Due to the exigencies of black life in the United States, an integration of
race and religion has always characterized black religious thought. In fact,
much of black religion has been intentional in inscribing anti-racist prin-
ciples into their practices and, especially, their hermeneutics. This essay,
drawing upon a variety of black voices in dialogue with Pentecostal schol-
ars, will look at the ways in which previous generations of Pentecostals did
not attend to a theological interpretation of culture, while imagining the
possibilities for Pentecostalism if present and future generations did. In
the next section, I will describe the broad notion of hermeneutics found
in black religious scholarship, using the work of Charles Long as a repre-
sentative model. Then, I will look at three recent projects that discuss the
tendency of early Pentecostal hermeneutics, similar to Green’s assessment
above, to focus on Biblical interpretation and the justifi cation of core
Pentecostal doctrines. Finally, I will gesture toward what a Pentecostal
hermeneutics of culture might look like.
H ERMENEUTICS IN BLACK RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
In her haunting and provocative work, Sister Outsider , Audre Lorde offers
us a principle which has resonated within cultural studies since its publica-
tion in 1984: “ For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will
never enable us to bring about genuine change.” 13 Lorde writes:
What does it mean when the tools of a racist patriarchy are used to examine
the fruits of that same patriarchy? It means that only the most narrow perim-
eters of change are possible and allowable. 14As a scholar-activist, Lorde urged a reconceptualization and renaming
of the world across disciplines, affi rming the truth of Sterling Stuckey’s
observation that “Black people have met with as great injustices from
American scholarship as they have from American life.” 15 For this reason,
black scholars of religion have seen theory as a critical site in responding
to racism.
Specifi cally, hermeneutical theory has been central for those who con-
ceive of their work in religion as concomitant with or, at least, an ally
to, racial justice. Frederick L. Ware provides a taxonomy of three rep-
resentative methodological perspectives within the academic study of
religion by black scholars: the Black Hermeneutical School, the Black
232 D.T. LOYNES