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The Distillery podcast explores what motivates the work of Christian scholars and why it matters for theology and ministry.
Shari Oosting
In the early twentieth century, a series of revival meetings in Los Angeles shocked the nation. They had unsegregated worship services where both women and men spoke in tongues, performed faith healings, and wildly claimed to be filled with the Holy Spirit. These meetings, held in a small run-down building on Azusa Street, were pivotal in the creation of the modern Pentecostal movement. In today's episode, we sit down with Keri Day, who is professor of Constructive Theology and African American Religion at Princeton Theological Seminary. We discuss her new book Azusa Reimagined: A Radical Vision of Religious and Democratic Belonging. In this interview, we'll consider what lessons the Azusa Street Revival can provide for those seeking new ways to create belonging in churches and in our society. You are listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary. Keri, thank you so much for joining me today.
Keri Day
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here and be in discussion with you.
Shari Oosting
Well, I'm thrilled to be talking about Azusa Reimagined. What you share in the book, is a little bit of your own story, which I think sets the stage for the “why” this book needed to be written. You call yourself a child of Pentecostalism, so can you tell us a bit of your story?
Keri Day: Sure, sure. I am a fourth generation in the Church of God in Christ—the acronym is COGIC—but I'm a fourth generation. And there've been all kinds of stereotypes and labels associated with Pentecostals as noisy and backwards and uneducated and uncultured and all these different things, right? And so, the reason why I was wanting to name that, is because I am an African American woman that is a professor at one of the most prestigious institutions of theological education.
Shari Oosting
A fully tenured professor, I might add.
Keri Day
Thank you! I so appreciate that! Yes, tenured and a full professor now.
Shari Oosting
Yes.
Keri Day
There's a way in which I absolutely am a part of what people refer to as the “ivory tower,” and yet I am claiming this identity. But yet I am a child of Pentecostalism, which says it's not just the academic environment that has formed me, with respect to my own intellectual and vocational commitments. But saying I'm a child of Pentecostalism is a signal—Pentecostalism has formed me as a human being, as a Black woman, as a Christian. It has utterly shaped my intellectual and vocational interest. And so, with that being said, you can automatically anticipate why this would be important for me, right? These two disparate worlds, they're seen as separate. They're seen oftentimes as even antithetical—Pentecostalism as anti-intellectual—and, of course, academic life as the epitome of intellectualism. For me then, personally, wanting to begin to right, to make sense, of these two worlds, but to bridge these two worlds in some way through this history of Azusa.
Shari Oosting
Yeah. It's so great because I think you set us up to experience some of the ways that you push against those exclusive categories across the board, but one of them being the life of the intellect and the life of the spirit.
Keri Day
I do, right? And I'll start here within the history of both Christian theology, but then in mainstream white churches in the US, there is been this assumption through belief and practice, that at the center of Christian faith, is this faith-seeking understanding, right? But understanding is about the life of the mind. But for me, it was this understanding going back to the child of Pentecostalism that how we come as Pentecostals, how we come to know something about God, is in and through the body. But that's not, in some ways, to think of the body as sort of sitting over and against the mind, right? There's a way in which the mind, how we come to understand something intellectually, involves the very participation of the body, of corporality, of the material life, right? Just not our bodies, but creation itself, how we're moving in the world. So that as a Pentecostal then, knowledge about God is mediated in and through our bodies, whether it's in worship service, whether it's in fellowship. And that's really important, right, as we turn to the book that I've written, because part of what I'm attempting to—I guess, you could say disturb or unsettle within Christian theology, within mainstream churches that Azusa was doing, is unsettling this idea that over here we have reason, which guides faith and intellectual life and then on the other side, you have the passions, right, which get in the way of a true understanding of God and true service to God, and that Pentecostals then teach us something, and Azusa in particular, about epistemology, theological epistemology. How do we come to know what we know about God and about divine life? But not only that, how do we come to know what we know about the world? And Azusa once—part of this investigation that I do with Azusa, is making the argument that these people, in many ways, this community, they're deeply invested in turning to the ground level, what's going on in communities as it relates to say, racism, patriarchy, and so forth, as a way to understand the world as it truly is, and how God is moving in that world.
Shari Oosting
Yeah. That's a perfect segue: how do we know, how do we come to understand what God is up to? So, set the stage for us: what is the Apostolic Faith Mission? And for those who are not familiar, what's the Azusa Street Revival?
Keri Day
Yeah. So, the Azusa Street Revival of 1906—it began in Los Angeles, California—it is sort of understood as the revival that we attribute to the emergence of Pentecostalism in the United States, and especially as it relates to some of your mainline Pentecostal denominations. Now, I want to be clear that historians contest that, okay? So I want to be clear upfront. And I talk about this in my book very quickly because I'm also very clear that I'm not writing as a historian—I am a theologian, I'm a critical theorist of religion—that you have other Pentecostal groups that sort of precede the Azusa revival. However, it is generally understood that your mainline Pentecostal denominations, they do come out for the most part of the Azusa revival, and hence, the attribution of early Pentecostalism in this country to the Azusa movement. The reason why—and I'm glad you brought up the Apostolic Faith Mission, okay?—This is really important because people that know about the beginnings of early Pentecostalism, they often know about the Azusa Street Revival. But I think what's important to note that I do talk about in my book at the beginning, is that the Azusa Street Revival, this revival and movement, it emerges out of a church, out of ecclesial life. That the Apostolic Mission Church is actually this small church that, just to give a bit of history as we continue this conversation, you have William Seymour, who eventually becomes the pastor, who is actually living in Houston, Texas, okay? He's actually being pastored—and I know we'll get to this—he's being pastored by a woman, Lucy Farrow, okay? And they are in conversation with Charles Parham, a white minister, that is beginning already to talk about Pentecostalism, what is distinctive about Pentecostalism, when there is a woman called Neely Terry, who visits in Houston—she has family, she visits Lucy Farrow's church—she hears William Seymour, she invites William Seymour to Los Angeles to her church—another woman is pastoring at this church, Julia Hutchins. Seymour, a few days later, he travels to Los Angeles, where he, in this church, Julia Hutchins' church, he sort of presents this new emerging doctrine of initial evidence which is this idea within early Pentecostalism, that a part of having the Holy Spirit is receiving the gifts of the Spirit and namely speaking in other tongues. Well, Hutchins doesn't like that because Hutchins is a holiness pastor, she is, but she's not Pentecostal. So she throws him out, okay? It's Seymour and this small band of people that follow him, and they go to a couple's house by the name of Richard and Ruth Asbury on Bonnie Brae Street in Los Angeles. And they begin a very small communion there of worshiping—I mean, it's often understood that what actually forces them to move from Bonnie Brae Street while they were worshiping on the porch and crowds are gathering, is that the porch falls in, it collapses, it caves in, and they realize they need a new building. And so, after worshiping there for a month or two, they realized they need a new building. Seymour finds a building on Azusa Street in Los Angeles. And it's at that point when they move over to that building, that they officially identify themselves as the Apostolic Mission Church, right? And this would be the church out of which this revival and this movement would be birthed. All of that to say, the reason why that ministry is really important, is because we often, even within theological circles, it's the question of how efficacious can churches be today, right? In terms of the ecclesial life, how do we think about church practice and even liturgical practice, with respect to questions of social change, which with respect to structural racism and heteropatriarchy and classism? And here you see that it's not just this movement, right, that just emerges out of nowhere. It's about the way in which a church community actually, through fellowship, through liturgy and other sorts of things are coming together, and out of this profound experience, something radical is born that changes the landscape of American religiosity in the 20th century.
Shari Oosting
What was so radical about this community?
Keri Day
Gosh, I could probably name four or five things, but really I would say a couple that are, I think, most important, especially to the—of course, the book I've written “Azusa Reimagined.” The first is in Los Angeles—I mean, this is the case at the beginning of the 20th century where you have industrialism emerging, right? You have—although we would see a new form of slavery—neo-slavery through segregation—you have African Americans that are experiencing the first in politics, the first in banking, things like that. But you also have this influx of immigrants, right? And this is absolutely the case for Los Angeles. You have this huge influx of immigrants from around the world, so that part of the question at the beginning of the 20th century for the nation, it was how do we live together with the growing diversity, not only in terms of racial diversity and ethnic diversity, and national diversity, but also religious diversity, right? Because these folks were bringing over their own unique religious and spiritual context. But this is against the backdrop of profound structural racism, right? Not just meted out against African Americans, but Asians, right? Latinx people and so forth. What is really radical about Azusa is first the way in which you have a church community coming together, and there are experiences of the Spirit—there is fellowship in many ways that is crossing the segregative boundaries and logics of early America. You know, what is absolutely revolutionary and dangerous about this revival, is the way in which it really violates the very segregative—and really legal at that time!—logics of American whiteness, and really anti-Blackness and structural racism. So that's one image I think that really—and here's maybe another image: you have Black women that are serving as the gatekeepers at this revival, gatekeepers of the religious conversion, the religious experience. As I talk about in the book, the religious conversion experience is being mediated through enslaved religious practices. These are the practices that you would find when African Americans were enslaved, you would find at the plantations. These practices were seen as pagan retentions from Africa, okay? They were seen as unsophisticated, as demonic. And here you have at this revival, these enslaved religious practices forming the cornerstone of the Spirit experience, not only of African Americans, but of white folks
Shari Oosting
Yeah. You use the phrase “queer” as a word to help express how outside of the normative structure Azusa was. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Keri Day
Sure. I mean, so—I take my cue here from in particular, Linn Tonstad, a systematic and constructive, queer theologian, but there have been many—I mean, Patrick Cheng, another one, Asian American theologian, that has written extensively about that the term “queer” is certainly about how we think about that which sits outside of the heteronormative gaze with respect to identity as such, right? So, the LGBTQ community is an example of identity as such, as well as practice—but that the term “queer” more broadly is about deviation from the norm, right? So that when we're speaking about “queering” something, it is about the way in which a particular phenomenon is countering and deviating from the norm in this kind of way. And, I mean, clearly, at least the way in which I try to present—and I also should say this—that in this sense, the way I talk about “queer”—and this is Tina Campt. Black feminist theorist Tina Campt—is “queer” as also participating in the idea of the fugitive, meaning practice and identity that is on the run, that is just not deviating from the norm, but it's being punished for doing so. And part of the way in which then society that lives by the norm, the punishing often means that these communities in some way are "on the run." They're pushed underground, they're penalized, they're punished as such. And so for me, all that I've described about Azusa thus far, I argue makes at least Azusa’s practice quite “queer,” because it's transgressing racial boundaries. It's transgressing gendered boundaries. You have the evangelist Methodist minister, Alma White, that comes down to Azusa, and she says all of this—she calls it these examples and expressions of free love. And she knew what she was doing when she invoked the idea of free love, okay? This idea that it is outside the bounds of sexual propriety and gender norms and roles, okay? And when you have women leading and preaching, out of which most denominations did not allow women to pastor or preach, as well as she said you have the scandalous mixing of the sexes—what does it mean when you walk into the revival and you see men and women hug together, bodies absolutely pressed together in the spirit through an experience? And so, in this way, for me, it is a very “queer,” uncanny deviating from the norm, but punished in some ways and on the run from the law, from mainline Christian communities that feel that it's a dangerous religious community.
Shari Oosting
Yeah. I like the way that you push a little bit into the use of the word erotic, and in a helpful way. Can you say just a bit about that?
Keri Day
Yeah, so I—oftentimes—much of my conversation about the erotic is been informed by not only Black feminists, but also by theologians such as Paul Tillich would be one—that sees the erotic as actually participating in what he refers to as the ontology of love, both God's love, and then our expression of God's love moved out toward humanity and creation, right?So, you have this history of the erotic in Western philosophy and Western theology seen as debased, as getting in the way of the contemplation of God, getting in the way of a service to God. And so the erotic has a long history as being seen as a sin, as a vice. So for me, part of reclaiming the idea of the erotic first, is to show in this book, the way in which the erotic actually functions to secure relations of belonging, what we hold dear. And that can be human on human, but that could also be what it means in terms of erotic or desire, things that I desire, that can be in how I engage a book, in terms of my desire that can be—and how I read a poem with passion, engaging all of my being and all of myself. But what I was wanting to do here in the book, however—so I wanted to say a brief background on how philosophy and theology has thought about it—is to think about the contradictions and ambiguities of the erotic. And that is, if it is the case that the erotic offers us a way to feel desire, and to long and to yearn for the deepest parts of who we are and who others are and of the world—if it is in some ways that which funds how we think about intimacy and belonging—and here I'm drawing off of Black feminist Sharon Holland's work—that it can be argued that the erotic can bring us together in ways that are profoundly life-giving, right?—that undergirds communities of belonging that are justice and promote human flourishing—but that we can also experience certain forms of yearning and desire that are death dealing—certain forms of yearning and desire that actually harm. And so, for me then, talking about the erotic life of racism, is this understanding that it's not just structural, material arrangements that keep racism going. But it's also feelings and events, and sentiments and ties that bind. Like, for example, in white supremacy or white nationalism, there's a deep desire and yearning to be together among white nationalists, but the problem is the object of that yearning is distorted, right? And so, for me, it was really important to talk about the contradictions and the ambiguities, and the ways in which the erotic can go wrong.
Shari Oosting
And what I love is that you share how the Azusa revival was also very complicated. This was not a simple, straightforward—I mean, what community of faith is, right? But even in its kind of erotic aspects, desires of kind of deepest longing, belonging, and connection, it's complicated.
Keri Day
It's complicated, right? So, in my estimation, the erotic cannot be contained. It has its own inner life, right? It cannot be controlled. And so even in some of the best moments of the Azusa revival, for example, in which what it means to yearn and long across racial and gender and class and nationality and ethnic difference is powerful. There's a way in which those very norms, often again, the erotic life of racism and patriarchy, nevertheless creep back in. And here's one example: William Seymour absolutely supported women in ministry as pastors and preachers—many of them go on and start churches. But you have people from the outside that are critiquing, right? I mean, you have husbands of the women leaders at his church that are coming to Seymour and saying, "They're no longer being good wives. Can you—“
Shari Oosting
—Right. You've disturbed the peace in my home now.
Keri Day
That's right! That's right! And so, you even have one situation—a woman leader that led right by Seymour, and the husband threatened to basically divorce her if she did not stop the activities, the leadership activities of the church. And so here you see Seymour—he's becoming more aware of how others think about the community. And so Seymour, as a way to offer a politics of respectability, as a way to be more in-line with the gender norms of the day—you see Seymour actually making at critical moments, a turn back toward the very gendered norms that the revival, in many ways, at least performatively, were countering.
Shari Oosting
Let's go back to Lucy Farrow. You mentioned her quite a while ago, but it'd be a missed opportunity not to share a bit of her story. So, can you tell us about Lucy Farrow?
Keri Day
Yeah, so, Lucy Farrow was the first—well, at least it was the first recorded—African American to receive the Holy Spirit in tongues in Parham's revival. It's actually Lucy that brings this view back to Seymour. So it's a Black woman pastor that introduces in some ways Seymour to Parham and to this experience. I think what is really significant about Lucy Farrow, is in the current context where you have, for example, the denomination I come out of, the Church of God in Christ—the acronym COGIC—this denomination still does not ordain women. And the conversation right now is not even on the table in the general assembly. They have taken it off of the table—that here you have Seymour, who becomes the central leader and figure of early Pentecostalism. But it's important to remember that Seymour's experience and Pentecostal identity, would be birthed through a community of women, namely Lucy Farrow, who was his pastor. So to me, this is, I think, a major moment that can counter the deep misogynistic and heteropatriarchal practices of contemporary Pentecostalism today, that does not see on biblical grounds and cultural grounds—does not see women as being a proper or justified leaders as pastors and preachers and so forth—that actually what you see is Seymour being led by a woman.
Shari Oosting
What a great opportunity to reclaim a part of history that could be overlooked. One of the things that you state later on, and this is a phrase that just jumped off the page at me, is you're encouraging Christians today to pay attention to what you call the moods of the unredeemed. And I feel like one is to point at history of Lucy Farrow, but can you say more about what else you'd like people to pay attention to? One, it sounds like is your own history, but what do you mean by the moods of the unredeemed?
Keri Day
Yeah. When I speak about those who are unredeemed, it's those who refuse the buy-in to the narrative, that simply participating in the capitalist project will redeem them, will enable them to experience success. Think about over half of American workers today have to often work two to three jobs just to stay at either right above poverty level line, or some of them still are below with a family of two or three. And so, for me at least, it's about thinking about those and listening to their cries, listening to their moods, their pessimism. Their staunch and vehement critiques of a democratic, racial capitalist project, that actually depends upon the exploitation and expropriation of people's bodies, lives and work. And so that's what I mean—really listening to these people, not as problems that we need to solve, but as human beings that are telling us something about what is wrong, what is profoundly wrong about democracy and about racial capitalism as it's experienced today.
Shari Oosting
Yeah. I think Azusa points toward a possibility of that resistance, that something new emerging in the context of something else that's broken. So, can you talk a little bit about the hopefulness in a different understanding of what democracy could be?
Keri Day
Yeah. If you recall in those last few pages, I resist the urge that I know many readers want. Well, then, okay, what is just democracy?
Shari Oosting
Help me vote better.
Keri Day
Right, right, there you go! Help me vote better. Help me do this, help me do that. What I try to do is I try to resist moving in that direction, because part of my argument in that last chapter is that we don't even know right now what we should do until we've listened to those that are on the underside of the racial capitalist democratic project, right? So that in some ways, it takes a profound intellectual and political humility for those that may privilege from the structures, the economic and social and political structures that are in place to say, "You know what? We don't even know what is needed until we have sat with the moods of those that are experiencing profound precarity, from forms of neoliberal racial capitalism today." So, for me, a part of then and I use Derrida's understanding of the “democracy to come”—this idea, that number one, it is always an incomplete project, right? But the “democracy to come” is more about the kind of disposition as human beings, that we should have, a kind of humility that we should have, that we have a tendency to get things wrong, and we're going to get things wrong before we get things right. And so it's in that profound humility that keeps us then open to what we're getting wrong and how to—this idea of the democratic, of how to engage the democratic in ways that really allow it to be the democratic as such. And again, this is—how do we listen to those on the underside? And not just that, in listening to them, it may transform how we even understand democratic practice itself. Like, here's one example: we live in a representative democracy. I think there's simply an assumption that this is an eternal form. That's the felt nature among many Americans. But maybe we are—in terms of a “democracy to come”—maybe we are at the beginning of an entire new re-articulation of what the democratic can be moving into the future, that may not look like a representative democracy. Really, my call is the call to imagine. It is a call of imagination, of political imagination that the political instruments that we have right now, cannot save us in that sense. But that doesn't mean that in the process, we cannot think anew about what can be in terms of the political.
Shari Oosting
Well, I think that's a beautiful note to end on. You've been listening to The Distillery at Princeton Theological Seminary. Interviews are conducted by me, Shari Oosting. Our editorial and production staff include Nathanael Hood and Byron Walker.
Like what you're hearing? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and don't forget to leave us a review, even better, share an episode with a friend. The Distillery is a production of continuing education at Princeton Theological Seminary. Until next time, thanks for listening.