In little more than a century, Christianity has experienced the explosive growth of a new movement called Pentecostalism. This movement, which did not exist prior to the twentieth century, presently claims the affiliation of an estimated “279 million” people worldwide, according to Pew Research. Additionally, the Pentecostal-influenced charismatic movement comprises “305 million Christians in the world,” meaning that the two movements “together make up about 27% of all Christians and more than 8% of the world’s total population.”[1]
Nevertheless, few historical studies deal seriously with the movement. On one hand, notes Arlene M. Sánchez-Walsh, “legions of grassroots scholars, church historians, and laypeople who preserved their histories . . . have also created an imaginary consisting of hagiographic accounts of great men and women and often failed to interrogate Pentecostals’ incredible claims.” On the other hand, academics often dismiss Pentecostalism as “a distasteful backwater frenzy fit only for those willing to delude themselves.”[2] Sánchez-Walsh, however, argues that the movement deserves to be neither glamorized nor dismissed; Pentecostalism, she explains, “deserves to be studied critically.”[3] Employing a thematic and narrative-based approach, Sánchez-Walsh sets out to do just that in Pentecostals in America.
Chapter One: Pentecostal Faith and Practice
Sánchez-Walsh begins by exploring three elements of Pentecostal piety: tongues, healing, and prophecy. She identifies tongues, “a life-changing experience that marks a person’s entry into the Pentecostal world and offers him or her the ability to communicate with God,” as “the practice that sets Pentecostals apart.” While early Pentecostals taught that the gift of tongues was “prophecy expressed in foreign language” for the purpose of evangelism, the movement soon understood tongues as something of an ecstatic utterance of either “existing” or “unintelligible language that allows the practitioner to speak to God.”[4] Healing also plays an important role in Pentecostal piety, for it expresses unwavering “belief that the supernatural work of God exists as an unbroken continuum.”[5]
Finally, the practice of prophesying characterizes many Pentecostal groups. While Pentecostals understand prophecies to be futuristic insights given by the Holy Spirit, Sánchez-Walsh interprets them as “encouragement and exhortation.”[6] She proceeds to argue that throughout the history of Pentecostalism “historical figures have been able to harness the power of these practices, and wed them to social, cultural, and political circumstances of their times.”[7] Consequently, she weaves these practices into the many biographical narratives that follow.
Chapter Two: Pentecostal Innovators
The second chapter treats “Pentecostalism’s entrepreneurial spirit,” which “allows for constant rebranding of its most popular consumer favorites: healing and eschatology.”[8] In particular, Sánchez-Walsh describes how four seminal figures in Pentecostal history—John Alexander Dowie, Charles Parham, Aimee Semple McPherson, and A.A. Allen—reimagined and reshaped Pentecostal faith and practice.
Dowie famously promoted faith-healing in opposition to western medicine, and Parham was the first to advocate for speaking in tongues after one of his Bible college students experienced the phenomenon.[9] McPherson was “the first woman to lead a Pentecostal denomination” and extended the movement’s influence by her foray into radio broadcasting.[10] Finally, through Allen’s ministry, “the prosperity gospel became part of American Pentecostalism.”[11]
Pentecostals generally regard each of these four as heroes. Yet Sanchez-Walsh demonstrates that they also lived sordid lives marked by sexual promiscuity and substance abuse. Pentecostals deal with this reality by “rescuing [their] reputations.”[12] The tension between public beliefs and personal hypocrisy is present in nearly each of the figures Sánchez-Walsh discusses.
Chapter Three: Gender, Sexualities, and Pentecostalism
In chapter three, Sánchez-Walsh argues that scholars need to investigate the impact of gender and sexuality on Pentecostalism and vice versa. Pentecostals, she argues, prize traditional gender roles and heteronormative relationships.[13] Once more, however, the movement has often been marked by a distinction between ideals and reality with respect to gender and sexuality.
Sánchez-Walsh notes that several prominent Pentecostals—Maria Atkinson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Juanita Bynum, and Ted Haggard—struggled with their own practices of monogamy and heterosexuality. Atkinson was divorced; Tharpe was thrice divorced and engaged in more than one homosexual relationship; Bynum was divorced and remarried; and Haggard admitted to a homosexual affair.[14] Even so, Pentecostals tend to defend these individuals by the creation of redemptive stories such as the public spectacle of Tharpe’s third wedding, which was attended by “22,000 people” and intended to make her palatable to Pentecostal audiences.[15]
Chapter Four: Pentecostalism and the Popular Culture
The clash between ideals and reality is realized once more in the relationship of Pentecostals to popular culture. While many Pentecostals believe in “immutable laws about what is sacred and profane,” thereby rejecting much of popular culture, Sánchez-Walsh notes that Pentecostals have both shaped and been shaped by popular culture.[16] She explores the Pentecostal upbringings of both Elvis Presley and Marvin Gaye, even characterizing the former as a “kind of preacher who embodied the ecstatic shout, the holy dance, and the clandestine sexuality that institutional Pentecostalism suppressed.”[17] She also explores how Agnes Sanford and Joel Osteen have appropriated popular culture, and consequently, “repurposed Pentecostalism.”[18]
Chapter Five: Race, Ethnicity, and the Construction of an American Pentecostal Identity
Pentecostalism has also been marked by a tension between “integrationist tendencies” and “a hyper-spiritualized neutrality that often completely ignored racism.”[19] Sanchez-Walsh argues that white Paternalism has often characterized Pentecostalism. That is, “White Pentecostalism deploys a whole host of controls to ensure that ethnic identity is both subservient to religious identity and supportive of theological stances and conservative political views.”[20] Essentially, Sánchez-Walsh argues that white Pentecostals value diversity so long as those who are diverse convert and embrace the dominant, white culture.
Chapter Six: Outliers in American Pentecostalism
In the final chapter, Sánchez-Walsh deals with figures who refuse to conform to prevailing norms in Pentecostalism: Joyce Meyer, Carlton Pearson, and Jay Bakker. She dubs these figures “outliers” or “‘heretics’ . . . individuals who have chosen to live on the periphery of Pentecostalism.”[21] Meyer is an outlier because she occupies the paradoxical position of a Pentecostal preacher and a defender of “women’s submission to men [as] the way to a peaceful married life.” She gains a hearing with many Pentecostals because she “sticks to the script” in the latter regard.[22]
Pearson and Bakker, however, have “push[ed] the boundaries of that script so far out that they find themselves completely outside the boundaries of what Pentecostalism is willing to accept . . . .”[23] Both Pearson and Bakker were reared in conservative environments but came to question their upbringing. Specifically, they questioned orthodox positions on eternal punishment and sexuality. Both were ultimately forced out of their churches because of their theological shifts. Nevertheless, Sánchez-Walsh believes that such outliers are renegotiating and reshaping Pentecostalism.
Critical Analysis and Conclusion
Sánchez-Walsh rightfully tells a story of American-Pentecostalism that is much more nuanced than many which have come before. She takes Pentecostalism seriously while simultaneously challenging its internal claims of flawlessness. For these reasons, Pentecostals in America is a welcome addition to the extant literature on the topic. Be that as it may, at least three points deserved either inclusion or greater elaboration in the book.
First, Sánchez-Walsh makes scant reference to the most mythical figure of Pentecostalism William J. Seymour, under whose ministry the Azusa Street Revival was born. True, Sánchez-Walsh notes that “the literature on Seymour is vast.”[24] Focusing on Seymour, then, may have gone beyond her plan to tell the untold tales of Pentecostalism. However, the lack of attention to Seymour hardly deals with the other side of her plan: dealing with the half-told stories of Pentecostalism. Why not tell his story in the balanced way that she does for many others in the book?
Secondly, Sánchez-Walsh makes only passing reference to the fact “the rise of a non-Trinitarian branch of Pentecostalism called Oneness, which became a legitimate and strong competitor for the loyalty of Pentecostals.”[25] The fact that Sanchez-Walsh provides no sustained treatment of this large, unorthodox movement, however, is rather puzzling.
Finally, though Sánchez-Walsh’s stated purpose was to “allow voices that have not been heeded in Pentecostal histories to be heard,” one must ask where the voices of early Pentecostals are heard.[26] She focuses on the heroes of Pentecostalism, particularly on those with obvious inconsistencies between their beliefs and personal lives. For every Ted Haggard, however, the lives of hundreds of ministers and millions of laypersons align more closely with their professed beliefs. We must be careful not make sweeping generalizations about an entire movement on the basis of a few particular individuals.
These omissions notwithstanding, Sánchez-Walsh reveals parts of Pentecostal history that have long been overlooked. She takes the movement seriously and deserves to be read by any who wish to understand what is one of the largest, fastest growing, and most influential Christian movements today. Indeed, besides most American communities having a Pentecostal presence, the phenomena of the movement (e.g., tongues, healings, etc.) have moved beyond Pentecostal denominations and found their way into Roman Catholic, Evangelical, and Mainline Protestant churches alike. For those who wish better to understand the Pentecostals in their community and Pentecostal influence on their churches and movements, Pentecostals in America is a must read.
[1]“Christian Movements and Denominations,” Pew Forum, accessed December 27, 2021, https://www.pewforum.org/2011/12/19/global-christianity-movements-and-denominations/.
[2]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America (New York: Columbia University, 2018), xiii.
[3]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, xiii.
[4]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 3–4.
[5]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 7.
[6]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 11.
[7]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 13.
[8]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 14.
[9]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 16–20.
[10]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 25.
[11]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 31.
[12]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 33.
[13]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 35.
[14]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 42–48.
[15] Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 45.
[16]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 52.
[17]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 54.
[18]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 57, 65.
[19]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 70.
[20]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 83.
[21]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 87.
[22]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 91.
[23]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 93.
[24]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, 114.n4.
[25]Sánchez-Walsh, Pentecostals in America, xxiv.
[26]Sánchez-Walsh, xii.
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