Pasquier on The Fire Spreads
Art Remillard
Let it be known that contributing editor Mike Pasquier knows nothing about college football. For example, he truly believes that LSU, 1) deserved to be in this year's BCS Championship game; and 2) finished the season as the best team in the nation despite playing a floundering Ohio State squad.
This being said, I will give Mike credit on one thing, he knows a good book when he reads it, as evidenced by his recent review of fellow contributing editor Randall Stephens's The Fire Spreads on H-Pentecostalism. Here are Mike's final thoughts...
This study is an important addition to the growing field of pentecostal studies. Stephens's emphasis on regional identity complements the previous works of historians like Grant Wacker and Edith Blumhofer. His ability to make sense of the complex theological features of pentecostalism makes The Fire Spreads accessible to a wide audience composed of lay adult readers, college students, pentecostal practitioners, and professional historians. Furthermore, there is something to be said for a book that is both deeply intelligent and highly readable. Though Stephens certainly discusses the role of African Americans in the development of pentecostalism, The Fire Spreads is largely about white southerners and their involvement in the movement of a fringe religious group into the mainstream of evangelical Protestantism. Anyone interested in the history of religion in the United States—and specifically as it relates to region, race, and politics—must read Stephens's The Fire Spreads.
Comments
I likewise agree with Michael's LSU laudations. But then again, they didn't play the best team in the SEC last year and we all know the Dawgs will beat LSU like a rented mule come Oct. 25. ;-)
Case in point (from my own area of study): the many Roman Catholics who align themselves politically with many conservative evangelicals, but who wouldn't be caught dead in a Protestant church. And let's also note that in places with a large number of African American Catholics, it is usually the case that Catholic churches are often segregated by race. This is especially the case in rural southern Louisiana, a place with one of the largest black Catholic populations in the United States, and, interestingly, home to William Seymour (of Azusa Street fame) and the location for Robert Duval's escape from Texas lawmen in "The Apostle."
The further along I moved into the 20th century, it seemed to me, the more difficult it was to draw larger conclusions about pentecostals, evangelicals, and fundies of one stripe or another. I think Mike is right. If we look at other factors—theology, practice, etc—we’ll see a different picture.
Could one argue, though, that with regard to worship and theologies of the spirit that many other traditions have been pentecostalized? Would a discussion of that look like work on the southernization of American culture? Just think of how so many free churches worship on Sundays: praise bands, hands raised, choruses projected on a screen, emotive sermons, altar calls...
Does having one of those sleek glass pulpits qualify as a sign of pentecostalization?
They emphasize emotional or experiential worship, to be sure. Heck, it's often in the marketing literature and on the website. But that seems more like an updated form of (non-pentecostal) revivalism to me.
First, Michael quotes you as describing the first Southern holiness adherents as "anonymous zealots on the cultural fringes of society."
Second, you are quoted as characterizing holiness theology as "negative."
It's unclear to me whether these terms are moral judgments on your part, self-descriptions, or otherwise "technical" terms in the context of your study (for instance, are you linking holiness somehow to ideas of "negative theology"). My question might well be cleared up when I read the book, but I'm hoping you'll say a few words here.
I'm excited to read it!
And, if you haven't already done so, check out Ashcroft's rendition of "Let the Eagle Soar." $10 to the first person to listen to the whole 5 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woLQI8X2R6Y
"Zealots" might seem like a loaded term, bringing to mind jihadists with bombs strapped to their vests. I didn't mean it like that. Holiness and pentecostal believers were intensely committed to their cause and were often "anonymous." They weren't southern power brokers or well-placed figures. In a later chapter I contrasted their "anonymous" roots with later visibility.
To answer the other question, I had meant to use these words as technical descriptions, but they may have moral connotations. Grant Wacker and I disagree on the matter of pentecostals' eschatology. I don't think he would use the term "negative." But I might have to check with them about that.
I suppose my upbringing as a hardcore premill Nazarene has something to do with all of this, but that's a pandora's box better left closed.
Thanks for making me think about some of these issues. My brow has been furrowed.
Nothing here rebuts Mike’s essential point, which I think is accurate. But they are interesting outliers that seem to contribute to what Randall is saying (I haven’t read it either, so I could be COMPLETELY off base). Finally, Mike is still SOOOO wrong about LSU.
I've got two more weeks in the semester, then I hope to begin catching up on my backlogged reading this summer. Your book is in the pile.
In what might possibly be the perfect example of waffling, I can see both sides of the eschatological issue. With Wacker (and also Robins in his excellent biography of A. J. Tomlinson), I clearly see that even the earliest Pentecostals were driven into the world under the "power of the Spirit" to evangelize/proselytize using every modern means possible: railways, radio, newspapers, and eventually television, were all used extensively by Pentecostals. They were most certainly motivated by what they perceived to be the "inbreaking" of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit was breaking into the world and so must the Pentecostals. This, it seems to me, is the more distinctly Pentecostal contribution to the eschatology. On the other hand, most of the early Pentecostals were also direct products of the earlier Holiness movement which emphasized the "come out from among them" mentality. It was this space from which the Pentecostals were to break into the world. So in essence, what has generally been attributed to a negative eschatology among Pentecostals (and perhaps other conservative premillennialists) has less to do with eschatology and more to do with soteriology and ethics (and again, I am not at all sure this is what Stephens has done - read the book, Gene). The belief that Jesus was coming soon had more to do with incursions into the world system (though not in traditional political ways). The opposite impetus was driven by a desire to be pure from the "evil" of that world.
In terms of the pentecostalization of broader Christianity, there seems to be at least a couple of ways that this is accurate. 1) If one's understanding of Pentecostal distinctives is limited to tongues, healing, etc., then starting in the 1950s, and especially since the 1970s, this has been widespread throughout the mainline denominations. Leaving off certain cumbersome, conservative points as well as holiness rigidity, millions of Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and others have in recent decades embraced the charismata without leaving their own traditions. 2) Certain church groups have specifically embraced "more Pentecostal" worship practices and liturgical freedom as a competitive reaction, among other things. I personally know one very large, conservative, Southern Baptist church who has hired a Pentecostal pianist/worship leader/arranger in order to liven up their worship so that the younger people would stop leaving the church for more exciting (read, Pentecostal) ones.
And now the most important point: the BCS is a joke and inherently flawed. One of the best teams in the country won the national championship, of that there is no doubt. But we will never know if they could have (or more accurately, would have) beaten GA or USC. Sorry, Mike.