racial divisions in Pentecost

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I also subscribe to a discussion list run by members of the Apostolic
Assemblies.  Lately, a hot topic of discussion has been the presence of
racism and a lack of racial diversity in Pentecostal congregations.  The 
following letter was posted by Bro. Dan Rodriguez, by his own description
"a religious
historian, with roots in the Apostolic Assembly and some years spent in
the UPC, which church I love and in which I have loved ones."  I received
his permission to forward this to y'all.  I would just like to hear opinions
on the state of racial diversity within in the UPC and in the Pentecostal
movement as a whole and also suggestions about how we can improve our
current situation.  Please take time to read the letter in its entirety
before responding.  

Thanks,
Lisa :)

>From Bro. Dan:
Ay, 'manito, pero que preguntas estas soltando por alli!

Actually, there was just such an event here in the U.S., in the Fall of
1995.  About 200 or so African American bishops and White
superintendents from different pentecostal denominations got together
for an unprecedented meeting to discuss the racial divisions that
divide the Body of Christ, especially it's Spirit-filled
constituencies.  They invited historians in to explain how we lost the
original vision of Pentecost and Azusa Street and found ourselves stuck
in and conformed to the sad legacy of racial division that has haunted
the American experiment since before the pilgrims got off the boat.
After the historians explained what went wrong, the leaders were left
to discuss "What next?"  "Where to go from here?"  You have your
denomination.  I have mine.  You have your bishopric.  I have my
superintendency.  What do we do with these man-made structures called
denominations that we have built and in which we have invested so much
time and energy defending?

The accounts I have heard report that there was a spirit of frustrated
despondency.  No one knew what to do next.  Mankind had failed
Pentecost.  Pentecostalism's great witness to the nation had been
squandered by conforming and not transforming.  Any plan of action
seemed doomed to fail.  Human pride was an insurmountable obstacle.  No
gesture seemed to suffice.

Then the miraculous happened.  A White superintendent got up, and
walked over to a Black bishop.  Somehow he found the items he needed on
the way. He knelt in front of his brother, and weeping, begged
forgiveness for the betrayal of Azusa (and Seymour) and for the racial
pride that had kept them divided, and proceeded to wash his brother's
feet!  Reports say that a move of the Holy Ghost swept the auditorium
as the Black Bishop responded in kind, and all these important
denominational leaders fell to their feet in sorrow and repentance, and
then rose to embrace and wash one another's feet.  The worship and
speaking in tongues was celestial and palpable.My friends who were 
there quickly tagged it "The Memphis Miracle,"
after the city where it took place.  The Bishop was from the Church of
God in Christ, the largest, and mostly Black, pentecostal denomination
in the country, whose headquarters is in Memphis.  (That church, by the
way, is where Martin Luther King gave his last speech before being
assassinated--he was speaking to the striking sanitation
workers--mostly Black--of that city, who had gathered in Mason Temple.)
That beginning moment of racial reconciliation has gone on to spark
similar moves in Promise Keepers and in the Southern Baptist Convention
among others.  The White pentecostal leaders who were gathered there in
Memphis quickly dissolved the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America,
a broad coalition of pentecostals that had, since it's founding in the
1940s excluded Black churches.  They then proceeded to reconstitute a
new fellowship of interracial cooperation, and committed themselves to
work at the local, regional and national level for racial
reconciliation.

I was at a panel discussion of some of the participants later at the1996 
Society for Pentecostal Studies in Toronto, where they reported on
the events in Memphis.  There, several scholars took note of the
obvious absence of 1) Latinos, and 2) oneness pentecostals.  Everybody
recognized that is was just a beginning to a long process that only the
Spirit can see through to completion.

So, what about oneness pentecostals?  Well, thankfully, although we are
not exempt from the stain of the betrayal of Azusa's vision (White
oneness pioneers H.W. Carothers and Howard Goss, 1st UPC General
Superintendent, had a very low opinion of the theological capabilities
of Black folk, with Carothers, especially, sharing in the Charles
Parham's belief that Blacks were in all ways inferior to the Anglo
Saxon race and that the Azusa revival was just another "darkey camp
meeting" run amok), after oneness folks were kicked out of the
Assemblies of God in 1916, oneness folks tried to create anew a
multiracial fellowship, but after about a decade and a half of fits and
starts, they also succumbed to the spirit of Jim Crow. Mostly, the
Whites abandoned the Blacks, and spun off into several denominations,
principally two. The PAW tried to stay true to the universal vision of
Azusa, however, by writing into its bylaws that racism was considered a
sin, and by including a type of affirmative action for Whites in its
highest levels of leadership.

(By the way, for my class in African American Religions last semester,
I wrote a paper on "'Colored Mammies and Darkey Camp Meetings': The
Heterodoxy of African American Revivalism and the Azusa Street
Revival."  The paper analyzes the inability of early White pentecostal
leaders, and most Christian leaders of that time, to accept the
theological equality of Blacks. If any would like to read it, send me
an e-mail).

Meanwhile, back at the rancho, our pioneers, especially Bro.
Antonio Nava, came to the conclusion that "los gringos no se
preocupaban por nosotros" (The gringos--both White and Black--did not
worry themselves about us), and incorporated a very Mexicano and
Chicano oneness denomination in California that, together and in
solidarity with his colleagues in Mexico, he built up and stamped with
an indelible Mexican/Chicano identity.  This saved the Latino Apostolic
movement and allowed for strong growth and a process of maturity that
most other Latino protestant groups did not undergo (due to their dependency
on White control and patronage) until much later .  When the two
principal White oneness groups merged into the United Pentecostal
Church in 1945, newly elected General Superintendent Howard Goss was
surprised to find a large and viable oneness movement in Mexico, and an
understanding was reached that the UPC would allow the
Apostolic Church of Mexico to continue evangelizing that country by
itself, while all three denominations would seek to cooperate in the
mission field in Central America (an agreement that fell into disrepair
about three decades later).

I think the word "disrepair" about sums it up today for the oneness
movement. Disrepair between races.  Disrepair between
denominations.  Disrepair between social classes.  Disrepair between
the suburbs and the inner city.  Disrepair between the Iglesia
Apostolica in Mexico and the Apostolic Assembly in the U.S. Nothing
short of a move of the Holy Ghost will bring the apostolic family into
repented fellowship with one another.I was once a guest at the headquarters 
of the UPC while traveling toMissouri.  At lunch with one of the very higher-ups, 
I was asked how
our Assembly leadership would likely respond to an overture from the
UPC to bring the oneness groups back into a sort of loose fellowship or
coalition.  My response was not welcome (and I never delivered the
overture). I replied that I could never speak for the leadership of the
denomination, but that as a layman who loves our church, I believed
that our response would be similar to that of Blacks to such an
overture:  until the UPC repents of the original sin of racism that
lies at its very origins, the Brown and Black brothers would probably
not come to the table being set.  Thereupon ensued a long conversation
over the state of race relations in Pentecost, with all the attendant
dynamics of the larger national conversation/argument over race:
sincere and slightly clueless Whites, angry and suspicious Blacks, and
bemused and confused Latinos on the sidelines.

I also insisted that mere tokenism, placing Black and Brown singers and
musicians on platforms or ethnic ministries preachers in positionssubordinate 
to White senior pastors or an occasional Brown preacher on
a program, would never do the trick. Folks would have to see Black and
Brown superintendents at the highest levels of leadership to believe
that things had really changed. And UPC congregations would have to
learn to sing some songs in Spanish to welcome the immigrants as
first-class citizens of the Kingdom of God.  In other words, the church
would have to become universal and not try to mold everyone else into a
North American Bible Belt model.  And certainly, the Apostolic Assembly
has a greater role to play than that of an Ellis Island first-stop
waystation to clean up, sanitize, de-louse, and train immigrants in the
King's English before sending them or their progeny over to the UPC
mainland.

I guess the above would not surprise most folks on the list.  Yeah, ol'
Bro Dan loves to say the controversial thing, and trot out those spots
and wrinkles that mar our identity. The glass half empty, and not
half full.  But elsewhere, I have reported on the half full side of
things.  (And I have a wonderful report about an incredible event in
Durham that I will share shortly.)In any case, that conversation in Hazelwood 
was before the Memphis
Miracle. Before the Holy Spirit began to move in mighty and mysterious
ways among our trinitarian brothers.  I now fully expect the Holy
Spirit to work the same wonder among Jesus' name people in this
country.  After all, this is the movement that most closely
approximated the apostolic ethos of racial, linguistic and social
universality in modern church history.  But I suspect that it will not
occur as a carefully calculated move among churchmen and executives.
Our denominational strongeholds are too strong.  Rather, the Spirit
will blow where It will and spontaneously so. When it happens, hold on
to your seatbelts. The exercise in humility will be painful, especially
for those of us who have a lot of privileges to lose. But it will be a
necessary exercise. For then the world will know that we are
Christians, by the love that we have one for another.

Abrazos,

Bro. Dan