Church Realness

Chapter 7 examines ethnography of formerly gay gospel recording artist and pastor Donnie McClurkin’s sermonizing as a performance of the heteropatriarchal scripts that manage gospel enthusiasts concerns about queer(ed) musicians’ spiritual fitness and protect the social order of church leadership. Since the early 2000s, McClurkin has been regarded as the architect of the deliverance from homosexuality testimony format of communicating queer sexual history in Pentecostal worship. Men’s performance of church realness in historically black Pentecostal churches is the deployment of sung and spoken heteropresentation and gender conformity. The objective of the performance is both to blend in and to assert dominance in gospel music heteropatriarchal forums in a manner that has been socioculturally required of them.

Setting the Atmosphere

Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance intervenes into the crisis narrative of black male participation in historically black Pentecostal churches by examining the striking aural-visual performances of gender expression and sexuality as the Spirit moves upon vocalists’ bodies. By following the discourse surrounding the “flaming” choir director stereotype, I investigate the extent to which men’s unique approaches to music-making are met with spectators’ derision and queries about the extent to which their worship generates queer connotations. Participants are essentially guided by what constitutes a practice of the adage “where there is smoke, there is fire.” If there are rumors about a man’s sexual behavior or if he demonstrates queer potential, than it must be so. This perception is tied to the biblical notion that believers are to stay away from the appearance of activity and affiliations that are regarded as evil.

Emerging African American Pentecostal Sources in Public Theology

Theological authority is of paramount importance for the future of African American Pentecostal public theology. Largely ignored as authoritative sources by white Pentecostals in the years following the Azusa Street Revival, black Pentecostals were often snubbed by black denominations as well. Consequently, at the traditional table of theological discourse, black Pentecostal pastors have been notably absent. The question of theological authority in black Pentecostalism can be answered, in part, by examining its historically relevant contributions to theology in general, and to black liberation theology in particular. Early social prophetic theologians left a treasure trove of leadership hermeneutics and models for public engagement. This article highlights four pastors who left legacies built on their roles as pioneers in the black Pentecostal movement. The biographic profiles reveal sources of i) historical authority within the broad contours of the black Pentecostal tradition, and, ii). innovative hermeneutics as valid models for engaging public theology.

Migrant Churches

This chapter assesses how migratory trajectories in the twentieth century became channels of transmission of southern or eastern styles of Christianity to urban locations in the northern and western hemispheres, so that Latino/a, Chinese, Korean, and—rather later—African churches became for the first time highly visible elements enriching the tapestry of Christian life in North America and Europe. Some of these transmitted Christianities were very ancient—such as the Assyrian Church of the East. Other varieties of migrant Christianity were of much more recent origin. Those that have attracted most contemporary scholarly interest were Pentecostal in character. These include the older black Pentecostal churches that were established in Britain in the decade or so after the arrival in Britain in June of 1948 of the Empire Windrush, the first immigrant ship that transported 492 settlers from Jamaica. From the 1980s onwards, on both sides of the Atlantic, they also included African neo-Pentecostal churches, mostly of Nigerian or Ghanaian provenance. The rapid growth of West African neo-Pentecostal churches in European and American cities since the 1980s has been the subject of a host of recent sociological studies concerned to elucidate the leading role of these churches in the fashioning and sustaining of corporate identities within African migrant communities.

Black Pentecostal Hermeneutics?

This essay advances hermeneutical insights for emerging black pentecostal scholars to consider. The salient question is, “What distinguishes black Pentecostalism?” This study revisits James H. Cone’s sources for black theology for insight into the role of blackness in shaping black Pentecostalism. On the one hand, the study dispels the myth that black Pentecostalism is inherently a spiritual alternative to the fight for social justice. On the other hand, it calls for critical dialogue between Cone’s sources for black theology and black Pentecostalism to advance scholarship on the formation of black pentecostal hermeneutics. This essay explains that blackness is more than a cultural and experiential reality. Blackness is a theological source that correlates with other sources in shaping black Pentecostalism. Blackness, moreover, legitimates black pentecostal proclivities for the integration of the faith, spirituality, and social advocacy. Theological blackness in Pentecostalism has historically distinguished black Pentecostalism from subsequent white Pentecostalism.

Black Folk Religion in Black Holiness Pentecostalism

This essay seeks to understand theological rudiments embedded in traditional black Pentecostal spirituality to enhance spiritual formation in contemporary black Pentecostalism. Its conclusions contribute to a praxis-oriented discourse on the black folk religious tradition, black holiness Pentecostalism, and a contemporary ethnically diverse society in which black people continue to suffer disproportionately. The salient question is, what transformative proposals emerge from black ‘spiritual praxis’, or a conversation between black religious heritage and contemporary black America? While this essay does not attempt to draw conclusions for contemporary lived practice, it unearths jewels in black Pentecostal spirituality that deepen insight into faith formation in an increasingly diverse society wherein the dominant formational paradigms have lodged within the tunnel vision of Western categories.

Metaphor of Sound - Lee Breuer’s Gospel at Colonus

Lee Breuer’s Gospel at Colonus is an attempt to achieve a synthesis between an ancient Greek tragedy and the black Pentecostal church service, in addition to offering a mixed marriage between white and black cultural idioms. Regarding this experiment, the question is not, I believe, reducible to Breuer’s intention so much as the actual result of the work itself. Indeed, in experimenting with culturally established styles of expression, results depend on the nature of their unprecedented interaction. Therefore, hermeneutic inquiry is rather problematic and perhaps only a learned intuition is possible as a starting point. Nonetheless, I conjecture that rendering the narrative of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus through the prism of Gospel music bestows an additional metaphoric dimension on the basic metaphor embodied in the original play-script. This study aims at elucidating the nature of these metaphoric dimensions, specifically on the level of sound.

Equal Power

Charles Harrison Mason was the founder of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), which from its Memphis roots grew into the largest black Pentecostal denomination in the United States, with profound theological and political ramifications for poor and working-class black Memphians. This essay traces the origins of COGIC in Memphis; it reveals how Mason’s early black Pentecostal denomination grew, gained social and political power, and earned a permanent place in Memphis’s black religious pantheon. While analyzing how the local black and white press viewed Mason, it uncovers the significance of Mason’s religious teachings, especially his thoughts about freedom of religious expression, racial inequality, integration, gender discrimination, and appreciation of black working-class culture. The essay argues that COGIC congregants regarded Mason’s unusual religious demonstrations as embodying political protests—these rituals of resistance transformed black lives, helping to strengthen and sustain blacks fighting for freedom in segregated Memphis.