Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders.

Portraits of a Generation: Early Pentecostal Leaders. Edited by James R. Goff Jr. and Grant Wacker. Afterword by David Edwin Harrell Jr. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2002. Pp. xviii, 430. $34.95, ISBN 1-55728-731-7.)

This intriguing volume consists of twenty biographies, each roughly fifteen to twenty pages in length, of leading figures in American Pentecostalism in the early twentieth century. A brief and useful introduction spells out four themes that defined Pentecostalism: a belief in salvation through faith, the significance of the experience of the Holy Spirit expressed through speaking in tongues, the practice of divine healing, and a belief that Jesus was coming back to earth soon. Editors James R. Goff Jr. and Grant Wacker summarize the various theological movements that preceded the rise of Pentecostalism and wisely emphasize that "Lines blurred" (p. xiii).

These individual life stories document people who will be obscure to most historians, including many religious historians. Pentecostal and Holiness leaders left numerous religious groups and started new denominations or movements all over the U.S. and Mexico. The essays dramatize Pentecostalism's attraction for people from a variety of class and ethnic backgrounds.

The essays emphasize theology, religious practice, and religious organization more than other social, economic, or political issues. Individuals emerge as inspired seekers of deep religious experience, often with the second inspiration to take that experience to new audiences. They were united by, if anything, the questions they addressed. Primarily, they tried to figure out what holiness or Pentecostalism meant. Did it mean speaking in tongues? If so, was that most of what it meant or only part? Did it mean the imminent return of Jesus to earth? If so, was the believer's proper responsibility to organize churches or to take the word places where Pentecostals had never been? Also uniting various individuals was a willingness to move and an intense interest in innovation. Many of the people in this book seem to move almost constantly, either looking for work, wandering, or acting as missionaries.

A review should mention that many of these essays are only of average quality; some are straightforward narratives without much analysis, at least in part because many of the people studied left few records. Still, though we learn only basic narrative data about some people, some essays stand out for larger points. William H. Durham, for example, "thrived best when he felt most embattled" (p. 142). The story of Thomas Hampton Gourley illustrates that "an independent--even chaotic--spirit endured both inside and outside the organizations" (p. 145). An excellent essay on Charles Harrison Mason traces the interracial impulse in the early Church of God in Christ. Ida B. Robinson's "ministry of nurture" emphasized family-like "relationships, the visibility of work, and the teaching of wisdom" (p. 315). A concluding essay on A. J. Tomlinson describes his evolution into an "organization man" (p. 358). Despite the insights of individual essays, the strength of the volume lies in the selection of the various leaders and in seeing each story as part of a broader history. Moving from person to person, the reader senses the excitement, innovation, and commitment of the people who led various aspects of one of the most important movements in twentieth-century religion.

University of Mississippi 

TED OWNBY