Grant Wacker, the Gilbert T. Rowe Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Christian History at Duke Divinity School, wrote the foreword for the recently released Oneness Pentecostalism: Race, Gender, and Culture. This 263-page hardback volume is published by The Pennsylvania State University Press and edited by Lloyd D. Barba, Andrea Shan Johnson, and Daniel Ramirez.
In addition to Wacker’s foreword, the book includes a list of illustrations, acknowledgments, and an introduction titled “Remapping the History of North American Oneness Pentecostalism,” with contributions from each editor.
Ten chapters explore the variety of topics to which the subtitle alludes, offering insights on race, gender, and culture from the perspective of Oneness Pentecostalism as it developed from the early twentieth century. The author of each chapter is a scholar in the field whose academic qualifications are presented in a list of contributors on page 251.
Here are the chapter titles with the authors’ names:
- The Unresolved Issue: A Third-World Perspective on the Oneness Question, Manuel Gaxiola
- Evangelical Origins of Oneness Pentecostal Theology, David A. Reed
- Sounding Out Diversity in Pentecostal History: Early Oneness Hymnody, Daniel Ramirez
- Andrew D. Urshan: An Eastern Voice in Early Oneness Pentecostalism, Daniel L. Segraves
- The Dust District: Okies, Authority, and the Hard-Liner Transformation of California Pentecostalism, Lloyd D. Barba
- The Braziers: Three Generations of Apostolic Activism, Rosa M. Sailes
- Bossed and Bothered: Authority and Gender in the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, Dana Coleby Delgado
- Trust God to Provide for the Difference: The Economic and Opportunity Costs of Being Female and a Preacher, Andrea Shan Johnson
- Women in the Luz del Mundo Church: A Transnational Study, Patricia Fortuny Loret de Mola
- Liturgical Spaces in Mexican Oneness Pentecostalism: Architectural and Spatial Dimensions, Daniel Chiquete
The volume concludes with a final offering by the editors titled “Navigating New Paths to Old Landmarks,” followed by a ten-page index.
The need for this work is captured in Wacker’s first paragraph:
“Four score and seven years ago” – or so it now seems – I wrote a long essay on “Bibliography and Historiography” for the landmark Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (1988). For a young historian wading into uncharted waters, it was, I hope, a useful effort. Yet looking at that essay today, I am shocked – though not really surprised – by the topics that I shortchanged. The most notable was Oneness Pentecostalism.
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