Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements – serie

Since the 1830s, Holiness and Pentecostal movements have had a significant influence on many Christian churches, and they have been a central force in producing what is known today as World Christianity. This book demonstrates the advantages of analyzing them in relation to one another.The Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church identify strongly with the Holiness Movement. The Assemblies of God and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World identify just as strongly with the Pentecostal Movement. Complicating matters, denominations such as the Church of God (Cleveland), the International Holiness Pentecostal Church, and the Church of God in Christ have harmonized Holiness and Pentecostalism. This book, the first in the new series Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements, examines these complex relationships in a multidisciplinary fashion. Building on previous scholarship, the contributors provide new ways of understanding the relationships, influences, and circulation of ideas among these movements in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Southeast and East Asia.In addition to the editors, the contributors are Kimberly Ervin Alexander, Insik Choi, Robert A. Danielson, Chris E. W. Green, Henry H. Knight III, Frank D. Macchia, Luther Oconer, Cheryl J. Sanders, and Daniel Woods.

Since the 1830s, Holiness and Pentecostal movements have had a significant influence on many Christian churches, and they have been a central force in producing what is known today as World Christianity. This book demonstrates the advantages of analyzing them in relation to one another.The Salvation Army, the Church of the Nazarene, the Wesleyan Church, and the Free Methodist Church identify strongly with the Holiness Movement. The Assemblies of God and the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World identify just as strongly with the Pentecostal Movement. Complicating matters, denominations such as the Church of God (Cleveland), the International Holiness Pentecostal Church, and the Church of God in Christ have harmonized Holiness and Pentecostalism. This book, the first in the new series Studies in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements, examines these complex relationships in a multidisciplinary fashion. Building on previous scholarship, the contributors provide new ways of understanding the relationships, influences, and circulation of ideas among these movements in the United States, the United Kingdom, India, and Southeast and East Asia.In addition to the editors, the contributors are Kimberly Ervin Alexander, Insik Choi, Robert A. Danielson, Chris E. W. Green, Henry H. Knight III, Frank D. Macchia, Luther Oconer, Cheryl J. Sanders, and Daniel Woods.

This volume traces the history of Oneness Pentecostalism in North America. It maps the major ideas, arguments, periodization, and historical figures; corrects long-standing misinterpretations; and draws attention to how race and gender impacted the growth and trajectories of this movement. Oneness Pentecostalism emerged in the aftermath of the Azusa Street Revival (1906–9), baptizing its members in the name of Jesus Christ rather than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and splintering from trinitarian Pentecostals. With its rapid growth throughout the twentieth century, especially among ethnic minorities, Oneness Pentecostalism assumed a diversity of theological, ethnic, and cultural expressions. This book reckons with the multiculturalism of the movement over the course of the twentieth century. While common interpretations tend to emphasize the restorationist impulse of Oneness Pentecostalism, leading to notions of a static, unchanging movement, the contributors to this work demonstrate that the movement is much more fluid and that the interpretation of its history and theology should be grounded in the variegated North American contexts in which Oneness Pentecostalism has taken root and dynamically developed.Groundbreaking and interdisciplinary, this volume presents diverse perspectives on a significant religious movement whose modern origins are embedded within the larger Pentecostal story. It will be welcomed by religious studies scholars and by practitioners of Oneness Pentecostalism.In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Daniel Chiquete, Dara Coleby Delgado, Patricia Fortuny-Loret de Mola, Manuel Gaxiola, David A. Reed, Rosa Sailes, and Daniel Segraves.

This volume traces the history of Oneness Pentecostalism in North America. It maps the major ideas, arguments, periodization, and historical figures; corrects long-standing misinterpretations; and draws attention to how race and gender impacted the growth and trajectories of this movement. Oneness Pentecostalism emerged in the aftermath of the Azusa Street Revival (1906–9), baptizing its members in the name of Jesus Christ rather than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and splintering from trinitarian Pentecostals. With its rapid growth throughout the twentieth century, especially among ethnic minorities, Oneness Pentecostalism assumed a diversity of theological, ethnic, and cultural expressions. This book reckons with the multiculturalism of the movement over the course of the twentieth century. While common interpretations tend to emphasize the restorationist impulse of Oneness Pentecostalism, leading to notions of a static, unchanging movement, the contributors to this work demonstrate that the movement is much more fluid and that the interpretation of its history and theology should be grounded in the variegated North American contexts in which Oneness Pentecostalism has taken root and dynamically developed.Groundbreaking and interdisciplinary, this volume presents diverse perspectives on a significant religious movement whose modern origins are embedded within the larger Pentecostal story. It will be welcomed by religious studies scholars and by practitioners of Oneness Pentecostalism.In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Daniel Chiquete, Dara Coleby Delgado, Patricia Fortuny-Loret de Mola, Manuel Gaxiola, David A. Reed, Rosa Sailes, and Daniel Segraves.

Pentecostalism is often characterized as an ecstatic movement—centrally involving spirited worship, speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing—as well as an exclusivist one, primarily aligned with North American white evangelicalism. Yet there is a vibrant Black Pentecostal tradition stretching back more than a century that is both theologically complex and deeply grounded in an ethics of social justice.In More Than Tongues Can Tell, Eric Lewis Williams dismantles prevailing notions of Pentecostalism’s anti-intellectualism and explores how social contexts shape theologies produced by marginalized groups in America. Through close readings of the work of four pioneering Black Pentecostal theologians—Bishop Ozro Thurston Jones Jr., Bishop Ithiel Conrad Clemmons, Dr. James Alexander Forbes Jr., and Dr. William Clair Turner Jr.—Williams uncovers a theological vision marked by openness to diverse Christian and philosophical traditions alongside a deep commitment to liberation and egalitarianism. Situating these thinkers within African American religious history and the wider landscape of Pentecostal theology, the book reconstructs Black Pentecostalism’s coming of age in the twentieth century.Foregrounding pneumatology as a site of theological creativity, More Than Tongues Can Tell challenges glossocentric frameworks that reduce the Spirit to ecstatic speech and demonstrates how Black Pentecostal theologians articulate a more expansive and socially engaged vision. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of theology and African American and Africana religions, as well as practitioners within Pentecostal communities.

Pentecostalism is often characterized as an ecstatic movement—centrally involving spirited worship, speaking in tongues, prophecy, and healing—as well as an exclusivist one, primarily aligned with North American white evangelicalism. Yet there is a vibrant Black Pentecostal tradition stretching back more than a century that is both theologically complex and deeply grounded in an ethics of social justice.In More Than Tongues Can Tell, Eric Lewis Williams dismantles prevailing notions of Pentecostalism’s anti-intellectualism and explores how social contexts shape theologies produced by marginalized groups in America. Through close readings of the work of four pioneering Black Pentecostal theologians—Bishop Ozro Thurston Jones Jr., Bishop Ithiel Conrad Clemmons, Dr. James Alexander Forbes Jr., and Dr. William Clair Turner Jr.—Williams uncovers a theological vision marked by openness to diverse Christian and philosophical traditions alongside a deep commitment to liberation and egalitarianism. Situating these thinkers within African American religious history and the wider landscape of Pentecostal theology, the book reconstructs Black Pentecostalism’s coming of age in the twentieth century.Foregrounding pneumatology as a site of theological creativity, More Than Tongues Can Tell challenges glossocentric frameworks that reduce the Spirit to ecstatic speech and demonstrates how Black Pentecostal theologians articulate a more expansive and socially engaged vision. The book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of theology and African American and Africana religions, as well as practitioners within Pentecostal communities.

Pentecostal communities are often characterized as focused on personal salvation to the exclusion of engagement with society and culture at large. But as the contributions to this volume show, there is an astoundingly diverse array of traditions that identify with the Holiness, Radical Holiness, or Pentecostal movements, and each brings with it a long and complex history of social engagement—and, at times, disengagement—that needs to be examined in historical context.Accordingly, this volume explores how churches (and individuals) influenced by Holiness and Pentecostal thought have offered aid to the needy, advocated for social justice, and situated themselves politically, all while navigating their own marginalization as religious communities. The chapters plumb histories of abolition, racial justice, rescue missions, and cultural politics—from African Methodism as a fulcrum for Black liberation to the Pentecostal practice of providing sanctuary for undocumented migrants, the Salvation Army’s fraught internationalism, and the development of blues, jazz, and gospel in the Sanctified churches. The book does not offer a single theological vision but rather unfurls for readers the richness of the Pentecostal, Holiness, and Radical Holiness movements’ pluralistic engagements with societies in their various contexts. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Rebecca Carter-Chand, Dale M. Coulter, Dara Coleby Delgado, Dennis C. Dickerson, Amanda Koch, John Maiden, Priscilla Pope-Levison, Daniel Ramírez, and Randall J. Stephens.

When the United Holy Church of America moved to curtail women’s ordination in 1924, Ida Bell Robinson broke away to found a church where women would not only preach but lead. The Subversive Pulpit argues that Robinson used her agency and autonomy amid the upheavals of the Great Migration to build a religious enterprise defined by radical gender egalitarianism and socioeconomic uplift for Black women and their communities.Centering Robinson as founder and first bishop of the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America, Dara Coleby Delgado shows how her religious program extended far beyond the question of whether women should preach. Drawing on unpublished denominational records, census data, the Black Press, and other archival sources, Delgado interprets Robinson’s efforts to “loose the women” as a practical, economically consequential project. Robinson transformed the pulpit into a subversive site—one that generated social capital, fostered positive religio-racial identity, and created jobs and institutional opportunities aligned with Progressive Era urban culture, industrialism, and commercial expansion.By recovering Robinson as both a religious influencer and business-minded institution builder, Delgado reframes her legacy as a model of holiness, spiritual empowerment, and prophetic social consciousness. The book makes a significant contribution to scholarship on American Pentecostalism, African American religion, and women’s religious leadership, and will be essential reading for scholars and students of American religious history, Black church studies, gender studies, and women’s history.