How Pentecostalism Emerged as a form of Resistance to Racial Oppression in the US

Abstract

ABSTRACT The history of resistance to black racial oppression in the US dates back at least to slavery. From abolition to the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panther party, and the BlackLivesMatter Movement, each of these oppositions to racial injustice has been much discussed in the literature, but less often discussed is the role that Pentecostalism played in shaping black struggle for racial justice. This paper attempts to bridge this gap by showing how Pentecostalism in the US emerged as perhaps the first organised black protestant movement of the post bellum years. It traces its roots to African culture and argues that Pentecostalism embodied the positive ontology of black cultural expressionism and empowerment, which laid the foundation for the resistance movements that came later. This is the ontology of the spirit and performance from which blackness drew its resilience and resistance to racial oppression.