Pentecostals laboring in the field
Lloyd Barba shows how Mexican farmworkers established a viable life in the face of California’s industrial agriculture machine.
In Review
Sowing the Sacred:
Mexican Pentecostal Farmworkers in California
“The book is dedicated to the farmworkers who have broken their bodies, atoning for the nation’s sin of starvation.” So begins Lloyd Barba’s learned, perceptive, and hauntingly beautiful study of the miners, railroad workers, and crop pickers who toiled in California’s agricultural valleys between 1910 and 1960.
On the surface, the book’s subject is the origin and early history of the Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus. This Pentecostal sect, gathered in the first decade of the 20th century and formally organized in 1930, was centered in the southwestern United States and northern Mexico. It now numbers more than 300 churches in California and nearly 800 nationwide. Until recently, most members spoke only Spanish.
Like almost all Pentecostal groups, the AAFCJ affirms the gifts of the Holy Spirit, strict rules about lifestyle, and exuberant worship enriched by stringed instruments and vigorous hand clapping. Divine healing is part of the package too. Barba tells of an Apostolic laborer who, when asked to name his family doctor, answered, “Jesus.” Unlike most Pentecostal groups, however, the AAFCJ is ardently Oneness in theology. A sect of a sect, it holds that God is not triune but one, manifesting the divine persons in three modes as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
