Sex, Drugs, Rock N Roll…, And Race! — Or Something To That Effect Whither Pentecostal Studies

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Pneuma 33 (2011) 171-173

Sex, Drugs, Rock-n-Roll . . ., and Race! —

Or Something to Tat Effect:

Whither Pentecostal Theology?

Amos Yong

Dale Coulter and I are happy to bring to Pneuma readers this special issue of five articles, “Will the Revolution Be Televised? Preachers, Profits and the ‘Post-Racial’ Prophetic!” — book-ended by a brief introduction and response. We are grateful to Prof. Jonathan Walton for serving as a special editor and for bringing this collection to us for consideration.

OK, so the title of my editorial may be a bit misleading with regard to the actual issues that the articles engage, but if I have caught the reader’s attention, then it has served its purpose. As editors of the foremost journal on pentecos- tal studies in the guild, we believe that, agree or disagree with the stances enunciated in the following pages, Walton and his colleagues raise a number of important questions for the future of Pentecostal Theology.

First, sex! Yes, there is enough material here to fuel heat rather than shed light. At least two of the following articles insist that the issues remain urgent for pentecostal scholars, even while they pose challenges to one another. In discussing the message of Juanita Bynum, for example, one author suggests that Bynum’s message is creating a kind of sexual bondage for black women while another suggests that Bynum and her husband’s messages on YouTube reinforce negative gender types that can lead to violence. Yet, one of the reasons Bynum might encourage sexual abstinence is because of the very vio- lence against women in the black community. So, does her message create bondage for women by having them abstain from sex and thus potentially abusive relations with men or does her message create bondage for women by having them enter these relationships in an abusive way: which is it? Presum- ably nobody wants black women engaging in abusive relations or having babies out of wedlock with absentee fathers, so there appear to be multiple possible responses to Bynum beyond those presented in the following pages.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2011 DOI: 10.1163/027209611X574989

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A. Yong / Pneuma 33 (2011) 171-173

While it is undeniable that pentecostalism, by and large, is theologically con- servative about sexuality, is it possible to reframe the discussion so that we do not continue polarizing between “conservative” and “liberal” factions? For example, might we need to revisit long-standing ecumenical traditions that have developed elaborate theologies of celibacy in order to rethink the issues of our time? What other resources are there in the broader theological tradi- tion that might move the discussion forward in contemporary pentecostal thinking about these matters?

Second, drugs! Maybe this was genuinely disingenuous — but there is something else that this collection forces on our attention that may be even more important: the role of money and the idea of prosperity in contemporary pentecostalism. Money and prosperity may be as life-saving or insidious as (analogously) drugs may be pharmaceutically health-giving or, as contraband, destructive. And on both fronts, these are not merely North American con- cerns, but of importance for the global movement. Almost all of the essayists take up the theme of prosperity, many of them explicitly and at length. We now realize that pentecostalism’s emphasis on healing and embodied wholeness very easily translates, even theologically, into a gospel of prosperity. Again: if, as theological conservatives, pentecostals perennially are in quest of “biblically defensible” versions of prosperity, how might these be unfolded in light of what is happening on the neopentecostal ground, in neopentecostal megachurches, on the neopentecostal airwaves, and in the neopentecostal participation (some would say baptism) in(to) the current neoliberal capitalist economic regime?

Tird: rock-and-roll! Well, this genre of music may be passé for most of the churches and ministries that are discussed by our contributors, but hip-hop, rap, and other forms of telecommunicatively mediated gospel music and mes- sages are pervasive on the contemporary pentecostal scene. Te medium is the message — or is it the other way around? In our present situation, the media are multiplying at a rate beyond our capacity to either monitor or engage, yet people are creatively opening up new possibilities regardless of what we scholars are doing.1 Tese articles challenge us not only to update or even develop theologies of music, but also to rethink the perennial questions at the interface of gospel and culture, except now transposed into the digital age. Our foremothers and forefathers in the Afropentecostal movement were at the

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See, for example, Mark W. Lewis, Te Diffusion of Black Gospel Music in Postmodern Denmark: How Mission and Music are Combining to Affect Christian Renewal (Lexington, KY.: Emeth Press, 2010).

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forefront of developments in the arena of music two generations ago,2 so we should see these new mediations as occasions for further reflection at this juncture.

Last but not least: race! Tis remains an exceedingly important topic even more than fifteen years after the “Memphis Miracle.” Tese essays present a glimpse into contemporary pentecostalism from a variety of standpoints within the black pentecostal, charismatic, and neopentecostal movements. Tey also invite ongoing reflection on the racial dimensions of that contempo- rary pentecostal experience that goes beyond black-and-white, as important as the black-and-white issues remain. How sustainable is the traditional pentecostal response — which crosses the white-black color line, as these essays show — that the way to overcome historic racism is simply “Jesus!”? Do global perspectives that have themselves been purged through the fires of the colonial legacy have anything to add to this issue?

Our intention is not be provocative for its own sake but to allow space to continue the important conversations initiated by Estrelda Alexander in her presidential address to the Society for Pentecostal Theology.3 What is important to note about these four sets of issues — which do not even begin to exhaust what Walton and his associates have presented for our consideration — is that they really cannot be segregated, as enumerated above. Rather, these are all intertwined aspects of the reality of contemporary neopentecostalism, especially as refracted through the prism of black pentecostal and charismatic communi- ties of North America. To engage with any of these matters will require that we keep these other dimensions in mind, and this means that canned responses in one domain may be inconsistent with canned responses in the others. In the end, then, the interconnectedness of the issues may require a rethinking between, around, and even beyond the traditional liberal-conservative options. It is such re-visioning that we hope this special issue precipitates.

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Louis B. Gallien, Jr., “Crossing Over Jordan: Navigating the Music of Heavenly Bliss and Earthly Desire in the Lives and Careers of Tree Twentieth-Century African American Holiness- Pentecostal ‘Crossover’ Artists,” in Estrelda Y. Alexander and Amos Yong, eds., Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture, Religion, Race, and Ethnicity Series (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 117-38.

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Published as Estrelda Alexander, “Presidential Address 2010: When Liberation becomes Survival,” Pneuma: Te Pentecostal Theology 32:3 (2010): 337-53.

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