Pentecostalism grew out of Holiness revival movements within late nineteenth and early twentieth century American Methodism. Pentecostals emphasize direct experience of the divine through baptism in the Holy Spirit—an experience manifested by the ability to speak in tongues, healing, prophesies and visions. It is the fastest growing sector of contemporary Christianity. At the turn of the twenty-first century followers of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity numbered 523 million, with an estimated nine million conversions annually. Overwhelmingly, growth is evidenced outside of the West with women comprising seventy-five percent of the membership (Robbins 2004).
Within the past two decades scholarly attention to Pentecostalism has increased significantly in an effort to address the range of issues suggested by the religion’s rapid expansion. Global Pentecostal studies have generally been understood within two competing theoretical rubrics. First, Pentecostalism is understood as emblematic of Western dominance achieved through exporting religion and culture. Second, it is portrayed as the result of local agentive processes of religious appropriation and transformation. These two framings, in turn, are linked to paradoxical manifestations of Pentecostalism. Pentecostal gender discipline suggests a revamping of patriarchal domestic relations, yet it empowers women with spiritual authority and prompts men to forgo significant and costly gender prerogatives. Pentecostals evidence political apathy and conservatism as well as political participation and progressive agendas. Pentecostals embrace sober and simple lifestyles and yet, in some instances, accumulate significant wealth as well as extensive and diverse media holdings.
“Black Women and Pentecostalism in Diaspora” will extend current scholarship by interrogating continuities and discontinuities of religious practices and experiences at the intersection of three key theoretical frameworks, “race,” gender, and diaspora. As populations migrate across geopolitical terrains, notions of home and belonging shift, while gender and “race” remain salient yet unstable markers. This symposium will trace realignments of gender in varying contexts and examine the extent to which Pentecostalism reconfigures racial identities and notions of citizenship. Religious idioms and behaviors will be consistently examined through the lens of these broader cultural and political formations. Critical conversations in the field concerning gendered, regional, sociopolitical, theological, and liturgical distinctions in religious practices and experiences will be addressed by examining identity formation, community production, popular cinema, music, female religious authority, domestic/public spheres, and war.