This work is an ethnographic essay that undertakes thick description of the development of a Black Holiness-Pentecostal body by examining its religious life from within. It goes on to sketch lines of continuity within the larger church.

This project was inspired by years of nurture and ministry in the church upon which the study focuses. With roots going back to the historic African American Church, it offers a window into early growth, the development of crucial theological positions, institutional development within the American Church of the twentieth century, and emerging patterns for worldwide Christianity in the twenty-first century. The struggle within this project is against a background of misunderstanding. Given the pejorative biases in earlier studies against African American Christianity in general, and...