Pentecostalism is the Global South’s fastest-growing Christian movement, yet mainstream narratives continue to undermine more than 75 percent of Black women’s pivotal support to its growth. Several early scholarly works treat present Black women’s narratives as simplistic. Their narratives don’t count towards the growing field of African/a, Pentecostal, and, principally, Black feminist studies. In contrast, Judith Casselberry and Elizabeth Pritchard’s collaboratively sculpted anthology, Spirit on the Move, offers an exceptional view of the potential that Black women’s lived realities offer to close this gap. Their edited volume draws on diverse sources to fold/unfold/refold these women’s narratives, thus making it possible to access their “em/power/ment” by drawing meaning from their lives centered in a locale of empowered imaginations of being. The introduction provides a roadmap for the readers to help navigate the authors’ topics. It also sets the tone for the complexities associated with the power rhythms found amongst Pentecostals and the occasions that permit marginalized community members to realign, reinvent, and circulate counter/discourses (6).
Part 1, entitled “Saving Race,” includes John Burdick and Elizabeth McAlister surveying the “Voices of God” through “race.” Burdick uses the Afro-Brazilian context to gauge “race” indicators and gender-inflected performance. McAlister problematizes the theologized racial constructions that frame the notion of Christian citizenship, for example, associating darker skin color, particularly blackness, with evil intersects with gender roles based on the colonial histories of missionaries that have been absorbed into African (Haitian) traditional contexts. Citizens are called to a “spiritual warfare” with ancestors—a reaction occasioned by their contact with missionaries under very awkward circumstances. These circumstances paved the way for conforming to the conquerors’ taste and demonizing precolonial traditions.Footnote 1
The essays in part 2—“Scrutinizing and Sanctifying the Body”—problematize the gendered attribution of power and sexuality to Black women that subtly endorses a dominant patriarchal system in a tradition that avers egalitarianism. The authors draw on women’s bodies and strict gendered dress codes to underscore political and spiritual contestations. Linda van de Kamp, in “Women and the Afro-Brazilian Pentecostal War in Mozambique,” evaluates Black women’s lives as the “field” for demons’ revenge; they engage in a spiritual battle, continuously “fighting” before they can enjoy productive, familiar kinship and socialization relationships. Deidre Helen Crumbley’s essay, “Dressed as Becometh Holiness,” focuses on extensive field research in a small storefront Philadelphia church and examines patterns of how “sanctified” dress codes reinforce gendered irregular power relationships.
Part 3, “Sonic Power,” houses Paula Aymer and Judith Casselberry’s essays. These essays demonstrate how women broaden the parameters and the productive tensions that pervade discipline and spontaneity. Aymer traces the paths of certain Nigerian women evangelists who traverse Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond, recruiting women into “the Wailing Women Worldwide Intercessor[y]s group.” They employ Scriptures to justify women’s “em/power/ment” and train them to become “ruthless masculine warriors” in the face of significant class differences and the heteronormative nuclear family model versus the Caribbean predominant mode of single motherhood. Casselberry, in “The Kingdom in the Midst,” interrogates the performative stance in which women’s liturgical and theological authority is supplemental based on space and gender. Here, negotiations are evidenced in how Black women maintain notions of themselves.
Part 4 features details about “Modeling the State.” The authors probe how “spirit power” interactions interact with state models and institutions. Jane Soothill’s essay, “A Critical Approach to Concepts of ‘Power’ and ‘Agency’ in Ghana’s Charismatic (or Neo-Pentecostal Churches),” shows how Ghana’s charismatic churches applaud elitists and yet portend “generalized” empowerment. Soothill argues against the elitist model for a gender complementarity ideology devoid of double standards. Laura Premack’s “Bless Us with Children” interrogates Alafia, a Yoruba word encompassing peace, health, and material good signified by childbearing. Premack explores church-sponsored fertility and maternity centers to underscore the pragmatic bent of Nigerian divine healing-invested churches.
This volume comes with powerfully dramatic ideas that speak to a world where Black women’s lives often still matter little. Its authors’ insights justifying Pentecostalism’s inclusion alongside gender discrimination, colonialism, racism, classism, and state failure alone make this book worthy to be read. Direct scholarly attention should continue to focus on aspects of Black women’s narratives as the contributors to this volume have done. By privileging the study of Pentecostal Black women’s narratives alongside historical global forces, this anthology contributes to Black feminist studies and women and gender studies, especially African/a and Diaspora Pentecostal women’s studies.
