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| 233 13 Meeting Beyond These Shores Black Pentecostalism, Black Theology, and the Global Context Dale T. Irvin More than thirty years have passed since Leonard Lovett’s dissertation , “Black Holiness-Pentecostalism: Implications for Ethics and Social Transformation,” first appeared.1 In that work, Lovett sought to lay the groundwork for a fuller dialogue between black theology and the black Pentecostal movement. Three decades later that dialogue has still hardly begun. Over the intervening years, Pentecostalism has grown exponentially as a global movement. In the process, the significance of the African American contributions to the formation of Pentecostalism globally has been somewhat obscured, ignored, or even erased. I will not re-argue here the thesis regarding the African American origins of Pentecostalism in the United States. Suffice it to say that I am convinced of this particular historical thesis, and in this chapter will more or less assume it.2 I will also not try here to sort out the complex question of the precise relationship between American Pentecostalism and global Pentecostalism, which is a much larger question.3 Analysis of the historical relationship between the two modes of Pentecostalism has often come down to a discussion of the role of the Azusa Street Revival of 1906–09 in Los Angeles in the history of the global Pentecostal movement. One must acknowledge that Azusa Street played an important role in the emergence of Pentecostalism globally, without necessarily trying to determine the precise nature or significance of that role.4 It is important, on the other hand, to note explicitly the African American context out of which the Azusa Street experience emerged. Thanks to the historical work of Cecil M. Robeck, there can no longer be any doubt that not only William J. Seymour but the entire Azusa Street Mission and Revival that he led were fully within the Black Church tradition. Azusa Street was many things, but it was first of all a Black Church.5 We cannot truly understand or appreciate Pentecostalism as a global Christian phenomenon without understanding its 234 | Afro-Pentecostalism in Global Context deep (although not exclusive) roots in the African American religious world and in the Black Church tradition, specifically the black Holiness church tradition , of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Without such an understanding, global Pentecostalism has found itself in an identity crisis. Black theology has also undergone its own fuller global engagement over the last several decades, primarily through its sustained dialogue with other liberation theologies around the world. Black theology has had, from its inception as a discursive and self-reflective practice in the 1960s, a significant, if sometimes somewhat obscured, global identity. Black theology as a movement has also since the 1970s struggled with questions of its “identity.” The theologian Cecil Wayne Cone’s important book that responded to the work of his brother and preeminent proponent of black theology, James Hall Cone, was titled The Identity Crisis in Black Theology.6 Cecil Cone’s critique of black theology was that it had not rooted itself deeply enough in the language and practice of the Black Church. Black theology appeared to him, at least, to have depended too much on white European-American sources and thus faced a fundamental crisis regarding the blackness of its identity. The movement’s engagement with the wider global community of liberation theologies from the so-called Third World was in no small part a response to this critique. Over the three decades since Cecil Cone published his critique and Leonard Lovett sought to open a discussion, the conversation between black Pentecostalism and black theology has not been entirely silent. On the contrary in fact, in the academic world there has been a very lively engagement resulting in a rich body of work drawing these two streams together. One need only consult the works of Cheryl J. Sanders, Clarence E. Hardy, and others in this regard to see the results of the conversation.7 Nevertheless, these academic efforts have not had a great deal of impact on the life of black churches. This is especially true for black Pentecostals. While a number of black Pentecostal scholars have been engaged directly with black theology, taking the latter movement forward in significant directions, black Pentecostal churches as a whole have not always embraced these efforts. Of course, this has not been universally true. One can point to a number of churches or church leaders whose identities were forged in a black Pentecostal context and who have embraced...

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