The argument of the book answers that question in the affirmative, depicting “the Spirit as organizing the complex, dynamic, and relationally entangled structures that constitute creation” (back cover). Pitts is careful to resist the dangers of institutional idolatries, never drawing facile equations between the work of the Spirit and any specific institution. There is no place, local or global in scale, where the work of the Spirit is fully and faithfully embodied and expressed; neither is there any place beyond that work.
While the project draws primarily on Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological work to conceptualize a relational understanding of organizations, Pitts positions the sociological argument within a pneumatological framework, thus pressing against stark dualisms between grassroots movements p. 129 and local communities on the one hand and larger institutions on the other, calling for his readers to widen their understanding of the range of activities and forms in which the character and work of the Holy Spirit may be found. Thus, the book seeks to provide an account of institutions that can be seen as potential means of pneumatological participation and provide tools (criteria) for discerning the faithfulness of those institutions.
In chapter 1, “Picturing Spirit,” Pitts sets the stage for the rest of the book, presenting the state of the debate in which he intends to participate. Too often, he says, a dualistic picture rules the day, one in which local communities and movements are on one side, and fixed organizations on the other. Pitts intends to provide a picture of a “dynamic and relational view of organizing, organizational forms, and organizations” (19). He does so by drawing on social theory but bases that work in “an account of the relationality at the heart of the divine economy and of creation” (19). In order to develop this “alternative pneumatological-sociological picture,” Pitts commits himself to three methodological considerations to which he remains consistently faithful: (a) as a Mennonite theologian, he draws on engaging Mennonite history and thought as a constructive resource; (b) in the spirit of Bourdieu’s notion of reflexivity, Pitts determines to carry out research on the conditions in which he finds himself, hence the use of case studies from his experience; and (c) he understands the theological language of participation to mean that we can join God’s work by grace and not confuse those efforts with divine works, engendering an ongoing practice of discernment of practices and organizations.
In the second chapter, “Hovering Spirit,” Pitts highlights the material and social interconnectedness of this world, a reality that bears witness to the presence of the Spirit and thus encourages the embracing of the possibility of participating in the work of the Spirit in complex institutions, not only in local enterprises. This argument is made via a sociological case study of Anabaptist environmental ethics, which, in Pitts’s view, focuses disproportionately on local scales. His contrasting vision pictures the Spirit hovering over the organization of particular localities and the connections of localities in solidarity with other localities. The theological emphasis in this chapter develops the notion that the hovering Spirit should be understood as “dynamically structuring creation, giving it life and forming life-giving solidarities among creatures (52),” resulting in the acknowledgment that the Spirit works with and in a variety of scales, not only on a local level, or in a single watershed.
Chapter 3, titled “Sanctifying Spirit,” focuses on the work of the Spirit in the church, arguing that the Spirit sanctifies the church through the p. 130 reform of its institutions, drawing on the sociological case of the role of North American Mennonite women organized to foment meaningful change in the Mennonite Church over the span of a hundred years. Pitts is careful not to suggest that advocating for progress in the church necessarily entails uncritical devotion to institutional reform, nor some kind of mechanistic view of social betterment, all the while advocating for participating in the sanctifying Spirit to reform our ecclesial institutions in the direction of faithfulness.
In “Doubling Spirit,” Pitts takes up the question of whether institutions that are organized in the name of oppressed identities can be thought of as participating in the Spirit. The sociological case taken up here is the work of Vincent Harding in Black liberation, labeling the enlivening and empowering work of the Spirit as “doubling” the spirit of Black struggle. Put another way, institutions can serve as a good in their contributions to movements that themselves are enacting God’s liberation from bondage (131).
In chapter 5, “Organizing Spirit,” Pitts seeks to draw together the related strands of his argument, warning us of the potential danger of missing out on the organizational depth of the divine economy. He does not naively dismiss legitimate concerns inherent in institutions, but (relying on the subjunctive voice) brings to view the constructive possibilities of participating in the work of the Spirit as expressed in institutions, being careful to advise the reader that such participation calls for constant discernment based on criteria such as an “institution’s dedication to life and creaturely solidarity; to progressive inclusion of formerly excluded people and groups for the sake of collective flourishing; and to global anti-colonial healing and justice in the way of Jesus” (160). In his concluding sections, Pitts shows how this book can then be read as a political theology, since “it explores in various ways theological justifications for political institutions” (162).
This book offers a valuable intervention in theological considerations of the work of the Spirit, the pneumatological dimension of theology having perhaps received relatively less attention in Anabaptist thought than, say, ecclesiology or Christology. Pitts’ methodology here is exemplary, drawing on sociology and philosophy in sophisticated ways but doing so within the primary framework of theological considerations. Sociologically informed case studies function not as merely illustrative but provide impetus for theologically constructive work. Further, Pitts’s concerns about participating in the work of the Spirit wherever that may be found presses his readers to embrace considerable porousness rather than stark dualisms between church and world, even while imploring the reader p. 131 to engage his criteria for discernment, even if there might be disagreement about that porousness or the criteria themselves. This book can be seen as a call to Christian involvement in institutions, attended by perpetual discernment that seeks to participate in the work of Spirit, without blind commitment to those given institutions (including the church).
I have several relatively minor hesitations about this book. First, in the midst of presenting this sophisticated argument for participating in the work of the Spirit in institutions up to and including those on a global scale, what receives little attention is the work of the Spirit in the life of the believer. To be clear, I am not here arguing for some kind of individual piety at the expense of the kind of pneumatology Pitts emphasizes; rather, my concern is that in pressing for the expanded embrace of the possibility of the Spirit’s work in institutions the personal and local will be left behind, something akin to kicking away a ladder once one has climbed to considerable height. Further, I wonder if Pitts has spent enough time on recognizing the idolatrous possibilities of institutions—he names this as a potential problem early in the book and brings various cautions to view. Nonetheless, closer attention to issues such as the dangers inherent in large-scale enterprises would be welcome.
Overall, then, Pitts succeeds in the goal he sets for himself, to challenge fellow theologians and institutional leaders to think more theologically “about the place of national, regional, and global institutions in Christian ministry and witness” (xi). This book is exemplary in its theological work carried out in witness and service to God in God’s world and deserves serious attention.
