Pentecost must be set free. First, Pentecost must be set free from the silence of the church concerning its importance. Second, Pentecost must be wrest- ed from its association solely with denominational designation. Third, Pentecost must be delivered from denominational caricatures that identify it primarily with glossolalia as the badge of fidelity.

Youngstown, Ohio, Episcopal priest John Horner, then rector of Saint Mary’s Episcopal Church in Ardmore, Pennsylvania, announced in a 1999 sermon that he loved Pentecost Sunday:

So many of the Christian Holy Days have been over taken by secular interests. Christmas is now about gift giving and office parties. Easter finds its heroes among the rabbits and its symbols in baby chickens and eggs. The church no longer controls the meaning of these two celebrations—the birth and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But the world wouldn’t know what to do with Pentecost you claim that Jesus Christ has not only been raised from the dead, but also has poured out His Spirit upon humanity in a way distinct from any other. I just think that we need to press Pentecost as a uniquely Christian celebration.

Horner is right. As the church strives to find its distinctive place among the institutions of society yet engage those same institutions, it must hold fast to that which makes it different. Many institutions believe that the poor should be empowered. Many institutions believe that families should be helped. Many institutions believe that the oppressed should be set free. But only one institution believes that such activ- ity is motivated, indeed propelled, by the divine intervention of the activity of a Spirit promised and poured out by one raised from the dead. That is the church. Horner rightly longs for a celebration that is devoid of secular influence to press God’s people to do God’s will. “They [the secular world] wouldn’t know what to do with Pentecost “—it couldn’t be co-opted for any other purpose.

Any who doubt John Horner’s analysis need look no further than the extent to which the Christian calendar—the operative one, not the temporal—determines the way in which we worship. Mother’s Day, Independence Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving Day all occupy a greater significance than Pentecost in our worship life. Even Labor Day has more impact as a day of celebration—if only by virtue of the empty pews masquerading as worshipers on the first Sunday in September. And this is beyond even Horner’s clear critique of the ways in which Christian holy days are co- opted by secular interest.

In engaging the second critique, we ask the question, “Who are the Pentecostals?” that is, who are those who invoke the name of Pentecost as part of denominational or traditional identity and claim it as an exclusive designation for their own tribe. The criticism here is not of Pentecostal denominations but rather of other Christian traditions who don’t see themselves as Pentecostal. If Pentecost points to the sending/coming of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2, do not all the faithful share in its celebration and implications? Is not Pentecostal identity better represented when the whole of the church of Jesus Christ reclaims the Spirit’s role in its identity, life, and work? To take a piece of Christian identity and make it the whole is difficult, but the church has become quite good at doing that over the centuries. In an attempt to resist such tendencies, the Rev. Dr. Buster Soaries of First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset, New Jersey, has been,

“I’m a Baptist because I baptize, I’m a Methodist because I have a method, I’m a Pentecostal because I believe in Pentecost, I’m a Catholic because I believe in the church universal, I’m a Presbyterian because I believe in eldership, I’m Holiness because I believe in being holy, I’m Episcopalian because I believe in the shepherding of the bishops—I refuse to be limited by denominational designations.”

While some might think Soaries’ declaration trite, the larger theological implications are clear: Why should any denominational tradition claim ownership of a signal dimension of the faith tradition? This means that all Christians are Pentecostal, if they believe that God did a unique work on that Pentecost Sunday rehearsed in Acts 2.

Pentecostalism must be liberated from any denominational ownership to include the whole of the church of Jesus Christ. But this means less being pried from the grip of Pentecostals and more being pulled from the theological garbage-heap to which respectable mainline Protestants have sentenced it. The association with out- casts, holy-rollers, and the poor—whether mountain, city, or Third World—is a view from a dying center to a margin pregnant with theological possibilities.    The assignment of the designation to televangelists who represent more mainline values than some mainliners represents more the refusal of the respectable to be “Pentecostal.” We forget that the initial response of the world to Pentecost was ridicule and disdain.

The question moves from who are the Pentecostals to how are we Pentecostal? To surrender the nomenclature of pentecostalism to any segment of the church without considering Pentecost within a church’s own tradition is to abdicate responsibility for the movement of the Holy Spirit in that church’s life. Either the whole church is Pentecostal or none of the church is Pentecostal. Pentecost is not defined by glossolalia— there are other things going on, such as the salvation of thousands, the preaching of the Word under the anointing of the Spirit, and the declaration of the gospel in a divinely appointed multicultural setting and manner.

Many churches acknowledge the multicultural dimensions of Pentecost by having the scripture read in diverse languages—a reenactment of the first Christian Pentecost where persons from a variety of cultures heard the Word in their own language. At Horner’s Saint Mary’s, the fruit of British colonialism and American immigration produced a congregation that boasted a plethora of mother tongues. This led to the practice of having the Gospel reading for Pentecost Sunday read simultaneously in every language represented in the congregation.

At the church I currently serve, Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Twin Oaks, Pennsylvania, we have adopted this reading of scripture for Pentecost Sunday. The difference is that as a historically African American congregation, the multiplicity of languages does not reflect the church’s background; rather it points to the challenge to African American congregations to take their place on the world stage of Chistendom not simply as martyrs to American racial convention but as partners in the global church, recognizing the struggles of Christian peoples in a variety of cultural settings. This is no small thing in a community where the world comes to our doors to set up shop, teach math and sci- ence in our schools, and staff our hospitals, while simultaneously the descendants of Africa set foreign policy, negotiate for peace in the Middle East, and play leading roles in tennis, golf, and ice hockey.

The final venue of the struggle for Pentecost’s liber- ation lies in the valley of denominational caricature. While speaking in tongues was certainly a signal feature of the 1906 Azusa Street Revival and its descendants worldwide, calling it the signal feature of the heirs to the tradition overlooks several key components of the Pentecostal tradition. First, consistent with the diverse cultural setting of the first Pentecost,the multicultural dimensions of the current movement’s founding and recent reconciliation efforts highlight an important distinction. Virtually every African American Pentecostal denomination has a strong tradition of pointing to various white members, not so much those in leadership positions, but in the idea that a sure sign of Pentecost is whites following Black leadership. They did it at Azusa. They did it in the early Church of God in Christ, in the movements of both Philadelphia’s Mother Ida B. Robinson and New York City’s Mother Rose Horn.

Second, the growth of Pentecostalism out of the holiness movement requires a rehearsal of holiness roots. A colleague of mine once asked a Pentecostal scholar, “At what point, with your emphasis on the Holy Spirit, do we consider what it means to be Holy?” Anyone who is a Pentecostal person, whether by tradi- tion or by reclaiming the label, must ask questions about what it means to be holy, since Pentecost is the sending/coming of the Holy Spirit. Early Pentecostals knew this; their leaders and the traditions that grew from them always raised the moral questions, even if some have found their solutions extreme. If moral reckoning in a postmodern church leads to a form of polite relativism, then maybe such wags will opt for relative holiness. I doubt such would win out, but the need for “ideas of the Holy” should spring from Pentecost’s liberation.

Third, most Pentecostals have a strong tradition of pacifism. Church historian David Daniels and bibliographer Sherry DuPree have gone to great lengths to document the pacifist and anti-war stances of Black Pentecostal leaders in the first half of the twentieth century, some paying for it in beatings, jailings, and seizures of property. Church of God in Christ founding overseer Charles Harrison Mason preached, “How can you fight a war in the name of the Prince of Peace?” Mount Sinai Holy Church bishop Ida B. Robinson pub- licly questioned the United States’ entry into World War II, and the United Holy Church counseled conscientious objection for its members drafted into military service.

In the liberation of Pentecost from the church’s neglect, from denominational designation, and from traditional caricature we may discover another freedom—our own. We can claim freedom to name and celebrate, to be empowered by and filled with a particular Spirit—the Holy Spirit, no small claim in a post- modern world where everything is spiritual. As the dove soars, it represents a new freedom—Pentecost’s and our own.