contextualizes our understanding and experience of God, so should theo-
logians recognize culture as providing the same diverse contextualization
for our theology. Culture, like creation, should not merely be taken for
granted—it must be cultivated in service to God. Oliverio states:
The hermeneutical task is not only to recognize that culture provides the
context for interpretation but also that it provides both the venue for God’s
revelation and the place of constructive interpretive action to better cultivate
the world. 77
For Oliverio’s project, language is the framing medium for this herme-
neutics. The diversity of tongues in Acts 2, by communicating the same
Gospel message in various modes on the day of Pentecost, indicated the
global character of Christianity. Pentecostal hermeneutics, therefore, must
embrace this connection between the translated/ing nature of Christianity
and God’s diverse creation/culture. He concludes:
This means that Christianity is an inclusive faith, one that relinquished
Jerusalem as its center and has continually enculturated itself anew, despite
obstacles to doing so. That global pentecostalism has emerged as one of
the largest constituencies among the Christian communions of the world
demonstrates its power to adapt with expedience. This does not mean that
Christianity has no essence; rather, the translatability of Christianity is based
on the theological claim that it is a potentially universal religion, that it
somehow can speak to the human condition no matter where or how it has
been cultivated. 78
Oliverio’s claim that Christianity is a faith without obligation to a particu-
lar cultural or ideological center resonates with Long’s attempt at decen-
tering a European worldview that monopolizes both the exegesis and the
exegetes of Christian theology. Oliverio’s assertion about the translat-
ability of Christianity also mirrors a concern posed by Josiah Young in
his attempt to construct the outlines of a theology that takes black cul-
ture seriously, one “unvitiated by oppressive values.” 79 Young situates his
discussion about the translatability of Christianity using the concepts of
acculturation (the indigenous effort by a people to make Christianity their
own) and inculturation (the reality of the changes that a culture experi-
ences at the hand of Christianity), concluding “Without inculturation,
African theology is not Christian; without acculturation, Christian theology
is not African .” 80
PENTECOSTAL HERMENEUTICS AND RACE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH... 243
