Joel Daniels, From Normative To Nothig - A Pentecostal Theological Conception of The Body

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249
brill.com/pneu
From Normative to Nothing

A Pentecostal Theological Conception of the Body
Joel D. Daniels | orcid: 0000-0002-5631-3829

American University, Washington, DC, USA
joeldan@american.edu
Abstract
Christian theology has historically constructed a “normative” human body: white and
male. Theological conclusions, then, are filtered through this systematic way of view-
ing the world, invariably excluding bodies that do not conform. Pentecostal theology,
I argue, has the resources to transgress these myopic confines imposed on the body,
freeing the body through sound and movement rather than adhering to static catego-
rization. Thus, I begin by exploring U.S. history around the body, demonstrating how
specific bodies have been strategically opposed and denigrated for the sake of main-
taining “white” supremacy. Next, I use Paul Tillich as a case study for the theology’s
“normative” body, enabling me to enter my central argument: Pentecostal theology is
able to reconsider, reconstitute, and reform the “normative” body, removing arbitrary
parameters and categories. The body, I contend, is movement and sound that refuses
the oppressive forces that try to contain through classification and subjugation.
Keywords
body – normativity – nothing – reconsidered – reconstituted – reformed
Religious life within Pentecostalism is rarely quiet or still. Indeed, participating

in a pentecostal church service regularly includes shouts, calls and responses,
singing, and dancing. Bodily movement and sound are elementary to Pente-
costalism because central to the religious community is the notion that the
Holy Spirit fills believers, making every action and declaration Spirit-filled.
As explained in Luke 19:40, when confronted with the presence of Jesus, cre-
ation invariably cries out. Consequently, not to move and exclaim is unnatural,
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700747-bja10035

Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM
via Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
234 daniels
requiring a person to restrain oneself or be restrained by another. For Pente-

costals, the body is inextricably tied to knowing and experiencing God through
the Spirit and, thus, encourages significant investigation and consideration.
My primary question in this essay is, how should the body be understood
within Pentecostal theology? I begin by considering what kinds of bodies have
been viewed as “normal” and which ones “abnormal” in theology historically,
using Paul Tillich’s The Courage to Be as case study. From there I enter my central
argument, which consists of three main sections: Body Reconsidered (Delores
S. Williams), Body Reconstituted (Judith Casselberry), and Body Reformed
(Ashon T. Crawley). Each of these sections exemplifies how social conditions
shape theological inquiry and outcomes. The body, I contend, is not a static
entity that can be dissected and defined; rather, the body is movement and
sound that refuses the oppressive forces that desire to steal, kill, and destroy
(John 10:10).
1 Body Normativity
This essay is restricted primarily to the U.S. American context; there are, to be
sure, many different perspectives on what the body is that I do not address
here. At the same time, Western history is fraught with colonial subjugation,
which grew throughout the world by oppressing certain bodies in the name
of advancement and faith. The U.S. story, therefore, has an almost ubiquitous
quality because enslavement, even when colonialism is not involved, has sadly
always been a part of human history.
The formation of the United States is entangled with enslavement and
oppression. Describing the very impetus for colonizing the New World, Kelly
Brown Douglas explains that the religious English immigrants to the New
World saw themselves as the “Anglo-Saxon remnant that was continuing a
divine mission.”1 They viewed their journey to the New World as emancipation
from religious suppression in England; indeed, they were called and commis-
sioned by God to accept their new inheritance of land and prosperity. As Dou-
glas states, “With the formation of America’s grand narrative, the two key pieces
of America’s sense of self come together: its Anglo-Saxon character and its ‘cho-
sen’ nature.”2 Douglas continues by explicating how the English colonizers sys-
tematically opposed bodies that were not “white” by restricting immigration,
1 Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll:
Orbis, 2015), 8.
2 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 16.
Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

from normative to nothing 235
tying the theology of sin to “blackness,” using “scientific” research to “prove”

their theological position and justify enslavement, legally opposing anything
that was not “white.”
These methods, designed early in U.S. history to repress “non-whiteness,”
continue up to the present. Douglas outlines how new laws were enacted after
emancipation that ensured that Black bodies would not be free bodies: “The
twenty-first-century version of this construct is the criminal body. The black
body that was once marked as chattel is now marked as criminal. This con-
struct serves the same purpose as the construct of chattel. It relegates the black
body to an ‘unfree’ space. It preserves the free space as a white space. This
transformation began shortly after emancipation.”3 Douglas’s point is clear:
the “normative” body throughout U.S. history is white, making all other bod-
ies “abnormal,” which justifies abnormal treatment.
According to Douglas, the Christian church—specifically the evangelical
church—has not challenged this notion, focusing instead on individual salva-
tion.4 One reason the evangelical church has avoided the topic is that so many
of its denominations were formed to preserve “whiteness.”5 Judith Casselberry,
for example, describes one such event, saying, “Within six years of the founding
of [the Church of God in Christ (cogic)], the groundswell of White ministers
who objected to being credentialed by [Charles H.] Mason, an African Amer-
ican, came to a head. In 1914 White ministers pulled out of cogic to form
the Assemblies of God (ag).”6 The ag’s story is interesting because the white
ministers originally pursued ordination and affiliation with cogic; yet, after
years of social pressure, these ministers rejected their relationship with “non-
whiteness.”7
2 Body: A Case Study
Western theologians have historically ignored the relevance of the body. To

clarify, I do not mean that the topic of personhood or human emotion and
physical feeling has not been discussed—that would be an incorrect assertion.

5 One of the clearest examples of this is the formation of the Southern Baptist Church.
6 Judith Casselberry, Labor of Faith: Gender and Power in Black Apostolic Pentecostalism (Dur-
ham: Duke University Press, 2017), 52.
7 Bernice Martin, “The Pentecostal Gender Paradox: A Cautionary Tale for the Sociology of Reli-
gion,” in Sociology of Religion, ed. Richard K. Fenn (Malden: Blackwell, 2003), 54–55.
Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

236 daniels
Rather, I am suggesting that theologians, particularly prior to the twenty-first

century, typically adopted a normative idea of the body: white and male. That
fundamental construct is then uncritically inserted into theological discussions
in which the theologian ends up reducing all of theology into his personal
bodily experience. My point is not that uncritical theologians are intention-
ally perpetuating negative imagines of the body, although some most likely
have; instead, I am saying that these theologians, whether inadvertently or not,
preserve and promote “white-male” hegemony through their presuppositions
concerning the “normative” body. In what follows, I explore Tillich as a case
study.
Paul Tillich is not native to the U.S., and his theology is not without detrac-
tors; nevertheless, his particular physical reality—“Western” white male—al-
lowed him to easily assimilate into U.S. cultural norms. In his book The Courage
to Be, Tillich’s pastoral penchant is apparent as he tries to help people navigate
the uneasiness of life in the aftermath of two world wars, arguing that courage
is woven into the very ontological fabric of reality.8 Humans require courage
because of the threat of nonbeing, another ontological reality, which causes
great anxiety; anxiety, unlike fear, is destructive because it does not have an
identifiable source—anxiety’s “object is the negation of every object.”9 Tillich
says that people desperately try to move anxiety to fear because at least fear
has an object, and with an identifiable object, fear can be overcome. The inter-
relationality between anxiety and nonbeing is described as follows:
Nonbeing threatens man’s ontic self-affirmation … spiritual self-affirma-

tion … moral self-affirmation … The awareness of this threefold threat is
anxiety appearing in three forms, that of fate and death (briefly, the anx-
iety of death), that of emptiness and loss of meaning (briefly, the anxiety
of meaninglessness), that of guilt and condemnation (briefly, the anxiety
of condemnation).10
Tillich paints a bleak picture, even if it does accurately represent what many
felt following the wars.
The remedy, according to Tillich, is courage: “Courage is self-affirmation ‘in
spite of,’ namely in spite of nonbeing … Courage resists despair by taking anx-
iety into itself.”11 Courage, however, is not simply a self-generated inner drive
8 Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 1.
9 Tillich, The Courage to Be, 35.
Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

as Nietzsche suggested; for Tillich, the courage to be derives from God: “The
courage which takes threefold anxiety into itself must be rooted in a power of
being that is greater than the power of oneself and the power of one’s world.”12
This “greater power” is the God above the human construction of God.13 Tillich
concludes by saying, “The courage to be is rooted in the God who appears when
God has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt.”14 Although this message is influen-
tial and perhaps even beneficial, Tillich includes several subtle elements that
reinforce colonial images of the normative body. I will restrict myself to three
brief critiques because the following sections address these issues in more
detail.
First, Tillich rightly feels anxious. He was estranged from his people and
homeland (Heimat), disconnected from their pain, and uncertain about their
future.15 Would Germany ever return to the country of his youth? It should
come as no surprise, then, that Tillich regularly spoke about estrangement
and anxiety—more specifically, his estrangement and anxiety. Tillich seems
to absorb every person’s unique challenges into his own story because he tac-
itly assumed that his bodily experience, mediated through “white-maleness,”
was standard. Second, and more to the point, is everyone’s greatest trepidation
really nonbeing? In other words, for those suffering great oppression, is their
anxiety properly defined as nonbeing? Third, Tillich’s solution rests on the term
and concept “power,” which is associated with heteronormative masculinity—
one must overcome the negative forces through greater power. Again, I do not
mean to criticize Tillich unfairly; his work has helped many people and his use
of language was the standard social construct during his lifetime. Indeed, it is
precisely this “standard” that I have tried to expose here.
3 Body Reconsidered
Through the work of James H. Cone (among many others), “the Black experi-
ence” was included in theology. That is not to say that Cone’s Black theology
was accepted by mainstream theology;16 nonetheless, Cone did awaken U.S.

15 Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s strong emotional pull to Germany is a good example of how Tillich
might have felt. See the Introduction to Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration
of Faith in Community (New York: Harper and Row, 1954), 10–13.
16 Cone says, “[White people] like to think of themselves as universal people. That is why

238 daniels
theology to another body that should be included in the discourse. Yet, Cone
only critiqued one aspect of the standard: “whiteness.” The maleness standard
remained intact, absorbing Black women into Black men’s bodily experience.17
Although others, such as Margaret Walker and Alice Walker, preceded her,18
Delores S. Williams’s book, Sisters in the Wilderness, required male-centric the-
ology to reconsider the body.
Williams confronts many oppressive norms from mainstream theology to
Black theology and feminism. She defines her methodology as womanism, say-
ing,
Like black male liberation theology, womanist theology assumes the ne-
cessity of responsible freedom for all human beings. But womanist the-
ology especially concerns itself with the faith, survival and freedom-
struggle of African-American women. Thus womanist theology identifies
and critiques black male oppression of black females while it also cri-
tiques white racism that oppresses all African Americans, female and
male.19
Williams’s version of womanism is Christian and thus includes Scripture,

though in a very different way from mainstream theology and Black theol-
ogy. Williams explains, “Womanist theologians … need to show the African-
American denominational churches and black liberation theology the liability
of its habit of using the Bible in an uncritical and sometimes too self-serving
way.”20 Cone, in Williams’s estimation, inappropriately uses the Hebrew exo-
dus story paradigmatically,21 which ignores the atrocities committed once the
people of Israel entered the promised land. Without critically examining Scrip-
ture, Black theology is susceptible to the same brutality enacted by immigrants
most seminaries emphasize the need for appropriate tools in doing theology, which always
means white tools … They fail to recognize that other people also have thought about God
and have something significant to say about Jesus’ presence in the world.” Cone, God of
the Oppressed (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997), 14.
17 Delores S. Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness: The Challenges of Womanist God-Talk (Mary-
knoll: Orbis, 1993) 1.
18 Margaret Walker, Jubilee (New York: Second Mariner, 2016); Alice Walker, The Color Pur-
ple (New York: Penguin, 2019). Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, cites these authors and
books (45).
19 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, xvii.
20 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 133.
Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

to the New World who also used the Hebrew exodus story to escape English
rule and then conquer their promised land—the Americas.
Williams, therefore, begins her biblical investigation not with the Virgin
Mary or any other prominent mainstream figure but, rather, with Hagar, who
is described as “the solution to a problem confronting a wealthy Hebrew slave-
holding family composed of Sarai (Hagar’s owner) and Abram.”22 According
to Williams, Hagar’s story closely resembles that of African-American women,
especially regarding motherhood: “Through the lens of motherhood we see
the struggle between power and powerlessness in human relationships disrupt
peace in a family unit, breed enmity between women and send a poverty-
stricken female slave (Hagar) scurrying into the wilderness.”23
Williams’s use of Hagar opens up a new interpretation of the body. No longer
is the body scientifically determinable, as the English colonizers tried to suggest
in order to justify their oppressive ways. The body is also no longer norma-
tively “white-male.” Hagar’s story emphasizes something much more dynamic
and vibrant: the body is movement and sound. Hagar is not a one-dimensional
object—a “slave”—although the beginning of Genesis 16 seems to suggest as
much. For the first six verses the reader discovers that Hagar is enslaved and
is forced to have sex with her enslaver’s (Sarai) husband (Abram) in order to
conceive, carry, and give birth to a child her “owner” will then take as her own.
Sarai becomes jealous after Hagar conceives and subsequently drives her away.
Hagar, in Sarai’s view, is simply an object; she is a “thing.” But the second half of
verse six changes Hagar’s one-dimensionality, saying, “Then Sarai dealt harshly
with [Hagar], and she ran away from her.” Hagar’s identity as a slave who is
restricted and controlled is transgressed through movement, because to move
means agency and agency means humanity.
Hagar is then approached by God and is promised prosperity (Gen 16:10). As
Williams says, “Hagar steps into the usual male role of receiving a promise of
numerous posterity.”24 A second transgressing moment follows as Hagar names
God “El-roi,” or the God who sees. Williams suggests that Hagar’s name for God
is influenced by her African-Egyptian heritage. In other words, “Hagar does not
call upon the God [of] the slave holders Sarai and Abram … she does not name
her God in accord with their patriarchal tradition [which] lifts up another bit
of Egyptian tradition.”25 Hagar’s body, therefore, is not a lifeless object designed


240 daniels
to serve her “masters”; instead, her body moves and speaks, which results in
communion with God.
Williams provides a helpful critique of Tillich here as well. The story of Hagar
expresses what Williams calls “wilderness experience”:
This (Gen 16:7–14) experience holds in solution a woman’s self-initiated

liberation event, woman’s alienation and isolation, economic depriva-
tion, pregnancy and a radical encounter with God, which empowers the
female slave of African descent to hope and to act. It is this first wilder-
ness experience that brings to the surface the many surrogate roles Hagar
has and will assume.26
Hagar’s wilderness experience and subsequent lived experience refutes and

rejects Sarai and Abram’s objectifying oppression.27 Furthermore, the wilder-
ness experience can be “a positive concept … Slave women were often most
persistent in their effort to undergo the wilderness experience.”28 Tillich’s exis-
tential anxiety about nonbeing is absent in Williams’s wilderness experience.
The wilderness represents movement, sounds, and, more fundamentally, an
encounter with God. Wilderness is not an “in spite of” endeavor that requires
courage but rather is an opportunity to further know God.
The wilderness experience critiques another aspect of mainstream theology,
Black theology, and feminism: womanhood. Mainstream theology, as exempli-
fied by Tillich, ignores women entirely; their bodies do not inform the “norma-
tive” body. Black theology likewise disregards women’s experience, absorbing
women into men’s bodily experience. To feminism, which is often associated
with middle-class white women, Williams says,
Contrary to Anglo-American ideals about “true womanhood,” this

African-American notion affirms such qualities as defiance; risk-taking;
independence; endurance when endurance gives no promise; the stami-
na to hold things together for the family (even without the help of a mate);
the ability, in poverty, to make a way out of no way; the courage to initi-
ate political action in the public arena; and a close personal relation with
God.29
26 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 24–25.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

By including African-American womanhood into theological conceptions of

the body, other theological propositions change—perhaps most notably sub-
stitutionary atonement. Substitutionary atonement claims that Jesus took hu-
manity’s sin upon himself: Jesus was humanity’s substitute. When placed next
to womanist theology, the problems are obvious. Enslaved women, from Hagar
to today, have been forced to serve as surrogates or substitutes for their “mas-
ters.” That role is not redemptive or representative of Jesus’s life, death, and
resurrection. Williams maintains, “[T]he womanist theologian must show that
redemption of humans can have nothing to do with any kind of surrogacy or
substitute role Jesus was reputed to have played in a bloody act that supposedly
gained victory over sin and/or evil.”30 Womanist theology informs the reconsid-
eration of the body and in the process Christian theology as a whole.
4 Body Reconstituted
The concept of the body has expanded as more voices are included in theo-
logical discourse. Rather than the body being “white-male,” new perspectives
emerged through Black theology, feminism, and womanism. The important
point to note is that the body, which had been strictly defined and singularly
identified, has become more complex and dynamic—the body can no longer
be reduced to a static object that science can easily dissect. Pentecostalism,
a religious movement connected to African and African-American spiritual-
ities,31 although not necessarily represented in Williams’s womanism as she
describes it,32 continues erasing arbitrary binaries and discriminations asso-
ciated with the body. Judith Casselberry’s study on the Oneness Pentecostal
church, Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, Inc. (cooljc),

31 For example, see Estrelda Alexander and Amos Yong, “Introduction: Black Tongues of Fire:
Afro-Pentecostalism’s Shifting Strategies and Changing Discourses,” in Afro-Pentecosta-
lism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture, ed. Amos Yong
and Estrelda Alexander (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 1–2; Cecil M. Robeck,
Jr., “The Azusa Street Mission and Historic Black Churches,” in Afro-Pentecostalism: Black
Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in History and Culture, ed. Amos Yong and Es-
trelda Alexander (New York: New York University Press, 2011), 31–35; and Leonard Lovett,
“Ethics in a Prophet Mode,” in Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic
Christianity in History and Culture, ed. Amos Yong and Estrelda Alexander (New York: New
York University Press, 2011), 157.
32 Yolanda Pierce has written on pentecostal womanism specifically. Pierce, “Womanist Ways
and Pentecostalism: The Work of Recovery Critique,” Pneuma 35, no. 1 (2013): 24–34.

242 daniels
expresses the fluid movement between the church’s vertical and horizontal
structures; and in the process, the body is reconstituted.
cooljc’s leadership structure resembles any other patriarchy: male bodies
lead, and female bodies follow. Casselberry explains, “The vertical male hier-
archy was constructed over women’s horizontal auxiliary operations … Aux-
iliaries provide women with a formalized means to function in almost every
arena of church work, without an expectation of lifelong, church-wide titled
recognition or representation on the executive board.”33 Although the leader-
ship structure elevates men to a position of leadership, the actual leadership
model—the one that is practiced—is quite different. For example, women who
have been active in the church for many years are venerated as “mothers,” and
the “churches rely on mother’s spiritual gifts, organizational acumen, and insti-
tutional memory for [the church’s] very existence.”34
Casselberry, who is conducting sociological research, shares a variety of
anecdotes about how cooljc actually functions. On one occasion, a male pas-
tor informed Casselberry that she would be moving into a different Sunday
School class. The female Sunday School leader, without even addressing the
pastor, openly proclaimed loudly enough for all onlookers to hear that Cas-
selberry would be staying in her class.35 The male pastor accepted the Sunday
School leader’s declaration without further discussion. In a similar moment, a
group of congregants went to the pastor’s house for dinner accompanied by
Casselberry. During the dinner, three young women “vehemently disagreed”
with the pastor’s assessment of a testimony in church. Recording the inter-
action, Casselberry says, “[These women] had no qualms about raising their
voices or interrupting him to make their point. They never backed down from
their position … Given the rhetoric of female submission … I was surprised by
the level playing field in the debate.”36 To Casselberry, this expressed the fluid-
ity of leadership, where the male leaders are often leaders only in title. There
appears to be three main reasons for this: Pentecostal history, Pentecostal prac-
tice, and Pentecostal women.
Casselberry briefly outlines Pentecostal history through the Azusa Street
revival for two reasons: (1) cooljc is Pentecostal, and (2) Garfield T. Haywood,
the mentor of cooljc’s founder, Robert C. Lawson, is tied directly to the Azusa
Street revival. Describing Pentecostal history through the Azusa Street revival,
Casselberry says,
33 Casselberry, Labor of Faith, 80.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

Along with teachings of the embodied Spirit, Azusa Street provided a radi-
cal social model for early twentieth-century American religion, attracting
worshippers across ethnicities, nationalities, denominations, and classes.
This kind of mixing was extraordinary just ten years after the Supreme
Court had sanctioned racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and
it appealed to a cross-section of people with a vision that brought spiri-
tual equality before God into alignment with societal equality across lines
of race, ethnicity, class, and gender.37
The Azusa Street revival did not essentialize bodies; in fact, of their twelve
elders, “[h]alf … were women, a fourth were African American, and one was a
ten-year-old girl.”38 Furthermore, the Azusa Street revival was led by William
J. Seymour, the son of formerly enslaved parents, and Seymour was intro-
duced to speaking in tongues, a linguistic practice most often associated with
Pentecostalism, through a woman, Lucy Farrow.39 The lines of demarcation
between bodies are transgressed in Pentecostal history through the Azusa
Street revival.
Second, Pentecostal practice refuses to define the body as an object and
thing; instead, the body is fluidly expressed through movement and sound.
Consider prayer: “Moaning, singing short melodic motifs, chanting, rapidly
repeating words or phrases, weeping, wailing, clapping, speaking in tongues,
and stomping make up the sound of prayer.”40 Experiencing the Spirit involves
releasing the notion that a person exists in one form that must be maintained.
Casselberry describes this idea through cooljc’s altar workers, often church
mothers who pray with congregants during the church service: “[T]hey encour-
age seekers to open up and ‘let Him in,’ and to ‘loose’ their tongues by rapidly
repeating ‘Hallelujah’ or ‘Jesus.’ Techniques designed to help the seeker men-
tally, physically, and spiritually surrender are said to allow the spirit of Jesus
(the Holy Ghost) to enter the seeker and baptize him or her.”41 Rather than
rationalizing and categorizing the world, Pentecostalism invites bodies into
unencumbered movement and sound, allowing the Spirit to move where the
Spirit wills (John 3:8).

38 Craig Scandrett-Leatherman, c in Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic
Christianity in History and Culture, ed. Amos Yong and Estrelda Alexander (New York: New
York University Press, 2011), 106.

244 daniels
It was first sound—“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like
the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sit-
ting” (Acts 2:2)—on the day of Pentecost, and then sound-movement followed:
“All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other lan-
guages, as the Spirit gave them ability” (Acts 2:4). Pentecostal bodies are not
fundamentally sexed or gendered, able or unable, young or old; instead, they
experience and embody the Spirit, leading to sound and movement—“verbally
through speech, shouts, and singing and nonverbally through hand clapping,
foot stomping, running, and the ‘Holy Dance.’”42
Lastly, as Williams indicated, female bodies, particularly African-American,
labor in the fullest sense of the word. According to Casselberry, female bodies
at cooljc labor in three primary ways: emotional, intimate, and aesthetic.43
In short, women’s labor “sustain[s] the institution.”44 Removing all the social,
political, religious, and ethical reasons for transgressing the boundaries
between bodies, one cooljc sister (a younger woman in the church) explained
that “not increasing women’s workload was one pragmatic consequence of
keeping men in formal leadership positions.”45 In other words, women—who
comprise 75–80 percent of the congregation—could call for reform, but they
do not because it would be unreasonable for them to be responsible for yet
another aspect of the church.
Pentecostal spirituality, as Casselberry describes, reconstitutes the body: the
body is no longer a static object, restricted to certain spheres of society and the
church, but instead is movement (running, dancing, and so forth) and sound
(shouting, speaking in tongues, and so on).
5 Body Reformed
Pentecostalism originated within Protestantism, and staying within its her-

itage, Pentecostal spirituality has reformed the body and, in the process, the
movement. Another Pentecostal founder, Charles H. Mason, exemplifies Pente-
costal reformation concerning the body. Throughout U.S. history, Black bodies
have been degraded;46 for example, Craig Scandrett-Leatherman explains that
the dominant “myth-metaphor of lynching was the black-beast-rapist male act-

43 Casselberry, Labor of Faith, 7–8.
46 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 48–89.
Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

ing against the white-pure-passive female.”47 Black male bodies were defined as
one thing that should be and must be controlled and subjugated. Mason, who
was also introduced to Pentecostalism at the Azusa Street revival, adamantly
rejected this myth of violence and abuse. Offering an alternative, Mason pro-
fessed a new “masculinity” that did not conform to social standards:
But if the liminal male was one shackled or hung, or in a state of perpet-
ual boyhood, then the rite into manhood often involved being raised up
to speak and move freely. Afro-Pentecostals gave men the right to speak
freely without uttering a word, and the right to move freely without serv-
ing a white master—the sweet rights of dancing in joy and victory.48
Liberation comes through free movement and speech, and where the Spirit of
the Lord is, there is freedom (2Cor 3:17). The opposing force to the Spirit of
freedom, then, is categorization, reductionism, and subjugation.49
Ashon T. Crawley’s book, Blackpentecostal Breath, argues this specific point:
the Spirit’s free movement, also described as breath, is a threat to oppressive
forces. For context, Crawley begins by saying, “ ‘I can’t breathe’ as both the
announcement of a particular moment and rupture in the life of the Garners
(regarding Eric Garner’s death from being choked by a police officer), and ‘I
can’t breathe’ as a rupture, a disruption, an ethical plea regarding the ethi-
cal crisis that has been the grounds for producing his moment, our time, this
modern world.”50 Categorization, Crawley argues, is Enlightenment’s project,
designed to restrict and contain “abnormalities.”51 Categorical distinctions such
as “racism, sexism, homo- and transphobia, classism and the like” have been
adopted by theologians and philosophers in order to construct “whiteness,”
which Crawley defines as “the acceptance of violence and violation as a way
of life, as quotidian, as axiomatic.”52 Theologians and philosophers, histori-
cally white and male, have used categories in order to do violence to bodies
that do not fit their normative white, male, hetero- classifications. Resistance
47 Scandrett-Leatherman, “Rites of Lynching and Rights of Dance,” 99.

48 Scandrett-Leatherman, “Rites of Lynching and Rights of Dance,” 108. Emphasis mine.
49 I explore racism and strategies for transgressing racism in “Strategically Opposing Injus-
tice: A Feminist Approach to John Cobb’s and James Cone’s Theologies,” Process Studies
50, no. 1 (2021): 128–147.
50 Ashon T. Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath: The Aesthetic of Possibility (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2017), 1. Of course, tragically, Garner is not the only victim of this brutal-
ity, with George Floyd and others being murdered in a similar way.
51 Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath, 11.
52 Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath, 5–6.

246 daniels
to these violent categories, according to Crawley, comes through “dancing,

singing, noise making, whooping, and tongue talking,” or Blackpentecostal-
ism.53
Two important terms for Crawley are “otherwise” and “Blackpentecostalism.”
“Otherwise,” Crawley explains, “is a word that names plurality as its core opera-
tion, otherwise bespeaks the ongoingness of possibility, of things existing other
than what is given, what is known, what is grasped.”54 Blackpentecostalism,
then, is described as “the capaciousness of otherwise resistance that arises to,
while emerging from, the occasion of its genesis.”55 Breathing bodies, Crawley
argues, require openness and are thus against borders.56
Early Pentecostal history is informative on this point. While the image of
a harmonious fluid community of Pentecostal believers appears to be almost
romantic, the reality was quite violent and abusive. Those first Pentecostals
were often “banished from families for joining the ‘holy rollers,’ shunned by
friends and lambasted in the media for speaking in tongues, those strange utter-
ances that are not given to coherent rational thought.”57 Uncontrolled move-
ment and incoherent sound disrupts the status quo by rejecting false binaries
and categories—“this is not normal!”—causing those who are empowered by
the “standard” system to violently suppress such threatening non-conformities.
Order comes through categorization and containment, constructing normative
and uniform classifications, which is disregarded by Pentecostal spirituality.
In other words, mainstream theologians, philosophers, and political leaders
want to choke out the free-flowing, “undignified,” capacious Holy Spirit or Holy
Breath, because if the Pentecostal body cannot breathe, it cannot move or
speak, returning it to the status of object-body, which can be dissected, studied,
and ultimately controlled.
One of the key—though hardly the only—Blackpentecostal practices Craw-
ley discusses is glossolalia, or speaking in tongues. Glossolalia is incoherent
language. To be discernable requires an interpretation; however, glossolalia is
not valuable because of the interpretation, although interpretation is beneficial
to a church community. Rather, glossolalia is a spiritual practice that is good in
its incoherence.58 Crawley explains, “[G]lossolalia not only enacts a disruption

58 “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to
pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans” (Rom 8:26).
Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

of grammar and lingual form but also enacts spatiotemporal incoherence, pro-
duces a ‘floating nowhere’ for celebratory speaking, for ecstatic praise against
the very violence and violation that animated, and animates today still, our
political economy.”59 There have been many “scientific” studies intended to
understand glossolalia. What is it: manipulated speech, political protest, cog-
nitive misfire, uneducated emotionality? These studies are designed to reduce
glossolalia to something “real” or, stated differently, to something that can
be reductively categorized, catalogued, filed away, and ultimately contained.
Indeed, studies like these are often an attempt to constrain the inexorable Spirit
through belittling and shame, explaining Spirit-filled religious practices as sim-
ply the result of uneducated people grasping at hope within their limited cog-
nition. Incoherence must be contained so that it can be ordered. Glossolalia,
however, is fluid—it is movement and sound. Furthermore, it is an outcome
of being filled, or embodied and enfleshed, by the Spirit. The body, therefore,
is the uncontrollably free movement and sound of the Spirit, dismantling and
destroying oppressive structures and institutions.
6 Conclusion
The body has not always been a theological frame for understanding God, sex-
uality, and the self. I argue here that the reason for this is that the body has
historically been singularly described and understood: “white-male.” There are,
to be sure, exceptions to this position; nevertheless, only recently has the body
been reconsidered. Theologians such as James H. Cone challenged the “white-
ness” of theology while Delores S. Williams skillfully denied the validity of both
the “whiteness” and “maleness” of theology. Consequently, the body was freed
from its categorical suppression. Pentecostalism, which preceded Cone and
Williams and perhaps informed their thought, fully rejects bodily containment
in all forms. The Spirit brings freedom, moving like rushing wind, embodying
believers through movement and sound. Crawley calls this unity of movement
and sound “choreosonic,” adding that it is “atheology-aphilosophy of black-
ness, how Blackpentecostalism utilizes choreosonic as a political avoidance
that exists previous to aversive theological, philosophical thought.”60
Cheryl J. Sanders outlines ten African-American Holiness and Pentecostal
worship practices that demonstrate the sound and movement of choreosonic


248 daniels
Blackpentecostalism: call to worship, singing, prayer, offerings, Scripture read-

ing, preaching, altar call, benediction, holy dance, and chant of affirmation.61
Quoting from James M. Shopshire,62 Sanders adds,
Not being satisfied with the response, [the bishop] said in a scolding tone,
“I can’t understand how anyone can remain quiet and seated in such a
spirit-filled gathering as this. Get up, and dance!” Speaking especially to
the constituent members of the gathering, he took time to remind them
that to dance is indicative of a meaningful experience in worship, and
they “need not try to be cute” by not talking back and dancing … As he
talked he was moving back and forth across the length of the pulpit plat-
form with a very agile gait, ever so often initiating a brief dance step and
then stopping. By the time the point had been made about dancing being
integral to meaningful worship experience he had reached a vocal peak,
and performed a dancing frenzy for about 15 seconds.63
As the bishop declared, when the Spirit moves, how can anyone remain quiet
and seated? In other words, when the dynamic (dunamis δύναμις) Spirit moves,
Acts 1:8 says sound (“you will be my witnesses”) and movement (“to the ends
of the earth”) follow, often resulting in an uncontainable “dancing frenzy.” The
Spirit removes all boundaries constructed for the sake of control, enabling free
sound and movement.
If Pentecostalism removes categories, this means that “nothing” remains—
that is, there is no “thing” that can reducibly categorize the Holy Spirit or
the Spirit-filled believer. When people can no longer be narrowly defined and
imprisoned by restrictive identities, then they are free to be any-thing. No-thing
constrains the Spirit’s movement. Hence, any-one, through the Spirit, can lead
without reserve, no longer enslaved to categories of gender, race, ethnicity, abil-
ity, age, appearance, or education. Through the Spirit, any-one can do any-thing
because they are not reduced to some-thing. Indeed, as Crawley says, “nothing
is irreducibly full.”64
Yet, what might appear to be an abstract theological, pneumatological, and
philosophical proposal is actually rooted in the material. Not only do racism
and subjugation run rampant in the world, forcing bodies either to conform to
61 Cheryl J. Sanders, “African-American Worship in the Pentecostal and Holiness Move-

ments,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 32, no. 2 (1997): 105–120.
62 James Maynard Shopshire, “A Socio-Historical Characterization of the Black Pentecostal
Movement in America,” Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1975, 180–181.
63 Sanders, “African-American Worship in the Pentecostal and Holiness Movements,” 112.
Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

“order” or be detained and disposed of, U.S. pentecostal denominations’ lead-

ership is still dominated by this “normative” body — white and male.65 Within
the pentecostal denominations who fully ordain women, the Assemblies of
God is led by a white man, with one female leader, two Black men, and two
additional white men.66 The Foursquare Church, founded by Aimee Semple
McPherson, is also led by a white man, though with a diverse Board of Directors.
Of course, for those pentecostal denominations that continue to withhold full
ordination from women, the leadership teams are entirely male. The Church of
God, Cleveland, for example, is led by a white man, with three additional white
men in top leadership out of four, and their International Executive Council has
some diversity but is overwhelmingly white male.67 Furthermore, to Delores
Williams’s point, the Church of God in Christ, a predominantly Black pente-
costal denomination, is also led only by men.68
But the body is not a static object that can be dissected and defined; rather,
through the Holy Spirit, the body is movement and sound, which repudiates
the oppressive forces that desire to classify, contain, and exclude. The body,
therefore, cannot be reduced or categorized without inflicting violence by
forcing it to become one thing—sexed, gendered, raced, abled, and so forth.
Thus, all Pentecostals, filled with the dynamic breath and movement of the
Spirit, should enthusiastically and audaciously speak out against oppression
and white supremacy while dancing in the already–not yet freedom found in
Christ Jesus.69 Because when it is no longer forced to conform to normativity,
the body is no-thing. The result: God, creation, and the body are reconsidered,
reconstituted, and reformed, creating a dynamic Pentecostal theology of move-
ment and sound, freeing the body to move any-where, any-how, and any-time
the Spirit moves.
65 Leonard Lovett, reflecting on a paper he gave titled “Liberation and the Holy Spirit,”
explains how racism has also been a part of the Society for Pentecostal Studies: “Later,
I recall being literally booed during an entire presentation of an sps meeting in Vancou-
ver in 1979 after announcing my eponymously titled paper.” Leonard Lovett, “Ethics in a
Prophet Mode,” in Afro-Pentecostalism: Black Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity in
History and Culture, ed. Amos Yong and Estrelda Alexander (New York: New York Univer-
sity Press, 2011), 159.
66 https://ag.org/About/Leadership‑Team.
67 https://churchofgod.org/leadership/.
68 https://www.cogic.org/about‑company/the‑executive‑branch/general‑board/.
69 Pentecostal communities have often forfeited their heritage in order to reach and achieve
prominence—to be categorized and indexed prominently. For references and responses,
see Brian K. Pipkin and Jay Beaman, eds., Early Pentecostals on Nonviolence and Social Jus-
tice (Eugene: Pickwick, 2016); and Jay Beaman and Brian K. Pipkin, eds., Pentecostals and
Holiness Statements on War and Peace (Eugene: Pickwick, 2013).


Joel Daniels, From Normative To Nothig - A Pentecostal Theological Conception of The Body

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Joel Daniels, From Normative To Nothig - A Pentecostal Theological Conception of The Body

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

From Normative to Nothing

Joel D. Daniels | orcid: 0000-0002-5631-3829

body – normativity – nothing – reconsidered – reconstituted – reformed

Religious life within Pentecostalism is rarely quiet or still. Indeed, participating

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/15700747-bja10035

requiring a person to restrain oneself or be restrained by another. For Pente-

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

tying the theology of sin to “blackness,” using “scientific” research to “prove”

2 Body: A Case Study

Western theologians have historically ignored the relevance of the body. To

3 Douglas, Stand Your Ground, 76.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

Rather, I am suggesting that theologians, particularly prior to the twenty-first

Nonbeing threatens man’s ontic self-affirmation … spiritual self-affirma-

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

12 Tillich, The Courage to Be, 155.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

Williams’s version of womanism is Christian and thus includes Scripture,

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

22 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 15.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

This (Gen 16:7–14) experience holds in solution a woman’s self-initiated

Hagar’s wilderness experience and subsequent lived experience refutes and

Contrary to Anglo-American ideals about “true womanhood,” this

26 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 24–25.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

By including African-American womanhood into theological conceptions of

30 Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, 146.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

33 Casselberry, Labor of Faith, 80.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

37 Casselberry, Labor of Faith, 48.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

Pentecostalism originated within Protestantism, and staying within its her-

42 Casselberry, Labor of Faith, 3.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

47 Scandrett-Leatherman, “Rites of Lynching and Rights of Dance,” 99.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

to these violent categories, according to Crawley, comes through “dancing,

53 Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath, 7.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

59 Crawley, Blackpentecostal Breath, 224.

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

Blackpentecostalism: call to worship, singing, prayer, offerings, Scripture read-

61 Cheryl J. Sanders, “African-American Worship in the Pentecostal and Holiness Move-

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249

“order” or be detained and disposed of, U.S. pentecostal denominations’ lead-

Pneuma 43 (2021) 233–249 Downloaded from Brill.com04/11/2023 09:29:53AM

You might also like