Scripting Pentecost

A Study of Pentecostals, Worship and Liturgy

Mark J. Cartledge, A.J. Swoboda, Mark J. Cartledge, A.J. Swoboda

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317058656
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

Scripting Pentecost explores and develops an analysis of worship and liturgy in Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions. Organized into three main sections, history, theology, and contemporary practice, the first section quarries the historical trajectories of classic Pentecostalism, the Charismatic movement, Third-Wave, and Oneness Pentecostalism. Particular attention is given to the liturgical approaches of some of the earliest leaders, including William J. Seymour, Alexander Boddy, and Aimee Semple McPherson. The second section, constructive theology, offers theological approaches to liturgical studies from Pentecostal and Charismatic perspectives. In this section the Pentecostal and Charismatic tradition is advanced and extended by an interaction with ecumenical sources. The third section, case studies in contemporary worship theology and practice, examines the actual performance of liturgy through selected global case studies chosen to reflect a diversity of ecclesial practice in Africa, Asia, Europe, North America, Latin America and Oceania.

Part I
History and theology

1
“New voices”

Pentecostal preachers in North America, 1890–1930

Leah Payne

“Proud, well-dressed preachers come in to ‘investigate.’ Soon their high looks are replaced with wonder, then conviction comes, and very often you will find them in a short time wallowing on the dirty floor, asking God to forgive them and make them as little children.”¹

Introduction

From their inception in 1901, Pentecostal preachers were convinced that they were doing and experiencing something entirely new. “A new dispensation is dawning upon us,” claimed one Pentecostal journal in 1908.² They spoke of their call to ministry as the “new work” that the Holy Spirit was doing. Even familiar tasks like reading the bible were changed for Pentecostal practitioners. “The Bible becomes a new book,” wrote Azusa Street Revivalists in 1907, “to those baptized with the Holy Ghost.”³ Pentecostal preaching was no different. “Many have received the gift of singing as well as speaking in the inspiration of the Spirit,” claimed first-generation Pentecostals. “The Lord is giving new voices.”⁴

Pentecostal preachers were not the first inhabitants of the New World to claim that God was doing a novel thing through their voices. Indeed, North American religionists are known for their innovation and creativity.⁵ This chapter argues that first- and second-generation North American Pentecostal preachers performed in a way that was simultaneously innovative and derivative. Early Pentecostal preachers borrowed holiness theology and revivalist practices and combined them in innovative – and often peculiar – ways. In spite of (or perhaps because of) their particularities, Pentecostal preachers, initially derided, went on to influence celebrity preachers of all denominational affiliations in North America.

Methodology and scope

In this essay I will analyze North American Pentecostal preachers through accounts from Pentecostal magazines, newsletters, and journals from the years 1890–1930, which includes holiness preachers who eventually became Pentecostal and the first two generations of the Pentecostal movement. While they were not great record keepers when it came to detailing liturgical practices or church polity and policy, North American Pentecostals were superb self-promoters. Almost immediately after experiencing what they called a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Pentecostals started advertising their experiences in periodicals such as the Azusa Street Revival’s The Apostolic Faith, the Church of God in Christ’s The Whole Truth, the Assemblies of God’s The Latter Rain Evangel, the Association of Pentecostal Assemblies’ The Bridegroom’s Messenger, and many more.⁶

The Pentecostal knack for telling their story to the masses is perhaps one reason why Pentecostalism produced a large number of celebrity preachers and why celebrity preachers had so much influence in the movement. In addition, celebrity Pentecostal preachers were often itinerant: Maria Woodworth-Etter, William H. Durham, Carrie Judd Montgomery, Charles Price, and Aimee Semple McPherson spoke to national (and sometimes international) audiences. This itinerancy put them in direct contact with a broad swath of Pentecostals. Because of their influence and because of the fact that there are records available of their performances, analysis of celebrity preachers gives insight into the launch and design of the movement.

I will examine the performances of these celebrity preachers as ritualized acts. In her work on ritual and performance, Catherine Bell defines ritualized acts as performances that give participants the notion that what they are experiencing is significant in some way.⁷ Bell also argues ritualized acts are employed strategically to create, maintain, and organize power relationships.⁸ As the emcee of North American Pentecostal worship services, the preacher, through his or her actions, did more than any other single person to create the impression that Pentecostal worship services were significant. Although sermons are what one typically associates with the preacher, several additional acts fell under the preacher’s purview including the offertory, divine healing, altar calls, and more. These liturgical elements created an otherworldly experience for Pentecostals that defined the movement and preachers were responsible for and empowered by their ability to create a ritualized sense of “heavenly intoxicating fullness.”⁹

North American Pentecostal preachers engaged in an extremely complex, multi-layered task. Through their sermons, altar calls, prayers for divine healing, and prayers for the baptism of the Holy Spirit, preachers and their congregants were (and are) continually negotiating issues of theology and practice as well as gender, race, class, etc. during the preaching moment.¹⁰ Because of this fact, this chapter does not seek to offer an exhaustive account of Pentecostal preachers. Neither does this chapter seek to parse out all theological strands present within the act, of which there are many. Rather, the modest goal of this chapter is to situate early Pentecostal preachers in their practical and historical context and to examine the trajectory of their preaching.

Pentecostal preachers and North American Protestantism

Pentecostal preachers presided over what might be considered the movement’s first contribution to the Christian tradition: Pentecostal worship services. In its first two generations (1890–1930),¹¹ Pentecostalism did not produce a large number of thinkers known and respected in mainstream theological circles.¹² In fact, early generations of Pentecostals were largely left out of the fundamentalist–modernist controversy, which was for all intents and purposes the popular Protestant theological issue of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.¹³ Nor did Pentecostals revolutionize church polity or articulate a distinct version of ecclesial ethics; for the most part, their churches were organized and governed in ways similar to their holiness or Wesleyan counterparts. Rather, Pentecostal preachers, through their noteworthy performances, created distinctive revival experiences for practitioners.

Pentecostals were not the only Protestants interested in preaching in the early twentieth century. Most North American Protestants were very concerned with proper preaching techniques. The large number of preaching manuals produced in the era attests to the preoccupation with preaching well.¹⁴ As could be expected, there were many different opinions as to what made for good preaching and a good preacher, but for many Protestants of the era, opinions about what made for a good preacher were split according to liberal–fundamentalist tastes.¹⁵

The liberal–fundamentalist divide in North American Protestantism dominated the theological landscape of early twentieth-century Protestantism.¹⁶ It began when the academic science of biblical study, known as “higher criticism,” trickled down from German-influenced seminaries into American ministerial circles.¹⁷ Those who embraced higher critical approaches to the scriptures were given the moniker “modernist” or “liberal.” Modernist theologians and biblical scholars applied scientific principles to the bible and then began reevaluating its historicity and authority for modern readers. For example, liberal preachers such as Harry Emerson Fosdick argued that because the creation account in Genesis clashed with the theory of evolution, the creation account was meant to be read metaphorically rather than literally.¹⁸

The modernist notion that the bible included errors enraged conservative scholars. John Gresham Machen, professor of New Testament at Princeton Seminary, led a conservative backlash against higher critical forms of biblical and theological study and called for a return to the “absolutely fundamental” Christian doctrines.¹⁹ Soon, many other conservative voices joined Machen and set out to articulate the fundamentals of the faith and with that, fundamentalism was born. A chief tenant of the movement was that the bible was inspired by God and as a product of God, the bible did not include any human mistakes.²⁰ Another key belief was that the bible was meant to be interpreted “literally”;²¹ fundamentalists believed modernist metaphorical readings were theologically bankrupt.

The rift between these two competing intellectual movements eventually split nearly every mainline denomination in American Protestantism. It also created several other splinter denominations and colleges and universities. For the most part, fundamentalists left to create their own schools and denominations and liberals retained what was left of the existing institutions.

With so much acrimony between the two groups, it is not surprising that liberals and fundamentalists disagreed when it came to what made for quality preaching and quality preachers. For most mainline Protestants, preachers were made through seminary education and official ordination. Good preaching depended upon the preacher’s ability to present a rational, respectable, modern version of Christianity that appealed to the intellect as well as the heart. “When he stands on a platform, his body tense, dynamic, his wavy hair brushed back, his heavy-lidded eyes gleaming,” wrote Time Magazine of liberal Protestant preaching celebrity Harry Fosdick, “then his audience, whether it be Baptist, Presbyterian or lay, knows well that here is a leader that knows his business – his mind.”²² Preaching stars like Fosdick were known as public intellectuals who could translate modernist theology in a compelling, even “electric,” manner.²³ Fosdick’s primary aim was to appeal to the “younger generation” of American Protestantism.²⁴ “As I plead thus for an intellectually hospitable, tolerant, liberty-loving church,” preached Fosdick, “I am, of course, thinking primarily about this new generation.”²⁵

For fundamentalists, a solid understanding of the scriptures and a preacher’s ability to war against the supposedly unorthodox modernist teachings (like those of Fosdick) was key. Conservatives like Billy Sunday and fundamentalists like J. Frank Norris were known for their biblical knowledge and their ability to preach with aggression and power against the liberals. “Nowadays we think we are too smart to believe in the Virgin birth of Jesus, and too well educated to believe in the resurrection,” preached Sunday against the modernists. “All we know about heaven and salvation is in the Bible.”²⁶ Sunday was known for his knack for preaching with “word bullets with his Gatling gun which grew almost white with heat at times.”²⁷

Pentecostals shared more of an affinity with fundamentalists than modern-ists, but they did not necessarily have the same criteria for determining what made a good preacher.²⁸ This was due in part to the fact that, in the early years of the movement, Pentecostals were not highly inv...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Part I History and theology
• 1 “New voices” Pentecostal preachers in North America, 1890–1930
• 2 The Welsh Revival and the Azusa Street Revival Liturgical connections, similarities and development
• 3 Classical Pentecostal liturgy Between formalism and fanaticism
• 4 An ever-renewed renewal Fifty years of Charismatic worship
• 5 A theology of sung worship
• 6 Pentecostal sacramentality and the theology of the altar
• 7 Saving liturgy (Re)imagining Pentecostal liturgical theology and practice1
• Part II Global case studies
• 8 God is doing something new A North American liturgical experience
• 9 Pentecostal worship practices in Europe
• 10 Ritual and spirituality in Kenyan Pentecostalism
• 11 Hybridity among the Chin of Myanmar
• 12 Bi-modal rhythms of celebration in Venezuela
• 13 Worship among the Binandere of Papua New Guinea
• Bibliography
• Author/name index