Dis/parity: Blackness and the (Im)possibility of a Pentecostal (Political) Theology
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Abstract
American pentecostal political theology is not marked by a fivefold gospel, as key theologians contend, but is best understood as the justification of the color line. That term, popularized by W.E.B. Du Bois, is a theological-political term, and was invoked at Azusa Street. The color line is a spatial and racial order that is both politically and theologically inaugurated and upheld. Political theology, as such, is anti-Black. But at Azusa Street, a Black-led and interracial revival, the color line is washed away. Persons and practices excluded by the color line, and racialized as Black, reject the terms of order and generate the order’s undoing. If this undoing becomes the central interpretive grid for “pentecostal,” then the terms “pentecostal” and “Black” are read synonymously and over against political theology as terms of order. By turning to this generating mode of the Blackness of pentecostal origins, the impossibility of doing a pentecostal political theology emerges.
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| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
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Dis/parity: Blackness and the (Im)possibility of a Pentecostal (Political) Theology
In: PneumaSearch for other papers by Marlon Millner in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
American pentecostal political theology is not marked by a fivefold gospel, as key theologians contend, but is best understood as the justification of the color line. That term, popularized by W.E.B. Du Bois, is a theological-political term, and was invoked at Azusa Street. The color line is a spatial and racial order that is both politically and theologically inaugurated and upheld. Political theology, as such, is anti-Black. But at Azusa Street, a Black-led and interracial revival, the color line is washed away. Persons and practices excluded by the color line, and racialized as Black, reject the terms of order and generate the order’s undoing. If this undoing becomes the central interpretive grid for “pentecostal,” then the terms “pentecostal” and “Black” are read synonymously and over against political theology as terms of order. By turning to this generating mode of the Blackness of pentecostal origins, the impossibility of doing a pentecostal political theology emerges.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 534 | 189 | 42 |
| Full Text Views | 60 | 17 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 142 | 43 | 1 |