Interview Report

Interview Report

History

I would resist an analysis of the social impact of the Holiness and Pentecostal churches based solely on the styles of social witness that have dominated the major denominations in the past two decades. One could argue that these churches have been at their best socially, at least historically, in dealing directly with the radical dissolution of personal and family life under the pressures of oppression, personal vice, and the like. Still today the Pentecostals often have better success in dealing with problems of drug addiction and alcoholism through conversion and spiritual discipline than the supposedly more sophisticated programs launched by the government and various social agencies1. And one should not overlook the sustaining power of Pentecostal life and worship in maintaining identity and an alternative vision of reality in the face of racial and economic oppression and deprivation. The irony is that such styles and concerns are less characteristic of these churches as they rush to adopt the styles of the mainstream.

Structure/Leadership

In fact, on many social issues the Holiness and Pentecostal churches have a better historical than current record. Two Holiness bodies, the Wesleyan Methodists and the Free Methodists, were antislavery and radically reformist in their pre-Civil War founding -- and into the 20th century maintained very active “reform” committees on the district and national levels. Many turn-of-the-century Holiness bodies, archetypically the Nazarenes and the Pilgrim Holiness Church, understood their special calling to be ministry to the poor, especially those in the inner cities -- and this impulse was epitomized in the Salvation Army. And early Pentecostal church life reveals striking illustrations of racial integration -- such as whites worshiping in the black Azusa Street (Los Angeles) mission that launched the international Pentecostal revival, or integrated worship services in the south at the height of the Jim Crow era.

Such concerns are, however, largely absent today. The Holiness reform impulse is largely evaporated, and often in the recent identification with the “evangelical” world even repudiated as inappropriate for a properly “spiritual” and “evangelistic” church2. Pentecostalism as well is now sharply split along racial lines with little evidence of interaction.

A similar pattern may be discerned with regard to women. A recent NCC study found one-third of all ordained women in this country in Pentecostalism and another one-third in paramilitary groups like the Salvation Army. Had Holiness bodies been properly grouped with the latter, several hundred more women ministers would have been identified and the fact discovered that perhaps 50 per cent of all ordained women are in Holiness churches.

Ironically, the institutionalization of these churches is pulling them in the opposite direction. The Church of the Nazarene, for example, had 20 per cent women ministers at its founding, but only 6 per cent by 1973. And the Salvation Army now less consistently applies its earlier feminist principles. But there is some push among the younger generation -- partly in response to the wider feminist currents -- to reaffirm and reappropriate this heritage as both a source of role models and a ...