The ideal goal of a book's title is often an attempt to capture an author's or editor's thesis for the work. Such is the case with this edited collection. The editors, all insiders to the Holiness and Pentecostal traditions, hope to demonstrate the intertwined nature of the movements, both in their histories and their theologies. The idea of intertwined traditions is not novel or surprising—there is a denomination called the Pentecostal-Holiness Church, and historians have written about the Holiness roots of the Pentecostal movement. Yet, the editors believe the effort to elucidate the intertwined pasts (and presents and futures) is needed because of the historic, conflicted nature of cooperation, or lack of, between the traditions. They hope to flesh out the complexity and thus enhance, at minimum, scholarly collaboration.
The text is divided into three parts: “In the Beginning” (four chapters), “Unity and Diversity” (three chapters), and “Theological Engagement” (three chapters)—an attempt to provide something for everyone, historians and theologians, insiders and outsiders. Something is most likely there for everyone interested in studying the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, but like some edited collections, the chapters have little connections, and some essays will gather interest only to a small cadre of specialists. For example, the short section on theology seems too brief and scattered to provide an evidential depth of intertwined traditions. Attention to gender concerns is included in Cheryl Sander's chapter on “Black Radical Holy Women.”
As a historian, an outsider who writes on these topics, I found several of the historical chapters of interest. David Bundy demonstrated that “God's Bible School” (with founder Martin Wells Knapp) was an expression of the “radical holiness networks” (33) amid progressivism and populism. Other more historical chapters, while having no connecting links, highlighted ways to investigate the global reach of the intertwined Holiness and Pentecostal stories. Any new information on the role of Pandita Ramabai and how the Mutki Revival of 1905 enriches the understanding of the interaction of Holiness missionary networks and Pentecostal beginnings is welcome. Robert Danielson's analysis of Ramabi's personal library was creative, though admittedly highly (or too) speculative as to what books Ramabi had read or was influenced by as her identity developed. Kimberly Alexander's chapter on early British Pentecostal Alexander Boddy and his interaction with the Pentecostal League of Prayer offered a historiographical corrective to better emphasize the Wesleyan rather than mostly Keswick roots of British Pentecostalism. Readers connected to the Wesleyan-based Asbury Seminary (Wilmore, Kentucky) will find a chapter on how their founder, Henry Clay Morrison, spread his “radical holiness” beliefs globally to countries like China and Japan. Luther Oconer noted that while radical holiness concepts like sanctification as the eradication of sin were gradually pushed to the margins in the United States, that was not the case in Morrison's evangelistic messages in international mission settings.
Scholars active in the academy will find information about how the Wesleyan Theological Society and the Society for Pentecostal Studies slowly began to cooperate in the latter part of the twentieth century. Such reading is no doubt an insider story but the account—found in the introduction—actually speaks to the book's thesis of how the traditions interacted (and can interact). Another essay designed for an insider audience offers an assessment of the “Promise of the Theology of the Cleveland School” (Cleveland, Tennessee; home of the Pentecostal denomination, the Church of God). Readers, including those outside the Holiness-Pentecostal traditions, will find a window open into the current dynamics in Holiness and Pentecostal interaction. The essay sheds light on the scholarship of key players such as Steve Land and Cheryl Bridges Johns, who have been active in recent Pentecostal cooperative relations, and how their theology shaped current trends. The chapter, written by Chris Green, cites, for example, Land's emphasis that Pentecostals need to recover their black/Wesleyan holiness theology/spirituality to be “in step” with the Holy Spirit. Such an embodied spirituality worked for “reconciliatory community, and its appreciation for iconic power of dreams and visions” (232). Green encouraged the “Cleveland School” to continue to “be ‘black,’ both in the sense that honors its heritage in the black church tradition and in the sense that it is intentionally resistant to ‘whiteness.’” Despite Pentecostals’ past failures to fulfill this calling, “the interracial character of Azusa Street Revival services prefigures the future that the Spirit desires not only for the Pentecostal Movement but also for the church catholic and the world” (233). The essay certainly speaks to present and future challenges, given recent evidence that reveals Pentecostal characteristics in very conservative American politics, and maps a way forward for readers to consider in the work of “racial conciliation” (234).
The collection of essays asserts the primary importance of the Wesleyan tradition to the intertwining of Holiness networks and Pentecostalism. Other scholars, however, rightly note that the Reformed traditions are part of the larger story (and some, myself included, have written about this). The book has several chapters that assume prior knowledge of the Holiness and Pentecostal traditions and whose audience is Holiness and Pentecostal groups that might find the material conducive to further conversation together. Still, the collection has material that demonstrates the fruits and possibilities of Holiness and Pentecostal scholarship.
