JEPTA 2013 1

As a Prophetic Voice: Liberationism as a Matrix for Interpreting American Pentecostal Thought and Praxis
Zachary Michael Tackett1
Abstract
American Pentecostalism began as a liberating community in which pathos held in tension and gave life to the churchs doxology and praxis. Pentecostals advocated a prophetic commitment to words and actions as an expression of the eschatological kingdom of God, challenging the church and society. Over time, calls for ethnic inclusion, womens voices, advocacy for the poor, and peace in the midst of war faded. In the early twenty-first century, the prophetic voices are being whispered anew. This paper considers how a liberationist paradigm might enhance the interpretation of early Pentecostalism and how such a paradigm might contribute to the advancement of contemporary Pentecostalism.

Introduction
American Pentecostals arose a little over a century ago from the cultural, ecclesiological, and theological margins of American life, speaking as a prophetic community. They proclaimed an evangelistic call for all peoplewithout regard to gender, social location, or ethnicityto participate fully and equally, in the present, in the eschatological kingdom of God, anticipating the soon-coming return of Christ. Social justice was integral to their message. This revolutionary community challenged the American religious and civic status quo. William Faupel argues that Pentecostalism did not arise as a variation of American evangelical fundamentalism, but as a critique directed at an emerging fundamentalism which was attaching itself to the Old Princeton Theology. 2 Cecil Robeck cites William Seymours contention that the Azusa Mission was seeking to displace dead forms and creeds and wild fanaticism with living, practical

Zachary Tackett is based at Southeastern University Lakeland, Florida. His email address is zmtackett@gmail.com. D. William Faupel, Whither Pentecostalism? 22nd Presidential Address, Society for Pentecostal Studies, November 7, 1992, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 15:1 (Spring 1993): 21.

42 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION Christianity. In succeeding generations, American Pentecostals moved away from many of their prophetic commitments, migrating toward the middle class and its cultural expectations. This process of pulling away from the mainstream toward the margins and then spending successive generations reassimilating in various ways,4 is identified by Dayton as a Pentecostal paradigm. 5 The paradigm was foreshadowed during the nineteenth century, Dayton observes, in American Methodism and in the holiness movement. As Pentecostals moved from embracing the marginalized to identifying with the broader society, the voices and practices of Pentecostals changed. Positively, these changes mean that now Pentecostals voices are usually acknowledged and often a ppreciated by the broader society; negatively, many of the early prophetic voices of challenge have faded. Voices of liberation were heard from within early American Pentecostalism concerning race, gender, social location, and pacifism, but Pentecostals were not unified in their commitments. Black Pentecostals tended to champion issues of race. Yet, African American Pentecostals seldom encouraged women to rise beyond traditional roles. In contrast, white Pentecostals tended to make room for womens voices, but stopped short of advocating equal roles. Also, whites on the whole appear to have challenged American apartheid, but stopped short of advocating equality. Those who encouraged African American as equals in society were few. Whites and blacks during the early era of Pentecostalism tended to challenge war. The reasons for their pacifist commitments varied, often reflecting the Pentecostals varying social locations. Yet, Murray Dempster questions whether Pentecostals can be identified as presenting a thoroughgoing pacifistic challenge. It is not clear that a majority of Pentecostals were pacifists. 6 Some Pentecostal pacifists argued against the taking of life, any human life. Others
3
3

Cecil M. Robeck, Jr. The Azusa Street Mission and Revival: The Birth of the Global Pentecostal Movement (Nashville, TN: Nelson Reference and Electronic, 2006), 9. Donald W. Dayton, The Fragmentation of American Protestantism, 1865 -1920 Viewed through the Lens of the Methodist Experience, Paper presenting Preliminary Statement of Issues at Wesleyan/Holiness Studies Center Conference, Asbury Theological Seminary, September 29-30, 1995, p. 5; cf. Dayton, The Search for the Historical Evangelicalism: George Mardens History of Fuller Seminary as a Case Study, Christian Scholars Review 23:1 (September 1992): 18-20. Donald W. Dayton, The Limits of Evangelicalism: The Pentecostal Tradition in Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston (eds), The Variety of American Evangelicalism, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1991), 51. In this analysis, Dempster specifically engages the Assemblies of God. Murray W. Dempster, Pacifism in Pentecostalism: The Case of the Assemblies of God, in Theron F. Schlabach and Richard T. Hughes (eds), Proclaim Peace: Christian Pacifism from Unexpected Quarters, (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 1997), 33-34.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 43

GREGORY KANE contended that the war not only extinguished life, it adversely impacted the poor and persons of colour. The prophetic dynamic of early Pentecostalism shares some common characteristics with Black Liberation Theology and Latin American Liberation Theology. Liberationism contends that the essence of Christianity extends beyond belief systems, that praxis is foundational to theological commitments. Such an emphasis resonates with early Pentecostals emphasis upon social engagement, in which commitments to inclusion and justice were integrated into the early Pentecostals evangelistic message. Liberationist commitments began to be renewed by some Pentecostals toward the end of the twentieth century. Leonard Lovett represents one of the first Pentecostals to embrace a Black Liberation Theology. 7 Stephen Land and Cheryl Bridges Johns each draw from liberation thought, developing their writings within the context of the Appalachian Mountains of the eastern United States, though neither Land nor Johns overtly make that geographic connection. Johns reinterprets Paulo Freires emphasis u pon contextualization.8 Land emphasizes the role of pathos in connecting orthopathy and orthopraxy.9 Samuel Solivan reinterprets Liberation Theology within a Puerto Rican context, also incorporating an emphasis upon pathos.10 This paper will engage origins of American Pentecostalism as a prophetic community of liberation. Pentecostal liberation will be identified as distinct from Liberation Theology. Pentecostals draw from common dynamics as Liberation Theology, but reinterpret liberation to develop uniquely Pentecostal commitments. Thus, the concept of American Pentecostalism as a liberationist community is distinguished from communities of challenge that have engaged Black Liberation Theology or Latin American Liberation Theology. The concept of embourgeoisement will be engaged as developed by Donald Dayton, emphasizing its particular understanding from within an American context. From this perspective, embourgeoisement reflects an attempt to access mainstream culture, highlighting a desire for middle class respectability. The present observation also
7

10

Cf. Leonard Lovett, Ethics in a Prophetic Mode: Reflections of an Afro -Pentecostal Radical, in Amos Yong and Estrelda Y. Alexander (eds), Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture , (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 153-165. Cheryl Bridges Johns, Pentecostal Formation: A Pedagogy among the Oppressed (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993). Stephen Jack Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Reprint, Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2010). Samuel Solivan, The Spirit, Pathos, and Liberation (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998).

44 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION includes a challenge to deprivation theory, contending that deprivation is only marginally appropriate for interpreting Pentecostal origins.

As Voice from Among the Peoples

Pentecostals emerged at the turn-of-the-twentieth-century as a working-class community, their countercultural ethics serving as a prophetic challenge to the American religious and cultural status quo. Pentecostals called for multi-ethnic inclusion, engagement of womens voices, full participation of the poor and the well-to-do, advocating peace in the face of the war in Europe, and invoking medical care and prayer for healing of the physically broken. Many of these ideals stood in contrast to the mors of the dominant American culture. Certainly Pentecostals were not the only ones to challenge Americas religious and cultural status quo at the turn of the twentieth century. This was the Progressive Era. Various communities challenged the dominant expression of true Americanism that called for all persons and communities to be smelted into an homogenous whole.11 As with many of these communities of challenge, Pentecostals were not unified in their prophetic actions. One of the earliest points of breakdown was along ethnic and racial lines. For example, William Seymour came to implement restrictions on whites participating as leaders at the Azusa Mission because of the trouble we have had with some of our white brethren in causing division.12 Closely connected with the ideal of an homogenous America was the pervasive philosophy of Manifest Destiny. This ideology contended that God had ordained a monolithic America to expand from the Atlantic to the Pacific, engulfing peoples and cultures in the process, marginalizing persons based upon political, economic, cultural, ethnic, and gender priorities. Pentecostals were among a collection of reformers within the communities of challenge who saw being truly American as more of a cornucopia than a single, homogenous entity.13 In contrast to smelting pot theory and Manifest Destiny, the

11

12

13

Jonathan Hansen True Americanism: Progressive Era Intellectuals and the Problem of Liberal Nationalism, in Americanism: New Perspectives on the History of an Ideal , ed. Michael Kazin and Joseph A McCartin (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 4-5. The Doctrine and Discipline of the Azusa Street Apostolic Faith Mission of Los Angeles, California, 1915, p.12, held by Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center, Springfield, Missouri. I have engaged this issue in more detail in a presentation to the Society for Pentecostal Studies, drawing upon the thought of Jonathan Hansen. Tackett, As Citizens of Heaven: Perspectives on Peace, War, and Patriotism among Pentecostals in the United States during World War I. Presented at the Society for Pentecostal Studies, March 2012.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 45

GREGORY KANE Pentecostals ideals called for the uplift of all persons, particularly those who did not fit within an idealized, monolithic expression of Americanism. Recognizing Pentecostalism as a prophetic community challenges deprivation theory.14 In the late 1920s, Richard Niebuhr identified deprivation as appropriate for analysing many religious groups in America. Pentecostals were not on Niebuhrs radar, but they seem to fit well in his evaluation. Religious groups have a history of developing from poor, outcast minorities who are without effective representation in the mainstream or who lack positions of leadership within society, states Niebuhr. Such groups commonly demand various religious experiences as prerequisites for membership, are usually led by laity, and frequently espouse ethical expressions that tend to sever religious life from the prevailing culture. As these groups develop in succeeding generations into more established churches, isolation tends to decrease, wealth frequently increases, and the ethics of isolationism diminish. Changes in ethics are accompanied by changes in theology. Leadership becomes more refined and educated. Creeds replace religious experience.15 The cultural and theological developments of American Pentecostals have affinities with many aspects of this theory. Nonetheless, deprivation theory fails to account for the fact that Pentecostals were among the broad majority of working Americans, neither the elite nor the outcasts. Further, deprivation theory fails to recognize that Pentecostals challenged the inequities of American society, rather than retreating from society. Early Pentecostals were not the outcasts of society. Further, they did not sever their ethical expressions from culture. To the contrary, Pentecostals challenged the social ethics of the mainstream church and of society at large. As writers such as Grant Wacker and Adam Stewart have shown, Pentecostals were typical working-class Americans.16 They were representative of Americas massive underbelly of the poor and the lower middle class who had limited access to Americas economic and political power engines. Cecil Robeck points out the significance of class and cultural dynamics regarding the Azusa Mission in Los Angeles. The mainstream African American congregations, states
14

15

16

The best analysis of Pentecostalism from a deprivation perspective is Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979; Reprint, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992). H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1929; reprint, New York: World Publishing Company, 1957), 17-21. Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 4-5; Adam Stewart, Re-Visioning the Disinherited: Pentecostals and Social Class in North America, in A Liberating Spirit: Pentecostals and Social Action in North America, ed. Michael Wilkinson and Steven M. Studebaker (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 136-157.

46 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION Robeck, catered to middle- and upper-middle-class members, while the Azusa Street Mission and at least one Holiness mission in town seem to have made more space in their midst for the recent influx of less educated, poorer African Americans.17 Peter Althouse builds his critique of deprivation theory upon the Pentecostals religious commitments. Pentecostal eschatology, Althouse contends, challenged enlightenment-framed, Western-oriented ecclesial traditions that identified spirituality as a quest for propositional truth. In contrast to the rationalist, foundationalist commitments of fundamentalists, who incorporated Scripture as leading to propositional truths, Pentecostals read and heard the narrative of Scripture as a model for life. Pentecostals were participating in the continuing biblical narrative, lifting up those who had been marginalized by Western enlightenment, propositionalist commitments. Pentecostals intentionally embraced the margins that their voices of challenge would be heard. From the margins, the prophetic voices of Pentecostals rose above the convoluted sounds of the middle; from the margins Pentecostals challenged the status quo. 18 Living in the light of the eschatological kingdom often proved more difficult than proclaiming the kingdom. Pentecostals failed to develop their ethics in such a way that they consistently elevated the marginalized. Not all Pentecostals appreciated multi-ethnicity, pacifism, the inclusion of women, or working for the economic uplift of the poor. For example, the church of the Azusa Revival by 1915 came to contend that women could be ministers, but women were not to baptize or ordain other ministers. Yet, at Seymours death, Jennie Evans Moore Seymour, the spouse of Seymour, succeeded him as pastor of the Azusa Mission.19 Another example of the multiplicity of perspectives is the response of Pentecostals to peace and war. On the whole the Pentecostal church was a peace church, seeing the intentional destruction of life as wrong. At least one Pentecostal leader contended that capital punishment was unacceptable, as it too was the purposeful taking of life.20 Yet, not all leaders and certainly not all the constituents were committed to pacifism and pacifisms commitment to the dignity and the sanctity of all

17

18

19 20

Cecil M. Robeck, Jr., The Azusa Street Mission and Historic Black Churches: Two Worlds in Conflict in Los Angeles African American Community, in Amos Yong and Estrelda Y. Alexander (eds), Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture, (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 22. Althouse, Waxing and Waning of Social Deprivation as a Model in A Liberation Spirit, 113-135. Doctrines and Discipline, 91. A. J. Tomlinson, Days of Perplexity, Church of God Evangel (January 26, 1918): 1, digitally republished by Dixon Pentecostal Research Center, 2008.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 47

GREGORY KANE persons. In light of these variations, the fabric of Pentecostalism should be seen as a patchwork quilt, rather than a fine silk comforter made from a solid bolt of material. Yet, the trajectory of early Pentecostalism was a prophetic community, whose values were to reflect the eschatological kingdom of God, providing a prophetic challenge to society. Setting the stage for identifying Pentecostalism as liberationist is Donald Dayton. He contends that Pentecostals followed in the tradition of Wesleyans and holiness advocates who had challenged the American religious and ethical status quo through advocating revivalism and low-church piety. In contradiction to deprivation theory, Wesleyans, Holiness Wesleyans, and Pentecostals each originated within the religious mainstream and intentionally embraced the marginalized.22 These prophetic communities advocated revivalism and lowchurch piety, and the marginalization that accompanied such action, as a critique of the perceived staleness and deficiencies of mainstream Christianity. These communities, however, could not sustain their prophetic challenges. In processes of embourgeoisement, American Pentecostals gradually returned to the centre. Like Wesleyans and holiness advocates before them, Pentecostals gradually made accommodations to society, setting aside their challenges to society, gradually accepting much of the American status quo as their own. Dayton identified this modelan initial movement toward revivalism and lowchurch piety as a critique of the churches of the mainstream, followed by gradual embourgeoisementas the Pentecostal paradigm.23
21

Listening to Liberating Voices

Black holiness-pentecostalism affirms with dogmatic insistence that liberation is always the consequence of a genuine encounter of the Holy Spirit , contends Leonard Lovett. Authentic liberation can never occur apart from a genuine encounter of the Holy Spirit, and likewise an authentic encountering of the Holy Spirit does not occur unless liberation becomes the consequence.24 Transformation
21

22 23 24

Paul Nathan Alexander (ed.), Pentecostals and Nonviolence: Reclaiming a Heritage , (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2012); Paul Alexander, Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances in the Assemblies of God (Telford, PA: Cascadia Publishing House, 2009); Murray W. Dempster, Pacifism in Pentecostalism: The Case of the Assemblies of God, (31 -57) and Theodore Kornweibel, Jr., Race and Conscientious Objection in World War I: The Story of the Church of God in Christ, (58-81) in Theron F. Schlabach and Richard T. Hughes (eds), Proclaim Peace: Christian Pacifism from Unexpected Quarters , (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997). Donald W. Dayton, Preliminary Statement of Issues. Dayton, Search for the Historical Evangelicalism 20. Lovett, Black Holiness-Pentecostalism, 162.

48 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION is not the product of human ideology but divine new creation.25 The conscientization of the individual in community through the working of the Holy Spirit liberates a person to participate as fully human. [O]nes consciousness is raised so that it would be difficult if not impossible to become basically satisfied with an external political and social order which in the long run dehumanizes [hu]man[ity].26 Lovett asserts that disenfranchisement provides location for a prophetic challenge that emerges from an encounter with the Holy Spirit. The location of the prophetic affirms the role of praxis in theological development, rejecting any type of abstract truth that is not engaged in the muck of life. [F]or the disenfranchised, the Holy Spirit is the source and criterion of ethical judgment. For Black holinesspentecostals the will of God is not found in philosophic abstraction, but in concrete historical realities and events characterized by supreme struggle for social and human survival within the vortex of their existential commitment to God as Holy Spirit.27 Therefore, a commitment to praxis becomes foundational to formulating theory. The starting point for all ethical analysis and reflection within Black holiness-pentecostalism must begin with praxis.28 Further, such praxis arises through the impetus of the Spirit. [A]uthentic liberation can never occur apart from a genuine encounter of the Spirit, and likewise, an authentic encountering of the Holy Spirit does not occur unless liberation becomes the consequence.29 African American Pentecostals, as heirs of slave religion spirituality 30 with its Exodus motif, resonate with the final public words of Martin Luther King, Jr. when he boomed from the valley of the despair of the Sanitation Workers Strike in Memphis in the spring of 1968. Hes allowed me to go up to the mountain. And Ive looked over and Ive seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we as a people will get to the Promised

25 26 27 28 29

30

Lovett, Black Holiness-Pentecostalism, 162. Lovett, Black Holiness-Pentecostalism, 102. Lovett, Black Holiness-Pentecostalism, 106. Lovett, Black Holiness-Pentecostalism, 106. Leonard Lovett, Conditional Liberation: An Emergent Pentecostal Perspective, Spirit 1 / 2 (1977): 27, cited by Sherilyn Rae Benvenuti, A Reconstruction of a Pentecostal Social Ethic of Reconciliation: The Work of Cecil M. Robeck Jr., H. Vinson Synan and Leonard Lovett (Ph. D. diss., University of Southern California, 2000), 133-134. Walter J. Hollenweger, The Black Roots of Pentecostalism, in Allan H. Anderson and Walter J. Hollenweger (eds), Pentecostals after a Century: Global Perspectives on a Movement in Transition, (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 36-39.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 49

GREGORY KANE Land. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!31 King engaged the Exodus as a narrative of liberation that he had received as a heritage from slave religion.32 King was employing the Exodus narrative to account for the success of liberation movements of peoples of color worldwide and to explain the history of blacks in the United States.33 African American Pentecostal communities participated with King and the larger African American community in the crossing of Jordan, marching into the Promised Land. During the Sanitation Workers Strike, African American Pentecostals in Memphis took up offerings, provided hot meals to the striking workers, and spent time in prayer for the workers, seeing each of these activities as expressions of the Spirit.34 One Pentecostal bishop recalled, I remember our people would go over to Mason Temple and pray three days and three nights. We took our case to God, because the Bible is against the oppression of the poor.35 African American Pentecostals joined King, states Lovett, in using his prophetic imagination to comfort the afflicted, to afflict the comfortable and to challenge the status quo.36 White Pentecostals in Memphis remained silent. Exodus eschatology was not unique to slave religion. The Exodus motif also has a tradition within white, holiness expressions of evangelicalism during the nineteenth century. White communities engaged the Exodus narrative as an interpretive grid of a persons spiritual journal. The exodus from Egypt, the wilderness wanderings, the crossing the Jordan River into the Promised Land , observes Donald Dayton, all became stages of the normative pattern of the spiritual pilgrimage from conversion into the second blessing.37 White Americans of the late nineteenth century would have viewed the liberating implications of the exodus motif differently than African Americans. Yet, both whites and blacks would have recognized the liberating dynamics of the Spirit, including social implications of this liberation.
31

32

33 34 35

36

37

Joan Turner Beifuss, At the River I Stand (Memphis: St. Lukes Press, 1990), 368; the Beifuss account is one of the most significant historical essays on the Sanitation Workers Strike. Gary S. Selby, Martin Luther King and the Rhetoric of Freedom: The Exodus Narrative in Americas Struggle for Civil Rights (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), 34. Selby, MLK, 8. J. Lee Grady, Keepers of the Flame, Charisma and Christian Life 21 (November 1995): 50. Grady, Keepers of the Flame, 49, citing interview with W. L. Porter. Mason Temple is the headquarters of the Church of God in Christ and during these tumultuous weeks was the headquarters of the strike. Leonard Lovett, Racism and Reconciliation, Charisma and Christian Life 18 (April 1993): 14. Dayton, Limits of Evangelicalism, 43; see also, Dayton, American Holiness Movement (reprint, Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, 2012), 40, place.asburyseminary.edu.

50 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION

Engaging Liberationist Theologies

His ideas sound to me like a pentecostal liberation theology , contended Harvey Cox, speaking of Pentecostal ethicist Murray Dempster. 38 Building upon a pneumatology that challenges sin in both its individual and community expressions, Dempster calls for the redemption of persons and societies. This redemption demands structural changes within society. Eschatology provides a framework for such a pneumatology to inform a transformational social ethic. The mission of the church is to witness to the truth that the Kingdom of God which still belongs to the future has already broken into the present age in Jesus Christ and continues in the world through the power of the Holy Spirit.39 Dempster places liberation within the context of the eschatological present. With the coming of Christ, and with the pneumatological presence of God at Pentecost, the eschatological future breaks into the present. Pentecostals proleptically participate in the future, engaging in part the fulfilled purposes of God. The eschaton breaks into the present bringing the ethic of the eschaton into the present. Dempsters understanding of the eschaton is similar to that of the Black Liberation theologian James Cone, who contends that black theology traditionally has emphasized an eschatology that relates to the black experience of oppression. 40 The presence of Christ calls for the subordination of personal interests in order to engage an eschatological liberation in the present. Those who see Gods coming liberation breaking into the present must live as if the future is already present in their midst.41 The liberating presence of Christ not only includes liberating the oppressed, but also calls for the liberation of the oppressors. 42 The eschatological in-breaking of the kingdom of God provides a theological fulcrum for a social ethic. The eschatological future presses into the present, emphasizes Dempster, where people can already experience the transforming power of Gods messianic salvation.43 This transforming power of the baptizing Spirit brings the rule of Gods justice into the present. The rule of Gods justice is
38

39

40 41 42 43

Harvey Cox, Fire From Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the 21st Century (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1995), 295. Dempsters 1991 Presidential Address to the Society for Pentecostal Studies, cited by Cox, Fire from Heaven, 295. James H. Cone, God of the Oppressed, revised ed. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1997), 50. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 138. Cone, God of the Oppressed, 139. Murray Dempster, Eschatology, Spirit Baptism, and Inclusiveness: an Explorati on into the Hallmarks of a Pentecostal Social Ethic in Peter Althouse and Robby Waddell (eds), Perspectives in Pentecostal Eschatologies: World Without End , (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 165.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 51

GREGORY KANE to be experienced presently in community. Spirit baptism empowered the church in its corporate life to witness to the moral dynamic of the gospel to transform people, change deep-seated prejudices, and restructure relationships so the participants incorporated into the inclusive believing community possessed an equally valued status in Christ.44 Thus, the work of the church is to engage the evangelistic commitment of the Spirit, and to provide a moral witness, which embodies love, justice, and respect of persons.45 The early Pentecostal community advocated the dignity and value of all people. Pentecostals inherited a holiness commitment to reality, states Cheryl Bridges Johns, that was to be critically perceived and [in which] injustice was to be the object of reflection and action guided by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, such issues as slavery, womens rights, child labor, slum conditions and illiteracy were problems addressed by many adherents of this movement .46 Significant to the development of personhood and the liberating community for Johns is the work of the Spirit in conscientization, derived from the model of conscientization by Paulo Freire. Conscientization in the context of a Pentecostal environment, states Johns, is initiated and maintained by the Holy Spirit who unveils reality in a manner which incorporates but supersedes human praxis. This is an ongoing dialectic of humanity and deity.47 Johns contends that this perspective is consistent with Leonard Lovetts insistence that liberation is always the consequence of the presence of the Spirit. For Johns, the liberating Spirit not only expresses the nature of black Pentecostalism, but reflects the influence of African American spirituality on the whole of American Pentecostalism. With its roots firmly in black spirituality and in the holiness movement, Pentecostalism was another cry against the abandonment of the historical churches to authentic spirituality. 48 The result was a challenge to the mainstream of American Christianity, the Spirit of Pentecost calling for a radical equalizing of blacks and whites, males and females, the rich and the poor. As a result, Johns identifies early Pentecostalism as a subversive and revolutionary movement. This subversion, however, was not based upon philosophic ideology nor totally upon critical reflection, but upon the Pentecostals experience of the Holy Spirit as liberator. Johns concludes, Pentecostalism had a dual prophetic role: denouncing the dominant patterns of the status quo and announcing the patterns of Gods Kingdom.49
44 45 46 47 48 49

Dempster, Eschatology, Spirit Baptism, and Inclusiveness, 187. Dempster, Eschatology, Spirit Baptism, and Inclusiveness, 188. Johns, Pentecostal Formation, 66. Johns, Pentecostal Formation, 62. Johns, Pentecostal Formation, 68. Johns, Pentecostal Formation, 69.

52 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION

Pentecostal Liberationist Theology

Pentecostals must come to terms with Gods designs to reach out to the non-persons of societyto those that have no one to plead their cause, to those who have been left on the roadside of life, consistently ignored and abandoned with little hopethose non-persons are also created in Gods image.50 states Doug Petersen. Looking through the lens of Latin American Liberation Theology, Petersen expresses a concern that Pentecostals are lacking in their commitment to social justice. If Pentecostal theology adequately conveys the gospel message of the kingdom, the Spirit-filled person must move from the theoretical to the practical in realizing Gods purposes.51 Pentecostals, he argues, have sometimes emphasized evangelism in such a way that a future, eschatological ideal fails to engage the present. At the same time, a commitment to evangelism is not intrinsically contradictory to social justice. Pentecostal theology has the inherent ability to engage social justice, when evangelism and social justice are seen as complementary actions. Global Pentecostals tend to see liberation as giving dignity and worth to the individual, valuing the imageo Dei within all persons. Pentecostals are actually doing something fairly subversive, observe Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori. They are teaching their members that they are made in the image of God; that all people have dignity and are equal in Gods sight; and that therefore they have rightswhether they are poor, women, or children.52 Such an understanding of social justice is reflective of how early American Pentecostals engaged societal problems, attempting to change structure through giving dignity to the individual. An example may be found in early Pentecostals approach to peace and war. Charles H. Mason argued against war because it devalued humanity, particularly African Americans and the poor who were called to war in much higher numbers than whites in the middle and upper classes. 53 Similarly, A. J. Tomlinson contended that war destroys society, depriving families and the
50

51

52

53

Douglas Petersen, The Kingdom of God and the Hermeneutical Circle: Pentecostal Praxis in the Third World, in Called and Empowered: Global Mission in Pentecostal Perspective, ed. Murray A. Dempster, Byron D. Klaus, and Douglas Petersen (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 49. Douglas Petersen, The Kingdom of God and the Hermeneutical Circle: Pentecostal Praxis in the Third World, 49. Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Christian Social Engagement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 4-5. In Re: Rev. Charles Harris[on] Mason, held by Special Collections, University of Memphis (Tennessee) Libraries, Tolbert-COGIC collection, box 9.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 53

GREGORY KANE community of hard-working membersthe husbands of young wives, the sons of aging parents, and the fathers of small childrenat least temporarily and sometimes forever. This depriving of communities and families of young men was in addition to the unethical demand of war that soldiers are to kill other humans. 54

Pathos and Liberation

The commitment to the dignity of all and the uplift of the marginalized within early Pentecostalism emerged from the Pentecostals eschatological commitments. To live in the Spirit was to live in the [eschatological] kingdom , observes Stephen Land. Early Pentecostals commitment to the in-breaking of the Spirit at Pentecost was understood as an eschatological event.55 The kingdom of Godinaugurated in the Resurrection and expressed within a lived community at Pentecost continued in the lives of twentieth century Pentecostals as they saw themselves living out the narrative of scripture. Pentecostals in the first decade of the twentieth century interpreted what they believed was a unique proliferation of the spiritual giftshealings, prophecy, tonguesas evidence that the eschatological Spirit was breaking into the present, empowering the Pentecostals to advance the gospel of the kingdom. The baptism in the Spirit signalled Gods intervention in and sufficiency for the missionary task of announcing the gospel of the kingdom to all nations before the end.56 Pentecostal communities were participating in the eschatological kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is Gods rule or reign. It is that society and situation in which persons, created by God in the divine image, love God and their neighbour with their entire being,57 states Land. In these communities, pathos is formed.58 Pathos is that which brings together expressions of orthodoxy and orthopathy, including both personal holiness and social justice. Moreover, this passion is focused by eschatological expectations. Pentecostals through the giftings of the Spirit were participating in the eschatological kingdom of God. Pathos provides a starting point for an Hispanic American Pentecostal paradigm, states Samuel Solivan. I propose that orthopathos can be a bridge
54

55

56 57 58

President of the United States Calls the People to Prayer, Church of God Evangel (September 26, 1914): 2, DPRC; cf. my As Citizens of Heaven, 16. Stephen Land states, Bill [Faupel]s careful and extremely valuable work [emphasizing eschatology] undergirds my own and is a prerequisite for understanding North American Pentecostalism, Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, page x, referencing D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996). Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 57. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 174. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 177.

54 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION between piety and social engagement, between proper thinking and proper doing. [O]rthopathos is a theological epistemology, which humanizes cognition as well as critical reflection about engagement.59 Solivan challenges the limitations of both orthodoxy and orthopraxis, particularly their tendency to be captivated by the dominant culture. Both Catholic and Protestant orthodoxys partnership with the dominant culture, and their propensity to uphold at all costs the status quo, have marred their integrity and undermined their claims.60 In particular, orthodoxy as advocated by the Old Princeton School, and embraced by conservative Christianity in North America, has advocated a system that prioritizes AngloEuropean thought, seeing such ethnic-specific theological perspectives as normative. Solivan similarly argues that Roman Catholic orthodoxy fails to relate to those who are marginalized by ethnicity or social location. Roman Catholicism and fundamentalism, Solivan emphasizes, have been reduced to instruments of conservative reactionary forces against the needs of the poor. In particular, the work of the Holy Spirit has been reduced to dependence on the proper orthodox propositional truthsproper doctrine.61 God interacts, not as the suffering one who participates in the disparity of human suffering, but as one who identifies truth and influences humanity toward truth. Such reassigning of orthodoxy to a set of propositional truths is particularly debilitating for the poor. In contrast, doxology and praxis that are informed by and developed through pathos liberates the poor and marginalized, recognizing that as imago Dei all persons are to be equal participants in the community.

Trajectories
Early Pentecostals theologies reflected the emergence of their theologies from within the community. This was a theology that was not limited by modernist commitments to propositional truth. Yet by the mid-twentieth century, American Pentecostals had come to embrace the modernist, propositionalist commitments of mainstream American Christianity. Toward the end of the twentieth century, however, Pentecostals such as Leonard Lovett, Cheryl Bridges Johns, Murray Dempster, and Douglas Petersen began to question Pentecosta ls commitment to the status quo. Stephen Land and Samuel Solivan developed commitments to theology through the dynamic of pathos. The passion of Christ emerges variously and differently as location changes. The in-breaking of the kingdom of God, as

59 60 61

Solivan, Spirit, Pathos, Liberation, 38. Solivan, Spirit, Pathos, Liberation, 35. Solivan, Spirit, Pathos, Liberation, 35-36.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 55

GREGORY KANE argued by Dempster, challenges the status quo, calling for the present to be modelled by the eschatological future. Doug Petersen contends for a reading of Scripture that begins in the context of community, with the questions of the marginalized. From within a Latin American context, Petersen articulates what he calls a hermeneutical circle. The community first participates in engaged, ideological suspicion of a problem. Reading Scripture does not begin with an eye toward a theoretical ideal, but with an eye to understanding a lived reality. Further, reading the narrative includes acting upon the text. Praxis becomes foundational to the continuing reading and understanding of the biblical narrative.62 John Christopher Thomas outlines another theology that begins with community.63 Citing Solivans and Lands emphasis upon pathos, Thomas states that a Pentecostal theology should integrate the heart and head in such a way that there is not a bifurcation of theology and ethics. In this process, theology should be contextual and confessional. Pentecostals should avoid the paved path of onesize-fits-all modernist theology, states Thomas, to develop theology in the ruggedness of new terrain. Such progress empowers new communities and enriches communities who are already working in the task of theology, reveal[ing] dimensions of the text and theology that have gone unnoticed, at best, or have been ignored or downplayed by those in other contexts.64 Modernity called for a universal theology, a propositional theology, contends Thomas. Pentecostal confessional theology should emerge from the margins. This postmodern context calls for a testimony from the margins to a world desperately seeking meaning and comfort.65 Kenneth J. Archer builds upon Thomas contextual-confessional model, seeing early Pentecostalism as a revolutionary movement calling for personal and social transformation.66 Early Pentecostals engaged modernist language, but moved beyond propositionalist limitations. Pentecostals were like the traveling circus sideshows, living on the margins of society and presenting to those who ventured into their tents an electrifying vision of Pentecost revisited. The truthfulness of Scripture was discovered relationally, personally and experientially more so than

62 63

64 65 66

Petersen, Pentecostal Praxis in the Third World, 51-52. John Christopher Thomas, Pentecostal Theology in the Twenty-First Century, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 20 (1, Spring 1998): 3-19. Thomas, Pentecostal Theology in the 21st Century, 11. Thomas, Pentecostal Theology in the 21st Century, 13. Kenneth J. Archer, A Pentecostal Hermeneutic: Spirit, Scripture, and Community (reprint, Cleveland, TN: CPT Press, 2009), 37.

56 JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY IN THE EARLY REFORMATION scientifically.67 As a result, Pentecostals developed a narrative reading to Scripture, which Archer identifies as inherently communal.68

Conclusion
Pentecostals emerged on the American scene as a prophetic voice, challenging the vitality of the American church, contending that the gospel gives life and dignity to all people. Over time, Pentecostals moved away from their fo rebears prophetic commitments. During the mid-twentieth century Pentecostals came to identify an orthodoxy that was defined by commitments to modernity. The prophetic voice became a faint whisper. Pentecostals came to embrace a middle class, mainstreamoriented Christianity, including commitments to the cultural status quo. Leonard Lovett speaking in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement led the way in calling for a renewed prophetic voice, advocating liberationism as a model for such a renewal. Cheryl Bridges Johns evaluated Paulo Freires concept of conscientization as a means of engaging Christian formation, that a pedagogy among the oppressed calls for a renewed reading of Scripture. Murray Dempster called for reengaging Pentecostal eschatology, reviving an early eschatological commitment to the in-breaking of the Spirit. Dempsters inaugurated eschatology expresses similar dynamics to the eschatology of James Cone, who contends that the Christian should live as if the eschatological future is already present. With the Spirit coming upon all at Pentecost, the eschatological future breaks into the present, providing an ethical model of the eschatological kingdom for the present. Emphasizing pathos as that which brings together doxology and praxis, many Pentecostals who are reengaging a social ethic have come to embrace the countercultural commitments of their foremothers and forefathers; they are re-engaging prophetic challenges characteristic of early Pentecostals. This allows for the reading of Scripture from within community. This liberating community engages anew a dual prophetic role: denouncing the dominant patterns of the status quo and announcing the patterns of Gods order.69

67 68 69

Archer, Spirit, Scripture, and Community, 97. Archer, Spirit, Scripture, and Community, 131. Cheryl Bridges Johns, The Adolescence of Pentecostalism: In Search of a Legitimate Sectarian Identity, Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 17 (Spring 1995): 4-5.
JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN THEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION 57

Copyright of JEPTA: Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association is the property of Journal of the European Pentecostal Association (JEPTA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.