pentecost and the end of patriotism.pdf

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Journal of Pentecostal Theology

DOI: 10.1177/096673699600400905 1996; 4; 70 Journal of Pentecostal Theology

Joel Shuman Among Pentecostal Christians

Pentecost and the End of Patriotism: a Call for the Restoration of Pacifism

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PENTECOST AND THE END OF PATRIOTISM:

A CALL FOR THE RESTORATION OF PACIFISM AMONG

PENTECOSTAL CHRISTIANS

Joel Shuman*

Graduate School of Religion, Duke University,Durham, North Carolina, USA

* Joel Schuman (MTS, Duke University) is a PhD candidate in Theology andEthics at Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.

The War Church is a Harlot Church’

This essay is intended to be prophetic in nature. By this I do not meanthat it is written to foretell future events or to express its author’s

particular charismata, but that it is meant instead to ’reinforce a visionof the place of the believing community in history, which vision locatesmoral reasoning’.2 The argument presented here is hardly a complexone; simply put, I claim in what follows that the 1967 decision of theAssemblies of God officially to abandon its historical position as a

1. From Frank Bartleman’s tract (circa 1922) entitled ’War and the Christian’,p. 4. Quoted in Murray Dempster, ’Reassessing the Moral Rhetoric of EarlyAmerican Pentecostal Pacifism’, Crux: 26.1, March 1990, p. 30.

2. John Howard Yoder, ’The Hermeneutics of Peoplehood’, The PriestlyKingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,1984), p. 29. Yoder remarks: ’Prophecy is described as both a charisma distinctlyborne by some individuals and a kind of discourse in which others may sometimesparticipate as well’ . I take my writing to be an expression of the latter, rather than theformer, understanding here. This understanding of prophecy, says Yoder, ’is a

matter of simple trust that God himself, as Spirit, is at work to motivate and to moni-tor his own in, with, and under this distinctive, recognizable, and specifically disci-plined human discourse’. Yoder suggests that persons engaging in this discoursemay be referred to alternatively as ’Agents of Direction’; in either case, the intent isto suggest to the community the need for a reorientation of its moral vision.



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pacifist church was a grievous error; that it was, as Murray Dempsterhas said, ’a funeral service for the conception of the church associatedwith it’ .3 In making official the transition from a pacifist church to anon-pacifist church, I shall argue, the Assemblies of God ceased to existin a way consistent with the radical eschatological vision which energizedit from its beginning.

This is perhaps an unusual, albeit not a unique, claim about the demiseof Pentecostal pacifism. In his 1990 article ’Reassessing the MoralRhetoric of Early American Pentecostal Pacifism’, Dempster correctlyidentifies an increasing militarism among contemporary AmericanPentecostals, a disposition is one particularly noticeable sign that thesecommunities have abandoned their heritage and have become highlyaccommodated versions of what Yale Professor Harold Bloom refers toin his book of the same title as The American Religion. In Bloom’sinteresting examination of American Christianity, the Jesus who gathereda community of women and men to follow him in the way of the crossis replaced by an altogether different figure, ’a very solitary andpersonal American Jesus, who is also the resurrected Jesus rather thanthe crucified Jesus or the Jesus who ascended again to the Father’ .4 Thisdifferent figure, it seems, is the conceptualization of Jesus which hasbecome more common among North American Pentecostals.

Dempster’s article, which he says ’aims to analyze the moral rhetoricof early pentecostal pacifists in order to determine the way they thoughttheologically about the church’s moral responsibilities to the largersociety’,5 will serve as a significant conversation partner here. WhereDempster denies, however, that his primary goal is to ’provide a basisfrom which to assess the normative relevance of pacifism for today’,6 Ishall make the provision of such a basis my principal objective. I want tooffer, in other words, a theological rationale for my assertion that thegradual and eventually complete loss of its pacifism is among the most

3. Dempster, p. 33. My arguments here are concerned with the Assemblies ofGod, simply because this is the community of which I am a member and with whichI am most familiar. Insofar as the Assemblies may be regarded as a paradigm formuch contemporary American Pentecostalism, however, the arguments presentedhere are applicable to that wider community.

4. Harold Bloom, The American Religion (New York: Simon and Schuster,1992), p. 32. Professor Bloom’s account of American Pentecostalism, although notentirely accurate, is nonetheless quite compelling.

5. Dempster, p. 23.6. Dempster, p. 23.



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compelling signs that the Assemblies of God has, at least in practice,abandoned its self-understanding as a community of radical Christianwitness. For in this regard I agree with Stanley Hauerwas, who has saidthat nonviolence is ’the hallmark of the Christian moral life...not just anoption for a few, but incumbent on all Christians who seek to live faith-fully in the kingdom made possible by the life, death, and resurrection ofJesus’ .~

I begin here by showing that contemporary Pentecostal self-under-standing has its origins in the Christian restorationist movement of thenineteenth century. Characteristic of this movement, I argue, was a wayof reading Scripture and of conceptualizing the presence of God in theChristian community that emphasized a return to the ecclesial forms andpractices of the New Testament, especially to those represented in thebook of Acts. It was from this particular hermeneutic that both the uniquedoctrines and the atypical social ethics of early Pentecostalism emerged.

Second, I shall attempt to account for the loss of pacifism in theAssemblies of God as being the consequence of that community’sgradual loss of identity as an eschatologically driven church and its even-tual captivity to American nationalism and the conceptual categories ofdemocratic liberalism. This accommodation, I argue, was to a significantextent the consequence of two closely aligned factors: the first of these isthe insidious presence of an incorrect understanding within AmericanChristianity which held that the United States, based on its democraticpolity, was a nation structured according to Christian principles which,therefore, enjoyed a position of particular favor with God. The secondfactor, which is closely related to the first, is the eventual complete accept-ance of Pentecostalism into the highly nationalistic American evangelicalmainstream.

Finally, I shall argue that the self-understanding of early Pentecostals,which made possible their pacifism, has not totally disappeared. A space,albeit a narrow one, still exists within the beliefs and practices of theAssemblies of God from which a return to that community’s pacifistheritage might be initiated. Whereas Dempster argues that a historicaldivision between Pentecostal spirituality and social ethics has preventedPentecostals from reembodying their once radical social ethic, I maintainthat this is only partly correct, and that the division of which he speaks is

7. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 1983), p. xvi.



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a reparable one.’ In response to his call for the formulation of a socialethic based upon the ’distinctive testimony’ of the Assemblies of God, Iwill attempt to show that this testimony is an inherently eschatologicalone and that the moral ramifications of the doctrine of Spirit baptismmust be understood eschatologically (as they initially were) in order toundergird a restoration of Pentecostal pacifism.

In his outstanding genealogy of Christian nonviolence, ChristianAttitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, John Howard Yoder counts

contemporary Pentecostalism as one of the many inheritors of nineteenth

century restorationism. Yoder notes that many of the restorationistcommunities were pacifist from their beginning. He identifies a generaltendency toward the avoidance of unnecessary attachments to the worldand a ’literal obedience to a word of scripture without rationalizing it’ .9As two significant characteristics of these movements, he notes, moreover,that among these communities

... there is the absence of a cultural commitment to social responsibility.As was somewhat the case with the camp meeting, so it will be more thecase with Pentecostalism, that the absence of commitment to social respon-sibility correlates with being of the lower classes, who don’t have themoney or the leisure or the training anyway, to be social leaders in thetraditional elite ways

Yet, as Yoder makes plain in his monograph, it was not their socio-economic location per se that led the first Pentecostals to be pacifists.’The simplest reason [for their pacifism]’, he says, ’is that they take thewhole Bible straight’ .11 It was, in other words, a particular way of readingthe Bible that led nascent Pentecostals to maintain that it was simplywrong for one human to take the life of another.

This unique hermeneutic clearly plays a role in determining the fourcharacteristics of restorationism identified as having ’particular signifi-cance for Pentecostalism’ by historian Edith Blumhofer.12 The first ofthese, she says, was the restorationist call for Christian perfection, which

8. Dempster, p. 32.9. John Howard Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution: A

Companion to Bainton (Elkhart, IN: Co-Op Bookstore, 1983), pp. 307-308. The’literal obedience’ to which Yoder refers here is meant, I believe, as a compliment.

10. Yoder, pp. 307-308.11. Yoder, p. 308.12. Edith Blumhofer, The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of

American Pentecostalism, I (Springfield: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), p. 18.



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’tended to advocate purifying religious forms and examining practicesand beliefs against the New Testament standard’.13 Second, she notes,was the restorationist tendency to view the true church as being united,to look past ’the turmoil and heterodoxy that had marked Christianbeginnings. An emphasis on shared origins promoted hope of renewed’family harmony’.14 The third of these characteristics was the restora-tionist tendency to see itself as a church on the cusp of the eschaton; thisaspect of restorationism, like the preceding two, arose primarily from theway these communities were trained to read the New Testament. Finally,restorationists supported a flight from denominational Christianity,which they saw as irreparably contaminated by the world.

From this perspective, restorationist views molded the subculture in whichPentecostalism flourished; its participants had already separated from themainstream. Their attitudes about the world were shaped by their convic-tion that cultural values necessarily opposed true faith; they interpretedpersecution as a measure of spiritual strength. They volubly opposedmuch of their culture, and the sense that they offered a viable, satisfyingalternative to this-worldliness attracted adherents. 15

What is common to each of these characteristics is the tendency ofthose who embodied them to see themselves as being part of a traditionwith very direct ties to the apostolic church represented in the firstchapters of the New Testament book of Acts. This association becameincreasingly overt among Christian leaders from a wide variety of tradi-tions at the end of the nineteenth century, all of whom expressed anextraordinary dissatisfaction with the level of commitment demonstratedby Christians of that day. Leaders among both liberal and conservativeProtestant groups called for a renewed holiness among their constituents:the story of the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost was frequentlyreferred to as the source of this renewal. 16

13. Blumhofer, p. 19.14. Blumhofer, p. 19.15. Blumhofer, p. 19.16. Blumhofer, pp. 39-41. Blumhofer notes that Walter Rauschenbusch, the

founder of the Social Gospel movement, was among those who called for such arenewal. On pages 40-41 she says: ’In terms that could have been borrowed from

conservatives, for example, Rauschenbusch maintained that, throughout history, theChurch had repeatedly been "rejuvenated by a new baptism in [the] Spirit"’ (Quotedfrom Walter Rauschenbusch, ’The New Evangelism’, in William R. Hutchinson(ed.), American Protestant Thought: The Liberal Era (New York: Harper & Row,1968), pp. 115-16.



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Dempster is correct when he asserts that the ’Pentecostal moralcommitment to pacifism has to be appreciated against this restorationistunderstanding of church history’ .17 Pentecostals of the early twentiethcentury saw themselves as being the contemporary restoration of theNew Testament church, a community that had become increasinglyunfaithful in the time between the Pentecost of the first century and thatof the twentieth. Central to the church’s fall during that interim era wasits entry into political establishmentarianism: ’Militarism entered thechurch’s life, from the Pentecostal perspective, when it backslid andforged a political alliance with the Roman State’ .18 A general attitude ofsocial and political disestablishment was consequently seen as an integralpart of the Pentecostal renewal.

This disestablishment was accentuated by the initial rejection ofPentecostals by the evangelical mainstream. This rejection served toenforce their tendency to see themselves as being citizens not of anyearthly nation, but of the kingdom of God.&dquo; Taking their inspirationfrom Hebrews 2, they regarded themselves as ’pilgrims and strangers onearth’, says Blumhofer. 21 Participation in war was regarded as incom-patible with such citizenship not simply because the violence inherent inwar was wrong, but because the allegiances demanded by war weretrivialized by comparison to the allegiance demanded by God.’Pentecostals considered themselves engaged in a conflict’, Blumhofernotes, ’infinitely more important than any earthly struggle’,21 Nationalismwas consequently regarded by many Pentecostals as a sin of no littlesignificance: ’Pride in nation and race was an abomination.’22The outbreak of the first World War and the development of strict

United States government policies with regard to religious objectorsserved to force American Pentecostals to develop an official positionwith regard to their participation in war.23 Although Blumhofer implies

17. Dempster, p. 27.18. Dempster, p. 27. I discuss this phenomenon of ’Constantinian’ versus ’anti-

Constantinian’ Christianity at some length below.19. Blumhofer, pp. 179-80; cf. Dempster, p. 28.20. Blumhofer, p. 343.21. Blumhofer, p. 345. 22. Blumhofer, pp. 350-51. Blumhofer offers here an excellent account of the

anti-nationalist rhetoric employed by Pentecostals at the outset of World War I.Dempster’s article also gives a good deal of attention to these matters.

23. From this point forward I shall engage in the admittedly somewhat question-able practice of seeing my own fellowship, the Assemblies of God, as representative



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that the initial response of the General Council of the Assemblies of Godwas rooted as much in political pragmatism as it was in an effort todevelop a theological position with regard to war, the initial statement ofthe General Council is explicitly theological in its language and logic.24Claiming that they spoke from ’the established principles or creed of allsections of the Pentecostal movement’, several members of the leader-

ship of the Assemblies of God produced an official resolution in April,1917.~ The resolution, which became the official policy of the fellowship,reads as follows:

While recognizing Human Government as of Divine ordination andaffirming our unswerving loyalty to the Government of the United States,nevertheless we are constrained to define our position with reference tothe taking of human life.WHEREAS, in the Constitutional resolution adopted at the Hot Springs

General Council, April 1-10, 1914, we plainly declare the Holy InspiredScriptures to be the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice, andWHEREAS the Scriptures deal plainly with the obligations and relations

of humanity, setting forth the principles of ’Peace on earth, goodwilltoward men’, (Lk. 2.14); andWHEREAS we as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of

Peace, believe in implicit obedience to the Divine commands and preceptswhich instruct us to ’Follow peace with all men’, (Heb. 12.14); ’Thoushalt not kill’, (Exod. 20.13); ’Resist not evil’, (Mt. 5.39); ’Love yourenemies’, (Mt. 5.44; etc.), andWHEREAS these and other Scriptures have always been accepted and

interpreted by our churches as prohibiting Christians from shedding bloodor taking human life;THEREFORE we, as a body of Christians, while purposing to fulfill all

the obligations of loyal citizenship, are nevertheless constrained to declarewe cannot conscientiously participate in war and armed resistance whichinvolves the actual destruction of human life, since this is contrary to ourview of the clear teachings of the inspired Word of God, which is the solebasis of our faith.26

What is especially notable about this statement, apart from its explicitlytheological tenor, is the way in which it clearly explicates so much of the

among Pentecostals. While admitting to the questionability of this move, I would alsonote that North American Pentecostalism comes as close as any strand of the Christiantradition to possessing the uniformity that would make such a move possible.

24. Blumhofer, p. 352.25. From The Weekly Evangel, August 4, 1917, p. 6. Cf. Blumhofer, pp. 352-53.26. Blumhofer, pp. 352-53.



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restorationist self-understanding of Pentecostalism noted earlier in thisessay. Although there is an implicit recognition in the first paragraph ofthe document that impending American participation in the war was theimpetus for the formulation of the resolution, there is also a strong claimin paragraphs three, four, and five that the Scriptures, according to thePentecostal reading, ’deal plainly’ with the matter of Christian participa-tion in war. Because the Pentecostal Christians understood their primarycitizenship to be in God’s kingdom and their first obligation to be obedientto God’s will, moreover, the resolution suggests rather unambiguouslythat it would be a matter of disobedience and even a sort of treason for a

Pentecostal to take human life in the name of America or any other nation.

Regardless of whether the newly developed policy was primarily theo-logical or pragmatic in character, it served the purpose of earningmembers of Assemblies of God churches exemption from United Statesmilitary service during World War I. Ultimately, they were granted thisexemption under the thirteenth of several ’Claims for Discharge’enumerated in a War Department document dated July 14, 1917. Thisdocument noted that among those not required to participate in combatwere

... a member of any well-organized religious sect or organization organizedand existent May 18, 1917, and whose then existing creed or principles~br~~ !~ ~~M~r~ fo par~C!p~ ~ war M any~b/Tn a~ w/!6’~ r~!g!-forbade its members to participate in war in any form and whose religi-ous convictions are against war or participation therein in accordancewith the creed or principles of said religious organization. 27

In spite of the fact that the resolution met the War Departmentrequirement by presenting the Assemblies of God as an unequivocallypacifist community with significant theological convictions in that direc-tion, there existed from the outset two closely related strands of thoughtwhich mitigated this presentation. These ways of thinking are identifiableas the basis for the ultimate abandonment of pacifism among Pentecostals.The first is the presence of a certain amount of dissenting rhetoric amongsome Assemblies of God constituents. Most of this dissension took theform of concerns that the resolution was worded in such a way as tolead Pentecostals to engage in blatant expressions of disloyalty to theUnited States government. At the same 1917 General Council thatproduced the statement of official pacifism, the minutes note that theseconcerns were voiced:

27. Blomhofer, pp. 352-53, italics mine.



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Bro. E.L. Banta spoke on the importance of our loyalty to the powersthat be, since they are ordained of God; and told of some so-calledPentecostal preachers who thought they were doing honor to God byinsulting the flag and of the humiliation to them that followed. Bro. A.P.Collions followed and said we were on Bible grounds in honoring thegovernment, and that the flag stood not only for civil freedom but also forreligious liberty; and that at the Texas District Council they had purposedto cancel the credentials of any preacher who spoke against the government.This body [the General Council] also agreed that such radicals do not

represent this General Council.28

The second strand of thought that mitigated the denomination’s non-violent witness was one whose presence was acknowledged even beforethe War Department’s final approval of the pacifist resolution. In theMay 19 issue of the Assemblies of God’s official publication, The WeeklyEvangel, an article intended to explicate the recently drafted resolutionappeared. It explained that although the resolution’s purpose was ’to

interpret as clearly as possible what the Scriptures teach on the subject’,adherence to it would be voluntary, rather than obligatory. Concerningthe adherence of church members to the position voiced by the resolution,the article noted that:

It is not intended to hinder anyone from taking up arms who may feelfree to do so, but we hope to secure the privilege of exemption from suchmilitary service as will necessitate the taking of life for all who are realconscientious objectors and who are associated with the General Council

What is more remarkable about each of these views is that they are asubtle representation of the very sort of establishmentarian Christianitythat Pentecostalism’s restorationist heritage led it to repudiate. Ratherthan seeing the state as being an agency of the world whose purposeswere ultimately at odds with those of the kingdom of God, as did the

28. From the Minutes of the 1917 meeting of the General Council of theAssemblies of God, pp. 17, 18. It is worth noting that the minutes of the GeneralCouncil of the following year (1918) show that by that time the sentiments expressedhere had become official policy as expressed in the following resolution, found onp. 9:

Resolved, That the General Council hereby declares its unswerving loyalty to ourgovernment and to its Chief Executive, President Wilson, and that we herebyrestate our fixed purpose to assist in every way morally possible, consistent withour faith, in bringing the present ’World War’ to a successful conclusion.

29. From The Weekly Evangel, May 19, 1917, p. 8.



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restorationists, this more established way of thinking tended to see thestate as an agent whose power could be employed in the service of thekingdom of God. What both views suggest is that the state is at the veryleast the necessary establisher and protector of a cluster of personal andinstitutional freedoms which are necessary for the good of the church.A temptation toward accommodation has existed in even the most

radically antiestablishment churches for most of the history of Christianity.This is partially the consequence of the evolution of ethics as a discretediscourse with little attachment to specific theological convictions; it hasbeen widely held for some time that although women and men must beinformed of the gospel message, they simply ’know’ right from wrongas a function of their being human.3° ’The realm of the social’, notesJohn Howard Yoder, ’is accordingly the one where the dynamics ofaccommodation and the tendencies to sell out are the strongest, as thechurch lives at the interface with the world of unbelief, its powers and

pressures’ .3 i

Although Yoder suggests that the historical roots of this accommoda-tion lie, among other places, in the church’s gradual departure from itsJewish roots as it encountered the Hellenism of Asia Minor and southern

Europe, he maintains that the most significant locus of the tendency isfound in the church’s legitimation of war. In this legitimation, he claims,’the view of Christians on the morality of violence in the public realmwas reversed’ .32 This acceptance of violence is not traceable to any theo-

logical position held by the earliest Christians, but instead represents asignificant departure from the primitive Church’s normative practices:

The new stance rejects the privileged place of the enemy as the test ofwhether one loves one’s neighbor. It rejects the norm of the cross and thelife of Jesus Christ as the way of dealing with conflict. It assigns to civilgovernment, not only to Caesar as an ecumenical savior figure but even,later, to fragmented local regimes, a role in carrying out God’s will that isquite incompatible with the fruit of the progressive relativization ofkingship from Samuel to Jeremiah to Jesus and Jochanan ben Zakkai. 33

30. John Howard Yoder, ’The Authority of Tradition’, in The Priestly Kingdom:Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984),pp. 72-73.

31. Yoder, ’Authority’, p. 73.32. Yoder, ’Authority’, pp. 73-74.33. Yoder, ’Authority’, p. 75.



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Although a number of particular sociopolitical factors could be cited aspossible reasons for the church’s acceptance of state violence, the rnostlikely is almost certainly related to the fact that during the time of thisacceptance the church had gradually come to enjoy a place of privilegein the Roman Empire. Yoder notes that the conversion of Constantineand the subsequent establishment of Christianity as the Roman statereligion provide an appropriate symbolic representation of this transition.For when the leader of a government becomes Christian, he notes:

The assumption tends to be that in order to continue being a sovereign, heneeds to continue to act the way a (non-Christian) sovereign ’naturally’acts, thereby creating some tension with what the later prophets and Jesustaught about domination, wealth, and violence.34

What Yoder suggests here, in other words, is that this Constantinianaccommodation had its origins not in newly developed theological posi-tions, but in the perceived need to create a space for the church tooccupy a position of relative power and mutual affirmation with regardto the civil authorities. This abandonment of the particular ethical con-victions of the Christian faith inevitably had a significant effect, however,on the ways in which the Church articulated its theology. Yoder notes anumber of ways in which this is so; two of these are especially relevantto the changing attitude with regard to members of Assemblies of Godcongregations participating in state violence, and are, therefore, worthdiscussing here.Yoder explains that the first significant theological shift in the

Constantinian Church was toward a new ecclesiology and a new escha-tology. In the New Testament church, prior to its being accepted as thestate religion of Rome, the Christian community was an empirical entity,a visible, confessing gathering whose members were subject to activeopposition by the state. With the establishment of Christianity, however,this situation was reversed. There were suddenly a variety of reasons tobe a member of the church, and it became necessary to postulate theexistence of an ’invisible’ church, operating within the confines of thelarger visible one; it was to this invisible community that those withgenuine Christian faith were believed to belong.

In the pre-Constantinian church Jesus was seen not only as risensavior but also as ascended Lord of the universe. The earthly powers,including the civil authorities, were believed to be under the control of

34. Yoder, ’The Kingdom as Social Ethic’, in The Priestly Kingdom, p. 82.



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Christ and were thus being used, in spite of their rebellious nature, to fulfillthe purposes of God’s kingdom. With the establishment of Christianity,however, this situation was also changed. The evidence of God’s reignover history was no longer a matter of faith, but was instead plainlyshown by the presence of the emperor, who was now at least nominallya Christian. ’Before Constantine’, says Yoder:

one knew as a fact of everyday experience that there was a believingChristian community but one had to ’take it on faith’ that God wasgoverning history. After Constantine, one had to believe without seeingthat there was a community of believers, within the larger nominallyChristian mass, but one knew for a fact that God was in control of

history. Ethics had to change because one must aim one’s behavior atstrengthening the regime, and because the ruler himself must very soonhave some approbation and perhaps some guidance as he does things theearlier church would have disapproved of.~

The second of these theological/philosophical transitions came in theform of a changed view of history and the way changes within historywere regarded. The established powers of civil government, and not the’average person or the weak person’, were now seen as ’the main

bearer[s] of historical movement’.36 A church enjoying a position offavor with the government tends to adopt that government’s ’eulogistic’view of history whereby it is assumed that ’the only way to readnational and political history is from the perspective of the winners’.3’When the relative power of the existing regime increases, it is seen bythe established church as a sign of God’s blessing. Ultimate standards ofright and wrong are thus changed: ’A moral statement...’, says Yoder,’is tested first by whether a ruler can meet such standards’. 38One might legitimately question whether any of this accurately repre-

sents the situation encountered by Pentecostal Christians in the UnitedStates of the early twentieth century. The answer to such a question,

35. Yoder, ’The Constantinian Sources of Western Social Ethics’, in The PriestlyKingdom, pp. 136-37.

36. Yoder, ’Constantinian Sources’, p. 138.37. Yoder, ’Kingdom as Social Ethic’, p. 95.38. Yoder, ’Kingdom as Social Ethic’. Ostensibly, Yoder would agree to the

addition of ’and still maintain control’ to this sentence. In Christian Attitudes

(pp. 259-61), he offers the example of the Quaker’s peaceable rule in late seventeenthand early eighteenth century Pennsylvania, noting that it was faithfulness to their con-victions (among which was the refusal to exert coercive force to maintain power),and not an unwillingness to rule that led them to hand over power to others.



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Yoder would say, is affirmative: ’Perhaps the strongest proof of thegreat reversal’, he notes, ’is the fact that it survives even as the situationswhich brought it forth no longer obtain’ .39 If anything, the form takenby Constantinian Christianity in modern democracies proves to be aneven stronger erosive force with regard to the faithfulness of the church:

Once the separation of church and state is seen as theologically desirable,a society where this separation is achieved is not a pagan society but asociety structured according to the will of God. American patriotismremains highly religious. For nearly two centuries, in fact, the language ofAmerican public discourse was not only religious, not only Christian, butspecifically Protestant. Moral identification of church with nation remainsdespite institutional separation...Let us call this arrangement ’neo-neo-Constantinian’. The social arrangement has been changed deeply andformally, but remains informally powerful

Those voices speaking from within the Assemblies of God whicharticulated the importance of the freedom of the individual to follow hisconscience and the necessity of the state to grant and preserve that free-dom clearly represent an instance of Yoder’s ’neo-neo-Constantinian’disposition.41 These voices, which were evidently present from the begin-ning in an at least embryonic form eventually became a dominant forcewithin the fellowship. This dominance may be accounted for on the basisof two interdependent factors, both of which continue to manifest theirpresence, in various forms, within contemporary American Christianity.From the beginning, the twentieth century Pentecostal movement saw

itself as uniquely carrying the burden of bringing salvation to a lostworld about to experience Christ’s return.42 The Weekly Evangel article

39. Yoder, ’Constantinian Sources’, p. 141.40. Yoder, ’Constantinian Sources’, p. 142.41. I am grateful to my colleague Bill Cavanaugh for first pointing this out to me

when I wrote a short unpublished essay on the philosophical foundations of theAssemblies’ 1967 revocation of pacifism.

42. Blumhofer (vol. 1, p. 13) makes this point very well when she quotes BennettLawrence’s Apostolic Faith Restored (a compilation of a series of articles writtenin 1916 for The Weekly Evangel), one of the earliest book-length accounts ofcontemporary Pentecostal Christianity:

This movement of God has resulted in the salvation of hundreds of thousands ofsinners, both in so-called Christian lands and in those called heathen... hundredshave felt the missionary zeal of the first evangelists and have gone to the uttermostparts of the earth in one of the most spontaneous and widely spread missionaryefforts the world has seen since the days of Pentecost.



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written to explain the adoption of the resolution on pacifism began notwith a statement about the evils of war, but with the following claimabout the mission of the fellowship:

From its very inception, the Pentecostal Movement has been a movementcharacterized by evangelism, studiously avoiding any principles or actionswhich would thwart it in its great purpose. All the wings of the movement,which have grown out of the work that originated in the SouthwesternStates and the Pacific Coast are a unit in this respect. 43

As in other sectors of Pentecostalism, evangelistic passion became thedriving force in the Assemblies of God. Arguably, it was a concern to beas effective as possible in this regard that led the fellowship to make aseries of small departures from the ethos represented by Pentecostalism’srestorationist beginnings less than ten years earlier. Blumhofer notes:

At least since 1916, the Assemblies of God had exhibited tendencies that

separated it from other Pentecostal denominations...After they disowned Oneness advocates in 1916, Assemblies of Godleaders opted for courses of action that distanced the denomination inimportant ways from what others regarded as the essence of

Pentecostalism: The Assemblies of God became increasingly organized; itquickly developed educational institutions to train its ministers, encouragedaffiliated churches to utilize various techniques for Christian education,developed an aggressive missionary program, implemented programs,and devised statistical measures of success. 44

Evangelistic growth came, and the Assemblies of God quickly becamethe largest denomination in the Pentecostal movement.45 It was the natureof this growth, suggests John Howard Yoder, which proved at leastpartially responsible for the ultimate abandonment of pacifism by thefellowship.

Their rapid success in numerical growth swept all kinds of additionalpeople into the movement, who hadn’t restructured their views on any-thing except the gift of tongues. Their distinctiveness was located at otherpoints that didn’t relate to critiquing Constantine or to the church as adistinctive community.

So Pentecostalism’s original pacifism was rapidly diluted. Already inthe first World War, when it was only a ten-or-fifteen year-old move-ment, the pacifism was softened in order to send people to evangelize

43. Weekly Evangel, August 4, 1917, p. 6.44. Blumhofer (vol. 2), pp. 14-15.45. Blumhofer (vol. 2), p. 15.



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among the troops. There was a beginning of a kind of awareness that wenow call ’church growth theory’, namely that you go where people aremobile and are worried and are away from home, not in their own cultural

context, with a new message. 46The new members who swelled the ranks of Assemblies of God

congregations (as well as those of the other parts of the Pentecostalmovement) during this time were women and men who had been atleast somewhat conditioned by the neo-neo-Constantinian ethic of a stillnominally Christian American culture. They had been trained by thehighly religious rhetoric of late nineteenth century patriotism and hadcome to believe that their nation was a special locus of divine activity.4’The Social Gospel movement of the early twentieth century emerged, tosome extent, as one of the progeny of this belief; its spokesperson WalterRauschenbusch, while not going so far as to say that America was auniquely Christian nation, did call for a repentance that could not beaccomplished without the active involvement of the United Statesgovernment. 48Rauschenbusch’s claims were rooted first of all in his tendency to see

Christianity as having deep philosophical affinities with democracy. Heasserted that the Judaism of the early prophets, for which he expressed atremendous admiration and of which both Jesus and John the Baptist hadin his mind been faithful expressions, had been essentially democratic.49The United States was consequently positioned ideally before God in away that other nations were not:

In this absence of social caste and this fair distribution of the means of

production, the early times of Israel were much like the early times in our

46. Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, p. 309.47. See p. 85 n. 40, above.48. I offer the following observations on Rauschenbusch based not upon any sort

of perceived connection between his account of Christianity and that of the earlyPentecostals, but rather on account of his rhetoric, which freely blended a call forrepentance with the notion that such repentance was possible only in America. I amgrateful to Dr Gary Smith of Grove City College, who corrected my earlier assertionthat Rauschenbusch was the Social Gospel movement’s founder, rather than itsspokesperson.

49. Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianity and the Social Crisis (Louisville:Westminster/John Knox, 1991/1907), pp. 13, 52-53. I am grateful to Dr StanleyHauerwas for teaching me to understand Rauschenbusch in this way, and especiallyfor helping me see the undeniable influence of Ernst Troeltsch on Rauschenbusch’s work.



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own country. America too set out with an absence of hereditary aristoc-racy and with a fair distribution of the land among the farming population.Both the Jewish and the American people were thereby equipped with akind of ingrained, constitutional taste for democracy which dies hard.5o

Democracy, Rauschenbusch maintained, was the essential notion under-lying the founding of both Israel and the United States. As such, he main-tained, it was also the fundamental principle of Christianity: ’Approximateequality is the only enduring foundation for political democracy. Thesense of equality is the only basis for Christian morality.’51 The problem,he believed, was that America, like Israel before it, had departed fromthe democratic ideals upon which it had been founded.52 A return tothese Jewish/Christian democratic ideals could be achieved only throughthe combined efforts of the church and the presumably democratic state:

When the State supports morality by legal constraint, it cooperates withthe voluntary moral power of the Church... When the Church implantsreligious impulses toward righteousness and trains the moral convictionsof the people, it cooperates with the State by creating the most delicate andvaluable elements of social welfare and progress... Church and State are

alike but partial organizations of humanity for special ends. Together theyserve what is greater than either: humanity. Their common aim is totransform humanity into the kingdom of God.53

The purpose of this admittedly extensive digression is to display broadlythe particular form taken by American neo-neo-Constantinian Christianityaround the time that contemporary Pentecostalism was emerging andestablishing its identity. The growth and subsequent institutionalization ofthe Pentecostal movement was rapid enough, as an earlier reference fromYoder indicates, that the community was unable to continue definingitself in ways consistent with its restorationist heritage. It is not unlikelythat many of those entering the fellowship at least tacitly shared senti-ments akin to those expressed by Rauschenbusch.The departure of the Assemblies of God from restorationism reached

a critical mass in the early 1940s, when the movement took its mostsignificant steps toward an establishmentarian ecclesiology. In theminutes of the General Council of 1941, Article XVI of the Assembliesof God Bylaws still affirmed the Assemblies as a pacifist denomination.

50. Rauschenbusch, Christianity, p. 15.51. Rauschenbusch, Christianity, p. 247.52. Rauschenbusch, Christianity, p. 15.53. Rauschenbusch, Christianity, p. 380.



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By this time the official position had been moderated only slightlythrough a combination of the initial pacifist resolution of 1917 with aversion of the loyalty resolution of 1918.54 Yet, the movement’s con-tinued growth and prosperity made it increasingly difficult to maintainthis view; the Assemblies of God was on the verge of entering theevangelical mainstream.

Beginning in 1940 there emerged a number of loosely related move-ments among fundamentalist Christians calling for the formation of anorganization that might counter the public influence of the mainstreamProtestant Federal Council of the Churches of Christ.55 At the front ofthese fundamentalists’ minds was a concern that liberal Protestantism

represented a serious threat to their own freedoms; they were persuaded,notes Blumhofer, that the Federal Council ’had become...nothing lessthan a front for those conspiring to subvert fundamentalists’ civil andreligious liberties’. 5’ Their efforts culminated in a meeting in St Louis,Missouri, in April, 1942, at which the Assemblies of God was repre-sented by a delegation of three; the organization founded there came tobe known as the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Assembliesof God was counted among its members.5’The NAE of that day was characterized by what Blumhofer rightly

calls a ’reverent patriotism’, fueled by then-president Harold JohnOckenga’s ’grand vision for American culture’, Ockenga’s vision wasfor a Christian America, and his rhetoric, which was both highly patrioticand strongly anti-Catholic, was a product of his conservative Reformedtheological heritage.58 An excerpt from his address to the firstConstitutional Convention of the NAE is worth quoting at length:

I believe that the United States of America has been assigned a destinycomparable to that of ancient Israel which was favored, preserved,endowed, guided, and used by God. Historically, God has prepared this

54. What I here call a ’slight’ modification is arguably a significant one. Attachedto the original pacifist declaration is the statement, ’At the same time the GeneralCouncil hereby declares its unswerving loyalty to our Government and to its ChiefExecutive, and we purpose to assist the government in time of war in every waymorally possible’. I take up the issue of Christian loyalty to government at somelength below.

55. Blumhofer (vol. 2), pp. 20-21.56. Blumhofer (vol. 2), p. 21.57. Blumhofer (vol. 2), pp. 23-25. Blumhofer notes (pp. 211-12 n. 45) that the

Assemblies of God soon became the NAE’s largest member denomination.58. Blumhofer (vol. 2), pp. 27, 29-30.



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nation with a vast and united country, with a population drawn frominnumerable blood streams, with a wealth that is unequaled, with an ideo-logical strength drawn from the traditions of classical and radical philo-sophy but with a government held accountable to law, as no governmentexcept Israel has ever been, and with an enlightenment in the minds of the

average citizen which is the climax of social development.59What is especially remarkable about this rhetoric is the fidelity

with which it represents both Rauschenbusch’s attitudes about Israel andthe United States and Yoder’s account of a neo-neo-Constantinian

Christianity. Both Rauschenbusch and Ockenga express the tacit assump-tion that there is a sort of philosophical principle undergirding bothChristianity and the United States Constitution and that this principle isin a sense more significant than the Gospel, which is but a historicalmanifestation of the principle. Given this perspective, it is fairly easy tounderstand how one could justify certain types of military action in orderto preserve the principle. ’It is hardly coincidence’, notes Blumhofer,’that Assemblies of God views on war and country changed significantlyat about the same time the denomination affiliated with the NAE’ .60The most profound expression of the change Blumhofer mentions

occurred at the General Councils of 1965 and 1967. By 1965 a signifi-cant number of questions had arisen concerning the official position as itstood to that time. A resolution was presented, calling for a specialcommittee appointed by the Executive Presbytery to study the matterfurther.61 At the 1967 Council the committee brought the followingproposed modifications to what had become Article XXII of thedenominational bylaws:

WHEREAS, The 3lst General Council in session requested the appointingof a committee to study the adequacy of our statement on Military Serviceas found in Article XXII of the Bylaws; andWHEREAS, Subsequently a duly appointed committee has carefullyexamined said Article XXII, together with the expressed opinions ofchaplains, pastors, evangelists, and correspondence from young mencurrently involved in the draft; therefore, be it

59. Blumhofer (vol. 2), p. 30. Blumhofer takes this quote from p. 10 of BenHardin’s letter in ’United We Stand: NAE Constitutional Convention Report’, takenfrom the Herbert J. Taylor papers at the Billy Graham Center Archives. Cf.Blumhofer, p. 210 n. 35, p. 212 n. 53.

60. Blumhofer (vol. 2), p. 212.61. From the minutes of the 1967 General Council of the Assemblies of God,

p. 14. Obtained from the Assemblies of God Archives in Springfield, Missouri.



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RESOLVED, That we retain Article XXII as it now appears in the Bylaws;and be it further

RESOLVED, That the following paragraph be added thereto: We herebyexpress our desire to continue to extend fellowship and sacramentalministries to those who do not choose non-combatant service.62

Given the rise of nationalistic sentiments in American evangelicalismsince the 1940s the position expressed by this amendment is surprisinglymoderate. By resolving to ’retain Article XXII as it now appears’, a greatrespect is shown for the pacifist heritage of American Pentecostalism.The addition of the paragraph concerning the ecclesial status of thosewho did choose to take part in war was not a particularly new claim; itmerely stated explicitly what had been implicit from the beginning.Clearly, however, the committee members wished to preserve as muchof the denomination’s traditional pacifism as they possibly could in theface of changing opinion.

This amended resolution, however, was not adopted. The minutesexplain that its reading was followed by [Considerable discussion...concerning the Assemblies of God position on military service’. Duringthis discussion it was decided that the resolution should be referred backto the committee and that the committee should be expanded by theaddition of three members ’representative of a cross section of thefellowship’ .63 Three days later the expanded committee reported back tothe Council, proposing a change much more significant than originallysuggested:

WHEREAS the ideal world condition is that of peace, we as Christian

citizens should use our influence in promoting peaceful solutions to worldproblems; and,WHEREAS we live in a world in which there may arise international

emergencies which will lead our nation to resort to armed violence in thedefense of its ideals, freedom, and national existence; andWHEREAS, our first loyalty is to God, we recognize nevertheless thathuman government is ordained of God, and that there are obligations ofcitizenship that are binding upon us as Christians; and,WHEREAS we acknowledge the principle of individual freedom of con-science as it relates to military service; therefore be itRESOLVED, That Article XXII of The General Council Bylaws be deletedand replaced with the following article:

62. 1967 minutes, p. 14.63. 1967 minutes, p. 15.



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Article XXII. Military Service

As a movement we affirm our loyalty to the government of the UnitedStates in war or peace.We shall continue to insist, as we have historically, on the right of eachmember whether to declare his position as a combatant, a non-combatant,or a conscientious objector. 64

What is more remarkable about this particular revision of Article XXII(which the minutes note without remarks was passed and made part ofthe official policy of the Assemblies of God 61) is the clearly differentrationality at work in contrast to the original resolution of 1917. Thatparticular article made an allowance for the place of civil government,but was clearly more concerned to affirm the Christian position towardviolence described in the New Testament and interpreted by contem-porary Pentecostalism. These were matters, said the original resolution,that were presented quite plainly by the New Testament and which wereto be modeled by a faithful community. The ’inspired Word of God’, ithad claimed ‘...is the sole basis for our faith’.66No such reasoning is evidenced by the resolution of 1967. In contrast

to the original statement, which looked almost exclusively to Scripturefor its warrants, this article is void of any such references. It acknowl-

edges the peaceableness of an ’ideal world’ but insists that such a worldis far from being a present reality. It suggests that the real world is aviolent one, and in a violent world violence is sometimes necessary inthe defense of the good. That good is described variously here-as the’ideals, freedom, and national existence’ of ’our nation’, or ’the principleof individual freedom of conscience’-but it is always a good that existsin a realm of principles and ideas rather than history, always a goodwhose preservation requires the support of the state. The clear implica-tion is that the existence of the kingdom of God is dependent not uponGod’s acts toward and within a faithful Christian community, but upon asword-bearing American state that can militarily defend the principlesthat make possible the existence of any Christian community at all.Such reasoning is patently fallacious on historical and philosophical, as

well as theological, grounds. The church has existed and can continue toexist as a minority community at odds, rather than in partnership, with

64. 1967 minutes, p. 35.65. 1967 minutes, p. 35.66. Weekly Evangel, August 4, 1917, p. 6.



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the state. America’s founding, moreover, was by no means an explicitlyChristian event; as Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden sosuccinctly put this matter in their book The Search for ChristianAmerica, ’early America does not deserve to be considered uniquely,distinctly or even predominately Christian, if we mean by the word&dquo;Christian&dquo; a state of society reflecting the ideals presented in Scripture.There is no lost golden age to which American Christians may return.’ Ifanything, they say, ’evangelicals themselves were often partly to blamefor the spread of secularism in contemporary American life’. 67 Thehistorical record suggests, in other words, that the Constantinianism ofthe American church has operated to the detriment of the cause of theGospel.As the church has deepened and complicated its alliances with

government, that deepening has demanded an ever-increasing relianceon principles and ideals and a corresponding abandonment of the scrip-tural accounts of Jesus and the church. The result, says John HowardYoder, has, to say the least, been problematic:

If kenosis is the shape of God’s own self-sending, then any strategy ofLordship, like that of the kings of this world, is not only a strategicmistake likely to backfire but a denial of gospel substance, a denial whichhas failed even where it succeeded. What the churches accepted in theConstantinian shift is what Jesus rejected, seizing godlikeness, moving inhoc signo from Golgotha to the battlefield. If this diagnosis is correct,then the cure is not to update the fourth-century mistake by adding another’neo-’ but to repent of the whole ’where it’s at’ style and to begin againwith kenosis.68

I stated at the beginning that the possibility for a return to pacifismstill exists in American Pentecostalism based on the eschatological natureof its origins and the priority it gives the book of Acts among the NewTestament Scriptures. One might say that the way Pentecostals had beentrained to read the Bible by their restorationist heritage gave them thesense that they were the contemporary manifestation of the ’last days’community founded in Acts; although this imminent eschatological sensehas been diminished by the passage of time and the relative institu-tionalization of Pentecostal communities, the privileging of Acts remainsas a contemporary characteristic of Pentecostalism. It is here, then,

67. Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden, The Search for ChristianAmerica (Colorado Springs: Helmers and Howard, 1989), p. 17.

68. Yoder, ’Constantinian Sources’, p. 145.



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that I shall begin to develop a reconstructed theological argument forPentecostal pacifism.The Pentecostal arrival of the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts was

clearly understood by the first Christians as an eschatological event.Jesus’ promise of the imminent and powerful advent of the Holy Spiritwas made in the context of his followers’ questions concerning the finalrestoration of Israel (Acts 1.6-8), a promise sealed by the angelicassurance that he would ’come in the same way as you saw him go into

heaven’ (Acts 1.11).69 Peter’s proclamation to those who were witnessesto the Spirit’s coming, moreover, framed the Pentecost event in thecontext of the eschatological prophecy from the Old Testament book ofJoel, by which God made the promise:

In the last days it will be, Goddeclares,

that I will pour out my Spiritupon all flesh...

Then everyone who calls on the

name of the Lord shall be

saved (Joel 2.17, 21).

As I noted above, this eschatological aspect of the Pentecostal experi-ence was a significant part of the way the earliest twentieth centuryPentecostals understood themselves, some of which have continued tofind expressions up to the present day.70 Central among these is thesense that in the Pentecostal coming of the Holy Spirit is an empower-ment by which the Christian community is made a radical community ofwitness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.?1 This sense, I believe,was the implicit basis for the Pentecostal social ethic that included astrong commitment to pacifism; it has also, however, served as the basisfor a denial of the importance of social ethics in the face of an impending

69. All Scripture references, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the NewRevised Standard Version.

70. Edith Blumhofer offers an account of the eschatological expectations of therestorationists in vol. 1, pp. 2-26.

71. The 1993 Constitutional Declaration of the Assemblies of God, for example,says that ’the priority reason for being of the Assemblies of God is to be an agencyof God for evangelizing the world... [it] exists expressly to give continuing emphasisto this reason-for-being in the New Testament apostolic pattern by teaching andencouraging believers to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, which enables them to evan-gelize in the power of the Spirit with accompanying supernatural signs...’ From theMinutes of the 45th Session of the General Council of the Assemblies of God, p. 125.



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eschaton. 72 Dempster is thus correct in his assertion that Pentecostalism’sfailure explicitly to link its ’distinctive testimony’ to its early pacifism’has had, and continues to have, an almost lethal impact on the task ofconstructing a Pentecostal social ethic’.’3 This link, however, continuesto offer itself as a possibility through a reclamation of the moralsignificance of the story of Pentecost.There are two particular reasons for making the story of Pentecost

central to the recovery of a nonviolent Christian social ethic. The first of

these reasons is literary. Stanley Hauerwas has argued that the Christianlife has a particularly narrative character, and that this ’narrative mode isneither incidental nor accidental to Christian belief. There is no morefundamental way to talk of God’, he claims, ’than in a story’. 74 Storiesare theologically fundamental because God’s self-revelation is specificallynarrative in its character; God has, in other words, revealed godself ’inthe history of Israel and in the life of Jesus’ .75 Christians are ’justified’and ’sanctified’ through our participation in this story; the use of thislanguage requires that we remember, though, that these terms are ‘notmeant to be descriptive of a status’ .

Indeed, part of the problem with those terms is that they are abstractions.When they are separated from Jesus’ life and death, they distort Christianlife. ’Sanctification’ is but a way of reminding us of the kind of journeywe must undertake if we are to make the story of Jesus our story.’Justification’ is but a reminder of the character of that story-namelywhat God has done for us by providing us with a path to follow. 76

Participation in the stories of Israel and of Jesus rightly calls into ques-tion the supposition that Christians must calculate ways to protect them-selves and to control their own existences; it names as a lie the notionthat human existence in a world filled with violence necessarily relativizesthe way of life presented in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. 77 Suchdeceptive illusions are at the root of Christian participation in humanviolence, for they perpetuate the idea that ’we are our own creators-

72. Blumhofer (vol. 1), pp. 24-25.73. Dempster, p. 32.74. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom (Notre Dame: University of

Notre Dame Press, 1983), p. 25.75. Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, p. 28.76. Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, p. 94. 77. Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, p. 142.



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and that only we can bestow meaning on our lives, since there is no oneelse to do so’ .78

Constructively, our participation in the Christian story offers analtogether different possibility for our existence, a possibility grounded inthe claim that as we make the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrectionour own, we are brought into the immediacy of God’s kingdom. Thepresence of this kingdom constitutes a substantive reality in which weare called to learn how to live. 79 We are thus able to see the world froma distinctively eschatological perspective.80 As we are made part of apeople who are learning to live according to this perspective, we aretaught to understand not simply that God rules, but also ’how God rulesand the establishment of that rule through the life, death, and resurrec-tion of Jesus’. 81 It is through our participation in the world constituted inthis rule that we may ’learn to be creatures, to have characters appro-

priate to God’s Lordship, to be redeemed’ .82Among Christians, Pentecostals are uniquely well positioned to under-

stand that peaceableness is central to lives which truthfully bear witnessto the reality of this kingdom. For Pentecostals understand, by virtue oftheir privileging the story told in the book of Acts, that in baptizingJesus’ disciples in the Holy Spirit, God was acting definitively to create anew world and a new people capable of living in that world. Hence theremarkable change in the disciples’ demeanor after Pentecost; they werea people, to borrow a phrase from Paul, who found themselves living in

78. Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, p. 94.79. The work of George Lindbeck is especially helpful here. He notes in a dis-

cussion of the notion of intratextuality in his important book The Nature of Doctrine(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984) that classical texts (of which the ChristianScriptures are ostensibly one example) ’shape the imagination and perception of theattentive reader so that he or she forever views the world to some extent through thelenses they supply... These same considerations apply even more forcefully to thepreeminently authoritative texts that are the canonical writings of religious commu-nities. For those who are steeped in them, no world is more real than the ones theycreate... Intratextual theology redescribes reality within the scriptural frameworkrather than translating Scripture into extrascriptural categories. It is the text, so tospeak, that absorbs the world, rather than the world the text’ (pp. 116-17; 118).

80. I think here of Paul’s take on this matter in 2 Cor. 5.16: ’From now on,therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view...’

81. Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, pp. 82-83.82. Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, p. 69.



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’a new creation’ in which ’everything has become new’ .83The centrality of peaceableness to those who would live as witnesses

to this new creation becomes apparent when the story of Pentecost isunderstood as one part of the entire story of God’s life with God’s people.For in Pentecost, notes Stanley Hauerwas, we see the restoration of thatwhich was destroyed at Babel. 84 This destruction, which consisted in thescattering of humanity into ’separate peoples isolated into homes, lands,and histories and no longer able to cooperate’,85 was God’s judgmenton a people who believed they were capable of living without theacknowledgement of their own creatureliness, and hence without God.86The consequence of the divisions created at Babel was the birth of

war, ’as the fear of the other became the overriding passion which moti-vated each group to force others into their story or to face amihilatiori’. 81The presence of difference became an intolerable one as each groupsought to make itself the absolute standard for being human:

Humans became committed to destroying the other even if it meant theirown death. Better to die than to let the other exist. To this day we thus findourselves condemned to live in tribes, each bent on the destruction of theother tribes so that we might deny our tribal limits. Our histories becomethe history of war as we count our days by the battles of the past.88

The story of Babel, however, is not the story of the ultimate fate ofhumankind. For after the tragedy of Babel comes the redemptive call ofAbraham, through whom ’God creates a rainbow people so that theworld might know that in spite of our sinfulness God has not abandonedus’.89 The story of Israel is thus born, and through Israel comes Jesus,whose life bears witness to the existence ’of a new possibility of human,social, and therefore political relationships’.9’ These are the relationships

83. 2 Cor. 5.17. I am grateful to Dr Richard Hays, as well as to Dr Steve Long,both of whom have helped me see that the most satisfying translation of this passageis one that sees the phrase ’new creation’ as referring to the world itself, rather thanto the individual believer.

84. Stanley Hauerwas, ’The Church as God’s New Language’, in ChristianExistence Today (Durham: Labyrinth, 1988), p. 48.

85. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 49.86. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 48.87. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 49.88. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 49.89. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 49.90. John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972),

p. 63.



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instantiated in the community called into existence by Jesus’ proclama-tions concerning the reign of God; a community intended, as JohnHoward Yoder has said, to be ’a visible socio-political, economic restruc-turing of relations among the people of God, achieved by his interventionin the person of Jesus as the one Anointed and endued with the Spirit’ .91

Pentecost therefore represents a culmination of the story begun withthe call of Abraham, a story of God’s gracious response to the tragedyof Babel. Those Jews who had gathered in Jerusalem for the festivalcame from all over the world and spoke a multitude of different languages.The glossolalia engendered by the coming of the Spirit was heard byeach of them in his or her own language, a sign that in Pentecost Godhad begun the final work of gathering together the world’s scatteredpeoples into one new people.92 The remarkable life of the newly createdcommunity, including the signs and wonders done by the Apostles andthe free sharing of resources, was a sign that Jesus’ promise of powersufficient for the faithful bearing of witness was being fulfilled.93 Thehostilities arising from the divisions established at Babel were overcome.The glossolalia of Pentecost represents the Spirit’s creation of a new

language that is not restricted to the utterance of words. ’It is instead acommunity whose memory of its Savior creates the miracle of being apeople whose very differences contribute to their unity.’94 This is thecommunity called the church,95 the community which looks forward tothe time when God will complete the work of gathering together ’agreat multitude that no one can count, from every nation, from all tribesand peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before theLamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands’.96 Theexistence of such a people is surely a sign that .

we really do have an alternative to Babel, to fear of one another, andfinally then to war. Even more happily it means that insofar as we are thechurch, we do not just have an alternative, we are the alternative. We donot have a story to tell but in the telling we are the story being told. 97

91. Yoder, Politics, p. 39.92. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 50.93. See Acts 2.42-47.94. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 53.95. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 53.96. Rev. 7.9.

97. Hauerwas, ’The Church’, p. 54.



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Pentecostals, of all such people, ought to be faithful embodiments ofthis story. For it is our ’distinctive testimony’ that at Pentecost Godmade possible the existence of a community whose willingness to live’filled with the Spirit’ makes present to the world the reality of God’skingdom. A reality so centered around so peaceable a vision certainlyprecludes any level of participation in killing. May we be transformed bythe recovery of this vision.98

98. I am especially grateful to the staff of the Assemblies of God Archives inSpringfield, Missouri, for their assistance in gathering a number of the materialsused in the composition of this essay, and to Dr Grant Wacker, who directed me tothe work of Murray Dempster.



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