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Heaven Below:
Early Pentecostalism and
American Culture
Grant Wacker
Harvard, 364 pages, $35

Pentecostalism could use a PR makeover. Its image has improved, but many people still think Pentecostals are peculiar, if not somehow suspect. Let us forgo the tally of offenses, offenders, and epithets—we know them well enough. Besides, the most egregious offenders may not care what others think.

One person, however, does care about perceptions: Duke University religious studies scholar Grant Wacker. Raised in a Pentecostal home, this Methodist now has only one foot in the tent. This is as much his story as it is theirs.

On American soil, the movement was born at Charles Parham's makeshift holiness Bible college in 1901. Only after the Azusa Street revival's eruption in 1906, however, did Parham's theological innovation reach a much wider audience. That innovation was the belief that speaking in tongues (glossolalia) is the biblical evidence of Spirit baptism.

Theologically, early Pentecostals looked a lot like other mainstream evangelicals. As a whole, they believed in most orthodox tenets of the faith, from the Virgin Birth to the inspiration of Scripture. Like more radical evangelicals, however, they did go further. For instance, they tended to treat God's promise to heal like an ironclad contract. An especially popular pastime was the detailed ordering of very specific end-times events. Radical or not, orthodox beliefs did not necessarily lead to orthodox practices. The two words that most appropriately described Pentecostal meetings, says Wacker, are chaotic and deafening. It is hard to believe anyone would want to revisit a Pentecostal meeting, much less enlist. But that is exactly what they did, from a diverse array of social, ethnic, cultural, and economic backgrounds.

To get at the heart of Pentecostalism, Wacker avoids theology proper and instead listens to conversations that took place around kitchen tables (a popular metaphor among scholars to explain "lived religion"). No early leader, it seems, was excluded from those tables. And herein lies the more interesting story. When listening closely, Wacker uncovers what he believes to be the kernel, the genius, of the movement: Pentecostalism survived and flourished because it was able to hold conflicting impulses—primitivism and pragmatism, idealism and realism—in creative tension.

Few surpassed Pentecostals as primitivists. They believed they had uncovered the earliest and therefore purest (or "primitive") form of Christianity, as if 2,000 years of historical blunders and compromises had been swept aside. Where others had failed, they would succeed. They now had direct access to God through the Spirit and drank from the pure, unadulterated Word of God. This self-assurance led in many directions, including rigorous asceticism. But above all it led to an uncompromising idealism. For some devotees, "time itself seemed calibrated by divine rather than human standards." This was heaven below.

When it came to getting business done, however, Wacker assures us, these were no "bumpkins fumbling around in the modern world." No, these were "strong, determined, clear-eyed leaders." Indeed, these were revolutionaries with a message for the world and no time to spare. A hero to many was Aimee Semple McPherson, who mastered the emerging world of Hollywood-infused pop culture. In one year alone, on a barnstorming tour she spoke to over 2 million people; that translates into 2 percent of the country's population. A local pastor, denominational head, divine healer, itinerant evangelist, and radio celebrity, Sister Aimee was the first woman to own a radio operator's license. (Pentecostals embraced technology without batting an eye.) God did not care about the good old boys network, tradition, and convention. God said, "Go!"

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March 11 2002, Vol. 46, No. 3