The radicalism of Azusa Street

As an Afro-Pentecostal womanist raised within and continuing to identify with that tradition, I often struggle to excavate liberative stains within a movement that observers generally characterize as an almost completely otherworldly religious expression, one whose adherents retreat into ecstatic spirituality to escape real-world sociopolitical realities. Moreover, much of the previous work undertaken by White scholars, such as Vinson Synan and Robert Mapes Anderson, relegated the contribution of the movement’s African American leadership to footnotes. By doing so, they failed to treat the significant influence of the African and slave religious heritages with the seriousness it deserves. So I looked forward to engaging political theologian Keri Day’s attentive treatment of the founding event of the fastest-growing expression of global Christianity—and I was not disappointed.

Day’s thoughtful work adds to that of a small cadre of scholars of color, Pentecostal and otherwise, who have attempted to resurrect and highlight the Azusa Street Revival’s significance within American religious history. She goes further, however, placing the 1906 event within the context of the historical interrelationship between White evangelical Christianity, American capitalism, and racism. Much of the focus of Azusa Reimagined is on Day’s strong critique of the exploitative elements of a Christianity in lockstep with what she identifies as America’s racial capitalism.

Day argues that the entire American democratic experiment denigrates and exploits Black people while purportedly promoting a vision of prosperity. She begins by laying out the racial climate of American society at the turn of the 20th century, and then she details how both evangelical leaders and upper-class Black religionists who desired to participate in the capitalist system provided theological support for an inherently racist economic system. Then she identifies how the revival’s unashamed African spirituality and slave religious practices—which White religionists have historically overlooked or dismissed as unimportant—are important for understanding how seemingly innocuous religious practices by seemingly powerless communities can stand as powerful protest and refutation.