grand narrative of oppression that had to be exposed and dismantled” 41
by an “unrelenting critique of whiteness as a destructive social identity.” 42
R ACE, HERMENEUTICS, AND EARLY PENTECOSTALISM
While Jacobsen laments the loss of the animating spirit of racial equality
that vivifi ed the halcyon days of Azusa, he also paints a portrait of early
twentieth-century race relations that made it hard to realistically imagine
a different outcome:
In historical perspective, it is hard to see how things could really have turned
out differently. The pentecostal movement came into existence at the height
of the Jim Crow era and it would have been an act of stunning moral cour-
age for pentecostals, especially those in the South, to have taken a consistent
stand against the racism of the culture. 43
The issue at this juncture, therefore, is to evaluate the extent to which “this
declension was a theological failure as well as a moral failure.” 44 What spe-
cifi c hermeneutical moves might have allowed early white Pentecostalism
the opportunity to provide a communal narrative that countered the racial
dynamics of most denominations and religious movements of the era?
One of the problems that affl icted early Pentecostalism was the fact that
racial justice was never the exigent issue in white Christian communities
that it was within black Christian communities. This is not to deny the
reality that the diversity of Pentecostal gatherings was celebrated—in fact,
one would be hard-pressed to fi nd a comprehensive account of Azusa-
era meetings without reading about how “[w]hites, blacks, Hispanics,
and people from many nations worshiped together at the Azusa Street
Mission side by side, arm in arm, hand in hand.” 45 However, such ref-
erences were incidental to the more pressing concern of validating the
Pentecostal distinctives that separated them from their fundamentalist and
Holiness counterparts. The diversity of the Azusa Street revival was not
seen primarily as an impetus to agitate for a new, just social order, but as a
confi rmation of the spectacular supernatural outpourings that were occur-
ring, a “sign of God’s presence.” 46 Racial diversity, therefore, was instru-
mentalized in service to the broader theological agenda of the nascent
movement. Pentecostals conceived of the new phenomena in their midst
as the promised outpouring of the Spirit of God, which was supposed to
be attended by “wonders in the heavens and on the earth.” 47 Given the
PENTECOSTAL HERMENEUTICS AND RACE IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH... 237
