Presidential Address 2010 When Liberation Becomes Survival

Pneuma 32 (2010) 337-353

Estrelda Alexander

Professor of Teology, Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia Beach, VA, USA

Abstract

Tis articles uses three contemporary issues — the struggle for authentic racial and cultural justice for people who are in some way locked out of the “mainstream” of the privileged white power structure, the quest of women to live out their God-ordained humanity in every arena of the church and society, and the response of the church to the perceived threat of the homosexual agenda — to explore the necessity of drawing on the intellectual resources of Pentecostal/Charismatic scholarship to engage the social justice issues with which the church must wrestle in the twenty-ﬁrst century. Historically, liberation theologies have been dismissed by the evangelical and Pentecostal communities as totally unbiblical responses to social ills driven largely by unbiblical philosophical understanding and agenda, but they have failed to speak a liberative word to those within our own churches whose very lives are circumscribed by blatantly unjust responses to these issues. Tis article calls for crafting liberative theologies as a Spirit-empowered and enlightened intellectual pursuit that takes seriously the biblical mandate to be responsive to issues of justice.

Keywords

scholarship, liberation theology, political theology, feminist/womanist theology, homosexuality, social justice, women

Within the evangelical and, more speciﬁcally, the Pentecostal community, eﬀorts for liberation are often viewed with suspicion. Some perceive these liberative movements as attempts by radical individuals or fringe elements to infuse the Christian context with secular, even ungodly agendas that could potentially move the faith community away from its central mission of work- ing toward the redemption of souls and reconciling them into a saving rela- tionship with Christ. Proponents of both feminist and ethnic, or cultural, liberation are suspected as being interested in mounting narrowly deﬁned campaigns to gain power for themselves and their constituencies at the expense

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of upsetting the God-ordained order for the church and broader society. For example, missionary scholar Raymond Hundley, in his 1987 work, Radical Liberation Teology: An Evangelical Response, examined Latin American libera- tion theology and found little in it that was laudatory, casting the entire proj- ect as “theological and doctrinal revolution that stands in opposition to the very foundations of traditional Christian doctrine,” and as “a whole new way of looking at Christian faith that challenges all past ways of being Christian.”1

Within this way of thinking, discussions of various communities’ struggles to obtain the essential human rights and dignity that are considered the natu- ral privilege of others are perceived as antithetical to an authentic biblical spirituality, for such spirituality is conceived as dispensing with attempts to gain one’s rights for the sake of maintaining unity in the body of Christ. Such thinkers understand social disparity simply as the unfortunate yet irreparable consequence of the fall. It is either to be patiently borne as one’s particular cross, or is characterized as a situation from which providential deliverance will eventually arrive, without disruptive human intervention, and within God’s predestined but largely indeterminable time frame.

A vivid example of this mindset was exhibited during a session of a contem- porary theology seminar I taught at my institution, an Evangelical seminary within the Bible Belt of the United States.2 A student interrupted the discus- sion to question how the topic was related to the Gospel: “What does this have to do with the saving of souls?” he challenged. And he quickly added that if it had nothing to do with the evangelistic endeavor, there was no sense in carry- ing the discussion further.

Te question at ﬁrst disarmed me, and I scrambled to counter the critique with an appropriate, oﬀ-the-cuﬀ answer. Yet, that evening the issue continued so to disturb me that I prepared a lecture to address it for the next class session. I was agitated not only because I did not immediately have what I felt was an adequate answer for the student, but because the question represented, for me, the tenor of much of the movement to which I have given the larger part of my life. It signaled what I have come to see as a major shortcoming in much of the evangelical theological enterprise: a dichotomy between what is consid- ered the biblical mandate for winning and making disciples of those who do not

Raymond C. Hundley, Radical Liberation Teology: An Evangelical Response (Wilmore, KY: Bristol Books, 1987).

Te term Bible Belt refers to a geographical region that encompassing primarily those areas of the South and midsection of the United States in which conservative evangelical Protestantism is a pervasive or dominant part of the Christian religious culture.

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know Christ, preparing them for a glorious afterlife, and inattention to the reality that circumscribes the lived situations of many believers — and non- believers — who are the victims of or challenged by the presence of systemic evil, social injustice, and deep disparity in access to what is necessary for a decent quality of life in this present world.

A recent roundtable discussion I attended on the campus of my institution provides a diﬀerent angle on the subject. A highly respected local pastor of a trans-ethnic congregation did an excellent job of attempting to bring balance to the political divide that often exists between members of diﬀerent cultures within the evangelical community. He worked hard to explain that we should put kingdom principles above political or cultural diﬀerences and not use invective to characterize those with whom we disagree politically. Rather, he contended that when we diﬀer, we should graciously approach others as broth- ers and sisters in Christ. Yet, even in this attempt to provide an objective cen- ter for reasoned discourse, he referred oﬀhandedly to those who are passionately concerned about justice as being “on the left,” and in doing so immediately discredited his early statements about objectivity.

As an African American woman, I have often found myself at the receiving end of both racial or gender injustice within the church and Christian acad- emy as much as in the broader society. Indeed, the harshest and most debilitat- ing injustice that I have experienced has been within these contexts. Still, my intellectual acuity and my academic preparation, as well as my fortune — or misfortune — in being born into a period in U.S. history that has seen a marked lessening of blatant instances of these injustices, has cushioned me from the brunt of the harshest — sometimes violent — instances that still exist within much of the world, indeed much of the Christian world. Existing at the intersection of three identities — African American woman, evangelical Christian, and scholar — presents existential problems and contin- ued psychic angst that have left me aware of being perceived as somewhat edgy and always in passion mode, a mode many mistake for anger, a mode that is often oﬀ-putting. But it has become the only mode for which I can justify my existence, for to live without a passion for justice is to deny the very reason for which I was created. It is to cut oﬀ the very lifeline that allows me to live an authentic human existence. It is to short-circuit my very survival. Tree issues — the struggle for authentic racial and cultural justice for peo- ple who are in some way locked out of the “mainstream” of the privileged white power structure, the quest of women to live out their God-ordained humanity in every arena of the church and society, and the response of the church to the perceived threat of the homosexual agenda — serve as vivid

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illustrations of the serious need to engage in liberative discourse. Each issue both provides an opportunity to examine the role of an informed faith in the life of the Christian community and highlights the duty of the Christian acad- emy to assist the church in promoting such a faith. At the same time they each suggest that the Christian scholar’s duty must extend beyond any personal agendas that drive our individual projects. Te ﬁrst two issues frame essential components of my own quest for wholeness within the community of faith and so allow me to resonate with others who face similar challenges. I, too, however, stand in a privileged place vis-à-vis the last issue, since it is not inti- mately related to my own experience. Yet, it provides a test of whether I can take a biblically appropriate stance toward a community in which I have little vested interest, but which has not always been treated with even a modicum of human civility by some Christians.

Lifting up these separate issues becomes even more important since both sides of the gay and lesbian rights movement have attempted to link their eﬀorts with the feminist and African American civil rights or liberation move- ments. Proponents of gay rights contend that all three are civil rights issues and should be treated as equally valid. On the other hand, evangelicals and other conservatives sometimes suggest that liberative eﬀorts by people of color and women should be summarily dismissed because they give sanction to the gay community’s eﬀorts to press for rights. While the three issues are more parallel than ontologically interrelated, this type of two-sided reductionism only results in hate and smear campaigns that do little to settle the issue and have left us with little direction on how to proceed.

Te Race Issue

Looking ﬁrst at the issue of attempting to achieve authentic racial equity within the church and society, many evangelicals might suggest that such an endeavor is a moot point because racism is no longer an issue — it no longer exists. Indeed, the eyes of many who hear or read these words may glaze over with the temptation to succumb to the “ho-hum” attitude of “here we go again.” Yet, unless forced by the sovereign design of birth to live within the reality of people of color, it is almost impossible to understand how unsettled the issue is for the average African American (or Latino/a) even within the Christian church.

At this point in history, a seemingly genuine query might be: “You have the presidency, what else could you want?” But I would suggest that the vast

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majority of those who pose that question are white and have little understand- ing of the real psychic costs of sustained racial discrimination, even among seemingly privileged minority persons. Because of a variety of circumstances, all but the few most privileged people of color hang near the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder with little real hope of ever reaching beyond its mid point. Even among people of color who have seemingly made it, the nagging sense of somehow never being totally regarded as an equal lingers in the psyche, and that nagging sense is debilitating. Amanda Berry Smith, the nineteenth- century Holiness evangelist, was rejected as a preacher by black Holiness men and then derided by other blacks for seeking preaching opportunities in white congregations. Yet, Smith understood that some in her white audience saw her as an oddity and never fully accepted her as their equal. She summed up the diﬀerence in perception of racial disparity within the Christian community in her 1893 autobiography. “I think,” she said, “some people would understand the quintessence of sanctifying grace if they could be black about twenty-four hours.”3 In an address to this very assembly in 2002, Marilyn Abplanalp oﬀered the insightful critique that the issue of racism within a speciﬁc branch of Pentecostalism could be characterized as the “undiscussed, undiscussed.”4 Abplanalp perceptively articulated that the sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that exists within classical Pentecostalism dictates that we don’t talk about the subject of racism, and we don’t talk about the fact that we don’t talk about the subject of racism. Tis policy might go a long way in keeping the perceived peace within the movement; yet, it does little to maintain the genuine unity of the Spirit that begins by regarding each person in the body of Christ as equal in dignity and worth and allowing them full participation in what the Spirit is doing in the church and the world.

Certainly, Barack Obama’s 2008 election signals an essential change in the fabric of much of American society from one that excludes any real hope of authentic valuation for people of color to one broad enough to allow a black man to stand as the symbolic head of its government. At the same time, the backlash from some evangelicals was unmistakably loud and somber. Many who would certainly not count themselves among that group are, nonetheless,

Amanda Berry Smith, An Autobiography: Te Story of the Lord’s Dealings with Mrs. Amanda Smith, the Colored Evangelist (Chicago: Meyer & Brother, Publishers, 1893), 116-17.

Marilyn Abplanalp, “Ethnic Inclusion in Pastoral Leadership in the Assemblies of God Fel- lowship from 1906-1999: A Case Study,” Paper Presented to the 31st Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Theology, Southeastern University of the Assemblies of God, Lakeland, FL, March 14-16, 2002.

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part of churches, families, and other constituencies in which the post-election mood resembled a funeral more than any other occasion. Immediately following the election, there were hard pronouncements (mainly from conser- vative evangelical pulpits) about what the Spirit was saying to the church and the nation, and the speciﬁc type of destruction God would rain on us. Our speciﬁc abomination was, of all things, having elected a man whose father was Muslim and who did not wholeheartedly support our right-to-life agenda or our particular understanding of what Scripture says about the issue of homo- sexuality. At the same time, many black evangelicals who hold the same ethical convictions were praising God that for the ﬁrst time they could look their children in the eye and truthfully say, “If you work hard, you can be anything you want to be.”

My confusion about the volume of these pronouncements is that many in these same camps were deafeningly silent for several hundred years, when countless atrocities — lynchings, bombings, unethical social and economic policies, unhealthy housing, and inadequate schools — were committed against people of color. I am also confused by the lack of a public balancing voice from the evangelical or Pentecostal academy as the silence from our ranks was particularly deafening since we have been given the gift of intellect to help guide the church through these issues and help it gain a balanced per- spective.

Te Women Question

At the same time, evangelical Christians (including Pentecostals) often see the feminist movement as the endeavor of a few women with too much education and too much time on their hands to agitate among and incite respectable women, many of them Christian, to move from under their God-ordained place and “usurp authority” over the men sovereignly placed at their head. Alternatively, some cast the movement as led by rebellious women who want to take over the church — or, put more harshly, who have a problem with or hate men. While such invective might shut down the conversation, it does not eliminate the real anguish women feel about the failure of the church and the Christian academy to come to terms with and seriously engage their struggle. Within the Holiness Pentecostal and Charismatic faith communities, the issue has been largely framed around the problem of women seeking broader roles in congregational and denominational leadership. Consequently, discus- sions often get mired at that level. Over the decades the tide has rolled forward and backward. We have seen some progress, however. So many wonder, “Why

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are women still dissatisﬁed?” Or as the question has often been posed to me, “What do women want, anyway?” And that really is the question! Surprisingly, the answer is that the struggle involves much more than an aggressive attempt by a few restless, overeducated women to wrest power from men — either in the church or in society. What is important is that the real battle has little to do with the church. Or more clearly, the situation in the church is only the tip of an iceberg of global proportions rooted in a highly resistant strain of misogyny. Within this global realm, liberation for women has little to do with ordination or the rights to preach, to hold certain jobs previously reserved for men, to gain equal pay for the same job, or to hold positions of church leadership. Further, for most evangelical women around the globe, the issue certainly is not over reproductive rights or the freedom to have an abortion.

Te harsh imposition of stringent controls over the lives of women concern- ing how much education they may obtain, where and with whom they may live, whom they may marry, or how many children they can have seem mildly inconsequential in light of more serious breaches of human dignity, including imposed illiteracy, wife beating and matricide, female circumcision, genital mutilation, and sexual traﬃcking and violence. Each of these injustices stems from a root of inappropriate philosophical (indeed, theological) understand- ings of what it means to be human that in some way appraise female humanity as somehow less equal, less deserving, and less in God’s image than male humanity. So, rather, the struggle is about allowing women of all races, eth- nicities, classes, cultures, and religious traditions to be treated as fully human individuals who reﬂect God’s full image. It is about aﬀording them the full dignity and respect that derives from that God-imaged createdness within every context — social, economic, spiritual, and ecclesial.

In her 1999 book, In the Spirit We are Equal: Te Spirit, the Bible, and Women: A Revival Perspective, Susan Hyatt, president of the Inter- national Women’s History Project, amasses astounding statistics regarding the status of women within the global context.5 Hyatt highlights how millions of women annually are sold as slaves into the international sex trade, discloses that two million girls a year are subjected to female mutilation, and reveals that battering, incest, and other forms of abuse occur regularly in Christian as well as non-Christian homes. Not much has changed in the intervening decade, yet the church remains largely silent on the issue, and the evangelical and Pentecostal academy has often failed to take on the challenge.

Susan Hyatt, In the Spirit We Are Equal: Te Spirit, the Bible, and Women: A Revival Perspec- tive (Dallas, TX: Hyatt International Ministries, 1999).

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In a true-to-life example, Firduas, an Egyptian woman who is the main character in Nawal El Saadawi’s short but gripping narrative, Woman at Point Zero, comes to a very tragic end when she is sentenced to die by hanging. Her crime was killing the pimp who has been taking advantage of her lower status as a woman to exact extravagant payment and semi-servitude from her. When oﬀered the possibility of escaping her fate by having someone intervene on her behalf, she chooses instead to die at age twenty-eight rather than have to endure the harsh reality of life as a woman in Egyptian society.6 For her such a life would be dehumanizing and not worth living, and death would be her liberation. Yet, such a life is the lot of countless women around the globe, many of them Christian.

A recent discussion with one of my graduate students concerning the abuse of wives within her Indian Christian culture sheds more light on the issue. After our discussion the student had a conversation with several Indian pastors about how the church could help the situation. She later informed me that, sadly, there was little pastors could do. To approach the subject within their congregations would make the situation worse because husbands would be oﬀended by a pastor’s intrusion into private matters and thus might take their displeasure out on their wives, possibly causing them greater physical, emo- tional, and economic injury.

In light of the seriousness of the global situation, evangelical and Pentecos- tal protestations that oﬀhandedly dismiss biblical feminists’ eﬀorts fail to engage critically the depth of human sinfulness regarding unbiblical and theo- logically ﬂawed practices toward women in the Christian church and broader society. Tey fail, further, to come to terms with the more urgent goal of lib- eration theologies — that of restoring that image of God within every person to its full clarity so that that image may be estimated in light of God’s word. While some past missionary endeavors have sometimes wrongly imposed mea- sures of Western civilization as biblical standards of righteousness on insigniﬁ- cant issues such as apparel and social activity, culture often becomes a scapegoat for failing to be prophetic about the unethical practices of a society — even our own society — that are truly life threatening, dehumanizing, and out of line with the principles of God’s word. Yet, a theological turn toward the pro- phetic is necessary to save the physical, emotional, psychic, and spiritual lives of our sisters who cannot fend for themselves. As spirit-ﬁlled academicians, we are called upon to assist in this project by allowing our Spirit-illuminated intellects to speak a Spirit-generated and empowered word that helps decon-

Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero (London: Zed Books, 1996).

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struct patriarchal and misogynist systems that are not only reﬂections of our sinful, fallen human nature, but are also responsible for domination and untold suﬀering among at least half of the world’s population.

Te Matter of Homosexuality

Te issue of homosexuality is a diﬃcult challenge that has the potential to be radicalized by both sides. Evangelical Christians must be faithful to their understanding that the Bible holds homosexual behavior to be sinful, just as it holds lying, murder, deceit, and adultery to be sinful. But the evangelical and Pentecostal communities have often used Scripture as a weapon to dehuman- ize gay or lesbian persons and have not always been clear that the measure of the Gospel is still the proclamation of God’s love and desire for reconciliation for all of sinful humanity. Te question becomes how to uphold a biblical conviction of the sinfulness of a behavior without breeding hatred for those who practice that behavior. While the expression may appear to be trite, we are called to frame responses that allow us to denounce all manifestations of sin, while fully, authentically embracing the sinner as a full human person worthy of the respect and dignity of his or her God-imaged createdness.

Te church certainly does not have to endorse homosexuality as a lifestyle or promote the acceptance of same-sex marriage. At the same time, the church must adopt a more humane response to the issues of homosexuality and the devastating rise of HIV/AIDS in the communities that we serve. We do not have to employ openly gay people on our staﬀs or allow them to serve in posi- tions of leadership within our congregations. But we must ﬁnd ways to com- municate the message of the universal possibility of redemption oﬀered in God’s grace. Further, we cannot elevate homosexual practices above other sin- ful behaviors, since the fallenness that brings about other forms of sinful behavior is no less severe than the fallenness that displays itself in homosexual behavior. Finally, we must also cease creating a climate that is so lethal that some leaders, as well as some lay people, secretly nurture a personal struggle while loudly hurling diatribes at others who openly insist they have a God- given right to live out their gay or lesbian identity.

While rejecting the argument that the struggle for gay and lesbian rights is completely on par with women’s, black, or Latino/a liberation eﬀorts, the aspiration of gay and lesbian persons to be treated with full human dignity as “created in the image of God” is legitimate. No level of sinfulness removes any person either from that image or from God’s love, since no one can rightly insinuate that another person is unworthy of the love only God can oﬀer. Tis

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is so because no degree of fallenness can completely obliterate that image, since it is not imprinted on but, rather, is indelibly and ontologically imbed- ded in the core of our very being. Further, our failure to discern that God- imaged createdness derives from our own fallenness that dims our ability to perceive that image in the other, especially those who are, in any signiﬁcant way, unlike us. If we in the academy sincerely believe that Christ’s atoning sacriﬁce was for all humankind, because all humankind is fallen and requires redemption, we are challenged to engage our Spirit-endowed intellectual acu- ity to help foster responses that point the evangelical church to genuine love for the sinner while allowing it to stand for what it perceives to be the truth of God’s word.

Speaking from within the broader evangelical academic community, South- ern Baptist Teological Seminary president R. Albert Mohler, Jr.’s contention that “[h]omosexuals are waiting to see if the Christian church has anything more to say after we declare that homosexuality is a sin”7 invites a clarifying voice from the Pentecostal academy. It is an invitation to help the church for- mulate a compassionate response to this issue that takes seriously the biblical insistence that a lifestyle lived out in sexual immorality is unacceptable. Such an invitation provides an opportunity to assist the church, though its accep- tance might require overtures from the academy to overcome both the historic and the contemporary suspicions hindering rapprochement. But such a response must make clear the biblical assertion that every person created in the image of God is equally loved by God, and that the result of the fall is a humanity that exhibits its fallenness in a plethora of manifestations.

Te Political Nature of Teology

No theologian within the contemporary academy approaches the theological task purely for the glory of God. All theology is political, some of it more blatantly so, some of it more honestly so than other theology. But all theology is crafted within the context of speciﬁc social, cultural, and political realities that not only color how it is formulated, developed, and reﬁned, but also seek to protect, resist, or destroy speciﬁc views of that reality. Tere is always some vested interest at stake in doing theology, employing a speciﬁc theological method, or insisting that certain theological methods are legitimate and others

Albert Mohler, “No Truth Without Love, No Love Without Truth,” Florida Baptist Wit- ness, http://gofbw.com/blog.asp?ID=10205, viewed January 30, 2010.

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are not. A theology of the nature of humankind, for example, that would allow a society to enslave or otherwise abuse any race or class of people while provid- ing biblical sanction for such an endeavor is a political theology. Te fact that such a theology is couched in esoteric terms obscuring a desire to uphold a supposedly God-ordained order does not deny its political nature. Any theology that supports the dehumanization of men and women because they deﬁne themselves as gay or lesbian, or as alcoholics, or as chronic liars falls short of the biblical call for Godly love. A theology that provides a rationale for, or in any way condones, mistreatment of gay and lesbian persons, includ- ing intimidation, physical or emotional violence, or labeling them with hate- ful names is ungodly. Any depiction of that Gospel that promotes a portrait of a God who hates one class of sinners more than others and not only wants their demise but seeks to elicit the church in bringing about that demise is inauthentic.

Tere is only one ministry that has been given to the entire body of Christ, and that is the ministry of reconciliation. Te Spirit calls us who make the claim that we are empowered by his presence speciﬁcally to invoke that pres- ence in the theological task of dutifully working toward the Spirit’s ends. We don’t have the luxury of doing theology for its own sake. We do not have the privilege of composing even grander schemes that only serve to bring acclaim to ourselves or our institutions. Too much is at stake. For those dehumanized by systems of oppression, it is a matter of survival.

We must be careful not to ﬁnd ourselves engaged in a spiral of what the apostle Paul designates as endless genealogies that serve no purpose and go nowhere other than to enlarge our intellectual egos. Te goal of any discussion of the nature of the Godhead is not to prove that one assessment is more on target than another. Rather, I consider God’s nature because humankind is created in God’s image and the nature of that createdness has implications for what it means to be truly human. I pose liberative rather than hierarchical models of the Godhead because of the imperative to move our thinking toward liberative models of the church and society. For this is the only way to ensure the authentic survival, indeed the thriving, of every member of the human family.

I don’t undertake a pneumatological dialogue to insinuate in some way that a Pentecostal encounter with the Spirit is in any way more authentic than that which occurs within another tradition. Rather, the hope is that such a discus- sion would suggest ways in which empowerment by the liberating Spirit of Christ might invest me with a genuine regard for his mission of reconciling the world to God. Te further hope is that such empowerment might be

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harnessed in service to that task. Within this scheme, the question of the nature of the Godhead takes on an entirely diﬀerent signiﬁcance. It is not merely a question of whether our propositions about the Supreme Reality get all the technical terms correct. Since God has deliberately remained a mystery, no one person or group can exclusively or authentically lay claim to such an assertion. But the question of God’s nature as reﬂected in his image, and my — and every person’s — createdness in that image becomes very important. It becomes a matter of survival.

When I come to understand, and am able to communicate, that the creat- edness of every individual in God’s image has implications for the very survival and ﬂourishing of every segment of humankind, it is important who and what God is. It is vital to understand and convey in our scholarship that every mem- ber of the human family is reﬂected within God’s very nature. And it is imper- ative to communicate that for that reason, each person deserves the reverent respect that precludes treating them in dehumanizing manners because of gen- der, race, diﬀering physical, mental, or emotional abilities, or because of how they deﬁne themselves regarding their gender identity.

Without reverting to revisionism, the question of which history of the church will be lifted up becomes important, as I attempt to discover elements within a fractured historiography of salvation history that celebrate the contri- bution of men and women of every culture to the Spirit’s project. I cannot aﬀord carelessly to overlook not only the contributions of every constituent but also their eﬀorts to reintroduce their rejected identity as full contributors to, and part of the full representation of, God’s kingdom. Such a representa- tion has within its contours a rich tapestry of philosophical and material resources that rarely received adequate attention. Failing to hold up this full image and this rich history gives credence to the misrepresentation that while the Holy Spirit was at work within privileged Western society, the rest of the entire human family was relegated to centuries of heathenish idolatry without any participation in the life of God. More importantly, it leaves women and people of color with no heritage as participants with God in the unfolding of salvation history and robs them of that part of their identity.

Our Task

As Spirit-empowered academicians, the pneumatological claim that the Spirit of the Lord is upon our Spirit-endowed intellects takes on new relevance as a mechanism for bringing the liberative good news to the poor, the broken-

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hearted, the captive, the blind, and the oppressed. Bishop John Richard Bry- ant, who introduced neo-Pentecostal spirituality within the African Methodist Episcopal Church, explicitly lifted up the need to infuse a deep spirituality with biblical activism and challenged assertions of Holy Spirit empowerment that did not take concerns for social justice seriously:

One must ask the question, “Holy Spirit for what?” . . . If all we are doing is jumping up and down in the air, speaking in other tongues, saying, “Yea, the Spirit is with us,” that’s ﬁne. But . . . that is taking the gravy and leaving the Spirit. Te meat of the Holy Spirit is for our empowerment. It’s for our liberation and development. It’s for our strength as a people. And it has been for that.8

Tough he was speaking within the context of the struggle of African Ameri- cans, his probing question can be extrapolated into any context in which injustice or deprivation is present. Regarding our academic pursuit as Pentecostal/Charismatic/neo-Pentecostal scholars, one must re-pose the question as:

“Holy Spirit for what?” If all we in the academy do with our Spirit-endowed intellect is consider ever more impenetrable propositions removed from the life of the church and the struggle of individuals and faith communities to live out the mandate for social justice, what does it matter? If all we do is pursue academic excellence to impress one another with our scholarship, speaking to each other in intellectual hyperbole, saying, “Yea, this is cutting edge theology,” that’s ﬁne. But that is taking the gravy and leaving the meat. Te gift of the Holy Spirit is also for our intellectual empower- ment. Te Spirit has been poured out on us for our liberation and development of our minds. It’s for our strength as a people. It’s for our very survival. And it has always been for that.

With that measure of the Spirit, we can attempt a faithful answer to the hard questions. What do women want? What do black people want? Yes, and even what do gay and lesbian persons want? Each of the groups desires what all human beings desire, the opportunity not just to survive or subsist, but to ﬂourish and be in full communion with those who claim to represent what is fully human.

Quoted in Lawrence H. Mamiya, “A Social History of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore: Te House of God and the Struggle for Freedom,” in James P. Wind and James Welborn Lewis, eds., American Congregations: Portraits of Twelve Religious Communities (Chicago: Te University of Chicago Press, 1994), 266.

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Jesus’ assertion the “the poor you will always have with you” was not an endorsement of a situation in which one-fourth of the world’s population lives a comfortable or extravagant lifestyle at the expense of the majority of others who live in abject poverty or at a mere subsistence level. Neither was it a license for those within the body of Christ who enjoy “the favor or blessing of God” to ignore the needs of masses of believers and others who live lives of quiet — or even loud — desperation. Nor was it an exoneration of the very political and social systems that cause such desperation. To say that Jesus was apolitical and endorsed no political system does not mean he did not recog- nize the sinfulness of certain political actions — especially those that deprive individuals or entire classes of people of the dignity required to survive at a level that allows them to be authentically human.

Rather, Jesus’ assertion described a continuing reality among fallen, unre- deemed men and women who he knew would be prone to pursue individual personal gain at the expense of the wholeness of entire communities. He also knew that, because of this fallenness, individuals would pursue paths leading not only to their own impoverishment but to that of generations of their prog- eny. He knew that the causes for impoverishment and other dehumanizing conditions would be both individual and personal as well as corporate and communal.

Just as Israel’s chosenness was as much for service as for communal blessing, the promise of God’s provision for the faithful is not an endorsement of an individual’s — or a nation’s — right to fare sumptuously as the rest of the world virtually goes to living hell. Similarly, our intellectual chosenness is not a tool for our own ego stimulation while real problems keep others locked out of opportunities for genuine wholeness. Our intellectual acuity is a gift to the church to help it to work toward a more just future for all humankind in this present world. Without raising any utopian hope of ushering in the reign of Christ over a fully actualized kingdom, we are called to use our intellectual gifts to assist the church in modeling the already but not yet reality that the Holy Spirit makes possible in lives lived out in authentic obedience to the dictate to work for justice.

As a political theologian, my contention that all theology is political sug- gests that at face value, Amos Yong’s assertion that much of classical Pentecos- talism has had a “typical apolitical orientation”9 misses an important truth. For no theology has a genuinely apolitical orientation. All theology has the prag-

Amos Yong, “Justice Deprived, Justice Demanded: Afropentecostalisms and the Task of World Pentecostal Teology Today,” Journal of Pentecostal Teology 15, no. 1 [2006]: 130.

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matic goal of preserving or dismantling a social reality that is presumed to be God-ordained or against the will of God. Granted, within the Holiness- Pentecostal-Charismatic continuum that political orientation has been embed- ded rather than deliberate. And unfortunately the lack of theological deliberateness regarding our politics and political deliberateness regarding our theology has rendered what ethicist J. Deotis Roberts correctly discerns as a political theology within the tradition that has been “notoriously short on social conscience and social sins” with “little concern for social transformation.”10

Roberts’ broad critique of the social consciousness of the Pentecostal move- ment in general does take note, however, of the contribution of early black Pentecostal leaders. He concedes that

[b]lack Pentecostals have been formulating a black theology for a long time. Tey have relied on oral traditions, African cultural retentions, and the like. Blacks join African, Latin American, and Asian tongues groups in rejection the deﬁnition of [themselves by] whites.

In essence . . . black Pentecostalism has called attention to the racism that has splin- tered the Pentecostal ranks. It has provided a very perceptive critique of the authentic- ity of the fellowship, theology and practice of white Pentecostalism. Te fruits of the Spirit are absent in regard to humanity of blacks and the poor. . . . Tis critique of this movement by black theologians may be a service to the entire church after all.11

Roberts’ assessment invites us in the academy to take the rich opportunity to reappropriate the liberative ethos found in various forms in formulations by some early black Pentecostal leaders such as William Seymour and Robert Lawson and such later thinkers as Bennie Goodwin, James Forbes, Robert Franklin, and Leonard Lovett. Within the witness of these exemplars, which has not always been fully appreciated by the broader movement (partly due to racism), we might ﬁnd some answers.

Yet, unfortunately, these same thinkers have been woefully short in shaping a liberative word for women or in fostering a humanizing word for those who struggle with gender identity issues. Despite obvious shortcomings, taking a cue from these black leaders, we who have been gifted by the Spirit with the charism of intellectual perception — the gift of the word of knowledge — have been given the supernatural ability to speak truth to power. We must use

J. Deotis Roberts, Black Teology in Dialogue (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1987), 59.

Ibid., 62.

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that gift to speak a sometimes hard truth to our colleagues, our pastors, our denominational leaders, and our communities. Too often the church and its academy have remained silent when a ﬁt word was called for. Too often we have taken the lead from the secular society, jumping on the bandwagon when it appeared safe. One need only look back at the failure of the church to address race relations before the mid-twentieth-century civil rights movement, while it now gives at least lip service to ideals of multiculturalism although it shows little genuine fruit. For those early black Pentecostal leaders, as for us, justice is not an optional feature of a faith community or a quality that God demands of those gifted or bent toward the prophetic. It is not a choice one can make from a menu of Christian virtues. As with the call to evangelism, worship, and prayer, the call to work toward justice must be an integral part of every group of people who gather to study, deliberate, and invoke the name of Christ.

Any theology that provides a foundation for the sanctioning of bigotry or injustice or provides a base for disengagement from the vital work of justice seeking is unscriptural and unsound. Any theological system that props up existing structures of oppression is inauthentic in its claim to be biblical. Any theological system that does not take seriously the liberative work of the Holy Spirit and the implications of Jesus’ assertion, “I have come that you might have life, more abundantly” is inauthentic. Any theology that does not enter into Jesus’ project of proclaiming and pushing forward the possibility of that abundant life within the already present manifestation of the kingdom, while being cognizant that its full presentation is only possible in the undetermined not-yet, is impotent. Further, whenever an individual or group hides behind the Bible as an excuse to ignore the cause of justice, it is an inauthentic use of the sacred text.

Te issue of racial justice takes on a new urgency when viewed in light of the in-breaking kingdom. Te issue of promoting the full humanity of women is critical when juxtaposed against the kingdom themes of physical, emotional, and spiritual wholeness for the entirety of God’s creation. Te issue of basic civil rights for those who identify themselves as gay or lesbian takes on a new focus when viewed through the lens of liberation of every human being to live out his or her God-imaged createdness. While these three issues exemplify the type of theological response we as Pentecostal scholars who have received the gift of intellect are called on to provide, they do not fully explore the desperate need of the quickly expanding global Pentecostal movement to come to terms with the myriad instances of injustice faced by those within the human family who are least able to fend for themselves.

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Te social, emotional, and psychic cost of the failure to appropriate libera- tive theologies in the cause of justice is evident. It is displayed in the audacity of human slavery that has existed in every century and continues to exist in a variety of forms throughout the globe. It exists in the forcing of entire races or cultures (including women and children) into dire poverty so that, at their expense, entire other races and cultures never fail to be without the most triv- ial comfort — propped up by supposedly biblical yet illusionary sanctions such as manifest destiny and divine social order.

It is also exempliﬁed in locking women into abusive, loveless relationships that subject them to emotional, mental, and physical abuse or deny them any opportunity to employ particular God-given gifts outside of rigidly circum- scribed but cleverly theologically nuanced structures that sanction male privi- leging. Finally, it is evident in the inciting of hatred and hate crimes such as violence to homosexuals or to those who support abortion among those (some of them in our own faith communities) who are unwilling — or unable — to hear a truly biblical call for love and who see themselves as God’s duly autho- rized vigilante squad.

But what is not always as evident is the spiritual cost to the kingdom of God that ensues from theologies that fail to marry personal and social holiness. For they result in a situation in which surrounding cultures become immune to receiving an allegedly life-giving gospel from which there is no tangible beneﬁt for their temporal ﬂourishing as human beings. Understandably, those within the culture esteem the oﬀer of God’s grace as bogus when it comes from a church that is passionately concerned about their eternal well being but seems callously uninterested in advocating for or providing them with the resources to ensure their survival in this in this present world.

Tese issues come from the heart of who people are. Tey are too critical for the academy or the church to cast aside as unimportant or as the dangerous work of malcontents. For those who live with them every day, these issues are the issues of life and death; they are matters of survival.

Let us pray for the gift of courage!

Presidential Address 2010 When Liberation Becomes Survival

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