Early Pentecostals On Nonviolence And Social Justice (pentecostals, Peacemaking, And Social Justice) [Hardcover]

This book documents some of the pacifist and social justice convictions of early Pentecostals, many of whomwere called traitors, slackers, cranks, and weak-minded people for extending Jesus' love beyond racial, ethnic, and national boundaries.They wrestled with citizenship and Jesus' prohibitions on killing.They rejected nation-worship, war profiteering, wage slavery, patriotic indoctrination, militarism, and Wall Street politics--and many suffered for it. They criticized governments and churches that, in wartime, endorsed the very thing forbidden in their sacred book and civil laws. They recognized the dangers of loving your country too much, even more than Jesus and his words, and viewed nation-loyalty as a distraction from a higher and more inclusive loyalty--devotion to God. These articles, once accessible only to academics, are now available to the public.These voices, often forgotten within today's mainstream Pentecostal history, offer an opportunity torevisit the passions of early Pentecostal leaders and to examine Pentecostalism in fresh ways. This edited collection brings together texts that illustrate how a significant number of early Pentecostals criticized instances of institutionalized violence and reflected on various themes surrounding social justice that are still familiar to twenty-first-century readers. These texts were often controversial, some of their assumptions are problematic and rather reactionary, but in the main they provoke necessary reflections for contemporary Christian communities. Presented together, they also constitute a valuable resource for those wishing to study the many writings of early Pentecostal on nonviolence. --Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, author of Christian Anarchism This timely witness to nonviolent peacemaking is a most welcome resource when violence is everywhere around us and 'terror is on every side.' This wide selection of testimony speaks urgently against the long-standing and current illusion of US moralitló&