Era of Racial Separation Ending for Pentecostals : Religion: White, black denominations will form coalition. Move hailed as milestone for fast-growing sect.

In a historic milestone in American Pentecostalism, an association of predominantly white Pentecostal denominations is poised to disband this week and erect a new multiethnic organization in its place.

The new body, still to be named, would include the nation’s leading African American Pentecostal denomination, the Church of God in Christ, as well as the Assemblies of God, the nation’s largest predominantly white Pentecostal denomination. Between them, the two groups account for about 10 million of the estimated 15 million Pentecostals in the United States.

Even Pentecostals admit that the dismantling of the all-white 46-year-old Pentecostal Fellowship of North America is painfully late, coming as it does 30 years after the tumultuous civil rights movement. However, they and outside observers call it the single most important development in the 88-year history of Pentecostal Christianity in the United States.

“It’s dramatic. It’s epochal,” said Harvard University religion professor Harvey Cox, whose new book, “Fire From Heaven,” traces the rise of Pentecostal spirituality.

Bishop Charles E. Blake of the West Angelus Church of God in Christ in Los Angeles said, “I cannot think of any comparable event in the life of the church that this would compare to.”

Cox said the gathering, which opens in Memphis today, holds out the promise that a new generation of Pentecostals may now be willing to take their place in mainstream society and speak out on issues of pressing national importance, including poverty, racism and injustice.

“(The) Memphis (conference) represents one kind of answer and (religious broadcaster Pat Robertson’s) Christian Coalition represents another in a very different direction,” Cox said. The coalition has maintained a high profile of political activism in conservative causes, from opposing gays in the military to arguing against President Clinton’s health care proposal. The coalition has also fielded candidates for public office and Republican party posts at the county, state and national level.

Pentecostalism is the fastest growing Christian sect in the world, with 410 million members, according to Cox. In the United States, they outnumber all but Southern Baptists, United Methodists and Roman Catholics. By the year 2010, Cox estimates, there will be more Pentecostals than all other non-Catholic Christians together.

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Pentecostals share with other Christians a belief in the Bible as the inspired word of God, in Jesus as son of God and Savior, and the need for evangelism. What sets them apart is their ecstatic worship, which can lead to glossolalia, or “speaking in tongues.” Such utterances are seen as evidence that an individual has been filled with the Holy Spirit.

Cox cautioned that interracial cooperation among Pentecostals on the denominational level may take time to filter down to local congregations where there is great autonomy. Moreover, there are thousands of independent Pentecostal churches that are unaffiliated with any denomination. They will also be asked to join the new association.

“The fact is, most congregations will remain black or white or Latin for a while, maybe for a long time. But you’ve got to start somewhere,” said Cox. “I don’t think this should be minimized. It is a very important step.”

Indeed, in the months before this week’s meeting, Pentecostal leaders said they were already seeing the first fruits of what they are calling a reconciliation strategy for 21st Century ministry. In areas such as Atlanta and Memphis, there are joint worship services monthly between white and African American Pentecostals.

New efforts are being made for annual joint worship and praise services on Pentecost Sunday, a major observance throughout Christianity when, according to the New Testament book of Acts, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus’ apostles following his Crucifixion and Resurrection.

The term Pentecost, which means fifty , is a Greek name originally applied to the Jewish Feast of Weeks, which came 50 days after Passover. According to Christian teaching, Jesus’ followers received the baptism of the Holy Spirit on this day and the earthly church was born.

The dramatic, if belated, move toward racial reconciliation harks back to the beginnings of Pentecostal expansion in America after what is known as the Azusa Street revival.

It was in Los Angeles in 1906 that William J. Seymour, a fiery African American preacher, began preaching to both African Americans and whites. His top assistant was a white woman.

From their small mission on Azusa Street in what is now the Little Tokyo district came reports of speaking in tongues, healings and other miracles. But the biggest miracle of all may have been the claim that the blood of Jesus had washed away the color line.

“One token of the Lord’s coming is that He is melting all races and nations together, and they are filled with the power and glory of God,” a Seymour leaflet proclaimed in 1906.

Soon, however, the little mission was shaken by public ridicule and outrage--as much over the mission’s interracial character as its unconventional style of ecstatic worship. Within months, members of the mission succumbed to a prevailing social and political climate that fostered the spinoff of separate churches and denominations that still exist apart today.

Racial separation has been “a serious scandal and a barrier to what the Lord has wanted to do in the church,” said B. E. Underwood, general superintendent of the Pentecostal Holiness Church headquartered in Oklahoma City and one of the leading figures in promoting the Memphis reconciliation.

“We believe we missed something and gave in to the pressures of our culture and forfeited for a time our right to lay claim to be leaders in the church world of America.”

While a rediscovery of Pentecostalism’s roots is part of the explanation for the new drive toward racial reconciliation, experts said it is not the only one.

Until recently, much of Pentecostal energy has been absorbed in growth, Cox said. In addition, Pentecostals--once on the fringes of religious thought and, typically, poorly educated--have moved into the mainstream.

Today, Pentecostalism has taken root throughout the United States. Its members are generally middle class and educated. There are indications that Pentecostals are increasingly becoming socially conscious.

Part of the reason for this, Cox said, is a growing sense that the end of the world is not as near as they once thought.

There is no thought of merging actual denominations. But by cooperating with each other through the new multiethnic association to be established this week, white and African American Pentecostal leaders hope to reclaim the promise of Azusa Street.

Some whites remain skeptical; some blacks remain embittered because of past slights and injustices.

Although Bishop Blake of the West Angelus Church of God in Christ has been in the forefront of reconciliation efforts, he has long lamented the failure of most white Pentecostals to engage in the African American struggle for civil rights.

“Those who were closest to us theologically were most distant from us in the struggle,” Blake said in an interview. “I’ve found individuals sometimes who are liberal in (Christian) theology or even Jewish in their heritage that were more dedicated to the cause of freedom for blacks than were those conservative Pentecostal Christians,” he added.

Cecil Robeck, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena and a Pentecostal, said the vast majority of white Pentecostals were far more concerned with what they saw as threats to the status quo and the “American way” during the 1960s.

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“There were Pentecostal white ministers who really were pro-segregation, who saw Martin Luther King Jr. as a threat,” Robeck said.

Because of this history, Blake and Underwood said, there has been as much resistance among African Americans as whites to past attempts at interracial cooperation and fellowship.

“There are some who cannot really believe that there is a depth of sincerity in the hearts of our white brothers,” Blake said. “They are not enthusiastic about this coming together.”

Underwood began thinking about interracial cooperation when he was elected three years ago as chairman of the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America, a voluntary association of 21 white Pentecostal denominations founded in 1948.

“I suggested that if we really meant business, we’d have to be willing to totally disband Pentecostal Fellowship of North America and start fresh with a new organization,” Underwood said.

One source said members of Underwood’s own executive committee on the Pentecostal Fellowship of North America raised questions about whether they should disband. Others were said to have resisted. Underwood denied there was any foot-dragging. “No one knew what shape the new organization would take,” Underwood said, “but there was never any serious opposition to it. That’s been the surprise.”

The reconciliation initiative represents a coming of age of Pentecostalism in America, according to those who have closely followed developments.

After the devastating Northridge earthquake, for example, Pentecostal churches like the Church on the Way in Van Nuys mounted major efforts to feed and clothe the victims. Before the 1992 Los Angeles riots, efforts were under way to bring white and African American pastors together through a program called Love L.A.

At the same time, however, unlike evangelical Christians, there is far less emphasis on overtly political issues or partisanship--and far more emphasis on their common theological views. This makes reconciliation easier since white and African American Pentecostals are thought to view the role of government differently.

Said Darrel Anderson, director of field services for the National Assn. of Evangelicals, “They (Pentecostals) have no fish to fry except the Pentecostal distinctive. If you’re a Pentecostal, you’re going to get together and sing and shout and preach and go home.”

By contrast, the National Assn. of Evangelicals--which has lobbyists in Washington and takes positions on political issues--is far more diverse religiously, Anderson said.

Aside from the prevailing social and cultural pressures that have influenced a new generation of Pentecostals, members of the churches say, the new efforts at racial reconciliation are grounded firmly in biblical truth.

“There is a larger sense of racism as sin,” said Daniel Hicks, senior associate pastor of the Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, the mother church of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel founded by Aimee Semple McPherson.

“For so many years racism was so cultural. . . . But I think as more truth unfolds, the knowledge of the Lord will fill all the Earth. When that begins to happen--and I believe it is--people must come to terms with what they know inherently: They have operated in what God would consider absolute sin.”