This book documents some of the pacifist and social justice convictions of early Pentecostals, many of whom were 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 to revisit the passions of early Pentecostal leaders and to examine Pentecostalism in fresh ways.
About the author
Ronald J. Sider (Ph D, Yale) is Senior Distinguished Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry & Public Policy at Palmer Theological Seminary, and President Emeritus of Evangelicals for Social Action. He is the author of over thirty books including Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1977), The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience (2005), Christ and Violence (reprinted 2001), Saving Souls, Serving Society (2005), and I Am Not a Social Activist (2008).
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