[SIDE CONVERSATION] Good afternoon. And welcome to our
last and final panel for this day's
Into All the World: Black Pentecostalism
in Global Contexts. What we want to do today-- or this afternoon-- I want to
give some instructions first. We've passed out cards. When the panelists
have finished, Dr. Sanders will engage in
question and answer with them. And we would like for you
to record your questions. Write them down in print-- not cursive, in print-- with your name and institutional
affiliation on that. And Dr. Sanders will read the
question for the panelists. The second issue-- if
we begin a conversation about Pentecostalism, we truly
can't talk about Pentecostalism without talking about
music in Pentecostalism. And I wanted to acknowledge
the CD that was playing before the session began. It's the CD-- the gift
that Bishop Carlton Pearson has given us. And that is Live At Azusa. [APPLAUSE] Classic [INAUDIBLE]. I'm completely Baptist. [LAUGHTER] But I can't help but say to
folk, you yet holding on? [LAUGHTER] Well, keep on keeping on. [LAUGHTER] I wanted to begin
the panel by saying, certainly we've had a
phenomenal and unprecedented day of presentations and dialogue. [APPLAUSE] Thank you. I'm [INAUDIBLE]. [APPLAUSE] And we wanted to
culminate this symposium with a panel that seeks to
re-imagine Pentecostalism. Given its burgeoning
and syncretic forms throughout Latin America,
Europe, Africa, and the US, what might African-American
Pentecostalism look like in five years,
in 10 years, in 20 years? What holds this
tradition together is that theology, worship
style, a shared history, and where might we've
locate it denominationally? What, after all, is a radically
inclusive Pentecostalism? Or is that an oxymoron? Or is it the fundamental
demonstration of faith? What influence will
Pentecostalism have on politics-- on how ordinary people
interact with the nation state. All of these
questions and more we want to tackle with
this final panel of distinguished ministers. I should remind you that the
purpose of this final panel is neither total
agreement nor conversion, but rather dialogue. [LAUGHTER] To help us see-- [LAUGHTER] Because we really want to
begin to see what truly are the emerging
and truly syncretic forms of this most
influential faith tradition. And who better to
moderate this panel than the Reverend
Dr. Cheryl Sanders-- a woman who graciously
embodies the tension that can exist between
the life of the mind and the life of faith. A woman who is
one of the leading scholars of
African-American Pentecostal and holiness traditions
in the country. The Reverend Dr. Sanders
is senior pastor-- not first lady-- [LAUGHTER] Not associate minister, not
evangelist, nor missionary. [LAUGHTER] But she is pastor of
the Third Street Church of God in Washington, DC. She's been serving
there since 1997. And she is a professor of
Christian Ethics at the Howard University School of Divinity. She has been serving
there since 1984. Dr. Sanders is the author
of over 50 articles and several books, including
Ministry at the Margins, Saints in Exile, The
Holiness Pentecostal Experience in African-American
Religion and Culture, as well as Empowerment Ethics
for a Liberated People. She is also the editor of
Living the Intersection. She is a graduate of Sidwell
Friends School, Swarthmore College, and Harvard
Divinity School. Please join me in
welcoming our moderator for this very fabulous
panel, Dr. Cheryl Sanders. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, Dr. Frederick
for your leadership, along with Professor
Best and Marlon Millner. I know that this
might sound redundant, but this has really
been a great event-- very well planned. And I've just been so pleased to
be a part of this conversation, and have been very much
looking forward to, as always, some opportunities
to return to Harvard and share in the
sharing of ideas. And always-- I always get new
information and new insight. And I'm just very thankful. And I'm sure that
I speak on behalf of all of our
participants in expressing our appreciation to the Divinity
School for hosting this event. Re-imagining Pentecostalism
is our subject for this last panel. And we have all day been
hearing from scholars. And now we turn our
attention to practitioners. And all of the
people on our panel are practitioners
who are informed by the scholarly insights
of their own work, their own research,
their own opportunities to occupy various pulpits
of the explication of ideas. And so we haven't just
selected practitioners. Well, I didn't. Well, let me just say, I
didn't choose the panel. OK? But I'm so pleased. Because I've had the
opportunity over the years to interact with all but one. There is only one person I'm
meeting for the first time. But these are practitioners
whose practice is enriched by the
kind of discourse that we've been having all day. And so I'm sure that we're going
to have a great opportunity to hear their hearts
and their minds in terms of what they
bring to ministry. And each of them brings
a particular expertise and has particular
issues on their agenda pertinent to this
important topic of re-imagining Pentecostalism. I'm going to just give a
very brief introduction. You know that in your folder
you have a complete bio for each of them. But let me just
introduce each of them. And I believe our time frame is
going to be about 10 minutes. If we can adhere to 10
minute presentations, we're going to try
our best to do that. And then we will receive,
as has been said-- [LAUGHTER] We will receive questions
from the audience and have an opportunity for
a rich dialogue I'm sure. Our first presenter is
Bishop Carlton Pearson, who is the presiding
bishop of over 500 churches and ministries through the
Azusa Interdenominational Fellowship of Christian
Churches and Ministries, and pastor of the Higher
Dimensions Family Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he has
served for more than 20 years. And we've heard his music. And he is a person who
brings multiple gifts to the multiple
ministries that he has produced and
participated in, as you can see in your program. Our second presenter is
Bishop Yvette Flunder, who is senior pastor of City of
Refuge United Church of Christ, and presiding bishop of
Refuge Ministries Fellowship, and founder of the City
of Refuge Community Church in San Francisco. She is a graduate of the
Pacific School of Religion and has a Doctor
of Ministry degree from the San Francisco
Theological Seminary. She is the author
of a new book-- Where the Edge Gathers. Is that right? Where the Edge Gathers:
Theology and Homiletics of Radical Inclusivity. And that is a publication
of Pilgrim Press. Our third presenter
is Bishop Andy Lewter, who is pastor of the Oakley
Baptist Church in Columbus, Ohio, and has been
particularly engaged in television ministry and
many other connections. He is a part of the Full Gospel
Baptist Church Fellowship, and is the state overseer
for the state of Ohio, and has a seat on the Bishop's
Council of the Full Gospel Baptist Church Fellowship. And he will be our
third presenter. Fourth is the Reverend
Dr. Frank Madison Reid, III, who is minister of
the historic Bethel AME Church in Baltimore, and is the
fifth generation of his family to be a minister
in the AME Church. He is a graduate-- as is Bishop
Lewter-- a graduate of Harvard Divinity School and
also has degrees from Yale and from United
Theological Seminary in Dayton, where he earned a Doctor
of Ministry degree. He also has made his mark
in religious broadcasting, and has also put a particular
face, and name, and imagery to Neo-Pentecostalism. Our fifth and final panelist
is Reverend Eugene Rivers, III, who is pastor of the
Azusa Christian Community in Dorchester, Massachusetts. And he has labored
for 30 years-- probably more than 30 years--
on behalf of the black poor, and particularly is known for
his leadership of the National Ten Point Leadership
Foundation-- and that work, which of
course, has gotten recognition nationwide. And also the Ella J. Baker
House is a very important venue for intervention and ministry
among the youth of Boston. And so in that order, I'm
going to invite our panelists to address the topic of
re-imagining Pentecostalism, beginning with Bishop Pearson. Thanks. [APPLAUSE] Thank you, Pastor Sanders-- Dr. Sanders, Bishop Sanders,
anointed female Preacher Sanders. I want to thank the
Lord for being here. Thank the Lord for
sanctifying me, filling me with His precious holiness. [LAUGHTER] And a mighty burning fire. [LAUGHTER] Ah ha. You through with it. I'm through. We can go home after that. Help him, Jesus. It's almost
embarrassing that this-- it's wonderful
and complimentary. But it's also
almost embarrassing that this event did not take
place on the OU campus-- where I, was a member of the
board for 15 years and alumni-- or as Dr. Franklin
said, at Emory-- at our COGIC school. We always considered Harvard
people to be unsaved, and unspiritual, and
in fact we actually said at ORU you that
we would never want, ever our school to
ever deteriorate spiritually to
where schools like Harvard, and Yale, and these. [LAUGHTER] And we said that
with great sincerity and incredible arrogance. I wasn't so aware at
that time, and never thought I'd ever be
invited here of all. And then to meet and hear
such brilliant intellectual discussion by
African-Americans-- especially Pentecostals-- is
a sort of a eureka for me. You all are more familiar
with it than I am. But my whole world-- I was in a world almost
completely dominated by non-black people for a while. I grew up in The Church
of God in Christ, as most of the more
spiritual people here did. [LAUGHTER] We not only know holiness,
we rolled holiness. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, you can't join in. You've got to be born. [LAUGHTER] Not born again. Just born in. [LAUGHTER] Yeah. I never thought I'd be engaged
in such brilliant conversation. But I was, for the first
18 years of my life, involved almost exclusively
in that expression. Then I came to ORU in 1971,
and got involved pretty heavily in the pretty predominantly
non-back charismatic world. My best friends were the Oral
Robertses, and the Hagins, and the Copelands, and some
of these people we present-- Joyce Meyer, people like that. And for many, many years, the
Jack Hayfords, and the Iverna Tompkins, and we traveled
in those circles, and didn't have a
lot of interaction among my own
Pentecostal brethren until we started Azusa. And then that kind of
started things again when Oral Roberts
prophesied that he thought that the next great
revival would come through and to the black church. We had the discussion in 1986. And in fact, we were we
were just having lunch one afternoon and suddenly that-- we thought it was the spirit
of prophecy that came upon him. We jumped and ran
to the studio-- no preparation, no
makeup or anything. We just sat down
and recorded it. So we actually have it on video. And he wanted to say
that God had been dealing with me about Pentecostalism. I'd been studying the roots,
particularly JW Seymour. I was conspicuously lonely for-- the conspicuous absence I
should say of African-Americans in that circle. I never heard of William
Seymour, and little about the Church
of God in Christ. I introduced Oral Roberts
to JO Patterson in 1972. We brought him in for an
African-American history week. And then I accompanied
Oral to the convocation to speak the following fall,
which I was not allowed to go up on the platform. And Oral kept trying
to get me to come. And I said, no. You don't do that. That'd be like going in the Holy
of Holies without permission. You'd get struck down dead. And-- [LAUGHTER] They'd pull you out with a
chain, or a rope, or something. [LAUGHTER] Or beat you out with
that same chain. But then I spoke at that
very event the same night, 28 years later. I was the speaker of
that same final night. So that was before I became
the heretic that I am today. I want to say
something about that. I see myself now as a
Pentecostal revisionist, a Pentecostal reformist. I am re-viewing, revisiting, and
maybe even revising my theology about a lot of things-- not just
Pentecostals, but evangelical Christianity overall. The word Pentecost means 50th
day-- the apprentice's 50th day after the blood
sacrifice, after Passover. So when you come
into Pentecost, you are supposed to already
be washed supposedly. What drew the
people to Pentecost was not the gibberish. What astounded them
and bewildered them, as the King James
version says, was that they understood in
their cultural identity what was being discussed. And they were not
discussing religion-- the works of man. They were discussing the mighty
or wonderful works of God. Hmm. Yes. Somehow we in religion,
particularly evangelical Christianity, have gotten
away from the wonderful works of God, and to the extravagant
works of humankind. Yes. We have created our
own denominations, and organizations,
and doctrines, and dogmas, and disciplines. And it's not really
about Jesus anymore. It's not about salvation. It's about our way of life. And I was ensconced in that. I was not aware that I
had become so arrogantly prejudicial and bigoted. I wouldn't use those terms of
reference to my position years ago. But since I've come
to this revelation-- the vicious rejection
that I received-- I said, have I been that way? Am I really what I saw? Was I ever that cold,
and harsh, and distant? And was I ever that
judgmental evidently? Or I don't think I'd be
receiving it to the degree that I have-- receiving the
reproach of the pioneer. But here's-- I've been speaking
in tongues for 46 years. And I'm 52 tomorrow. Whatever that is. Figure it out. Six years old. Six years old. I've always said
five or six years old when I started
speaking in tongues. But I'm speaking in tongues I
say, Bishop Reid, louder today than I ever have in
the 46 years that I've been speaking in tongues. And what I mean by that is, I'm
speaking in cultural language and identification. People are hearing
and understanding. And they are saying what they
said then-- what meaneth this? And here's what that
term means in Greek. What do you mean this to mean? Hmm. What does that mean? Why am I understanding? Because I'm not supposed to. I'm not used to cultural
relevance in religion. You are relating faith
to culture in me, and in my dialect,
in my consciousness. And I am moved. What does this mean? I didn't know it was possible. That was basically
what they were asking on the day of Pentecost. They were astounded. Because they heard them
speak in their languages. Now, the Bible never
tells us, Jesus never instructed us to
get anybody saved. He said make students. Yes. Or disciples. Yes, sir, that. I have never had so
many disciples of Christ who are Jewish, and Muslim,
or Hindu in my life. I've never had conversations,
engaging conversations, with Hindus or atheists. In fact, the first phone call
I got on my phone at church after the newspaper in
Tulsa ran the whole story-- I gave them an interview. I didn't know it was going
to be front page with me in vestments, and all that
stuff, in that conservative, buckle of the Bible
Belt, which has one of the highest mental
illness rates in the country. The highest divorce rate--
second only to Nevada-- highest out-of-wedlock
teen pregnancy. I hear you there. Huge same-gender loving
community in Tulsa-- one of the biggest
in the country. But yet we're the
buckle of the Bible Belt, where everybody goes
to heaven or hell through us. We're the toll gate keepers. And I've been
probably one of them. But I, like a young man
who stood a minute ago and said he's changed,
I have changed. I was wrong. I'm saying I was wrong. I'm not saying all of you are. I was wrong in so many things
that I preached, so many things that I believed. Not entirely. But I now believe
that Jesus is in fact, the Savior of the entire world. And it was TL Osborn
who said it to me. When you re-imagine-- can you
imagine and do you have faith enough to believe
that if in one man-- Adam-- all men die, that in
the second or the last Adam, all men will be made alive? If people die indiscriminately
without confessing Adam, if people die because of the
curse of Adam without even necessarily believing in Adam,
why cannot the last Adam have the same indiscriminate,
automatic, cosmic, Adamic grace and life-changing
impact that the first one? The first Adam didn't redeem us. The last Adam did. So why would the last Adam be
ineffectual in his redemption? Why would it be exclusive
to a few Southern Baptists? Or if you tongue-talking
Pentecostals. So I had to review all
that, revision all that, and now revise it and
present it in a way that-- I'm going to Moscow. I'm going to-- in fact I
just got on the plane Monday, a young preacher. I say young. He's my age. And that's getting
younger all the time. [LAUGHTER] 52 is not old. And you know it's not old,
especially if you're old. [LAUGHTER] But I put him on a plane
from St. Petersburg, Russia. He read about us on the
web, came over, spent a week discussing and discovering. And their bishops are flying
into Tulsa every week, or writing or calling
from all over to me. They come to me as
Nicodemus did Jesus by night so nobody could know that
they are at least considering the possibilities
that there may be a little truth in
the heresy I preach. Paul was called a heretic, as
well, you know, in Acts 24. In fact, the only
man in the scripture ever called a heretic was Paul. So I'm in fairly good company. But it just means choice. And I've chosen to
believe that Jesus said-- Paul said to Timothy,
we have put our faith in the living God
who is the Savior of all men, and especially
those who believe. If He is the Savior
not just for, but of, all humankind, but has a
special relationship with those who believe, He saves
those who believe and those who don't believe. Well, somebody said to
Paul and Paul answered it-- what if people don't believe. He says, does that nullify? What if some don't have faith-- Romans 3:3. Does that nullify or make of
non-effect the faith of God? Salvation is not a matter
between God and man. It's a matter between
God and his Christ. That God was in Christ
reconciling the world to himself. Pentecost speaks the
language of the good news. The wonderful works of God is
that your sins are forgiven. You are reconciled to God. You are redeemed to
God, whether you know it or not, why you were yet
sent as Christ's divers. The wonderful works of God,
which the first Pentecostals spoke, declared the good news. They didn't create it. They didn't tell people
they had to get saved. They were basically evidently
saying, you are redeemed. You are forgiven. Thank God for the
blood of Jesus. And they probably
quickened a little bit as we do in holiness--
hey, thank you, Jesus. But they knew what
they were doing. Yes. And so my presentation is not
so much to impress or depress church folk like you. It's to reach the unchurchful. And those are my new audience. That's who I'm listening to. And I'm thrilled to be a
part of that great expression of evangelistic life. [APPLAUSE] It's you. I had to write it down
because I'm a Pentecostal. And if I don't
write it down, I'll be up here till
sometime tomorrow. Praise the Lord, saints. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord again. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah. I consider myself
a Neo-Pentecostal without question. And I often refer to myself as
a Neo-Pentecostal reconciling, emerging theologian. Take it home. Mm. Because I have two
concomitant streams that run through
me all the time. And they run through
me simultaneously. One is my Church of
God in Christ self. And the other is my UCC self. And my Church of God in
Christ self and my UCC self do not get along. [LAUGHTER] And so from whence
come wars and fighting. I'm a Pentecostal, an
Acts 2 and 4 Pentecostal, as versus Acts 2:38 Pentecostal. And my memory of
church as a child was wonderful,
and mystical, full of a sense of belonging
to a community, and a community that
was special to God. Because we were more saved
basically than anyone else was. Oh, yeah. I recall the standard
picture of this Bishop Mason that stood at the door of
every Church of God in Christ that we had, and often asked
my folks what is he doing? And my mother said,
he's reading roots. I said, reading roots. What is reading roots? Go ahead. Go ahead now. And she said,
well, he would look at shapes of plants, and
fruit, and vegetables and receive a
revelation from God. Yeah. So as I got a little older,
I asked mama, I said, was Bishop Mason a root reader? Yeah. She said, yes. We'll talk about that later. And y'all know the picture. So you know I'm
telling the truth. Yeah, mm hmm. My grandfather came to
California from Texas during the diaspora just
before World War II. And he came he said by the
leading of the Holy Ghost-- much to the chagrin by the
way of my grandmother-- planted the first
Church of God in Christ in San Francisco
in the early 1940s. So my experience also
includes three years in Lexington,
Mississippi, at the Church of God in Christ School
at Saints Academy, worshipping at St. Paul the
First Church of God in Christ ever, praying at the house
where Bishop Mason lived and where his
children were born. I knew the Bible-- the whole Bible. Yeah. I had clear answers to
all the hard questions, about dinosaurs, and
creation, and all that-- about things present
or imminent things, all things eschatological. I knew all things about sex
and sexuality, everything that you could do, everything
that you couldn't do. I could quote the
appropriate passages to back up and prove
my point-- prove text my way through any conversation. Yeah. And I was fine until
I went to seminary. [LAUGHTER] And I'm going to tell
you the truth about me. I got told back-- I mean deconstructed in ways. And they don't have a
class for reconstruction. So you know just about what
my COGIC self went through. Amen. Praise the Lord, somebody. Let me get through this. [LAUGHTER] So now, quickly, how do
we connect the Pentecostal experience, in my
experience as a pastor and as a bishop of some 50 some
churches throughout the United States and Africa? How do we connect the
Pentecostal experience we are having to the book of Acts? First of all, we teach
Pentecost as a justice movement. And we teach it as
a justice movement because the immediate
diaspora from the event-- you all remember the
story, the telling in Acts. After everybody got
something from the Lord-- and 3,000, they went home. Yeah. I want to say that. The feast was over. The people left, which
meant that they went home with their own brand
of the infilling before they got acculturated
into the lives of the folks who preached to them. Mm. There is something about the
Holy Spirit and the necessity of our being able to receive
this baptism, this infilling, this outpouring of the
Spirit without having to visit upon everyone else
exactly what we received when we received it. Oh. All right. So my experience when
I went to Africa-- I go a lot. And when I went to Africa,
I was on the bus with some Spirit-filled-- I'm doing all right? Spirit-filled people. And one of them said, now when
you go in the marketplace, don't buy no masks. Because you don't know
what kind of demons you'll be bringing
back into your house. And she said it, and she spoke
in tongues-- duh, duh duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Don't buy no masks. [LAUGHTER] Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Don't buy no masks. She said, the Holy Ghost
told me to tell you because you don't know what
you're bringing in your house. And I thought to myself,
I said, you know, there is a disconnection between
how we got it in a sanitized way-- that's OK to say-- in this country, and
how the Holy Spirit is falling and raining
in the lives of people who look just like us and
live on the continent. Let me hurry along. So what would be-- and Mercy Oduyoye,
who's a Ghanaian woman theologian, powerful woman. When the folks tried to make
her church dress more Western and act more Western to show
they had the Holy Ghost, she said, the Maker of the
church will purify and use it. She said, that's not your job. We can have the Holy Ghost
and keep our culture. The nature of the church,
or the Maker of the church will purify and use it. So then I asked myself
a couple questions, then I'm going to sit down. What would be the radical
expression of inclusion today? If Pentecostalism is in
fact a justice movement, and if it is true that
William Joseph Seymour modeled a opportunity where people
came regardless to race, regardless to gender,
regardless to economic status, what would be the model
of that in this time? Who are the Gentiles among us? What is the present status quo? And then what is the
road less traveled? And so our ministry
extends to those who are most marginalized
by church and society. And I want you to see my
thesis before I sit down. The way we practice ministry
is we look intentionally for who does the
church hate the most. Yeah. Yeah. Mm. In San Francisco, it's not hard. No. [LAUGHTER] And somebody said, well,
it would be a no-brainer that you would minister to the
same-gender loving community. And I said, yes, with
great intentionality. There's no shame at all
in our game about that. But that's a no-brainer. We have gone beyond that to
reach for the transgender community. And we meet some 60 or so
transgenders at my church every Friday who have not
felt connected to any church, anywhere, at any
time in their lives. Mm. Somebody asked me, how
did you come to that? I said a transgender came to
me once who was undocumented and was living with HIV. And she said-- now
she was from Paris. And she sat down in my office. And she said to me, I
have one question for you. She said, will
your Jesus have me? My Lord. Changed my life. Ah. Hear me. It changed my life. It's not a question of
will my church have you? Nah. That's not what she asked me. It wasn't a question of whether
my denomination would have her, or my theology would contain
her, but will my Jesus-- do I have a Jesus
that will have her? And it led me to say that
if my Jesus won't have her-- Right. Lord. Let me close with this. What is the road
less traveled for us? What are the current blind
spots on the body of Christ? Certainly same-gender
loving people, people in recovery, those in the
incarcerated population. Yes. Listen. Those engaged in the sex
industry for sustenance. There are people that
exchange sex for food-- Yes. You're right. In the inner city of our cities. Come on. I'm telling the truth. Yes, you are. And there are people who
need some real practical intervention-- more intervention
and less judgment. And let me close with this. So we had to be honest about
our own reality and the reality of the whole community to help
us to build this ministry. And we had to be honest
about the way women have been treated, the way
same-gender loving people have been treated. And we had to tell the truth-- the contribution of
women in fundraising to raise money
for these churches without equal representation-- Yeah. Is a problem. Amen. Amen. My mother and my
grandmother both preached. They just didn't call it that. No, ma'am. And they didn't get to
sit on the front row. That's right. They didn't get to
sit in the pulpit. Yeah. And a young man could
sit in the pulpit and be one-year ordained
while my grandmother sat on the floor. So we had to do
something about that. The contribution of same-gender
loving people to music-- Yeah. Mm. Gospel music. We would have two songs to sing. I'm almost finished. [LAUGHTER] Just give me just
two seconds, Sister. Two songs-- can
I tell the truth? Is that all right? And they're songs
you don't like. [LAUGHTER] I'm telling the truth. And that's all right
if I tell the truth. I ain't scared. So it's important
to tell the truth. So we have this
risky experiment, which is Refuge Ministries. And it answers this question. How can we achieve a Pentecostal
style of celebration? How can we continue
the traditions of welcoming all persons
to the table of the Lord? In today's context, what does it
look like if you could get dead in '06 for being in a
pulpit with a white woman, then I believe that the work of
the church now needs to be just as courageous,
and just as risky, and move to the margins where
people are feeling alienated from the church, and find a way
to welcome them to the house of God. [APPLAUSE] I suppose one of the first
questions that I want to raise is the 10 minutes that
we have been assigned. I certainly want
to add my voice, and echo my sentiments,
express my gratitude to all of those persons-- Dr. Best, Dr. Frederick,
Brother Millner, and all others who have really
assembled this gathering and made it possible. And we are certainly
in your debt. And speaking for one that
comes from the corridors of mainstream ministry
in everyday life, there are times when we
assume that the Academy and members of academia
are not only dismissive-- Yeah. But are not interested-- Yes. In what goes on in
church on Sunday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday,
and Friday night. And your bringing
this gathering about has restored our
confidence in the Academy. It has encouraged us. And it has caused us to be proud
of our educational experiences. And for that, I indeed
want to thank you. I also want to-- I pray that the clock
has not started yet. But-- [LAUGHTER] You know, any time you
invite a Baptist preacher, you have to
understand he's a 747. He needs a long runway
to get up off the ground. So indulge me just a moment. I suppose I ought to
hastily say that I almost missed this opportunity to
really participate, be here, and be part of this weekend. Because several weeks ago, when
I received a letter and looked in the top left-hand corner of
the envelope and saw Harvard Divinity School, I had
assumed that somebody from the financial aid office-- [LAUGHTER] You know, had finally
caught up with me about an outstanding student
loan or something, you know. [LAUGHTER] Either that or it was from
the Alumni department. And in any event, so
I want to thank you. I want to thank you. And I want to thank my secretary
for opening the envelope and-- [LAUGHTER] Letting me know that it was
not as bad as I thought. I am honored to be
sharing with all of those persons who
have gone before me and will come after me. Dr. Frank Madison
Reid, as Dr. Sanders listed those items from my
profile, leaned over to me and asked-- he said, why didn't
they include that you were my roommate when I was
here at Harvard Divinity School? And so I just want to
kind of make that-- I want to kind of add
that to the listing. And so those were some
great days-- the mid-'70s. In my correspondence
with Dr. Frederick, she suggested that I
perhaps do two things. Number one-- articulate my
own personal involvement in the Pentecostal movement. And then secondly, if I would
treat and tackle, if you will, this rather colorful term that
has created some resonance, especially within the corridors
of the Baptist community And so I have opted
to take these 10 minutes to talk to you from the
subject, A Bapticostal: Fact or Fiction. A Bapticostal:-- Yeah. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Fact or Fiction. I'm part of the Full Gospel
Baptist Church Fellowship, and was part of the organizing
board of bishops that brought that organization to fruition. And my specific assignment
and my dissertation at United Theological Seminary
was to create the policy manual and to actually
create and establish the verbiage of our theology. And so I wrestled
for 2 and 1/2 years trying to create a
dialogue between Wesley on one side and his attitudes
of entire sanctification in Christian perfectionism
and second work of grace, along with the issues
of eternal security and Calvinistic predestination. I wish I could report
to you that we have resolved all of those issues. We certainly-- [LAUGHTER] We certainly did not. And it is an ongoing dialogue. I'm going to return to that
issue in just a second. But let me say, in 1895 BH Irwin
was one of several pioneers that had recently been
the year before expelled from the mainstream
of Methodism. He's part of a group
that was referred to then as Shouting Methodists. And in 1895, he
branded a new movement that became known as
the Holiness Movement. And his particular organization
was the Fire-Baptized Holiness Organization. The following year, in
1896, a class leader in South Carolina by the
name of William Edward Fuller had his own alders
gate experience. And when he sought
definition of that experience from his colleagues
and his superiors in the African Methodist
Episcopal Church, he was dismissed and told
that what had happened to him had not happened to him. As a result, he sought
answers elsewhere. And he began to search
out some explanation for what had happened to him. And he came across some
of the reading material of the National
Holiness Movement, but more particularly the
Fire-Baptized Holiness Association. And he began to
correspond with Irwin. And in 1897, he was invited
to their national meeting in Topeka, Kansas. He left South Carolina. He traveled by mule, not horse,
but by mule cross country to Topeka, Kansas, and appeared
at this national meeting of holiness who had just been
filled with the Holy Ghost. One of the items
that always strikes me is how one's religiosity
does not necessarily erase their racism. Say so, preacher. And when William Edward
Fuller, a black man, appeared at the meeting of the
National Holiness Movement, they discovered that
he was a black man. And they were an entirely
white organization. And yielding to the prevailing
racial attitudes of the time, they decided to accept him. I want y'all to hear this-- to accept him into
the organization, but not into the fellowship. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. They gave him a parcel
of land in Greenville, and gave him a title that was
overseer to your own people. Yeah. Mm. Yeah. He returned. There were approximately
40 churches in the Fire-Baptized--
white Fire-Baptized Church at that time. He returned to that work. And from 1898 to 1959 he built
the Colored Fire-Baptized Holiness Movement. He started out with no churches. At the time of his
death, he had built 850 congregations in the
continental United States and West Indies. He had national receipts that
exceeded a million dollars. The white Fire-Baptized Holiness
Church still had 40 churches. Oh. [LAUGHTER] Somebody better
hear me up in here. Yeah. We did. On his deathbed in
1959, he was approached by the leaders of the
Fire-Baptized Movement with the suggestion that now
they had changed their mind. Yeah. And felt it was time for the two
organizations to come together. [INTERPOSING VOICES] And of course,
the major question was, who's going to be bishop? And based upon that answer, the
Fire-Baptized Holiness Church remained an independent
body, and still remains an independent, primarily
African-American expression today. In 1947, William Edward
Fuller's daughter went to Spelman College. She met a young man
across the way-- a Morris Brown. [LAUGHTER] And that Pentecostal princess
married that mainstream Baptist preacher. That Pentecostal
princes was my mother. And William Edward Fuller
was my grandfather. And so I spent my entire life
going to a traditional English Baptist singing, hymn-singing
church on Sunday morning, and then stealing away to a
little Fire-Baptized Holiness church on Sunday night. And so both of these
traditions grew up within me. And so I saw this tension. And I saw an evolution even
take place in my own home. I remember these fierce
debates between my mother and my paternal grandmother
who talked about, when God gives you something,
he gives it all to you. He don't need a second chance. He gives it all to you at one
time, just one fell swoop. And I listened to my
mother try and defend her Pentecostal beliefs. This is what I
want to say to you. I want to say to you that
Pentecostalism in the Baptist church didn't come
through the front door. It didn't come
through the side door. It didn't come
through the back door. But rather it came
through the side door. Daddy made mama the
minister of music. All right. Yeah. And suddenly, the kind of music
that was being sung in church started to change. We went from the first and
the third beat to a second. You understand what I'm saying. Yeah. Yes, sir. This antithetical exchange
began to become apparent in the life of this ministry. And then, I want
you to hear this. Because what happened next is
so typical of what happened in so many Baptist churches. As Baptist choirs sought
to be more effective and bring more power
to their singing, they were told by musicians
and choir directors who had come from
Pentecostal circles that if you want
to improve, if you want to be more effective,
then you need the anointing. Yeah. You need to be baptized
by the Holy Ghost. And then Thursday
night choir rehearsal-- Yeah. That makes sense. Became a deliverance service
and a [INAUDIBLE] service. And so it infiltrated
and it became real in the life of so many
Baptist congregations. Now here's what you
need to understand. There have always been
Baptist congregations, for lack of a better word,
who've had a Pentecostal style. I want you to hear me-- a Pentecostal style of worship. Those congregations
always remained on the periphery of the
Baptist mainstream community. They were never allowed to be
moderator, state president. They could never run
for national office. They couldn't hold major times. But they were used
to raise money-- Yes. And to serve people. You get Reverend so-and-so
because, you know, he can get with the people. Let me close with this. And I know my time is up. Let me close with
this because I need to kind of relate this back. The Holiness
Pentecostal Movement was birthed in the midst
of a Baptist distraction. You have heard already today
several comments about how Bishop Mason was kicked
out of the National Baptist Convention. While in principle
that is correct, pragmatically you really
need to understand. 1893-- there was
the Tripartite Union between the American National
Baptist Convention, the Baptist Educational Convention, and
the National Foreign Missionary Convention. They came back together in 1895. Elias Camp Morris, in the
aftermath of the Tripartite Union put together the
National Baptist Convention. The keynote speaker that year
was Bishop Henry McNeil Turner. There was this rift within
the Baptist communion, between the cooperatists
and the separatists-- those who wanted to
work with white folk, and buy their
literature, and maintain a relationship with them,
and those who did not. And in the midst of that,
there were some Baptist folk who got the Holy
Ghost, wanted to shout, wanted to clap
their hands, wanted to be demonstrative
in their expression. And they were not
allowed to be so. So they were kicked out. Then 100 years later, here
come another group of Baptists, still clapping their hands,
still shouting amen, still speaking in tongues. But this time they
decided they would not leave the Baptist church. They were going to say
amen and stay right there. They were going to shout
hallelujah and stay right there. And they became the Full Gospel
Baptist Church Fellowship [APPLAUSE] And all the people
of God said, amen. Amen. Unlike my Baptist
brother and my roommate, Methodism has taught
that you're supposed to do everything on time. [LAUGHTER] And so I assume
that my 10 minutes started when I stood up. [LAUGHTER] Protocol already having
been established-- [LAUGHTER] That means all the people I
should've recognized and called their names, I just
called your name. In the eight minutes and 30
seconds that I have left, my assignment is
tonight to say to you as we deal with
re-imagining Pentecostalism, that we're dealing in
dangerous and deep water. Mm. Because if you re-imagine
with an untransformed mind, if you re-imagine Pentecostalism
with a conformed mind as in Romans 12 and 2,
what you will imagine will ultimately be the death of
Pentecostalism as we know it. For some that might be good. For some others it may not. So as I began to reflect
on this, it hit me-- and there's one name
I do have to call-- Dr. Preston Williams. Because it was not my
intention to come to Harvard. I'm a Yale graduate. I had a good job at
Yale Divinity School. I was looking forward to
making $15,000 a year, which was a lot of
money at that time. Being on full scholarship,
I saw myself getting rich. But I made the mistake of coming
to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to St. Paul AME Church. And while there, my father-- I preached at 7:00. My father preached at 11:00. And at St. Paul AME Church,
I experienced the power of the Holy Ghost
in such a manner that I ended up at the
altar, joining the church, and determined that I
would catch the train or drive from New Haven to
Cambridge every Sunday just to be under the power of God. Luckily the pastor
of that church-- in the six minutes 30
seconds that I have left-- the pastor of that
church was a graduate of Boston Theological Seminary. His name is Bishop
John Richard Ryan. And he was a student of Preston
Williams when Dr. Williams taught at Boston University. And he went to--
after I joined-- he went to Dr. Williams. And he said, Dr. Williams,
I've got a fine young man. Dr. Williams said, send me-- have him send me his grades. And either I'll get him
into BU or to Harvard. Coming to Harvard was part of
my Neo-Pentecostal journey. So in the last five minutes,
the title of this presentation is The Neo-Pentecostal
Challenge: Re-digging the Wells of Power. Mm hmm. The Neo-Pentecostal Challenge:
Re-digging the Wells of Power-- because before we re-imagine
Pentecostalism in the 21st century, we need to re-dig
the wells so that we know what the fathers and mothers-- the living water that the
mothers and fathers tasted-- before we re-imagine a new
millennium Pentecostalism. Yeah. Yeah. So in Genesis
Chapter 26, you will discover that Isaac--
it says that there was a famine or
drought in the land, that the water had dried up. But then God says to
Isaac, don't go to Egypt. Right. Right. Don't go into the strange land. Stay in the land
where the famine is. And re-dig the wells of
your father and your mother. Yes, sir. What we discover is that
when you skip from verse 5 down to verse number 9-- Yes, sir. In the last three minutes
that I have left-- what you discover is that
when he stayed in Egypt, the Bible says he received
a 100-fold blessing. Right. Oh, bless His name. He received a 100-fold blessing. And the Bible says
that he prospered, and that he was very prosperous. Now I know that bothers
some of us today. But if you're going to feed
the hungry, clothe the naked, and minister to
the marginalized, you're going to need money
to buy the food to feed the hungry, clothe the naked. Come on. Can we talk in the last two
minutes that I have left? Uh huh. And so the Bible says that when
he went to re-dig the wells, that the wells had been
stuffed with garbage and trash by the Philistines
that envied him. Oh, bless His name. There is a lot of
trash in the wells-- Yes. Of Pentecostalism that we
must dig out and dig through so that we can get
to the living water. Living water. And every time that Isaac
unstopped one of the wells, the enemy would come
and stuff it up again. In the last minute and 30
seconds that I have left, when he finally had
unstopped the wells, he tapped into a
fresh source of water. Now I don't have
time to do this, but I do know that in
the Gospel of John, there must be
something about wells. Because we discovered that
Jesus met a woman by the well-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] And when he had
finished, he was not talking about the water that
would come out of the well. He said that out of your
belly will come living waters. What we need--
thank you, bishop. Rivers of living water. Yes, sir. And so today, in my last 30
seconds, before we re-imagine-- Yes, sir. Pentecostalism, let us re-dig
the wells of the fathers and mothers of the faith,
and then re-imagine, so out of each generation can come
rivers of living water. [INTERPOSING VOICES] And then we will not be walking
in judgment of one another. Because when the rivers
of living water flow, oh, get in the river. [INTERPOSING VOICES] [APPLAUSE] Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Yes. Yes. Oh, yes. Yes. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Yes. Just say amen. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Oh, my God. Hallelujah. Come on somebody. Let's say hallelujah. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. Hallelujah. Ha ha ha. Ha ha. Hallelujah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I thank the Lord for the
opportunity to share. And following in the circumspect
tradition of my predecessor, I'm going try to stay on time. And I want to come
back to and pick up on what the strategic
challenges are for the people of Pentecost-- those people who are people
of prayer and the Spirit. Now we're talking. Now we're talking. And Paul, speaking
to the church says there is a necessity
for the church to resist the
temptation of relevance. My God. My God. Presenting your body
as a living sacrifice. Watch out. And renewing the mind and not
being conformed to this world. In each generation,
the people of faith are confronted with the
theological, ethical, moral, and philosophic challenge
to resist conformity, to be transformed, so that
God would get the glory. So that at this time, we must
wrestle with the temptations to re-imagine, as
opposed to recovering a sense of our original vision. No, no, no. Because contained
within the history, is a revolutionary tradition. My, my. There's a revolutionary
tradition of holiness. Come on, somebody. Yes, sir. Come on somebody. Yes, sir. You see holiness was conceived
of as a revolutionary practice and a form of
oppositional culture. Yes. We're talking. So when Sister Callahan
talked about the long dresses, there was actually a
political and cultural logic-- Yeah. To not showing all your stuff-- resisting the Daisy Dukes. Come on. Come on, somebody. Right? And honoring your body as the
temple of the Holy Spirit. Yeah. Yeah. So that within the
conservatism of Pentecost there was a
revolutionary trajectory. But that was missed as
we got sophisticated. And the discourse
of Pentecostalism underwent a process
of bourgeoisification. Yes. So that we
re-imagined as opposed to recovering the notion of
sanctification and holiness. Somebody talk to
me up here today. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Oh, yeah, doctor. And that process of
recovering holiness was part of a deeper
epistemological project of resistance
and transcendence. Yeah. Yeah. We were resisting the
administrative logic of a corrosive
capitalist culture, which promoted a culture of
death through the reduction and perversion of
human sexuality. Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. I'm going to say that again. Yeah. The cultural logic of
advanced capitalism promoted a hedonistic
elevation of the created above the Creator, under
the pretext of emancipation, liberation, and
alternative lifestyles. [INTERPOSING VOICES] So today, we've got a
revolutionary project. The revolutionary
project consists in at least four areas. There must be a
philosophic recovery of biblical thought
as the precondition of an emancipatory
project, which presupposes first moral order, then
secondly, freedom to pursue justice. You see, we have
come to a point where we have forgotten the
moral, existential, political, and
cultural logic of order as a precondition for the
pursuit of freedom and justice. Because within biblical
thought there is order. There's a right way
you're supposed to stuff. Somebody say amen. [INTERPOSING VOICES] I know that was hard for y'all. We sit up here at Harvard, and
y'all are all very progressive, and emancipated,
and revolutionary. Right. So I done said something
that did mess with you. But I'm going to
bring this thing home if I have a couple of minutes. So I'm going to wrap it up now. Number one-- the challenges
that exist for the Church are first philosophic. There must be-- I want
everybody to catch this-- a vigorous articulation of
a deep and compassionate philosophical anthropology
of human sexuality, marriage, and the family. There must be a vigorous and
compassionate articulation of a philosophical
anthropology of sex. What you're doing, why you
do it, with whom you do it, and what it produces. The family-- and you see, this
discussion and intellectual and philosophical debate
is central to the survival of black people-- number one. Number two-- bring
this thing home. We have to have a new politics. The paleo-liberal
integrationist paradigm of the now obsolete civil
rights industry is over. Y'all have got as much
integration as y'all going to get. [LAUGHTER] Now some of you folk, right,
are really disappointed. Because I didn't hear amen. So the truth-- y'all got as much
integration as y'all are going to get. Y'all are middle class Negroes. So you know what's going
to happen to the poor. What that means
then logically is that the black church, and in
particular the black church with the fire and the power
will by default operationally function as the provisional
government of black America-- number one. And number two-- be the
premier advocacy institution for the black world. Number three--
the big challenge, because we have
not dealt with this because it's connected to
power, is in the policy arena. The black church, for all
of our leadership rhetoric, are policy illiterate. We go to the White House. We meet all the
big white people. But in every meeting I've
been in at the White House, no run comes in to the
meeting with a policy prescriptive agenda
around anything. Yeah. Policy y'all. Why? Because policy is
connected to power. And we in the black
church confuse a little cash, a fancy
car, the fly suit, the big piece of real
estate, and the big mortgage with power. God is calling for a whole
new outpouring of His spirit. There now needs to
be a fresh anointing. There now needs to be
a tough conversation. Because we must engage in
interrogating the new currents and trends. We must recover a more
radically biblical-- because we ain't talked
much about the Bible. I've been sitting down around
here for a couple of hours. Right? And for all the talk
about Pentecost, didn't nobody say a whole
bunch about the Word. We must recover a radically
biblical understanding of Pentecostal pneumatology
so that the connections between the outpouring
of the Spirit and the redefinition
and reconstruction of economic reality conforms
to the likeness and the image of God. And in the process we
will be able to seize the unique historical
opportunity that God has bequeathed to
the people of the Spirit and prayer. And we will do
this to His glory. In the name of Jesus. Amen. [APPLAUSE] [INTERPOSING VOICES] [LAUGHTER] All right. I want to thank all
of our presenters for what I knew would be
provocative and insightful reflections upon our
theme of re-imagining. As the moderator-- I know, I see that some of you
are writing your questions. But I think that we're going
to have the opportunity to let you present your own questions. But I am going to just take a
brief privilege as moderator to raise-- we've addressed so
many different topics. But I have just a couple
of very general questions that I want to
present at first as we are gathering our
questions that will consume the rest of our time. I have a very broad concern. One it's based on-- some of you
are familiar with the book I did several years ago-- Saints in Exile--
where I lifted up exile as a paradigm for the holiness
and Pentecostal experience in North America. But one assumption
that I am challenged to revisit as I've
listened to the presenters and as I've thought
through a re-imagining is whether or not the social
character of Pentecostalism in the 21st century is going
to be characterized by exile. Or will it be
characterized by a more, for lack of a better
word, imperialistic or Babylonian form of
Christian social interaction? In other words, I'm asking a
question about whether or not even the notion of exile-- the dispossessed,
the church that is the advocate for
the dispossessed-- whether that is going to fade
away as a 20th century concept. And if what is emerging
is an entirely different self-understanding of the
church and its role in society, particularly in the capacity as
prophetic advocate and voice. The second overarching
concern that I wanted to raise is whether or not this
re-imagined Pentecostalism-- and I think we've got some
wonderful facets of that from our presenters
this evening. But will the re-imagined
Pentecostalism as time goes on be known and named
as something else? In other words, I
assume that none of us will be here 100 years from now. But 100 years from now will
be the second centennial of the emergence of the
Pentecostal movement. And so 200 years
after Azusa Street, will anybody still even be
using the term Pentecostal? We've talked about
Pentecostalism and one or two speakers
have talked about Pentecost. But will the re-imagined thing
melt into something else? Or will it morph
into something else? Or what is it that
Pentecostalism signifies now that we have begun the second
century of the movement. And I use that term
movement because I think it's very important-- movement for the holiness
movement, Pentecostal movement. And maybe what's
going on is that it's taken us 100 years to figure
out that movement is not another denomination. [INTERPOSING VOICES] But if it's a
movement, then that means that it keeps moving. Doesn't it? And so I just wanted to kind
of throw that out and see if any of our
panelists would like to respond to some of
those overarching concerns before we address the
specific questions. Yes. I think you're right that
part of the discourse here, which is sort of interesting,
is that much of our discussion has not necessarily
reflected the movement. We've talked about
mega-churches. We've talked about
the preachers. We've talked about big church-- I mean, that's sort
of been the thing-- and really haven't honed in on
the vast majority of Pentecost who are storefront, small
and medium-sized churches. They're the vast majority
of churches that exist. And that movement and it's
multiplication is moving. And my sense is, Cheryl, that
there's a new global movement, a new global black movement. I think that there is a
Pentecostal Pan-Africanism that is morphing very discreetly
in various levels of sophistication
intellectually and politically. I think it's moving
aggressively. It's been beneath the screen
and people haven't really caught it. So I think that that's true. The second point is that
I think in some sense, for some Pentecostals, one
of the operative paradigms-- and this is what
Bishop Charles Blake's been talking about-- is the
notion of the black church's Joseph, who was sold into
slavery by his brothers, prospered in the land
of his captivity, and went back to
help his brothers. So one paradigm for
some is the idea that the black church may emerge
as an institutional version of Joseph to spawn a new
Christian Pan-Africanism with networks that DuBois,
Malcolm, and Garvey never could have imagined. So that there's a new
possibility above and beyond, above and beneath the
TV evangelist thing. There's a whole vibrant
intellectual movement operating around some new paradigms
that have global conceptions. The most interesting
observation I can make about
modern Pentecostalism is the emergence and
emphasis on prosperity-- that we now are not the
poor, ignorant Christians. I had a conversation
with Reverend Ike and had him to
preach at the church. And one of the reasons
was I had demonized him, was angry with him. And when we started
having Azusa-- Azusa came to town and dropped
$10 million on that city. So the city fathers
were calling me saying, don't let it go away. Hmm. So we saw your people would
come in with credit cards, and getting rental
cars, and hotels. And y'all have money. I wanted to make
Pentecost pretty. That's why. It was ugly. I was ashamed. We rolled, and
frothed, and screamed. And my Catholic friends
had ash on their forehead. And my Seventh Day
Adventists didn't eat meat. I mean, I had a lot of Christian
friends that I grew up with. But Pentecosts, we
were embarrassed. We were poor and
ignorant in my day-- 50 years ago. So Azusa was an expression
to jazz it up a little bit. And so they came
into St. John's. But they'd been doing
that in Memphis. They just put them on layaway
a little longer in Memphis. Ah. That's right. That's right. But so my white,
charismatic world-- and Oral Roberts said to
me, 25% of my income-- interesting. He's sitting next to
me in an Azusa meeting. And Archbishop Idahosa from
Africa is raising money. He could raise money. Yes, he could. He made the command, you coming
down here now and bring $1,000. And boy, Negroes was walking. [LAUGHTER] And they were bringing. [LAUGHTER] And Oral Roberts leaned
over to me and said, I never dreamed I'd see the
day when black people would give like this. Hmm. He said, 25% of my
income consistently for my whole ministry has
been African-Americans. But it's been $10 or $15. I never saw this. So suddenly we have money. And we have Harvard PhD folks. That's right. And we're trying to think-- but we still speak in tongues. And we want to invite our
banker friends to church. But we don't want nobody
to quicken too much. So we're trying to-- Right. Dignify, as Catherine
did, the healing ministry. Hmm. Mm hmm. No screaming in her meetings. Mm hmm. You know, no wild things. She brought a certain something
that Vinny is trying to repeat. Mm hmm. And he is doing that. But we wanted to bring
this other thing. So we're still
trying to figure out, how do we keep it dignified
and not lose the power-- how not let the
trappings of success-- Yeah. And money, and jets? And I told Reverend Ike, I
said, long before Fred Price announced that he was getting
a million dollars a year-- Right. Driving a Rolls-Royce. Long before Creflo
was preaching, and long before these big guys
were doing this for the money, he was telling us,
get out of the ghetto. And get into the mo'. And we said, no. Mm hmm. And got out anyway. Yeah, you're right. So we need to celebrate
him in one sense. So now Baptists had money. Baptists had schools. Baptists had clinics. Pentecostals didn't. And we still don't. That's true. That's right. And one of the great leaders-- I'll say this and stop. Mother Berry said to
me one time, son-- this was back in 1972. I was at the state
convocation in Los Angeles with Bishop Crouch. Mm hmm. She said, son, when you young
people get where we are-- Mm. And see how much money we made-- Hm hm. And don't see any schools, and
any clinics, and any colleges-- Yeah. He's right. You're going to get
very angry at us. And she said-- Cora Berry-- she said,
please don't forget us. That's right. And don't leave us. Hmm. I left them. But I didn't forget them. But I see something happening. And it's powerful. And that's what
Pentecost needs to know. What do we do now? What meaneth this? We have money. So what is that
supposed to mean? Right. Right. On your first
question, I don't think we have to choose
between an exile paradigm and the Babylonian paradigm. Hmm. I think we need both. I think when you look at
Daniel, and Daniel's response-- Mm hmm. And look at Daniel 7,
where he talks about, it's time for the Saints
to possess the Kingdom. I think that's where we are now. Mm hmm. But we have to understand
both sides of power. All right? When we talk about power,
there's spiritual power-- prayer, or worship,
evangelism, restoration. But that by itself,
that's what helped us to survive in the exile. Now we've got to understand
the social side of power-- Mm. Which is politics,
organization-- Yeah. Wealth creation, education, and
that will lead to revolution. And so that does not
mean we have to choose. And if we're going to really
re-imagine our Pentecostalism-- and this is why
whatever disagreements I might have with
revolutionary inclusion-- one of the things I like is
it is broadening the dialogue. And it is causing us
to think about things we never thought before. But to really re-imagine
Pentecostalism, we need Bishop
Oyedepo at this table. We need Dr. Adeboye
at this table. Yeah. Because it's not so much now
African-American Pentecostalism shaping Africa-- Mm hmm. And the third world. Now it is Nigeria-- an African Pentecostalism--
coming to America setting up churches-- That's true. That are Growing left and right. In New York, with the
Ghanaian churches-- the Redeemed Church now
has over 600 churches here in the United States of
America-- most of them 1,000 or over. And they have gone
back to the well. And when we go back
to the well, then we don't have to choose
between exile and Babylon. Because we know
that it's a balance. All right. Can I add one thing? What? What comes up for me is
that Pentecostalism is not monolithic. There we go. And I keep hearing that
theme, it seems to me, repeated over and
over in some ways-- that there's one way
to do Pentecostalism, or one way that it shows up. And its authentically
Pentecostalism. How will it demonstrate
going forward? I think that the sad part about
the William Joseph Seymour story is how it ended. Mm hmm. Yeah. And the thing that we
haven't talked a lot about is the tragedy of Azusa-- how he died, what kind
of state he was in, the racism, the misogyny,
and all of the things that happened coming
out of that revival. That was a tragic ending
in a short period of time. Yes. How do we not revisit that? Yeah. How can we-- Repeat that. How can we not
repeat-- we was talking about going to the well. Which well? Mm. And I'm just saying that. Because my concern is that
I'm concerned about the well. Because the way
that things ended, they don't have
to end like that. So true. If we are able to see that the
heart and soul of what happened was inclusion-- we don't speak in
tongues to be different. We don't speak in
tongues to be holy. We speak in tongues
to be understood. That's right. And to make the message
of Jesus Christ universal. Relevant. And we are somewhat
myopic about that. I'm in a denomination
that's predominantly European-American. And there are people
here that know that-- that I'm a UCC preacher--
and ask the question, how did you get from
being a COGIC preacher to being a UCC preacher? What was the journey? Wow. And I say to them that what
attracted me about that church was its justice ministry. Mm hmm. Yes. I have a lot of Holy Ghosts. Glory. Be. [LAUGHTER] I'm like Paul. I speak in tongues probably
more than all of you, and sing in tongues,
and pray in tongues. But it wasn't getting
people off crack. Yeah. Now for whatever it's
worth, I need to say to you, I'm concerned about
economic justice. But we have 28 programs
in our ministry that do everything from provide
primary care at the pharmacy and housing, and take care
of children after school. And we just built a Yvette
Flunder Community Center and paid $1.8
million to build it. My God. My God. To do services hands on. What is the work of
Pentecostalism if it is-- yes, it is about the Spirit. Hallelujah. Right. But when I get up from
praying in tongues-- Uh huh. Say it. The question that I have--
not only am I prospering. Because that's not enough. That's right. Not only am I teaching you
how to work the stock market, and teaching you how to
invest in mutual funds. But what am I doing to build
capacity for poor people to survive and thrive-- Yes. In the neighborhood
that I live in? What impact am I having? And I heard a preacher
say, well, you know. When somebody asked him, what
about all the homeless people outside of your church? And he said to them, I
didn't make them homeless. Wow. On TV. Yeah. He said, God knows
they're homeless. And God's not doing
anything about it. Mercy. I can't explain to you
how that made me feel. But I will say to you this. I believe that Pentecostalism
going forward is about taking the same risks that
the folks took in '06. I think we're afraid. I think we are way
too invested in losing our personal and
political positions. Mm. True. I think we are
afraid politically within our churches--
losing standing and rank. And I say honestly
to you that there is a voice crying in
the wilderness saying, prepare ye the way of the Lord. Repair. And the question that I have
is, how much courage do we have to step out
into some stuff that will get us some
political baggage, and get us in a snit
in our organizations, and in the places
where we connect? And this administration
will not like us. And we may not get any
of that government money. Oh, Lord. Now how are we going to
do this big work then? There's a lot of faith. And there's a lot of expecting
funds and funding from people who are right-thinking people. And I declare to you
sisters and brothers, there are some right-thinking
people out there that will help us to do this work-- Mm. Effectively and efficiently. And I see Pentecostalism
moving in that direction. Somebody said the
wealth of the wicked is laid there for the righteous,
but there's a few papers you've got to fill out. [LAUGHTER] Righteous. Yes, sir. There's a whole lot of papers
you've got to fill out. Just as this is-- just as we are the-- just as we are the
postmodern generation that has established this new
term, Neo-Pentecostalism, I think that the core
beliefs of Pentecostalism are indelibly imprinted
into the consciousness of our communities, and our
ministries, and our churches. And that will live forever. I think the way we
referred to it will change from generation to generation. And we can expect
future generations to exercise the same kind of
creativity and imagination to refer to their
experiences as we have done in this experience. Yes, sir. All right. We're going to go
to our audience now. Now we have a mic. And well, I'm going to
skip you because you asked numerous questions. And I want to get some people
who haven't had an opportunity to ask a question. If we can start, do you mind? That's fine. Appreciate it. So can we start on this side? Thank you so much. Brother Ramirez. And please keep your questions--
please as brief as you can. Thank you. How are you all doing? [INTERPOSING VOICES] Dr. Reid and Brother Rivers,
the pre-electoral season saw the emergence of something
called the Apostolic Congress, where Oneness
Pentecostal leaders were summoned to meet with Karl
Rove and start the dance. And they believe they delivered. And I know there were meetings
that were mostly black or mostly Latino clergy
with the President. Using the Daniel
paradigm, when are we going to see Pentecostal
clergy being subpoenaed to go to the White
House under protest, and going only to
deliver the news, you have been found
wanting in the balances, and the Kingdom's
being removed from you? Justice says the
budget just passed. [INTERPOSING VOICES] I want to take that. We will be subpoenaed across the
board once we do the homework and really engage the issues. 90% of the time-- look, I
said it in my presentation. I've been in at least a dozen
or more White House meetings over the last five years. When the clergy goes. They don't go with policy,
program, agenda, ever. And frankly, I mean
as the Sister said, they're just thankful
to be invited. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to
tell you the truth. They're just happy to be there. They go there. It's the White House, child. They check my ID. Get a picture. It's impressive. You know, I got a picture. I got some silverware
in my pocket. You know, the whole thing. Right? So 90%-- no, no, no, no. More than that-- 99% of the time. And, you know, I don't
need to give any names. Every preacher y'all spend lots
of time watching TV on is up there. And in the recent meetings,
they recognize that-- I don't even know
why I was here. I'm impressed I was asked. I didn't know what to
ask when I got in there. And part of what this
discussion here should be about is that people come away
with an understanding that if you're going to
deal with Pharaoh or Caesar, you've got to approach Pharaoh
and Caesar with an agenda. There's got to be
something coherent. You just can't be drooling
and stumbling over yourself, thankful that you got invited
up to the man's house. Because let me say last point. What's amazing is that in
every meeting, those folk know, you know, we are the richest
country on the planet Earth. You know. We almost believe the Earth is
ours in the fullness thereof. Yeah. Right. You know? We almost believe that. Right? Yet no one person asked one
question about anything. So new leadership
has to emerge-- younger people that
are policy literate and who understand power. Because for all of our
Pentecostal talk, most of us don't have a developed
understanding of the divinic nature of
principalities and powers as they articulate
themselves institutionally. Mm hmm. Reverend Rivers, I just
need to ask you a question. I understand your response. But you've been 12 times. What agenda have you
taken to the White House? [APPLAUSE] Good question. Good question. I want to hear your answer. OK Every time-- [LAUGHTER] No, no, no. No. No. No, no. See? No, no, no. You got that. You got that. Every occasion, Cheryl,
that I've gone on this, I've pushed the agenda
of AIDS in Africa. OK. In fact, Cheryl, tell the truth. You were at the first
meeting when I raised it. It was in Austin,
Texas, in 2000. Mm hmm. And we all sat around there. Because all the
preachers are polite. We're all good people. Right? And so part of the delicate
nature of the meeting is that when all the
big guys are there, and you've got all the
bishops, you know, and you're a squidgit in a roomful
of the big guys, there's a protocol
you understand. So everybody sort
of passes around. But in all the occasions at
the White House when I've gone, and in subsequent real
meetings-- because see, the meeting with the President
isn't the real meeting. That's just a
dog-and-pony meeting. I'm just thankful to be there. All of the real work gets done
with these specific policy people. Now the more-to-the-point
question that should be asked is, OK, what happened
in the real meetings, which is where the real
nuts and bolts was raised? And I'll just say this
just in terms of results. One of the things
that Bush produced as a result of a lot of work
that Bishop Blake, using his influence,
produced, was some of the proposals around
increasing the amount of money that would be committed to
AIDS and putting AIDS, Africa, and orphans on the agenda. Now that was driven by the
black church and the Holy Ghost people. And that's indisputable. So, you know, in terms
of your question, one-- there's the
White House meeting. But you had 12 visits. So is that the one agenda
item for the 12 visits? 750 million people-- I need
another 20 more meetings. OK. Time to get that agenda up. All right. I just wanted to-- Oh, no. Good question. My name is John Penton from
Tacoma, Washington-- pastor of the Roosevelt Height Church. I'm certainly pleased
to be here to hear the dynamics of this meeting. But I would like to make
it just a brief statement. As we are challenged
to involve ourselves-- Is your statement
leading to a question? It can be. Well, I mean, we really-- OK. The question is-- Want to have the panel
to have an opportunity. The question would
be, have we've forgotten our moral
responsibility on the individual front? You know, we
certainly want to be involved in a social endeavor. But in order to be greeters
instead of gatekeepers, I think we need to personify
the life of Christ. So therefore, my question
would be, where would we have in these type of forums
something that will identify us as people that live
this what we talk about, as Bishop Flunder-- is that it? Flunder. Flunder said and
concerning reaching people. I think that's the
imitators of Christ. So my question is that we
are powerful people here. Because we are
the intellectuals. And the world is hearing us. And so, therefore,
we've got the mic now. Now since we've got
the mic, we have to carry it in our personal
life and our lifestyle behavior. So where would we have that? Because Pentecostals were
identified by like change. They were identified by
life expression of worship. But more so, the purpose
of that was the life change that really identified us. So when we are going to
speak of life change? That sounds like
a question for me. And just let me
say this briefly. First of all, morality
always gets tied back to sex, which
always troubles me. Usually we are so-- we are
sexaholics in a sense-- even in our thinking. The state in the
United States that has more online pornography than
any state in the union is Utah. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Per capita. OK. Among the Mormons who ain't
supposed to be doing nothing. Yeah. Now, which really,
really gets my goat. And I just wanted to put
that out there and say that to you while they are
picking presidents. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. That that's a-- you know,
because computers don't lie. So that's an important piece. I want to put that out there. We are-- morality is sex. And I need to say
just this much to you. Because the idea of family
is also not monolithic. It's never been monolithic. That's a complete farce. We have never had Father
Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver families. There's always been some
extended something or other, and auntie, and nanny,
and Uncle Bubba. And godmother. And grandmother, and Big
Mama, and other mama, and all that kind of thing
happening in our families. And so families are
constituted in several ways. It's important for
me to say that, too. Because that's a
part of our reality. And finally, I think
that why can't we attach being moral to things
like making sure people are not starving to death? [LAUGHTER] Because that's moral, too. [LAUGHTER] And don't come away
from here thinking that I don't believe that
when people impact Christ, that their lives don't change. The problem is we all have
a prescription for what that change is supposed to be. Right. And we visit that on people. This is what's
supposed to change. Mm hmm. Yeah. And what changed for you may
not be the same thing that changes for her. It's absolutely true that
when Christ impacts our lives, change begins. But as I've said to City of
Refuge, if you come to Christ, and you're smoking five
packs of cigarettes a day, and you call me and say that
the spirit of God in you told you to take better
care of your body, and that you don't need to smoke
five packs of cigarettes a day. And now you smoke three. We're going to shout. Because you came
in smoking five. And you got a word from God? And it wasn't punitive? Hallelujah. But it was concerned
about you and your body. And now you smoke three? I'm going get you by the hand. And we're going to dance. They're going to take
the whole church up. Somebody here know how to do. We're going to take
the whole church up on three packs of cigarettes. [LAUGHTER] And if that's the most
testimony you ever come in with, we'll just keep
dancing on three. Because something happened. Something transformative
happened in their lives. And then in the broader
secular perspective, Pentecostalism isn't necessarily
associated with morality. It's associated with
spiritual excess. They think evangelicals
are supposed to be the goody two shoes. I remember I was-- Bishop Ray was paying me
and my wife, Cindy Jo, to a resort in Florida. And we stopped at the
store to get some things. And I saw a little lady. I could tell she was
a Pentecostal lady. She and her daughter
looked like they'd been in a terrorist search. Because their hair
was all messed up. And the dress was wrinkled,
you know, and stuff like that. It was real late at night. All night terrorist search. I had to preach on Sunday
night and flew down. This was like 1:00
in the morning. So she was walking
through the store. And it reminded me
of holiness really-- my old revival touring service. And I said to the lady-- when I had my cap
on, and incogNegro. I put my Cokes and
all that stuff-- when I was drinking that kind
of stuff-- up on the counter. And I said to the lady,
well, how are you doing? How you doing, ma'am? She said, can't nobody
do me like Jesus. [LAUGHTER] And I remember thinking,
did he do that to you? [LAUGHTER] She looked like she'd fell
out the ugly tree-- had every branch coming
down around her. Oh. But I remember her emphasis
was, she missed a chance. She didn't know if I was an
alcoholic, a drug addict, or whatever. Yeah. When I said, how do you do,
that would have been her chance to give me a smile and love me. Yes, sir. And introduce Jesus to me. And when she said that, I
would sing, can't nobody. I sang it for her because she
didn't know if I was saved or not. Yeah. So we missed the opportunity. We have always been known
to be the holiness movement and the sanctified church. But that hasn't
gotten us as much. I believe it with all my heart. I live it. But where we are today-- and this is important for
this meeting, especially those of you who, Dr.
Frederick and those of you who put this on. I came here in Spirit, in 1991,
when a preacher walked up to me and offered me $100,000 if I
would let him preach at Azusa. Mm. And he said, do for me what
you did for some others. And I'm not referring
to Jason because I didn't know Jason in 1991. And he gave me $10,000
and walked away. Now, it wasn't
for me personally. It went in the office. But I was so grieved
that I accepted it. And this was only a few
years into the meeting. And we had big crowds then. And I went on and said, is this
what this meeting is coming to? Because for him to give me
that money, that would-- and me put him on the stage-- he'd get a booking that could
get him a quarter of a million in one year. Mm hmm. So offering me $100,000
to pay incrementally is not a big investment. Right. But I started saying
then-- the meeting was-- and for the rest of the
years, the place was packed. The glory of God was everywhere. The singers, the speakers,
the ministry was wonderful. But I wasn't there. I hear you, Brother. I left the meeting. In those days, my spirit
wasn't even there. Mm. And I never preached
in that conference. And it was mine. Because, well, the things
we're touching on today, from what Bishop
Flunder has said and other things
that we've discussed, I wanted to make
Pentecost beautiful. But I wanted it to be more
powerful, more powerfully impacting. I wanted to touch a world
and see a different world. I wanted that Hammond B3,
which is the King James version of an organ to be
played in the White House. [LAUGHTER] But I wanted to take
something, as you've asked these questions,
with our holiness, with our sanctification. It's so much more. And it's not just
buying your way to another man's
house to preach at, or for a one night stand
like a prostitute or a pimp. I hate that spirit. [INTERPOSING VOICES] Reverend Reid. I think that your
question is extremely important for two reasons. One-- whether we call ourselves
Pentecostal, Pentecostals in transition,
Neo-Pentecostal, God has given us an opportunity
to shape the world. And if we don't stay focused. stay focused on
the greatest gift that God gave Pentecostals,
which I believe is the gift of power, and
God only gives us more power when we show character. And character is not
about who you are when people are looking at you. That's right. It's who you are when
nobody is around. And so if you are a Mormon
watching pornography-- Yes, sir. It doesn't make character wrong. It means that that person who
says one thing and does another needs to be loved and forgiven
so their character can develop. And they understand that
the more character you have, the more power God gives you. And so we are looking-- and I agree with Bishop
Pearson on this-- we need a very healthy
Pentecostalism. Because without it, the
rubbish will stay in the well. The purpose of the
well is the water-- not to worship the well. But to get to the water. Yeah. And that water
that is in the well comes from many rivers
and many streams. I like that. And so I close my
comments today. There was a football player. Those of you over 50
will remember the old AFL before it became
part of the NFL. And there was a
great football player by the name of Abner Haynes. When I was a child, when
I was 10, 11 years old, he played for the
Dallas Texans, which became the Kansas City Chiefs. And I met him in 1995. And I was just so
happy to meet him. He had been retired
about 20 years. And he didn't know
I was a pastor. So he said, what do you do? I said, now I got pastor. And he said, Frank,
you may know my father. My father was the bishop
of the Church of God in Christ years ago. And my brother is
now bishop in Dallas. He said, but I don't
go to anybody's church. And I said, why? He said, I don't go
to anybody's church, because when I was a little
boy and Bishop Mason used to come to the house,
he said, I would stay up and sneak out of my room late. Because I would want to
go in and see the bishop sleeping in a position
or snoring in a position where I could make
fun of him later on. He said, but every time I'd come
to the door at 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, Bishop Mason
was on his knees praying. Yes, my God. He said, and when we'd have
revival out in the field, and it would be multicultural
and multiracial, he said, the Ku Klux Klan came one night. Yes, sir. And Bishop began to pray. And those of the Ku Klux
Klan that didn't leave came in and got
saved that night. He said, Frank, the reason that
I don't go to anybody's church now is because them
old men had power. And when I can find
pastors and churches that move in the power of God, then
I'll come back to the church. Because I'm tired,
he said, of folk pimping the needs of
the people to have their needs met when God's
got enough power to meet everybody's needs. Wow. [APPLAUSE] I'm Leslie Callahan from the
University of Pennsylvania. And I want to pick up on a theme
that Eugene Rivers put down in his presentation
that nobody has taken up and that is really,
I think, important. This is the place where
I think our real-- we've all been nice all day. And I think this is the place
where our real divisions are going to come out. And that's on the Bible. Mm hmm. I think all of us who
minister in the church believe the Bible. But what we believe about
it is not the same thing. Very different. Mm hmm. And so I think we need-- but part of the
problem-- now our people don't know the
difference half the time. Mm hmm. We all holler. We all take a text. We all make use of it. But when it comes
to our hermeneutics, they don't necessarily know. I think we need to get more-- can you open up the
hermeneutics that you use for interpreting the Bible? Because I bet all
of you are where you are because of
your interpretation of a faithful
reading of the Bible. Can you tell us something
about what it is? I have to get this in. Absolutely. That's such a sensitive subject. Because I get-- I can handle all the Bible
bullets anybody can shoot that I've been shot with them. So I'm a guy I've got
a bazooka of my own. [LAUGHTER] There is a difference between
the letter, which kills, and the logic, which gives life. The Logos-- most
theologians believe in the inerrant, infallible
word of God, which I do not. I believe that that's the
word of man about God. But the Logos, the logic
is infallible in there. But not the printed. There's no-- you can
no more confine deity to print than you
can to portrait. You can't say He's in the
letters or the literal-- that's what the word comes from. But His logic of love,
His language, His light, and His legacy, that
all makes sense. But if we all interpret
just the letter, then women should not wear
expensive clothes and jewelry. That'll shut Memphis down right
there-- no expensive clothes, no jewelry, no gold-- doesn't it
say that in the New Testament? No braids. And no braids. So if you want to
become a literalist, you'll miss the logic
of the discussion. So my position is that the
letter really-- the literal really will kill you. And it will divide us
from now till Jesus comes. Or if he doesn't come-- [LAUGHTER] We're going to Him. But the logic is love. And that's simple. And if we could
get back to that, that'll jazz it up
like nothing else. The logic of God is love. I also want to
say on that that I think that there is
general agreement in terms of what the Bible says. The division comes
on what it means. And we all bring our
own experiences to that. Being a product of
this institution, my interpretation's not going
to be identical with even many of those that I preach to. And so part of my
task is bringing them to a level of understanding
of biblical interpretation that is reflective of my
own perspective as opposed to what they bring with them. You want all of us? Please. I'm not a literalist. And I'll say that I don't
think I could possibly be and be a woman preacher. It's very hard to be
a progeny of slaves. I mean, how am I
going to do that? So I can't be a literalist. I can't take-- and also
honestly, sisters and brothers, I grew weary trying to
make excuses for Paul. Me, too. I just got tired of it. I'm going to just
be honest with you. You know, and that
part about how women can be saved in
childbearing and all that? I got so upset with
that boy one day. I was reading the Bible. And I read that. And then something
just came over me. And I just wanted--
wish he could be here. Like I'd take him out
on the parking lot. [LAUGHTER] Get some Vaseline,
take my rings off. Lord. And it would be me and
him because that boy needed counseling. In some places along the
way, he needed some therapy. No. He needed some therapy. He had some issues because
he wanted to be an apostle. And they were rejecting him. And he kept reading his
resume over and over again. Because he was rejected. I understand rejection. I also understand legalism,
and in being a Pharisee, and I've been all that. So I guess to some degree-- and when you read
them chronologically, you can see him grow
just like I grew. Anybody else grow? Oh, yes. I grew, too. So you grow. He grew. So if I take him literally
at his early points, I'm not giving him
a chance to grow. And if he's human and
was human, then he grew. Yes, he did. I'm human. I grew. So that's why I'm
not a literalist. I can't read it that way. I believe, however,
that the Holy Spirit interprets to the heart what
really is the word of God. Yeah, the counsel. I believe Jesus is
the word of God-- W, capital W-O-R-D.
Jesus is the word of God. I believe that the scripture
are words about the word. But they are words
about the word. Beautiful. I do not believe in bibliolatry. I do not believe in
worshipping the book. And I know too much about
how it was canonized. And so does everybody
else that's here. And if you tell the truth-- because sometimes we
don't tell the people the truth because we
need the Bible to prove to us the positions
we have already taken. That's right. Thank you, Jesus. But if we tell people
the truth, the truth is we're going to have
some struggle even with the canonization. We're not pseudepigraphas,
and apocryphas, and y'all know what
I'm talking about. And you know why
they picked them. Some of the they didn't pick. Maybe we need to read some of
them, and know who picked them, and why they picked them. And come on now. I hear you. So this is school. Isn't this school? Yeah. And the frustration for me,
Sister, is to see scholars-- Yeah. It just upsets me. I'm not frustrated with
prayer warriors telling me that the King James is
the only real word of God, and read it to me, and prove
text to me from a position. That doesn't bother me when
prayer warriors and church mothers-- and I can walk right
with them and love them on through processes. But scholars? Scholars. Who know what I know? Who know the languages
like I know them? Who learned what I learned? What are we trying--
then I know we're trying to preserve positions. Not true. I-- James, did you want
to comment on it. Oh. I think, doctor, your question
is achieving just what you meant it to achieve. [LAUGHTER] And I think that's a good thing. Because as Margaret
J Wheatley says, as long as we're not
talking to one another-- That's right, Brother. We can't be healthy. I do believe that the
Bible is the word of God. I believe-- I do not believe
it should be taken literally. I believe it's a nice
steak, a nice t-bone steak. And I think the
Spirit, with prayer, gives us the tools by
which we can eat the meat and leave the bone. But I'm not going
to throw away-- my momma left my father
when I was 11 years old. And we got t-bone steak
about once every month. And four of us had
to eat off of it. And I always waited
for the bone. Because I wasn't going to
eat the bone because it'd break my teeth. Yes, sir. But I sucked every piece of
meat off of it that I could. And so I think we have to
be careful and make sure-- I've read those other books. I've enjoyed them. I've read Pagels. I have read the gnostic gospels. I've read here-- at HDS we had
to read the book of Maccabees. We had to read the apocrypha. I enjoyed the novel
that's out now that has everybody talking about-- The DaVinci Code. The DaVinci Code. I enjoyed all of that. But at the end of the day,
I, because of prayer, laying the word before God, I
know in my experiences-- they know in their
experiences-- what works. He's right. That's right. And I've got to
stand on what works. Right. I'm with you. And it's hard enough for me
to live the Ten Commandments. I don't need the
Ten Commandments, and the apocrypha,
and all of this. It's hard enough for me to live. And that's my answer. I hear you, Brother. I'm with you. See, there exists in the
academic discourse on scripture a number of camps. Right. On the one hand, you have the
right wing, fundamentalist, literalist. Mm hmm. And in sophisticated circles,
we sort of snicker and joke, because they're basically
those cave people who drag their knuckles
on the ground, who move their lips when they
read their King James. And that's fine. That's one that the
mothers of the church, to fundamentalist literalists
who are all Republicans, they come from the red states. And they have no command
of the original languages. They don't read Hebrew. They never heard of Greek. King James is the book. Now that's one reality,
and also one caricature. Because the reality
is not simply that they're the literalists
who are essentially preliterate people who read
their tattered King James, and believe that,
you know, God stopped the sun, and seven days. That's one perspective,
it's one framework. And in certain kinds of
theological discussions, it's a caricature that
serves a polemical point. That's one side. On the other side, because
you have the right wing fundamentalists who
talk about them liberals that ain't saved and don't
know God, and that whole thing. Right? Mm hmm. Then there is a certain kind
of theological liberalism that has a very
distinct ideological, political, and
cultural pedigree, that takes a very dim
view of scripture and a very high view of social
science and anthropology. And we are in that camp tonight. And that's cool. I ain't mad. Right? And so I'll read James Boswell. Mm hmm. Right? John Boswell. Thank you. John Boswell. Right? Because that's a sacred text. Mm hmm. And it's important. But if we're all going to
be radically inclusive-- You can't exclude them. OK? You've got to have
the entire range. So it's not a
binary opposition-- Right. Of fundamentalist literalists-- That's right. Versus the enlightened,
sophisticated, radically inclusives. Right. That can't be the game. There is a way of having
a privileged high view of scripture as God's
revelation that is not literalist, fundamentalist,
Neolithic, antedeluvian or [INAUDIBLE]. The Spirit-- That! Right. So I take the bone out. And the word of God
becomes the bread of life for faith and practice. Now part of the
real discussion-- because this is really
the elephant in the room-- is this thing about sex. Because see there are two
ways the sex thing goes. Right? The fundamentalists are
preoccupied with sex. And to be told-- Sex. The left wing is
preoccupied with sex. Come on, y'all. Sure they are. See, so on both
sides of the game, what's really happening here-- and we've been weaving, and
bobbing, and dancing you understand--
there's a sex thing. And what's interesting
about this discussion, you understand,
is that we really ain't put it on the table. What's on the table? OK? What's on the table? So what I'm suggesting
intellectually-- no, no, dig it now-- is that let's get out of the
caricatures that, you know, if you think that
fornication is a sin, you're basically an
antedeluvian brickhead Negro who don't know no better,
as opposed to the enlightened, sophisticated where we
deconstruct everything. Because everything
is everything. And ain't no such thing
as sin or sexual idolatry. Dr. Sanders, I'd like
to ask my question. [LAUGHTER] And I'm a preacher. So done, done. We've done that part. So I'd ask that you not preach,
but answer the question. An anecdote-- I made a
point about the picture when I gave my
presentation, and talked about I think the reality
of this conference is to move to a
post-critical Pentecostalism. But that's not around critical. That's through critical. When I went to
college-- and I am going to ask a question--
quick anecdote. When I went to
college, my father, who has two master's degrees
and studied for a doctor in education, looked at me
three hours into a six-hour trip to Morehouse College from North
Carolina, and said, Marlon? I said, yes, sir. I looked at him. He said, you know what to do. And that was my sex education. This was after my sister had
gotten pregnant when I was 13. And she had hid
it for six months. And everybody knew
she was pregnant. This is after our
storefront church had lost most of our members. But we had the
largest attendance the Sunday he had to
announce she was pregnant. My grandmother-- his mother-- said to me, Marlon. She's a mother in
the church-- was the first person my mother's
father baptized in Jesus' name. She said, Marlon. If you're going to have
sex, wear a condom. Now this was the
mother of the church. Grandmother. Grandmother. My grandmother--
mother of the church. And so where I want to
go here is two-fold-- well, three-fold. First is, I respect
all of the opinions. But I hear from those
who weren't raised in the paradox of Pentecost
an appreciation for what happens when you
get to the water, versus those who understood
the trash that was in the well in the first place. Right? OK. That's the first thing. So address the paradox. Because I'm happy that I'm
baptized in the Holy Ghost, too, and speak in tongues. But, you know, we got to
St. John, and folks smoked. They drank. They were shacking. And they were shouting. So I've lived that reality. Number two-- number
one, paradox-- number two,
reclaiming resources. I talked about how in
reclaiming Bishop Lawson, Pan-Africanism and
Pentecostalism is not new. Bishop Blake, with
all due respect, has not introduced a new thing. It goes back to the
Azusa Street Revival. So how do we reclaim
Bishop Smallwood E. Williams, Bishop Ida Robinson? And what work are you all doing
to expand the discourse using those resources? And thirdly and practically,
about holiness-- the reality is, I meet
folk who talk about, I'm baptized in the Holy Ghost. And, you know, they
listen to hip hop. You know, I told Bishop
Clemons when I joined the First Church of God in Christ, that I
listened to Jodeci straight up. You know, I told him
things about myself. And so how can we
come to that place? Because Bishop Flunder,
I will say publicly, I appreciate a holiness stance
that's rooted in justice, because if my personal
piety is not transforming-- and this is where I want to
link back to my grandmother. My grandmother's personal
piety wanted to keep me alive. Yes. My daddy's piety wanted to keep
his head in the sand in denial, even after his
daughter had a baby. Right. I'm not interested in
piety that is in denial. I'm interested in piety that
wants to keep folk alive. So paradox-- Good. I feel you. Resources from the past, and a
real understanding of holiness as piety that preserves life. Can I address that? Right before you do that, I want
to try and answer the question. I do think that the meat of
the question is wonderful. I think the bone of
disrespect was not needed to make your point. And that's one of the tragedies
in these conversations. We can disagree without
being disagreeable. We can disagree without
being backhand nasty. And one of the
things that caused the major hurt between
Martin and Malcolm was the things
they said publicly. And then when both of them
came to a newer revelation, they had to apologize
to each other. And I hope they met
in heaven or wherever. Because Malcolm died
before he could say he was sorry all the way. And now you can go ahead. Thank you, Brother. God bless you. A couple things. First of all, one of the
biggest Bible studies I've ever had in my
church was a Bible study on sexuality and spirituality. Because we've set a certain
number of ground rules. And by the way, I'm talking
about same-gender loving people, which is what
I discussed earlier in my comments. I didn't talk about-- I didn't say anything about sex. That came up later. Mm hmm. I was talking about
affectional orientation and sexual orientation. Which by the way, does not
always materialize as sex. That's right. That's correct. That's a different conversation. My brother was
talking about sex. He'd been talking about sex. I'm talking about orientation. But I think it's
important for you to know that I don't have any
fear or trepidation to talk about sex. And I say this in
the context of being a child of the church, who lived
in and out of a bishop's home. And I knew everything
about everybody-- all the bishops in the church. That's true. Everything they did, because
they'd come on the phone all the time. [LAUGHTER] And it was going to do
one of two things to me. Either it was going to make me
run away from church forever-- because this is the
be real session. Isn't it? Yeah. It was going to make me run
away from church forever, because there are
proclivities that exist. All right? I have personally ministered
to several persons who were connected to
the General Secretary of the Church for a long time-- not the present
General Secretary, who happens to be a uncle,
but the one that preceded him. And many of them have been at
my ministry to receive help. Because we were not able to
say that he died with AIDS. Hear this. But the people who came
to me, who many of them have died since that
time, came to me. And I went to him when
nobody was ministering to him on the AIDS ward
in Oakland, California, and ministered to him. I know what I'm talking about. Yeah. I'm not sitting here-- forgive me. But I'm not playing about this. Because secrets kill. Yes. And the reality
of it is there are lots of proclivities underneath
the banner of holiness. And I want to say that because
what is missing for us is not that we are sick or something. What is missing for
us is we are not having a non-punitive discourse
about human sexuality. Amen. We just keep attacking,
and attacking, and attacking, and
setting up something that is not everybody's reality. Another preacher came
to me and said to me, I'm living with my wife. I have a girlfriend
in another city. And I go there often. I wish I could tell you
how much counseling-- some of these
people in this house know how much counseling I do
with preachers and pastors. And he called me and he said,
I need to know what to do. Big old, big old church. You'd know who he was
if I called his name. So the reality is not just
around same-gender loving people. But the reality is, we need
a non-punitive discourse about human sexuality. Let me-- Something that doesn't
condemn anybody, something that doesn't
destroy anybody, something that doesn't set
a paradigm that everybody has to live up to. And when we have
talked healthy, we can then talk about
how personal piety will help you to live a life
that will not only keep you from having sex when
you ought not to, but it'll keep you from eating
pork chops when you ought not to. Ha ha. OK? Is that all right? And too much fat back, and too
much sugar, and fried chicken, and staying up too late,
and getting up too early, and going to church all the
time, and not getting no sleep. Say it. We'll start talking about the
things that make us healthy. But we have to change
the conversation. This is not the way
to talk about this. You believe this is right. You believe that's right. You read the Bible this way. I read it-- we will never,
until we sit down and say, we are not going to leave
this table or this room until we have talked about
all of the possibilities and the ways in which people
express themselves intimately. And we do that in a non-punitive
way, in a caring way. Because, you know
what, sweetheart? We don't know what
we're talking about. We only know what
we've experienced. But we don't know other
people's experiences. We don't know how
much molestation exists in the church. Amen. We don't know how much
incest exists in the church. We don't know that the
priest of the house sometimes thinks
that all of the women are available to
him, and the men. Now we are sexually
ill in some ways. And the more holiness we have,
the sicker we are in that area. Because we're not
dealing with it. Yes, ma'am. [APPLAUSE] I have to-- [APPLAUSE] I hate to end this discussion. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Please join me in giving this
phenomenal panel another hand. [APPLAUSE] All of the panelists-- at this panel, the
earlier panel-- have taken time out of very
busy schedules to join us. And so we are truly greatly
appreciative of all that they have done to make
this day a success. I want to give you a few notes. We're having a reception
in the Braun Room, which is down the hall. You can continue in dialogue
with the panelists there. We have a general
comment sheet that we want you to fill out and
just kind of leave them with the students
in the Braun Room. It's general comments,
your general responses to the conference today, and
suggestions for the future. Marlon and the Azusa
Student Ministry are sponsoring a worship service
tonight at Memorial Chapel. Marlon, do you-- Memorial Church. I'm sorry. Do you want to make an
announcement about that?
