Book
Paul Alexander. Peace to War: Shifting Allegiances of the Assemblies of God. C. Henry Smith Series 8. Telford, PA: Cascadia, 2009.
Reviewer
Alan Kreider, Professor of Church History and Mission (ret.), Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, Elkhart, IN
Paul Alexander’s Peace to War is likely to bring a sea-change in the way the Pentecostals view their past. The Pentecostal phenomenon is huge, so Alexander limits himself to surveying the approaches to war of his own denomination, the Assemblies of God. His approach is methodical, but it is not hard to detect his commitments, and his awareness that Grant Wacker (Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (Harvard University Press, 2001) and other historians of Pentecostalism are looking over his shoulders.
As Alexander reads its periodicals, pamphlets, and denominational resolutions, he notes a gradual shift that is vastly slower than Wacker asserts. Instead of a shift from the movement’s original pacifism that took place within two years as Americans participated in World War I, Alexander finds one that took place over fifty years and culminated in 1967.
Early Pentecostalism, according to the author, was rooted in the primal spiritual experiences of Spirit-gifted worship and the expectation of Christ’s imminent return. It also was grounded in a deep devotion to the teachings and way of Jesus Christ. These led many early Pentecostals to a “crucifist” approach to life that expressed itself both in heroic missionary self-sacrifice and in Christ-centered social nonconformity. In arguing for this approach, they drew upon Quaker thought and pacifist tendencies in the Holiness traditions; they also, to my astonishment, repeatedly cited the early church fathers.
Alexander is careful to note that there were always differing Pentecostal voices on the subject of war. But within the Assemblies of God there was sufficient unanimity on a broadly pacifist approach to enable the General Assembly in August 1917 to pass Article XXII.
This Article affirmed the Assemblies’ loyalty to the government of the United States, but it “nevertheless” proclaimed their identity as “followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace,” whose Sermon on the Mount teachings it listed. It stated that these scriptures “have always been . . . interpreted by our churches as prohibiting Christians from shedding blood or taking human life.” It concluded by saying that the Assemblies of God cannot participate in war “which involves the actual destruction of human life,” for this is contrary to “the clear teachings of the inspired Word of God.”
Article XXII remained the official teaching for fifty years until 1967, when the Church Convention finally was able to agree to delete it, replacing it with a new Article XXII on “Military Service.”
Gone in the new Article are references to the teachings of Jesus; in their place is an affirmation of loyalty to the government of the United States, coupled with a pro-choice assertion that each member has the right to choose whether to be a combatant, a noncombatant, or a conscientious objector. In view of the soldiers whom the denomination’s leaders were promoting as role models, combatant military service was clearly the anticipated ethical norm.
From 1941 onwards, denominational periodicals urged young men to enlist as combatants. The writers’ focus shifted from the teachings of Jesus to stories of the Old Testament coupled with the first verses of Romans 13. Their emphasis upon mission no longer mentioned killing the enemy but on witnessing to American troops.
Underlying these changes was the transformation of the cultural milieu of the Assemblies, which were becoming respectable, conservative, Evangelical churches. Only domestically, in their services in which ecstatic worship still took place, was there a whiff of radicalism and risk.
According to Alexander, since 1968 the Assemblies of God have been “a pro-military and pro-American denomination” that, whatever its official position, “allowed little room for the conscientious objector.”
But, the author argues, things can change. Pentecostals can recover their origins and the Christocentric crucifism present in them. They can re-open themselves to the prophetic Spirit, who empowers a critique of social sin. In view of current Article XXII, they can allow advocates of each position to “present their understanding of Jesus, Scripture, faith, and practice so that it can be critiqued by others.” They can even confess that “we made a mistake” in departing from the original Article XXII.
For those wishing to proceed in new/old directions, Alexander invites Pentecostals in their “thousands and thousands” to join a new organization he has founded – Pentecostals and Charismatics for Peace and Justice. He longs to see followers of Jesus who will be “cross-bearing, Holy Spirit-filled, tongue-talking, enemy-loving, nonviolent witnesses to the Way, Truth, and Life.”
For non-Pentecostals who read this book, there is the cautionary tale of a peace church whose salt has lost its savor. “How easily,” Alexander observes, “the Christian pacifist nonviolence can be lost.” The Historic Peace Churches in particular, he is convinced, must take notice. Are we, he asks us, participating in a shift as gradual as that of the Assemblies of God, engaged in a movement from crucifism to conformity -- from peace to war?