March 7, 2006

The images abound in stock video footage accompanying stories on evangelicals, the religious right, megachurches and the culture wars—the obligatory shots of middle-class worshipers, usually white, in corporate-looking auditoriums or sanctuaries, swaying to the electrified music of “praise bands,” their eyes closed, their enraptured faces tilted heavenward, a hand (or hands) raised to the sky.

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8, NRSV).

When you get to the car lot, you have a decision to make—which way should you go? If you turn right, you enter beautiful show rooms with sparkling new cars that deserve their luxurious placement on plush carpets and under glass roofs. It seems a shame to think about actually driving these cars. Here the sales people are enthusiastic and chipper, the rooms are bright, the bathrooms tidy. The cars seem at ease too. They are an elite family, all with the sleek, beautiful lines of a particular brand.

As the message of Pentecost spread, it adapted to fit existing cultures. Korean Pentecostals, for instance, frequently climb “prayer mountains” for pre-sunrise prayer services, a reflection of a pre-Christian past. At Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, reputedly the world’s largest church, parishioners recite the Apostles’ Creed, pray or sing the Lord’s Prayer, and pray for the reunification of Korea every Sunday, reflecting something of the old Presbyterian majority.

I was raised in a tiny Pentecostal denomination, the Open Bible Standard Churches, founded in part by disillusioned followers of 1930s revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson. My parents were Open Bible pastors, many of my uncles and aunts were missionaries, and one uncle served as the denomination’s president.

On April 9, 1906, at a prayer meeting in a modest home on Bonnie Brae Street in Los Angeles, a few men and women spoke in tongues. They had been meeting to pray for “an outpouring” of the Holy Spirit. The tongues speech convinced them that they had “broken through.”

News of the event spread rapidly among blacks, Latinos and whites, the prosperous and the poor, immigrants and natives. Those who yearned for revival, as well as the curious, thronged the house. The need for space prompted a move to an abandoned Methodist church on Azusa Street.

Classic romantic comedies follow this scenario: the hero and heroine begin as adversaries but are irresistibly drawn to each other; they overcome a series of obstacles and recognize that they belong together; their willingness to change—to discard the prejudices that kept them apart—denotes their growth as human beings and shows that they deserve each other.

Hamas was formed in 1987 as an Islamist movement in opposition to Israel. It was linked to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. In spite of its resistance rhetoric, the organization received early covert backing and financial support from Israel. In promoting Hamas as an alternative to Yasir Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, Israel was following the adage that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”