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While I was researching and writing my book on Latino Pentecostals and working on my latest project, on evangelical youth culture, I was often peppered with questions from fellow Pentecostals. Why was I writing? Who was my audience? Was I a believer myself? Only when these questions had been answered--and the subjects were satisfied that I was not a hostile, secular academic--was I able to continue my research. But that didn't completely lay their fears to rest. The questions I was asking in my research rarely called for answers that validated faith; instead, they called for nuanced self-examination. I found many of my subjects either unprepared or unwilling to engage in that exercise. Such questions often heightened their suspicion of me, an academic trained at an Élite secular university, to the point where one informant asked me about my supposed quandary: "That must be hard, sister, to be a believer and be analytical." When I answered her, she appeared dissatisfied because I did not reflect enough tension with that false dichotomy; I did not wrestle sufficiently with my roles as a researcher and a believer.
My colleagues in the SPS agree that the anti-intellectualism of our Pentecostal forebears is still alive and well, but place equal blame on a perceived theological bias at evangelical presses. Some shared stories of their rejected manuscripts and slights so offensive that they were reluctant to go on the record with them for this article. Most scholars agree that evangelical presses do not seem interested in having Pentecostals write for their academic divisions because they view Pentecostal theology as inferior.
One notable dissenter was Vanguard University's Frank Macchia, director of the Graduate Program in Religion. Macchia told me he believes that Pentecostal scholarship is beginning to find a niche in evangelical academic publishing, citing Zondervan as one receptive press. He suggested that evangelicals are increasingly interested in distinctively Pentecostal understandings of the Holy Spirit's role in salvation: "A fully Trinitarian theology that recognizes the unique economy of the Spirit has become very attractive for many evangelicals in the current theological and ecumenical climate." Macchia sees opportunities for evangelical, Orthodox, and Pentecostal scholars to work together, engaging in conversations across theological lines.
But most Pentecostal scholars are not so optimistic. Cheryl Bridges Johns, professor of theology at Church of God Seminary, wonders whether evangelical presses have any interest in Pentecostal scholarship beyond Pentecostalism as a sociological phenomenon. She noted that Pentecostal scholars have taken to publishing their own works through cooperative arrangements with presses like Sheffield Press, which publishes monographs in tandem with Johns' seminary. Johns also quoted Marx to explain how Pentecostals have "internalized their own oppression." They have begun to believe their own bad publicity, she argued, and that has affected their productivity and their confidence that they can publish at a high level of academic sophistication. Implicit in Johns' reply is that Pentecostal scholars need to commit to an ambitious writing and research agenda.
I contacted several major evangelical presses and trade organizations in order to determine if what I had heard from my SPS colleagues was at all accurate. I also took a trip to my local Christian bookstore to see where Pentecostal books are placed and how they are categorized. I contacted InterVarsity Press, Eerdmans, Baker Book House, Tyndale House, the Christian Booksellers Association, and the Evangelical Press Association, and asked them if they kept track of the denominational or faith-tradition background of their authors. None of them did. The reasons I received for this varied from a lack of interest to the work involved in creating yet another database.
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