In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

394 l Evangelical Protestantism WOMEN IN PENTECOSTALISM Edith Blumhofer THE STORY OF women and American Pentecostalism is at once more complex and more predictable than a cursory look at history or statistics suggests. A (very) short list of female Pentecostal preachers comes readily to mind, headed by Aimee Semple McPherson, the controversial evangelist who died in 1944. While some Pentecostal women have had prominent roles, others have understood their faith to limit their public voice. Speci fic expectations about women’s behavior and participation differ by region, ethnicity, and denomination. Deeply rooted assumptions about gender and family interact with notions of liberty in the Spirit and muddle understandings of women in ministry. To make sense of a complicated story, it is necessary to examine ideas about gender relationships in early American Pentecostalism before moving on to assess how this religious movement has shaped—and been shaped by—understandings of women in relationship to men. As Pentecostals wrestle over statements about ministering women, one New Testament passage provides a consistent subtext: “I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to remain silent” (1 Timothy 2:12, New Revised Standard Version [NRSV]). Pentecostals have pushed hard at boundaries, but in the end most defer in one way or another to these words. Other Encyclopedia essays review in depth the experiences of women in African American, Latino, and charismatic groups. This essay focuses predominantly on EuroAmerican Pentecostal denominations whose histories illuminate at once the variety and the sameness of Pentecostalism ’s place for women. Early Ethos A convenient and conventional starting place is Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1906. There Pentecostals transformed an abandoned frame building that had once been a Methodist church into a simple mission that remains the most compelling symbol of the fervor that launched the global Pentecostal movement. The name of the mission, Apostolic Faith, conveyed one primary feature of early Pentecostalism: Adherents saw themselves in continuity with the Christianity practiced in the apostolic era. The apostles spoke in tongues at the moment of baptism with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2), and so too did Pentecostals. St. Paul wrote of spiritual “utterance ” gifts (1 Corinthians 12:7–11). Pentecostals expected to exercise those gifts—tongues, prophecy, interpretation of tongues. For women, this restorationist drive held promise and peril. The same writer who as- WOMEN IN PENTECOSTALISM l 395 Florence Crawford, the feisty Holiness woman with whom early pilgrims to Azusa Street Faith Mission in Los Angeles were forced to reckon, followed a “call” to the northwest and settled in Portland, Oregon. Her self-aggrandizement and overbearing claims to spiritual authority irreparably breached her marriage. Courtesy of the Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center. serted male and female oneness in Christ (Galatians 3: 28) enjoined women’s silence in the church (1 Timothy 2:12). Recovering dimensions of apostolic experience did not, in itself, assure clarity about woman’s place. The conviction that Pentecostalism represented a divine restoration of apostolic Christianity was linked to the certainty that history was about to culminate in the return of Christ. Preoccupation with the second coming energized Pentecostals to pursue their own holiness and the world’s conversion. At first they expected that the gift of tongues would bridge language barriers and accelerate the agonizingly slow task of global evangelism. But with or without miraculous speech, they eagerly set out to spread the word: Christ was coming soon, and the Apostolic Faith restored was nothing less than Christ’s equipping the church for his return. It presaged a brief worldwide evangelistic opportunity that would usher in the end of time, and this required the energetic participation of women and men (Anderson; Blumhofer, Restoring the Faith; Wacker). Early Pentecostal services were not “typical” Protestant gatherings. Spontaneous worship and impromptu preaching broke out wherever Pentecostals gathered— at train depots, in one another’s homes, or on street corners. “Wherever we happened to meet,” Ethel Goss reminisced, whether in each other’s home or elsewhere, and whether there was a minister present or not, there was prayer, Bible reading, or singing. . . . Those baptized in the Holy Ghost lived in this atmosphere as naturally as fish live in water. Hence, there was almost no teasing or joking, no relating of amusing anecdotes. There was little of ordinary visiting. . . . We were looking for Jesus only, and we found Him! (Goss, 192–193) Reports of Pentecostal meetings at the Azusa Street mission set the ideal for some. They intimated chaotic moments, but participants insisted...

Share