organization’s mission being subordinated to larger cultural currents and
confl icts regarding missional identity. Given early Pentecostalism’s place in
time, if it was to escape the Jim Crow dynamics of the era, the movement
as a whole—not just a minority—should have codifi ed and encouraged
these multicultural ideals in the structural and theological statements and
goals that accompanied the movement.
An example of this intentionality can be found in the principle of non-
racism that Peter J. Paris fi nds at the heart of black religion, succinctly
stated as “the parenthood of God and the kinship of all peoples.” 54 Paris
fi nds the black Christian tradition standing in stark contrast to the Western
Christian tradition, with the former advocating a “biblical anthropology
which they believe strongly affi rms the equality of all persons under God
regardless of race or any other natural quality.” 55 This fundamental norm
of equality allows the black Church to discern, critique, and contest the
inherent contradiction governing white Christianity: “the contradiction
between this biblical understanding of humanity and the practices of the
white churches” in their advocacy of a “worldview that is both morally
and religiously false.” 56 This spirit of equality within the black Church
could have remained a mere sentimental aspiration. However, for Paris,
this would have undermined the principle itself. He avers:
The black Christian tradition became institutionalized in the independent
black churches. Prior to their emergence, the desire and quest for freedom,
together with their concomitant resistance to slavery and racism, had no
enduring public form. The principle of freedom and equality of all persons
under God is not an abstract idea but a normative condition of the black
churches, wherein all who participate can experience its reality. That is to
say, the institutionalization of this principle in the black churches reveals its
empirical status. 57
Accordingly, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the world’s old-
est black Protestant denomination, adopted as its initial motto the phrase
“God our Father, Christ our Redeemer, Man our Brother” 58 to underscore
its commitment to the universal kinship of all human beings—a direct
challenge to the social and religious hierarchicalism of the early nineteenth
century. Furthermore, the AME Social Creed (read at the 1936 quadren-
nial conference of the AME Church) explicitly contained several state-
ments affi rming the denomination’s commitment to racial equality. 59
PENTECOSTAL HERMENEUTICS AND RACE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH... 239
