Jamie Pitts, Organizing Spirit: Pneumatology, Institutions, And Global Imagination (London: T&T Clark, 2025)

reviewed by Revd Ben Morgan Lundie
Rector, The Looe Valley Benefice and doctoral candidate at the University of Roehampton and Church Mission Society

In Organizing Spirit, Jamie Pitts wants to challenge and complexify the dualistic either/or perception that the Holy Spirit is active in marginalised, community-based movements and absent from stable institutions. To develop his theology of how the Spirit may work in organisations, he describes a “pneumatological-sociological picture” (p. x). Writing as a professor of Anabaptist Mennonite theology, Pitts attempts to answer this question by putting Mennonite pneumatology in conversation with Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology. 

His argument builds over five chapters. In Chapter 1 he makes an argument for expanding how theologians see the Holy Spirit at work in the organisation of complex human social structures such as communities, movements and institutions. In chapters two to four Pitts develops his argument through three case studies, using the themes of eco-theology, gender and sexual minority inclusion, and racial justice. The book concludes with a proposal for a political theology in which the Holy Spirit is the organiser of Christian institutions that can counter the global phenomenon of neo-liberalism. 

I found inspiration in Organizing Spirit for developing theological insights into my own area of research interest of a practical theology of change in the church, and how institutional change could be influenced by the Holy Spirit. Practical theologians concerned with the topics of the three case studies – climate change, equality and social justice issues – will find value in Pitts’ work as a way of understanding how the Holy Spirit gives agency to human action, as will those who are interested in the growing field of organisational ecclesiology.

In my mind there are two shortcomings in the book. Pitts says that he will develop a framework for discerning if an institution is participating in the life of the Holy Spirit. I was interested in this as a practical theologian as a way of measuring or discerning how God works through institutions, but Pitts does not fully develop these criteria (p. 176). He draws out a few conclusions from the three case studies, and states the obvious, that “all institutions are fallible and liable to go wrong” (p. 160). I would have liked to see these criteria developed further. It is also ambiguous throughout the book whether the organisations and movements that Pitts has in mind are explicitly Christian in foundation and activity or whether the Holy Spirit can also act through non-Christian institutions. I think that he falls into the first category, but he does suggest that the Holy Spirit can use “worldly institutions” to call the church to account for failing to live up to its vocation (p. 150). Should you read this book? I would say yes, even if you do not have direct interest in the topics of the case studies. For many denominations, institutional presence and power can often overshadow the theological reality of the church. The perspective outlined in Organizing Spirit offers the possibility and hope for organisational redemption and sanctification.

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