Standing At The Crossroads The Battle For The Heart And Soul Of Pentecostalism

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Pneuma 33 (2011) 331-349

Presidential Address 2011

Standing at the Crossroads: Te Battle for the Heart and Soul of Pentecostalism

Kimberly Ervin Alexander Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia Beach, Virginia

kalexander@regent.edu

Abstract

Tis address, delivered at the 40th annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Theology in Memphis, Tennessee (March 12, 2011), examines the present state of Pentecostalism and Pentecostal Theology through an analogy with American indigenous blues music. Seeing Pentecostalism at a significant juncture, the address seeks to call Pentecostals and Pentecostal scholars to a consideration of what is essential to Pentecostal scholarship. Proposed is a conversa- tional model of scholarship characterized by: 1) an openness to what the Spirit is saying and/or doing in other theologies or movements; 2) commitment to a Pentecostal way of doing theology in the Spirit; 3) interdisciplinary approaches; 4) a commitment to narrative and experience over dogma and proposition; and 5) an openness to hearing the visionary work of young scholars.

Keywords

Pentecostal scholarship, conversational model, Pentecostal spirituality

In this address I will make use of an analogy as a literary and pedagogical device. Te use of analogy is, of course, quite common and is used to clarify an abstract or unfamiliar idea. An even more helpful way of thinking of the use of an analog, in this case, may be to think of it in the way the term is used in the recording industry. Tere are a persistent few who prefer analog record- ing to digital because of the presence that is captured in analog. Tis presence has been described as full, as therapeutic, and even as healing, as opposed to the sterile or icy character of digital recording. Certainly full, therapeutic, and healing are words that have been associated with Pentecostalism. One hopes we never see the day when it is described as icy and/or sterile!

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/157007411X598930

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Arguably, no song more embodies the ethos of the Delta Blues than Robert Johnson’s 1937 autobiographical strain:

I went to the crossroad, fell down on my knee,

Went to the crossroad, fell down on my knee,

Asked the Lord above to have mercy, save poor Bob if you please . . . You can run, you can run, tell my friend, poor Willie Brown, You can run, tell my friend, poor Willie Brown, Lord, that I’m standing at the crossroad, babe, I believe I’m sinking down.

Legend has it that Robert Johnson, like Tommy Johnson before him, found himself at a crossroads, literally and figuratively, in a battle for his soul. Accord- ing to the legend, both Johnsons sold their souls to the devil in exchange for an ability to play blues guitar. Te devil met both men at an isolated cross- roads, at midnight, under a full moon. In West African religious tradition, now merged with Christian archetypes, the junction was the intersection of “the physical and the spiritual worlds, the human and the divine,”1 a place of ultimate significance. Robert Johnson cut a deal, so the story goes, and at least one blues historian, Samuel Charters, describes the result as follows: “As a guitarist he almost completely turned the blues around.”2 But in an Old Testament-like ending to his story, ultimately he was poisoned by a jealous woman and was seen crawling on all fours, barking like a dog just before his death.

Not all blues men and women, however, cut a deal with the Trickster. Blues history is replete with songs, stories, and testimonies of prodigals who came home to the church, sometimes selling their guitars. Tommy Johnson, who had sold his soul at the crossroads, grew weary “of living a ‘devil’s life,’ ” accord- ing to his brother, Rev. LaDell Johnson. After having bought a guitar for $75 just two weeks before, Tommy Johnson decided to give up playing the blues. After playing the last time, he hung his guitar up but couldn’t sleep and was repeatedly awakened by the sound of those last blues. He tried to quiet the Devil’s taunts by moving the guitar, even hiding it. Te next morning he sold the guitar for $5. Six years later, in 1924, while working in a field, Johnson

1

William Barlow, “Looking Up at Down”: Te Emergence of Blues Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989), 49.

2

Samuel Charters cited in Barlow, 47.

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heard another sound; this time it was the Holy Spirit, commanding him to go and preach. He became a “Sanctified preacher” in Jackson, Mississippi.3 More often, these prodigals “sanctified” their guitars (and the accompany- ing gifts), even rewriting words to their songs. Robert Wilkins had recorded “Tat’s No Way to Get Along” in Memphis in 1928, a song sung to his Mama about low-down women who treated her poor son wrong:

I stood on the roadside, I cried alone, all by myself I cried alone by myself

I stood on the roadside and cried alone by myself I stood on the roadside and cried alone by myself Cryin’, “Tat’s no way for me to get along.”

In 1936, Wilkins suddenly heard a voice while playing. He recalled, “Look like something appealed to me and I heard it; said, ‘Don’t do it anymore.’ And I just hung it on the wall.”4 But Wilkins didn’t leave the guitar on the wall. After this conversion and subsequent ordination in the Church of God in Christ (1950), the Rev. Robert Wilkins “put Sunday clothes on some of his old blues”5 and rewrote lyrics to describe his own return to his Father:

Said, “I believe I’ll ride, believe I’ll go back home Believe I’ll go back home Believe I’ll ride, believe I’ll go back home Or down the road as far as I can go” And that’ll be the way to get along . . . Well Father said, “Eldest son, kill the fatted calf, Call the family round Kill that calf and call the family round My son was lost but now he is found Cause that’s the way for us to get along”

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Pentecostalism in general, and Pentecostal scholarship in particular, finds itself at an intersection of ultimate significance. We stand at the crossroads between worlds and are being offered appealing deal(s). Will we sell our (heart and)

3

Jon Michael Spencer, Blues and Evil (Knoxville, TN: Te University of Tennessee Press, 1993), 65.

4

Stefan Grossman, Early Masters of American Blues Guitar: Delta Blues Guitar (Van Nuys, CA: Alfred Music, 2007), 61.

5

Ibid., 61.

6

Spencer, Blues and Evil, 65. Ironically, it is the newer version that was covered by Te Roll- ing Stones on Beggar’s Banquet in 1968.

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soul for perceived respectability and proficiency that is short-lived and leads to a shameful grave? Or will we return, like the Prodigal, to our essential roots, either hanging up the tools of the Tricksters or sanctifying them and rewriting the words? Will we write our own songs and sing them our way?

Te Heart and Soul of Pentecostalism

In attempting to define American Roots Music, Robert Santelli enumerates various common characteristics of its diverse forms (including blues), chief among them being that the songs and styles are passed on “by oral tradition.”7

Tese songs were heard, memorized, and recreated “for a specific commu- nity.” It is that portability of the essentiality of Roots Music, specifically of the blues, that has allowed it to transcend geographic space and time. Wherever blues women and men traveled — following the migration of an oppressed people from the Deep South, the path of the Mississippi River, or that of the railroad lines north to St. Louis and Chicago — the music traveled. As the music moved, it morphed into distinguishable blues styles, gaining scales or a particular rhythm, phrasings or even additional instruments, but retaining its essential nature: its emotionality, its pathos, indeed, its spirituality. Wherever the blues was played and sung, it was recognizable as such.

So, what of the Pentecostal experience? It is well known and well accepted by most Pentecostal scholars that Walter Hollenweger contended that the first ten years of the Pentecostal movement represented its heart and not its infancy.

8 In addition, Hollenweger has traced the movement’s root to its African, or black, origins. His articulation of the components of this root bear repeating:

• orality of liturgy;

• narrativity of theology and witness;

• maximum participation at the levels of reflection, prayer, and decision making and therefore a form of community that is reconciliatory;

• inclusion of dreams and visions in personal and public forms of worship; these func- tion as a kind of icon for the individual and the community;

7

Robert Santelli, “Introduction,” in Robert Santelli, Holly George-Warren, and Jim Brown, eds., American Roots Music (New York: Rolling Stone Press/Henry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001), 12.

8

W. J. Hollenweger, “Pentecostals and the Charismatic Movement,” in C. Jones, G. Wainwright, and E. Yarnold, eds., Te Study of Spirituality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 549- 53, cited in Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom, JPTS 1 (Sheffield, UK: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 47.

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• an understanding of the body/mind relationship that is informed by experiences of correspondence between body and mind, the most striking applications of this insight being the ministry of healing by prayer and liturgical dance.9

Hollenweger claims that Pentecostalism’s strength and its success as a global movement lie in this root, particularly in its oral nature. He cites the diversity of doctrinal commitments among Pentecostals as evidence supporting his claim. Indeed, beyond the often cited divisions over the doctrines of Trinity and soteriology, Hollenweger rightly points to the diversity of thought in the global movement that includes nonwhite indigenous expressions of Pente- costalism as well as the various expressions of the worldwide Charismatic movement.10 Hal Knight concludes that Hollenweger sees the spirituality of the movement as primary: “Whatever Christian movement manifests that spirituality he would therefore designate as ‘Pentecostal.’ ”11

Allan Anderson, in attempting to find a definition of Pentecostalism, points to the jazz-like play between spontaneity and order or Spirit and Word as a common characteristic in global Pentecostalism.12 He further includes an emphasis on “the immediate presence of God in the service,” an expectation of the miraculous, and “congregational participation, especially in prayer and worship.”13 For Anderson, experience and practice are essential in identifying Pentecostalism.

While acknowledging that part of the appeal of Pentecostalism globally is its “surrogate extended family” function, Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori rightly point out that “[t]he engine of Pentecostalism is its worship.”14 Tey cite the music in Pentecostal worship as well as experiences of healing that occur in the worship setting as conducive to the growth of Pentecostalism. Perhaps most insightful is their offering that those from cultures in which shamanism is normative experience a resonance with Pentecostalism because

9

Walter Hollenweger, Pentecostalism: Origins and Developments Worldwide (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 18, 19.

10

Ibid., 18.

11

Henry H. Knight III, “Part Four: Introduction,” in Henry H. Knight III, ed., From Alder- sgate to Azusa Street: Wesleyan, Holiness, and Pentecostal Visions of the New Creation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2010), 203.

12

Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 9. Anderson builds on the work of Jean-Jacques Suurmond, Word and Spirit at Play: Towards a Charismatic Teology (London: SCM Press, 1994).

13

Ibid., 9.

14

Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: Te New Face of Christian Social Engagement (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Te University of California Press, 2007), 23.

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of its recognition of the spirit world, though they correctly point out the distinction of the Pentecostal belief in one Holy Spirit over and against mul- tiple spirits.15 Te sociological assessment of Miller and Yamamori demon- strates that what primarily defines or identifies Pentecostalism and supports the contention that it is best understood as a spirituality is not a doctrinal distinctive(s).

If Pentecostalism, at its heart, is a spirituality, then it may be helpful to think about the advantages of such a designation. Harvey Cox designates three reasons why the term is gaining usage today:

First, it is still a form of tacit protest. It reflects a widespread discontent with the pre- shrinking of “religion,” Christianity in particular, into a package of theological propo- sitions, by the religious corporations that box and distribute such packages. Second, it represents an attempt to voice the awe and wonder before the intricacy of nature that many feel is essential to human life without stuffing them into ready-to-wear ecclesi- astical patterns. Tird, it recognizes the increasingly porous borders between the differ- ent traditions and, like the early Christian movement, it looks more to the future than to the past.16

To see Pentecostalism as primarily a spirituality is not to say that there were not doctrinal distinctions developing contextually and even spreading through missionary activity. But Anderson and others have shown that in at least some of these missionary activities, the establishing of the doctrine was at best an organizational activity; that is, the Pentecostal outpouring preceded the arrival of Pentecostal missionaries.17

Tis Pentecostal spirituality emerged or was carried into various locations, retaining its essentiality (orality, narrative, embodied manifestations, com- munitas, dreams and visions) but adapting to various contexts and locations and engaging cultures. Whether in rural or urban areas, in the southern or northern hemisphere, in the East or the West, Pentecostalism is recognizable, and for its adherents there is familiarity. To continue my analogy, Jon Michael Spencer’s description of the move from rural to urban blues is helpful: “What makes blues singing authentic was not the ability to imitate the text and texture, both of which were relatively concrete, but learning these in the context where the reason the text and texture were as they were could be

15

Ibid., 24-25.

16

Harvey Cox, Te Future of Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 14.

17

See Allan Anderson, Spreading Fires: Te Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2007).

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witnessed firsthand and explained by the ‘old people’ who knew.”18 Te claim is that authentic blues music must retain something of the witness of the early generation of blues originators. Importantly, Spencer says that authenticity is not simply a matter of “text and texture.” To remain authentic, Pentecostalism must also reflect its original spiritual witness. Tat witness, that familiarity or communitas cannot be reduced to “text and texture,” “style and substance,” or even “doctrinal distinctives.” It is, rather, a living faith, one that is experienced in community.

James Cone’s dialectical interpretation of the necessity of the spirituals and the blues is instructive.19 Both expressions of pathos are representative of the black experience in America. Cautiously, and without any denigration or assumed comprehension of the black experience in America, I would build on Cone’s (syn)thesis and maintain that both expressions resonate with the human experience. No one who hears this music, especially the blues, in any context ever thinks of the music form as “nostalgia.” Instead, humans from virtually every culture in the world find a resonance with the pathos of the songs, with those who sing them and those who play them. Te essence of the blues ethos, its pathos, has been adapted and interpreted by musicians in subsequent gen- erations who, though they may not be black and may not live in the Delta, have experienced human suffering. Brokenhearted, fatherless British working- class students, like Eric Clapton, absorbed the music via recordings exported to England. In order to master the form, Clapton was mentored by the blues men who were still alive, but he made the music his own, bending the notes further than they had been bent before. As a result, future generations were introduced not only to British blues but also to the original witnesses, those from the Delta who first crafted the songs out of the pain of their social loca- tion.20 Te essential nature of the Delta Blues is not lost in translation or transmission. Likewise, Pentecostal spirituality defies the restrictions of space and time, while taking on the sights, sounds, and sensations of the cultural

18

Spencer, Blues and Evil, xxx. See also Allan Lomax, Te Land Where the Blues Began (New York: Pantheon, 1993) for a discussion of the essential role of the community in the origins of blues music. Lomax questions the authenticity of imitations by Europeans.

19

James Cone, Te Spirituals and the Blues (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991).

20

Te music genre is infused with Indian rhythms and instrumentation in the music of Najma Akhtar and Indian blues bands like Smokestack and Contraband. Perhaps the best known example of blues fusion is found in the music of Carlos Santana, the Mexican-born son of a mariachi musician who heard the music of American blues men John Lee Hooker and B. B. King, while still living in Mexico, at the age of eight. Distinctly Latino, Santana’s music is also easily distinguished as blues.

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contexts in which it flourishes. Anderson emphasizes the ability of Pentecos- talism to “incarnate the gospel in different cultural forms.” In discussing the “engine” of Pentecostal worship, Miller and Yamamori describe its music:

Whether in a storefront building with bare fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling or in a theater with a sophisticated sound system, the heart of Pentecostalism is the music. It touches the emotions. It is populist in tone and instrumentation. And the lyrics give voice to feelings — the pain, the joy, the hope for new life.21

“Te Trill is Gone”: Te Road from Faith to Belief

Harvey Cox in Te Future of Faith divides Christian history into three epochs: the Age of Faith, the Age of Belief, and the Age of the Spirit. In the first period, he contends, the early believers understood that “[t]o be a Christian meant to live in his Spirit, embrace his hope, and to follow him in the work he had begun.” He defines “faith” as having “hope and assurance in the dawning of a new era of freedom, healing, and compassion that Jesus had demonstrated.”22

Tis understanding of the Christian life is not far from that of early Pente- costal leader and educator Hattie M. Barth. Barth describes life in the Spirit as living ahead of the time, seeing the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost as the beginning of the fulfillment of the prophecy in Joel 2:28. Te signs of the early Pentecostal revival (those identified by Jesus’ words in Mark 16) are viewed as a “foretaste of that coming Age.”23

Barth’s mother, Elizabeth Sexton, would later discuss the life of faith in an article titled “Te Faith Once Delivered to the Saints.” For Sexton, faith has been offered to the church as a gift and the church must respond by taking what is offered. What is striking, in Sexton’s view, is that the faith that is received by the hearing of the Word is equivalent to the “faith once delivered.” In other words, rather than seeing faith as a body of belief (or an early “Rule of Faith”) being transmitted, the faith that is passed on is equivalent to “miracle-working faith.”24 Tese early discussions reveal both the non-creedal nature of this Pentecostal spirituality and its emphasis on a living faith with an

21

Miller and Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism, 24.

22

Cox, Te Future of Faith, 5.

23

Hattie M. Barth, “Tings of the Kingdom,” Te Bridegroom’s Messenger 2.34 (March 15, 1909), 4.

24

Elizabeth A. Sexton, “Te Faith Once Delivered,” Te Pentecostal Holiness Advocate 1.46 (March 14, 1918), 2-3.

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eschatological hope. Being “faithful” was not so much adherence to a belief system as it was having faith as described in Hebrews 11, living by faith, following in the way of Jesus. 25

Cox goes on to describe the evolution from the Age of Faith to the Age of Belief in rather unflattering terms. Following the emergence of catechisms, which replaced “faith in Jesus with tenets about him” and thereby created a tension between faith and belief, something more “ominous” developed: “An elite class — soon to be a clerical caste — began to take shape, and ecclesial specialists distilled the various teaching manuals into lists of beliefs.”26 Constantine’s rise and his endorsement of the Christian faith ironically brought a degradation of it. Cox describes this: “From an energetic movement of faith it coagulated into a phalanx of required beliefs, thereby laying the foundation for every succeeding Christian fundamentalism for centuries to come.” David Bosch, in his seminal work, Transforming Mission, laments this para- digm shift: “Its white-hot convictions, poured into the hearts of the first adherents, cooled down and became crystallized codes, solidified institutions, and petrified dogmas. Te prophet became a priest of the establishment, cha- risma became office, and love became routine.”27 Building on H. R. Niebuhr, he contrasts an institution and a movement in a familiar recitation that bears repeating:

. . . the one is conservative, the other progressive; the one is more or less passive, yield- ing to influences from outside, the other is active, influencing rather than being influ- enced; the one looks to the past, the other to the future. . . . In addition, we might add, the one is anxious, the other is prepared to take risks; the one guards boundaries, the other crosses them.28

It seems to me that this evolution/devolution as traced by Cox, or paradigm shift as portrayed by Bosch, is descriptive of the path of Pentecostalism, par- ticularly as it is expressed in the West. Te living faith has given way to a rule of faith, anxious and guarding its boundaries. Tis is evidenced by the rise of a professional male clergy and hierarchy, doctrinal tests designed to exclude and to conform to standards set by others from outside the tradition, the replacing

25

See Kimberly Ervin Alexander, Pentecostal Healing: Models of Teology and Practice (Blandford Forum, Dorset, UK: Deo, 2006), 204.

26

Cox, Te Future of Faith, 5.

27

David Bosch, Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Teology of Mission (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1996), 53.

28

Ibid., 51-52.

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of spiritual vibrancy with sentimentalism and/or nationalism, worship services involving only the few in both planning and execution, and a downplaying of the primacy of religious experience. Is it any wonder that the statistics we read are so discouraging and that there is little real growth in the Pentecostal churches in the West?29

What is really at stake for Pentecostals in this paradigm shift? Another anal- ogy from the music of the Delta region is appropriate.

Ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, in his epic Te Land Where the Blues Began, describes a participant observation of the First African Baptist Church of Clarksdale, Mississippi in the early 1940s. To his dismay, he found that the spirituals, spontaneously sung in congregations he’d observed before, had been replaced by professionally arranged and notated gospel songs. Te “big power struggle” in the church was explained to Lomax:

Te preachers are taking charge. It used to be that the sisters and the old deacons ran the service. Tey raised the songs, they kept them going, and these songs brought the mourners through. But they’ve lost that power now. Te preacher controls the choir and the pianist and the music director. And so now he runs the service. His bunch holds the floor with the new gospel songs that the old sisters and deacons don’t like and can’t sing. Te church is pushing those songs right across the country. My guess is that there’s a tie-up between the big preachers and the publishers somehow. One thing is for sure, there’s a lot of money being made out of the whole thing.30

A minister in the congregation, Reverend Martin, called this new reality “the modern, educated way” with “more intelligently composed songs.”31 Lomax witnessed a move toward professionalism and modernity in the black church of the South that may have begun with good intentions but became a vehicle for profiteering, at least by some estimates. At any rate, what was lost, according to Lomax, was the authenticity he had first witnessed and heard when “[a]nybody present might ‘heist’ the tune and lead; everybody present joined in, each person at his own pitch with his own ideas. . . .”32 Lomax’s

29

Te latest figures may be found in the National Council of Churches 2011 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, accessible at http://ncccusa.org/news/110210yearbook 2011.html. Modest growth is reported in both the Assemblies of God (up 0.52 percent) and the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) (up 0.38 percent). Rev. Dr. Eileen Lindner reports that in American churches both growth and decline have remained stable; however, she warns, rates of growth and decline have generally slowed when compared to recent years in all churches reporting.

30

Lomax, Te Land Where the Blues Began, 4647.

31

Ibid., 46.

32

Ibid., 45.

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description of what he witnessed could easily be a description of the shift in Western expressions of Pentecostalism. He mourned:

What I witnessed that night in Clarksdale was the first step in the process . . . the sing- ing sisterhood of the folk research being silenced and brought into line by a male religious coterie, masking their drive for power and profit with platitudes about prog- ress and education. . . . Te age-old female religious collective was being replaced by a male-dominated hierarachy.33

Lomax concluded: the “African pattern, which had permeated the American folk church, was now being eliminated.”34

Dennis Dickerson documents a similar shift, and accompanying loss of authenticity, in the AME Church as envisioned by Bishop Daniel A. Payne and his “determination to instill order and discipline in the worship of unlet- tered, unlearned, and formerly enslaved African Americans.”35 Payne played down an emphasis on the Holy Spirit in his 1856 denominational doctrinal motto (“God our Father, Christ our Brother, Man our Redeemer”) “lest some African Americans view it as a license and a cover for blasphemous beliefs and unorthodox practices.”36 For instance, Payne, while pastor of a Baltimore con- gregation, attempted “’to correct some bad customs of worship, and especially to moderate the singing and praying bands, which then existed in the most extravagant form.”37 Elsewhere, Payne took exception to the singing of spiritu- als, ring singing, and dance. Well-intentioned, Payne saw the AME Church as a vehicle for the uplifting of African Americans in the precarious antebellum era. Dickerson writes, however, that in the final analysis, by not giving place to the Holy Spirit and by deleting the cultural expressions of black folk religion, Payne deleted a source of “empowerment and celebration.”38 Payne’s purging of the remnants of African culture was in effect similar to the degrading ideal of the Indian Boarding Schools: “Kill the Indian, save the child.”

33

Ibid., 48.

34

Ibid.

35

Dennis C. Dickerson, “Bishop Daniel C. Payne and the A.M.E. Mission to the ‘Ransomed,’ ” in Knight, From Aldersgate to Azusa Street, 125.

36

Ibid., 126.

37

Ibid.

38

Ibid., 133. Dickerson speculates that the addition of the words the Holy Ghost our Com- forter to the motto at the 1908 conference may have been a result of the influence of the rising Pentecostal revival. See ibid., 125.

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Like these churches described by Lomax and Dickerson, Western Pentecos- tals have moved from what has been described as para-modernity39 to moder- nity. Te inevitable organization and structuring of the movement is not necessarily the problem. As Bosch has suggested, the move to organization, what he calls a law of sociology, is necessary for the survival of movements. What is problematic for Bosch is the accompanying loss of verve.

40

I would suggest that for Pentecostals, at least, this loss of verve comes, as it apparently did in the Delta black churches, when the leaders of those movements look to the “other nations” for models of leadership, organization, education, and formation. What survives then as a result of the organization is a “form of Pentecostalism” that denies its original power, a power that came from its essential spirituality. Notice what was lost in the black churches, according to Lomax: full participation of all members and leadership by the “sisterhood.” Notice what was gained: power in the hands of the few, a male-dominated hierarchy.

Many early Pentecostals were, at best, suspicious about the imposition of “man-made creeds” onto what they saw as an exuberant movement of the Spirit. R. G. Spurling, in an 1897 manuscript, and later in his work Te Lost Link, lays blame for the divisions in the Christian church on Constan- tinianism, specifically on the Council of Nicaea.41 Dale Coulter summarizes Spurling’s view: “Since the Council of Nicaea had issued the first ecumenical creed, which was then used to divide the church into Arian and pro-Nicene wings, Spurling saw it as the wellspring of division and Christian-on-Christian persecution.”42 What went missing at Nicaea, the “Lost Link,” was Christ’s law of love. Harvey Cox, over a century later, offers a similar interpretation, seeing 385 CE as a critical crossroads. In that year, Priscillian of Avila was found guilty of heresy and condemned by his fellow Christians; he and six of his followers were then ordered beheaded by Emperor Maximus. Cox writes, “He was the first Christian to be executed by his fellow Christians for his reli- gious views. But he was by no means the last. One historian estimates that in the two and a half centuries after Constantine, Christian imperial authorities

39

Jackie Johns, “Pentecostalism and the Postmodern Worldview,” Journal of Pentecostal Teol- ogy 7 (October 1995): 73-96.

40

Bosch, Transforming Mission, 53.

41

See Dale Coulter, “Te Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN): A Forgotten Contribution?” Pneuma 29, no.1 (2007): 59-85.

42

Ibid., 65.

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put twenty-five thousand to death for their lack of creedal correctness.”43 Pris- cillian, Cox concludes, was the first victim of Christian fundamentalism.44

In our own history, many have been figuratively beheaded and literally exiled for their differing doctrines or practices. 1910 may be seen as an early crossroad for the Pentecostal movement, with 1916 and 1923 just around the bend. It was this kind of ecclesiastical beheading that prompted the older Seymour to see love as the real evidence of the infilling of the Spirit. Like his grandfather, John Wesley, Seymour seemed to be asking for proof of “real Christianity” in the adolescent Pentecostal movement. But Seymour, too, had developed ways to determine who was in and who was out.

In all fairness, though most claimed a kind of anti-creedalism, Pentecostals began to make lists of acceptable teachings and practices rather early on.45 Ini- tially, these statements were meant to help define and explain the experiences in the Spirit common among those in the new movement. But soon enough, they became ways of determining orthodoxy and, thereby, heresy.46

Cox decries the tendency of the church to literalize the symbol or ritual. He writes, “Te ill-advised transmuting of symbols into a curious kind of ‘facts’ has created an immense obstacle to faith for many thoughtful people. Instead of helping them confront the great mystery, it has effectively prevented them from doing so.” Te symbols and rituals that gave meaning have been “cheap- ened” into “doctrines, propositions, and pseudoscientific theories, which peo- ple are supposed to believe.”47 It seems clear to me that God intended us to

43

Cox, Te Future of Faith, 6-7.

44

Ibid., 6.

45

At the Apostolic Faith Mission at 312 Azusa St. in Los Angeles, the initial edition of Te Apostolic Faith periodical contained a list of beliefs adhered to by the leadership of the Apos- tolic Faith Movement. (Te Apostolic Faith 1, no. 1, Sept. 1906, p. 2). In Atlanta, Te Bride- groom’s Messenger did not publish a statement about doctrine endorsed by the leadership until 1910. Elizabeth Sexton delineated the “Doctrine of the Pentecostal Movement” in her editorial titled “Sound Doctrine.” (Vol. 3, no. 60, April 15, 1910, p. 1) In the Church of God (Cleveland, TN) a list of “teaching that is made prominent” appeared in the August 15, 1910 edition of Te Evening Light and Church of God Evangel (Vol. 1, no. 12, p. 3) immediately following an article titled “Warning and Advice: Divers and Strange Doctrines to be Avoided” (1). Te list of teachings was followed by a “List of Examination Questions for Ministry — Experiences and Qualifications” (3). Tis list was discussed and amended to strike the words “by immersion” in reference to water baptism at the 1911 General Assembly. Tere it was recommended that the list be published, as amended, separately in tract form. (Minutes of the Sixth Annual Assembly, Cleveland, TN, 1911, p. 7).

46

See Kimberly Ervin Alexander, “Matters of Conscience, Matters of Unity, Matters of Orthodoxy: Trinity and Water Baptism in Early Pentecostal Teology and Practice,” in Journal of Pentecostal Teology 17, no.1 (October 2008): 48-69.

47

Cox, Te Future of Faith, 27.

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have the law written on our hearts, not plastered on courthouse walls or on cheap plastic yard signs. For Pentecostals, this essentially pietistic view of the heart is vital to a proper understanding of inspired speech, as it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. My predecessor Blaine Charette’s 2006 address is worth another read.48

An examination of what is arguably the most distinctive doctrinal tenet for Pentecostals and the articulation of that doctrine is illustrative. Te earliest terminology associated with the occurrence of glossolalia accompanying Spirit baptism was “Bible sign.” Tis term, appropriating the biblical language of “sign,” was meant to help verify the experience and to differentiate it from other experiences, primarily from the experience of sanctification.49 Te lan- guage quickly shifted to the modernist language of “evidence,” a term associ- ated with the courtroom or the laboratory. In both cases, “evidence” is used to prove a point. In this case, the “Bible evidence” could trump any other, dis- counting other claims as unbiblical. Later, the terminology became less bibli- cal and even more scientific: “initial physical evidence.” What is missed in this reductionist approach is any discussion of significance and meaning of the experience of speaking in tongues. Further, these concise, “lowest common denominator” statements obfuscate the more expressive testimonies and nar- ratives of the experiences of these early Pentecostals that reveal a much more comprehensive and transformative experience of Divine Love, an experience in the Spirit that included worship and witness in a new tongue.

“Further On Up the Road”

In Te Future of Faith Cox describes and welcomes the third epoch, the com- ing “Age of the Spirit.” He uses this designation for the following reasons: First, there is a renewed emphasis on the Holy Spirit in the larger Christian movement; where the movement is “liveliest” there is celebration of “this vola- tile expression of the divine.” Cox goes on to cite the growth of the Pentecostal

48

Blaine Charette, “Reflective Speech: Glossolalia and the Image of God,” Pneuma 28, no. 2 (September 2006): 198-201.

49

See “Boundless Love Divine: A Re-Evaluation of Early Understandings of the Experience of Spirit Baptism,” in Passover, Pentecost & Parousia: Studies in Celebration of the Life and Ministry of R. Hollis Gause, ed. S. J. Land, R. D. Moore, and J. C. Tomas (Blandford Forum, Dorset, UK: Deo, 2010), 145-70.

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movement, the emergence of women as leaders in Christianity, and the growth of Christianity in the global south.50

Second, Cox prefers the term because there is a growing tendency among those who might once have described themselves as “ ‘religious’ to now use the term ‘spiritual’ ”; this Cox sees as a distancing from “institutional or doctrinal demarcations of conventional religion.”51 Like others, Cox welcomes this paradigm shift. He writes:

It suggests that what some people dismiss as deviations or unwarranted innovations are often retrievals of elements that were once accepted features of Christianity, but were discarded somewhere along the way. It frees people who shape their faith in a wide spectrum of ways to understand themselves as authentically Christian, and it exposes fundamentalism for the distortion it is.52

Te language Cox uses may be confusing for Pentecostals who have tradition- ally understood the “Age of the Spirit” to have begun with Pentecost. But, like Spurling, Cox sees many of the developments of the “Age of Belief” as detri- mental to Christian life and witness. Like Leonard Sweet, Robert Webber,53 and others, Cox sees a similarity between the first and third ages in that a living faith is being recovered with an emphasis on experience and the dissolu- tion of institutional hierarchies. If Cox and others are right, then it would seem that this coming age is especially conducive to the flourishing of a move- ment such as Pentecostalism that may be primarily identified as a spirituality.

So What’s a Teologian to Do? or “You Gotta Move”

It is ironic that a highly analytical historical theologian like myself would seemingly embrace the possibilities of a nebulous era with blurred boundaries and flattened views of the Christian movement. After all, how does one teach theology without neat rubrics and systems on which to hang propositional truth? How does one do the work of historical theology if there are no clear-cut doctrinal divisions to trace, no neat categories to delineate, and

50

Cox, Te Future of Faith, 10.

51

Ibid., 11.

52

Ibid., 14.

53

See Leonard Sweet, Postmodern Pilgrims: First Century Passion for a 21st Century Church (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2000), and Robert Webber, Ancient-Future Faith: Rethinking Evangelicalism for Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: Bridgepoint Books, 1999), l.

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no hierarchical structures to explore? I would suggest that the work is to be done in ways congruent with our roots: with the sharing of narratives of expe- rience, in community, with full participation of the members of that commu- nity, and with expectancy of the inbreaking of the Spirit. Tis community is both local and global; therefore, our work is done with full recognition that it is contextually and communally derived but also with the recognition that the Spirit is moving and working in other contexts and communities. One way to encourage this communal and experiential approach to doing theology is via conversation. In conversation, words are spoken in an informal, even casual atmosphere. Te value of this kind of theological enterprise is that that there is no assumption that opposing viewpoints exist (though they may well do so), no assumption of one party’s elite position, and no real agenda. In conversation there is a burden upon each participant to communicate and bring about real understanding. In other words, there is no defensive posture. Conversation is about understanding, not about conquest. Te gift and delight of conversation is that it allows one to engage new thoughts and ideas and new insights; in conversation new theological interpretations may be communally discovered.54

One last analogy may be insightful. Tis one comes from a kind of conver- sation between two traditions: blues and Pentecostalism. Tere are many intersections at which blues music and Pentecostalism meet, merging with or borrowing from one another, but in at least one context a particular blues genre has emerged out of the Pentecostal church. Tat genre has been coined “Sacred Steel.” Tis aggressive blues form is the primary worship music in the Pentecostal denomination, Te Church of the Living God, Pillar and Ground of the Truth, Jewell and Keith Dominions (churches in the latter are com- monly referred to as the “House of God” churches).55 “Sacred Steel” music is a distinct blues genre in at least two ways: (1) Sacred Steel music centers around the steel guitar, an instrument imported from Hawaii and normally

54

Tis idea was developed in conversation with my colleague James P. Bowers with inspira- tion and insights from Cox’s proposal of a “leisurely conversation at a comfortable spa” with Pope Benedict XVI, Christians from the global south, and scholars from various traditions. (Cox, Te Future of Faith, 119) See also Margaret J. Wheatley, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Bennett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2009).

55

Te Keith and Jewell Dominions are two of three Dominions formed out of the original Church of the Living God, Pillar and Ground of the Truth denomination founded by “Mother” Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate. See Estrelda Alexander, Limited Liberty: Te Legacy of Four Pente- costal Women Pioneers (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2008).

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found in country music; and (2) the music is primarily played in Holiness Pentecostal worship settings.56

Robert Stone describes how the steel guitar is particularly well suited to “African-American Holiness-Pentecostal worship”: “Te steel guitar could shout, cry, soar, or moan like a great gospel singer. . . . It could be played rhyth- mically and it was loud.”57 Tis music is certainly not without influence from the outside, but the tradition has constructed its own indigenous form using an instrument previously unknown in either blues music or the black church. Out of this conversation between a native Hawaiian instrument, the blues music genre, and Pentecostal spirituality, a new music form has emerged. In a setting in which the Creator Spirit is given full reign, we should not be sur- prised! Te Sacred Steel analogy serves this discussion in at least one other way. Tese musicians, having been discovered by ethnomusicologists and folklorists from outside the Pentecostal movement, are now taking their worship music into the larger arenas of cultural, folk, and music festivals. Rochester, NY House of God musician Charles T. “Chuck” Campbell comments on this new venture:

Te music transcends the church. People jump just as much outside of the church as they do at church. We are now experiencing another side of spirituality outside of church. We’re finding that this music celebrates not only the way we look at things spiritually, but the way everyone looks at their inner self.58

Campbell and his fellow musicians and worship leaders have taken the conver- sation outside the boundaries of the Keith Dominion, and in doing so they not only influence those outside the church but are themselves being chal- lenged to understand their own spirituality in broader and deeper ways. Unlike these home-grown Sacred Steel musicians, as academics and scholars we have been trained, for the most part, in methods often incongruent with our experience, and often by scholars who are at best unaware of, or at worst

56

Sacred Steel music has burst first on the folk music scene and now on that of popular music. New Jersey House of God Sacred Steel virtuoso Robert Randolph has a Warner Brothers contract and has been regularly featured at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival.

57

Robert Stone, Sacred Steel: Inside an African-American Steel Guitar Tradition (Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010), 6.

58

Robert L. Stone, “Sacred Steel and the Empire State,” in Voices: Te Journal of New York Folklore 28 (Fall-Winter 2002), accessed on 23 January 2010 at http://nyfolklore.org/pubs/ voic28-3-4/sacred.html.

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hostile to, our experience. For most, this journey has stretched us and helped us to grow, pushing us to think differently or even to be more creative. Beyond that, it has given us a pedigree! But that pedigree and the search for credibility in the larger guild may also have driven us to a significant crossroads: Will we sell our soul for proficiency and fame? Many of us have vowed not to do so, but the temptation and pressure is great.

Not to do so may mean “hanging up our guitar”; but it probably means redeeming those instruments, rewriting the words, bending the notes our way, developing our own genres and constructs.

Te lure of the Trickster is all around us here in this society. We are at a crossroads, most obviously seen in our current discussions regarding the recast- ing of our identity. But there are other ways in which I sense the Trickster’s temptations to sell our soul.

In a final word, since I am the President, and a Pentecostal with the mic, let me sing out a warning and open up the conversation:

• Verse 1: We betray our spirituality when, as scholars, we guard the boundaries and fail to cross them into new theological and scholarly territory. When we as a Society refuse to have conversations with other theologies and faiths outside our safe zone, we have given in to the lure of the Trickster to exclude and to alienate. When we malign those outside our tradition, we may be failing to heed the warning of the scholar Gamaliel and we may find ourselves fighting against God.

• Verse 2: Our Spirit-led vocation is compromised when we see it as sim- ply “defending the faith” and, more to the point, “defending our scholar- ship.” In so doing, we exclude the possibility of new revelation by the Spirit, new interpretations by the Spirit, and new moves of the Spirit. We become Cessationists, in effect boxing in the work of the Spirit, con- fining her to a previous era of scholarship. By definition, both Pentecos- tals and scholars are open to new ideas!

• Verse 3: We sell our birthright when we fail to do constructive theology

in authentically Pentecostal ways, opting rather for an uncritical adop-

tion of the methodologies and tools of the larger guild, especially those

of the past Age of Belief. Tose tools may be useful but it may be that

like Tomas Johnson, we will hear them calling out to us in our sleep.

Some of those tools should be hung on the wall, others, redeemed

and reconstructed.

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• Verse 4: Our Spirit-given scholarly vision is impaired when we become myopic and narrow in our focus, seeing only the work of those in our own disciplines as worthy of our attention. Tis kind of elitism defiles the beauty of the Body of Christ in all its diversity. Diversity isn’t only about gender and color. It is also about gifts and talents. It seems to me that the best expression of a truly Pentecostal approach to scholarship is an interdisciplinary one, where there is cross-pollination of practical the- ology, biblical studies, theological studies, historical studies, missiological studies, and so forth. Te segregation of the Pentecostal guild is no better a witness than is segregation in the Pentecostal church.

• Verse 5: When we force a translation of an experience into mere propo- sition or discount the viability of any theological method or construct other than our own, we move away from our essential spirituality and move very quickly toward the rigid and exclusionary confines of scholas- ticism or the crafting of dogma. So, who holds the Pentecostal truth and who uses the “Pentecostally correct” methodology? Te Cleveland School? Te Radical Orthodoxy adherents among us? Te Birmingham School? Te scholars at Regent? Conversation in the Age of the Spirit would require that we meet together at the table within the hospitality of the Pentecostal Big Tent.

• Last Verse: We violate the Spirit of Pentecost when we do not open the door to the visionary work of young scholars. Te Spirit poured out on all flesh was poured out on our sons and daughters, including those with scholarly gifts. We have a responsibility to mentor them, to create space for them, to bless them, to send them. But we also have a responsibility to hear their songs. And so, in keeping with the prophecy of Joel and the preaching of Peter, and the admonition of Paul not to despise youth, I have asked a promising young scholar, Chris Rouse, to offer a response to this address.59

59

Chris Rouse, M.Div., a recent graduate of Pentecostal Teological Seminary and a staff pastor at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church in Cleveland, TN, delivered a response to the address titled “Pentecostal Imagination: Spirit, Space(s), Memory.”

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