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29
Some Personal Reflections
on Pentecostalism
Harvey
G.
Cox,
Jr.*
When I attended the annual
meeting
of the
Society
for Pentecostal Studies
(SPS),
held last fall in Springfield,
Missouri,
I was welcomed at least as
warmly
as the
younger
son in the
parable
who had decided to forsake the husks for the more
satisfying
fare of his father’s table. I felt genuinely
included.
Still,
I could also see that some of the members had a little
difficulty hiding
their astonishment that the author of The Secular
City,
and a
long
time member of the
faculty
of Harvard Divinity School,
should
appear
at an SPS
gathering,
and one held at the main
seminary
of the Assemblies of God at that. But when I explained–quite truthfully–that
I had not come to
give
a
paper
but to listen and
learn,
no one seemed
surprised.
Pentecostals
recognize
that there is something
fascinating,
to insiders and outsiders
alike,
about their
burgeoning global
movement.
They know it has an
engrossing history
and a
complex
and
intriguing theology,
and
they
know that the role it has
recently begun
to
play
on the
global religious
scene makes it
impossible
to
ignore. Further,
I sensed that
they
know their movement is now
finding
its way through a wrenching
transition and that candid conversation between reflective insiders and
sympathetic
outsiders is now more
important
than ever. Still,
I can understand
why
some Pentecostals
might
be
puzzled by my interest. Allow me to
explain.
I have now
spent
almost
thirty years teaching
at Harvard
University, in both the
Divinity
School and in the
Religious
Studies
Program
of the Faculty
of Arts and Sciences. I have also
taught
in the Moral
Reasoning division of the Harvard
undergraduate
core curriculum where I offered a course for several
years
on Jesus that attracted enormous enrollments,
often six or seven hundred students.
During
these
very rewarding years, however,
I have come to realize what
might
seem quite obvious,
that when
you
teach
theology
and
religion nowadays
in most universities
you study mainly
other
people’s
ideas and experiences.
You
investigate
the
history
of
religions, comparative religion,
the
scriptures
of the world,
maybe
the
psychology
of
religion. This is
perhaps
as it should be. Few universities are
equipped
to
help students enter into a mystical
quest
for their own
spiritual
center.
Also, in order to avoid
myopia
and
provincialism, any truly
educated
person must be familiar with what has been
taught
and
experienced
in
past ages
and
by
other
peoples,
both in one’s own
spiritual
tradition and in the others.
Harvard *Harvey
G.
Cox, Jr.,
is Victor S. Thomas Professor of Divinity at the
Divinity School, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
1
30
But there is a downside to this second-hand
consumption
of
religion. As
Ralph
Waldo Emerson
eloquently
warned a
gathering
at Harvard Divinity
School in
1838,
the
danger
of a steady diet of other
people’s s religion
is that it can often
dry up
one’s own resources.
Ideas,
which can be
very secondary,
can take the
place
of experience, which must in some
way
be
personal.
I have sensed this
danger acutely during my years
as a teacher
and–perhaps
also as the result of an inclination that started in
my boyhood–have
felt
personally
drawn to those
religions which
major
in the “affections” rather than in doctrines. I am sure this experiential
orientation is one of the
things
that has
sparked my
recent interest in Pentecostalism.
My lifelong propensity
for the kinetic does not mean that I have no appetite
for the
philosophies
and doctrines of religion. On the
contrary, my hunger
is so voracious I can never devour
enough
of them. But this is just the
point.
It is
precisely my daily
immersion in the
fascinating formulations that make
up
the world of
theological
studies which causes
my personal religious
inclinations to wander
elsewhere,
and to ask time and time
again,
what
experience,
what encounter with the numinous,
lies behind and beneath this or that
theology?
This
experiential disposition
no doubt also traces back to
my
earliest encounter with the transcendent
which, though clearly
called forth
by the narratives and
images
of
my
own
evangelical Baptist church,
was never contained or exhausted
by them.
I could sense the
presence
of the great mystery
not
only
in
my
own
church,
but also in the Nazarene church at the
edge
of
town,
in St. Patrick’s down the
block,
and in the local African Methodist
Episcopal congregation.
The result is that during my
lifetime I have encountered the transcendent in many guises, in a variety of
holy places,
and
through
a number of different modes of worship.
I have sat in meditation for
back-breaking
hours with Zen monks, prayed
with
my
face toward Mecca with
Muslims, puffed
on a feathered
peacepipe
with Sioux
holy men,
and felt the
warming
fire in Hindu
temples.
I have
always gravitated
toward
experiential religion, but I have never
forgotten
that it was
through
a personal experience of Christ that I first came into the
presence
of the Divine
Spirit.
Given this pattern
of life
trajectories,
it was
probably
inevitable that one
day
I would
develop
a
strong
interest in
Pentecostalism,
the
experiential branch of
Christianity par
excellence.
Still,
however natural
my
interest in Pentecostalism seems to
me,
I can see
why
for some
people
there
might appear
to be innumerable counter-indications. Was I at the SPS as the
prodigal
son or as a wolf in
sheep’s clothing?
After
all,
I am the
theologian
who once wrote somewhat
favorably
about the
positive
side of
secularization,
even claiming
that it was in some measure a product of the
impact
of biblical religion
on
society. Although
I was never one of the “death of God” theologians–a
media-created
blip
I
stoutly opposed during
its
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31
short-lived
heydey
in the 1960s–I
felt,
and still
feel,
that it did make a contribution to
Christianity by demolishing
some outmoded and oppressive images
of God. It was useful iconoclasm. In more recent years
I have been
rightly
identified as
part
of the liberation
theology movement which
supports vigorous
Christian
participation
in social change.
At first
sight,
none of these
previous,
and
ongoing, phases
in
my work seem
compatible
with what most
people
think Pentecostalism is about. Is Pentecostalism not a movement which
rejects
the modem secular world as a realm of irredeemable evil from which all true Christian should
separate
themselves? Would not most Pentecostals view
any
talk about the death of God as the worst sort of
blasphemy? And,
when
they
do risk
any
involvement in the
political order,
do not Pentecostals
usually
end
up supporting
the most
reactionary positions?
My
recent
reading
and more intimate involvement with Pentecostalism has
persuaded
me that the answers to these
questions are not as obvious as some
people
think
they
are. In
fact,
I am
prepared to
argue
that it is
precisely
a certain Christian down-to-earth “this-worldliness”–Christian
secularity,
if
you
will–that makes Pentecostalism so attractive to so
many
millions of people today. I also believe that some of the ideas of the “death-of-God”
theologians,
such as their
emphasis
on the
experience
of radical
immanence,
the
rejection of traditional
ecclesially
mediated
images
of
God,
and their sense that we stand at the threshold of a new
spiritual era–although they
often expressed
them in
hyperbolic language–are
also articulated in a
quite different idiom in Pentecostalism.
Finally,
I believe that
Pentecostalism, and the
global upsurge
of
spirituality
it represents, may in the
long
run have a
considerably
more
radical,
even
revolutionary, impact
than liberation
theology
can. At its
best,
Pentecostalism attacks not
only
the demonic
political
and economic
systems
that
keep
God’s children in cruel
bondage,
but the core of distorted values and
misshapen worldviews that sustains these
oppressive
structures.
For a number of
years
now I have been
catching up
on Pentecostal history, reading
the
theology
and
visiting
Pentecostal churches whenever I can. As I have
worshipped
in these churches I have found that while some Pentecostals do indeed
personify
the narrow zeal popular judgment
attributes to
them,
most do not. But I also believe there is
something
far more
important
to be said about them. On a global basis,
Pentecostals
incorporate
into their
worship patterns
the insights
and
practices
of other faiths–shamanic
trance, healing,
ancestor veneration–more than
any
other Christian movement I know
of,
albeit frequently
without
realizing
it.
Pentecostalism,
I have come to
believe, is “catholic” and universal in a way most Pentecostals do not
recognize and
many might
even
deny.
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32
personally. Intellectually,
because diverse and
competing religions, smashing
other
people’s temples,
For me this
discovery
was an
important
one both
intellectually
and
I believe that in a shrunken world of
where fanatics take
delight
in we
desperately
need
spiritual
I am afraid that due
movements that include instead of
excluding.
But
to both the historical constraints
they
have inherited and the
contempt with which
they
have often been
viewed,
Pentecostals could
easily forfeit this
unifying spiritual gift they
could
bring
to a fractious and hateful world. This would be a serious loss for
everyone.
The immediate occasion for
my presence
at the SPS was a program of
teaching
and research that Professor Eldin Villafane of Gordon-Conwell
Theological Seminary
and I have undertaken in the Boston area. Professor
Villafane,
the author of The Liberating Spirit, is also the founder
and,
until
recently,
the director of the Center for Urban
A native of Puerto
Rico,
and an ordained minister in the Assemblies of
God,
Dr. Villafane has become one of the
principal
voices in the field of urban
ministry.
We had offered courses in that field
together before,
but last
year
we ventured
and
taught
Ministerial Education in Boston.
into somewhat new
territory “Pentecostalism and Liberation.” not learned in
many years Springfield
course
discussion,
a seminar It was to
compensate
together
on for what I had
social
theology.
We
agreed
about Pentecostalism that I came to
for what I
hoped
would
be,
and
was,
a crash
make-up
on the
subject.
The seminar Villafane and I offered was
jointly
listed
by Harvard, Gordon-Conwell and the Center for Urban Ministerial Education. It seemed natural for us to work on it
together
since I
regularly
offer courses on the liberation
theologies
at
Harvard,
and Villafane’s book makes an
eloquent
case for a Pentecostal
that we would
cooperate
in
choosing
the books and articles for
would share
equally
in the
lectures,
and would
respond
to each other
candidly,
thus
creating
an
open exchange
that would also help
the students to break
through
the
stereotypes
and formulas that have sometimes
kept
Pentecostals and advocates of liberation
theology at odds. We built in a field
component consisting
of three well
prepared site visits to Pentecostal churches in the Boston
area,
one each from the
Latino, Anglo
and African-American would admit fifteen students
tradition. We also
agreed
that we
through
the GCTS/CUME route and another fifteen from the
Divinity
School and the other divisions of Harvard in order to assure a proper mix.
Interest in the course was
high.
More than twice as
many
students than the
thirty
we
planned
for tried to enroll. With considerable
regret we turned them
away
because we knew that brisk discussion and useful site visits
required
a smaller
group.
We had
expected,
of
course,
that most of the Pentecostals in the class would come
through
the GCTS/CLTME
route,
but to our
surprise,
when the course
appeared
in
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33
the Harvard
catalog,
several Pentecostal students from both the Divinity
School and other
parts
of the
university
asked to take it. It was the
recognition
facilitated
by
this inclusion in the
catalog,
one of the students told
me,
that had
inspired
him to “come out of the closet.” This caused me to
recognize
not
only
the
uncanny power
of the curriculum to define what is real and
important,
but that the
suspicion and
disapprobation
that have
dogged
Pentecostals
throughout
their history
are still
present
in academic circles. As far as I can
tell,
this was the first course ever
given
on Pentecostalism in the entire
history
of Harvard
Divinity
School.
The course was a
roaring success,
one of the liveliest and most productive
I have ever
participated
in. Men and women students from several different Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal
churches;
from Afiica, Asia,
Latin America and the
US;
and
representing black, hispanic
and asian and white cultures took
part.
It was
probably
the most
cosmopolitan
class
meeting anywhere
at Harvard that term. We did not
try
to avoid controversial
questions,
but
plunged
into issues of eschatology,
ecstatic
worship, healing, gender
and
race,
biblical interpretation
and
public policy.
We benefited from
superb guest presentations by
David
Daniels,
Pablo Politchuk and Edith Blumhofer. We sorted out our observations at the site visits. We read some books and articles
by
liberation
theologians
and
analyzed
material both
by Pentecostal scholars and
by
critical historians and social scientists. Throughout
the course Villafane and I
engaged
each other in intense but
friendly dialogue
and
provided opportunities
for the students to do the same. We ended the semester with a festive Christmas
dinner,
music led
by guitar, keyboard
and vocals
supplied by
one of the Pentecostals whose minister was enrolled. The students wrote final
papers
on their own construction of how Pentecostalism and liberation should enrich and
challenge
each other.
It is hard to characterize the consensus that seemed to
emerge
at the end,
but there
definitely
was one. We
agreed
that whereas Pentecostalism needed to
develop
a more
penetrating approach
to systemic evil,
liberationist need to nurture the sense of
personal empowerment
Pentecostals
bring
to
hopeless
and destitute
peoples.
We agreed
that
despite
some of its initial
prophetic power,
American Pentecostalism had lost some of its critical
cutting edge
on issues of corporate evil, war,
racial
justice
and
gender
inclusiveness. We
agreed that,
in different
ways,
both Pentecostalism and liberation
theologies had demonstrated a
“preferential option
for the
poor”
but we did not always agree
on what
strategy
that
option requires.
Dr. Villafane and I will offer another course next
year together
on Pentecostalism. I look forward to
continuing
the conversation and I am grateful
for the
opportunity
since so few of
my scholarly colleagues
are interested in the
subject,
and I had met so few Pentecostals–until I
5
34
attended the SPS–who were interested in
dialogue. Still,
it is
surely true that
vigorous dialogue
can
only help
Pentecostals to reclaim their essential
identity.
As a
sympathetic
fellow
traveler,
I
hope they
do. In these recent
years
I have
developed
a
genuine
fondness for the movement,
and I know how much the world needs its
message
and its spirit.
But there is cause for
genuine
concern. In
America,
most white Pentecostals have become
terribly
comfortable with “this world.”
They started out as a faith that
brought hope
to the
rejects
and the losers. Today
some of their most visible
representative
have become ostentatiously
rich.
They
started out as a rebellion
against
creeds.
Today many
of their
preachers cling doggedly
to such
recently
invented dogmas
as the verbal
inerrancy
of the Bible.
They
started out
teaching that the
signs
and wonders that took
place
in their
congregations
were not some kind of
spectral
fireworks but
harbingers
of God’s new
day. Today
some Pentecostals have become so obsessed with the
techniques of
rapture
that
they
have
forgotten
the
original message. They
started out as radical
antagonists
of the
status-quo, refusing
to
fight
the
bloody wars of this fallen
age. Many
have now turned into
flag-waving super-patriots, easy
marks for the
demagogues
of the new
religious right. They
started out as a
radically
inclusive
spiritual fellowship
in which race and
gender
discrimination
virtually disappeared.
That is hardly
the
case,
at least in most white Pentecostal churches
today.
But I have not
given up hope.
In fact what
impressed
me most about the
people
I met at the SPS was not just their
openness
to
dialogue
but also their commitment to rescue their own movement from the distortions it has
suffered, especially
in recent
years.
What I found there was an
expanding company
of
young
Pentecostal leaders who are determined not to barter the
power
of their remarkable movement for a questionable
batch of
currently popular religious
and
political slogans. They
are determined not to lose touch with the
poor
and disinherited with whom
they
started out. And
they
are determined that the
Holy City,
seen of John, which has been so central to their vision for so
long, will not remain forever a dream.
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