SEWING A NEW CLOTH:

A PROPOSAL FOR A PENTECOSTAL ECCLESIOLOGY FASHIONED AS A COMMUNITY GIFTED BY THE SPIRIT WITH THE MARKS OF THE CHURCH

FROM A LATINA PERSPECTIVE

A DISSERTATION Submitted to the faculty of

The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago

In partial Fulfillment Of the requirement for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

By

Agustina Luvis Nunez May 2009

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Luvis Nunez, Agustina

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Copyright 2009 Agustina Luvis -Nunez All Rights Reserved

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My gratitude is to all those in whose company I have walked this challenging and illuminating journey of theological studies.

Thanks for stand besides me upon my path and held out a hand when I stumbled.

I appreciate the solidarity and care of each of these people, who were willing to open doors and helped me to see my dreams come true.

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ABSTRACT

Sewing a New Cloth: A Proposal for a Pentecostal Ecclesiology Fashioned as a Community Gifted by the Spirit with the Marks of the Church from a Latina

Perspective

By: Agustina Luvis Nunez Advisor: Dr. Jose David Rodriguez

The core of this research is the articulation of an ecclesiological proposal

from Puerto Rican women perspective.

The Ariadne's thread of this dissertation is the Pentecostal women

challenging and revisiting, again and again, the so called "Pentecostal gender

paradox," until gender justice is achieved.

Pentecostalism as a Christian movement has not attempted to develop a

theology of the church. However from that does not follow the absence of such

doctrine. Pentecostals conceive the church as a community gifted by the Spirit to

proclaim God's good news in Jesus Christ, to the whole world.

In spite of the fact that, quantitatively speaking, women represent the vast

majority of the Pentecostal membership, women have been systemically

excluded from the decision making process of defining the very nature of the

church. Therefore, the kairos has come to stop invisibilizing and silencing

women's voice, and instead of that, to start thinking and walking, hand in hand,

men and women, en conjunto (in togetherness), in order to built a democratic

church.

By reclaiming the ecumenical Nicene Creed and particularly its

traditional "Marks of the church": One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic,

alternative visions of being church will become apparent. In doing that, the

dialogue has been broadened to include female interlocutors who talk the talk in

the academia and walk the walk in the congregations.

This study proposes that the gifts of the Spirit are signs of the church as

well. The concept of the notes of the church is not a common one among the

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Pentecostal tradition; nevertheless this notion is a very useful theological key

from which we can depart in order to articulate an ecclesiology that pretends to

be ecumenical. In addition, the gifts of the Spirit alongside with the marks of the

church will enrich the different denominations within Christianity.

Methodologically, this research approaches the topic of "Notes towards a

Puerto Rican Pentecostal Ecclesiology" from the theological and ethnographical

angles. It highlights the contributions of Caribbean Pentecostal women and at the

same time invites to the discussion table Hispanic and non Hispanic feminists

who have already made relevant contributions to the doctrine of ecclesiology. As

a result of this dialogue with several partners, notes towards a Puerto Rican

Pentecostal ecclesiology have been ventured.

The study concludes asserting that there is continuity with the

affirmation that the gifts of the Spirit are marks of the church as the traditional

notae. Such declaration is based on the truth that both approaches are oriented to

praxis of love to our neighbor and consequently, the result will be a more

inclusive, ecumenical, ecological, contextual, healing, and liberating community,

which is in the last analysis, a definition of what a community of the Spirit stands

for.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Copyrights ii Acknowledgements in Abstract iv

Introduction 1 Methodology 7 Design 10 Participants 11

Chapter 1 Pentecostal Ecclesiology 17

Pentecostalism's Historical Background 18 Hispanic Presence 25 Hispanic Pentecostalism's Origins 26 Women's Role in This "His"-tory 32 Pentecostal Contributions in the Area of Ecclesiology 39 Hispanic Pentecostal Contribution 52 Pentecostal Church Strengths 57 Pentecostal Church's Challenges 60

Chapter 2 Feminist Ecclesiology 64

Christian Feminist Voices in Ecclesiology 65 Feminist Theological Anthropology: The Starting Point 82 A Little of History 84 Pentecostal Women and Gender Issues 92 Spirituality: A Point of Encounter 97 Elements of Feminist Spirituality 104 An Assessment of these various Insights in Pentecostalism and Feminist Spirituality 113

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Chapter 3 Latina Ecclesiology-State of the Question 120

Hispanic/Latina Theology Developments 121 Latina Feminist and Mujerista Theology 130 Other Voices in Hispanic/Latina Theology 135 Marks of the Church 138

Chapter 4 Pentecostal Latina Women's Voices:

A Puerto Rican Perspective 148 Caribbean Theology 157 Latina Pentecostal Women's Voices 168 Articulating Our Ecclesiology 179

Conclusions 183

Selected Bibliography 190

Appendix A 203 B 204

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Al viento delEspiritu que se llevo, en Pentecostes, los prejuicios,

los interesesy el miedo de los apostolus y abrio de par en par laspuertas del cendculo,

para que la comunidad de los seguidores de Jesus fuera siempre abierta al mundo

y litre en su palabra y coherente en su testimonio e invencible en su esperanza.

Al viento de su Espiritu que se I leva siempre los nuevos miedos de la Iglesia

Pedro Casaldaliga1

INTRODUCTION

My thesis is that Pentecostal women in the past and in the present continue to

challenge the "Pentecostal gender paradox,"2 namely that even when women are

seldom allowed to become pastors and there are usually restrictions on their

participation in the leadership of the ministry of the Word, as well as strict regulation

controlling dress and bodily adornment. However, from that does not follow that

women are mere spectators. No. Women are especially favored with spiritual gifts in

a movement which is after all, expressly constituted around the gifts of the Spirit.

Consequently, Pentecostal women are able to articulate an alternative form of being

[To the Spirit's wind which took away J in Pentecost, prejudices,/ the Apostles' interests and fears,/ and wide opened the dinning room doors,/ so that Jesus' community of followers/ were always open to the world/ and free in their word/ and coherent in their witnessing/ and unbeatable in their hope./ To the Spirit's wind/ which always takes away the new fears of the church. ] Pedro Casaldaliga, Fuego y Ceniza Al Viento (Brasil: Mato Grosso, 1983), 1.

2 This phenomenon is described by some analysts as the "Pentecostal gender paradox": Starting with Elizabeth Brusco's pioneering study- research on Pentecostals in the developing world, has repeatedly found that women are advantaged in new and crucial ways by the movement. See Elizabeth Brusco,'The Reformation of Machismo: Ascetism and Masculinity among Colombian Evangelicals," in Rethinking Protestantism in Latin America, eds. Virginia Garrard-Burnett and David Stoll (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994): 143-158.

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church that follows the traditional "marks of the church" as well as the note of being a

community gifted by the Spirit.

Pentecostalism as a religious movement was born and emerged as a dynamic

renewal within Christianity at the beginnings of the twentieth century. People who

participate in this renewal share an emphasis on life in the Spirit, subjective religious

experience and spiritual gifts, miracles, signs and wonders -including a language of

experiential spirituality rather than of theology - while strictly rational, scientific and

theological reflection is not its main focus.

Veli-Matti Karkkainen argues that this form of being church opposes the

traditional concept of the church, that sometimes forces us to choose between being a

free or an historical church. This alternative way of being church confronts us to

participate of a charismatic experience or of a more elaborated liturgical experience;

to focus on practice or on reflection; to have oral and narrative patterns of

theologizing or discursive modes of theological reflection, and so on.3 In my

estimation, far from forcing us to decide between one and another mode of being

church, Pentecostal ecclesiology is an invitation to the "catholic" church to recognize

that there are different understandings of faith exist in new expressions in life and

result in diverse forms of being church.

Some Pentecostal scholars agree that Pentecostalism has not attempted to

develop a distinctive ecclesiology, a theology of the Church, even though

Pentecostals conceive of themselves as a community of faith, gifted by the Spirit, and

that the proliferation of Pentecostal church bodies emerges from practical rather than

3 Veli-Matti Karkkainen, An Introduction to Ecclesiology: Ecumenical, Historical and Global Perspectives (Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2002).

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out of theological necessity.4 In general, Pentecostals have written little on

ecclesiology.5 Despite this fact some theologians question this absolute affirmation.

In the case of the Church of God, a classical Pentecostal church, for example, there is

an extensive debate about the nature and purpose of the Church within its early

history.6

Nevertheless, this lack of an articulated ecclesiology is more meaningful

within the Hispanic7 Pentecostal Church. According to Justo Gonzalez, some relevant

factors may explain why the Protestant Hispanics in general have inherited a theology

in which ecclesiology does not play a primary role. First is the fact that Hispanics

have received a Protestantism centered on personal salvation with a strong emphasis

on the individual's faith rather than on the faith of the community. Second, it was an

anti-catholic Protestantism and therefore anti-church in its teachings. Third, it was an

anti-liberalism one, reinforcing the authority of the individual to examine the Bible

while denying the need of the church for salvation. Fourth, it was an anti-hierarchical

Protestantism in which the Church was considered an external entity apart from its

4 Frank Macchia, "Theology, Pentecostal," in International Dictionary of Pentecostals and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley Burgess and Eduard Van Der Maas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002), 1137.

5 This lack of written reflections has been explained due to the strong oral and testimonial tradition of Pentecostals and to the Pentecostal emphasis on being more "doers" than "thinkers" of their faith and community life as well. Nevertheless, any study of the Pentecostal contribution to ecclesiology must take into consideration the writings of Donald Gee, specifically his editorials in Pentecost from 1947-1966; the work of John Lancaster, The Spirit-Filled Church (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1987). W.G. Hathaway, The Gifts of the Spirit in the Church, 1963; R.P Splitter, The Church, 1977; and the recent work of Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as The Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: WB Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1998).

6 Dale M. Counter, "The Development of Ecclesiology in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN): A Forgotten Contribution?" Pneuma: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 29(2007): 59-83.

7 1 will use interchangeably both terms Hispanic and Latino.

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people. Fifth, and specifically in the Pentecostal Church the emphasis on the freedom

of the Spirit represented a discontinuity from ecclesiastical constraints or precedents.8

In my view, this lack of written reflection on ecclesiology has to do with the

fact that Pentecostalism is not a monolithic movement. There are many categories of

Pentecostalism around the world,9 resulting in an array of communities of faith that

understand themselves affirming distinctive ways of being church. I will limit my

work to the native and indigenous Pentecostalism, which emerges from particular

Hispanic context.

The intention of my study is to suggest a Pentecostal ecclesiology from the

perspective of Hispanic women. In my experience, Pentecostal women constitute the

majority in the Pentecostal Church, yet, in my estimation they are do not the ones that

make the greatest contribution in defining the nature of the Christian community.

Long back, Simone de Beauvoir, a pioneer reflecting from a women's perspective

argued that "representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men;

they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with absolute

truth."10 I would add that reflection on the topic of the church is also the work of

men, specifically in the Pentecostal context, even though history reveals that since the

beginning of the movement women were not bystanders or merely supporters. On the

contrary, they were committed and involved in every facet of ministry, despite

Justo Gonzalez, "In Quest of a Protestant Ecclesiology," In Teologla de Conjunto: A Collaborative Hispanic Protestant Theology, eds. Jose David Rodriguez, Loida Martell-Otero (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 80-82.

9 The International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements identifies at least 95 categories.

10 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H.M. Parshley (New York: Vintage, 1972), 161.

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restrictions that had found their way into the Pentecostal movement in its earliest

stages.11

In other Christian traditions women have challenged this lack of reflection

developing alternative visions of being church that are consistent with the debate

regarding the traditional "marks of the Church."12 In addition, in their perspective,

the Church is enabled by the Spirit for the transformation of the existing church and

society structures.13

My contribution to the discussion table, has to do with a concept that

considers the church as the "gifted community" where the gifts of the Spirit could be

considered as marks of the Church. My aim is to propose a more inclusive,

ecumenical, ecological, contextual, healing and transformative community, which is

in the last analysis my definition of what a "community of the Spirit," stands for.

To be sure, the idea of "marks of the church" is not a common one among

Pentecostal religious leaders. However, I consider this notion as a theological key

from which we depart to articulate an ecclesiology that pretends to be ecumenical. An

important goal in my examination of this topic is to explore the way these "marks of

the church" present themselves within the context of the "charismata" of the Spirit in

the Pentecostal tradition. In this way, my intention is to contribute a Pentecostal

perspective that aims at a theological articulation of the church from a female

perspective in the context of Puerto Rican society. This enterprise would increase

11 Estrelda Alexander, The Women ofAzusa Street ( Cleveland, Ohio: Pilgrim Press Publishing Co., 2005).

121 am referring to the traditional marks of the Church: Unity, Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity articulated in the Nicene Creed.

13 Among them: Letty Russell, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, and Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz.

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awareness of being part of the larger Christian tradition, which is lacking among the

majority of Pentecostal churches. Equally important, such reflections would open

built the door to ecumenical and macro-ecumenical dialogue.

Finally, this project will contribute to a broader understanding of the

ecclesiological debate by highlighting the role of the gifts of the Spirit for

understanding of the Christian community.

The following section will be devoted to the methodological issues of my

research. The first chapter consists of an exploration of Pentecostal ecclesiology,

taking into consideration the contributions of Pentecostal voices of the academia,

their diversity of perspectives, emphases and limitations. The second chapter will

focus on the feminist debates about reconstructions or conceptualizations of the

church, their theological methods, critical theories and suggestions for a constructive

transformation in the Church. Given the fact that "theological reflection works out of

specific contexts rather than working with generic truths," 14 chapter four will give

attention to the work of Hispanic/Latino theologians. Here the interlocutors will be

primarily from my cultural, social and geographic context. Finally, in the last chapter

I will analyze a number of interviews performed within the Hispanic Pentecostal

female population joined to my ecclesiological proposal. In the conclusion I will

venture to articulate the relevant features of a proposal for a Pentecostal Puerto Rican

ecclesiology.

14 Robert Kinast, What Are They Saying about Theological Reflection? (New York/Mahwah, N.J.:Paulist Press, 2000), 1.

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Methodology

The methodology that will guide me in this research is an interdisciplinary

one, incorporating historical, theological and semi-structure15 and ethnographic

interview's approaches.16 First I will explore historically and theologically the

contribution of Pentecostal theologians and historians to the discussion about the

doctrine of the church.

Second, my approach will be directed to research the work of Christian

women in the arena of ecclesiology, analyzing their proposals and reflecting on its

possibilities for a Hispanic Pentecostal ecclesiological proposal from women

perspective. Third, I will incorporate the cultural and ethnic dimension, grasping the

work of Hispanic theologians and historians in the theme of ecclesiology.

The historical and theological method will also help me to retrieve what the

Pentecostal church might learn from its Hispanic female population, not only

analyzing their limited documented contribution, but by listening to the voices of

ordinary Pentecostal women and their experiences. For this purpose, I will conduct

interviews. 17

These interviews will be guided by ethnographic principles. Ethnography is a

way of conducting research based on "the complex relationships between the

15 Semi-structured interviews are conducted with a fairly open framework which allow for focused, conversational communication. They can be used both to give and receive information. Not all questions are designed and phrased ahead of time. Some of questions are created during the interview, allowing both the interviewer and the person being interviewed the flexibility to probe for details or discuss issues. See Jim McMillan and Sally Schumacher, Research in Education: Evidence Based Inquiry, 6th ed. (Lebanon, Indiana: Addison-Wesley, 2005).

16.Even when I did not work immersed inside a specific culture other than my own, I decided to be guided by ethnographic principles based on the fact that this methodology allow me to present these women insights with the less mediation possible.

17 See Appendix A for the interview model.

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researcher and his [sic] informants."18 To recover the voices and reflections of

women within the Pentecostal church, I will conduct these interviews through

conversation and dialogue as well as explore the contribution of women within the

Pentecostal Church and their vision of the church.

Through these interviews, women will express their thoughts and visions of

what it means for them to be a church and how they articulate the activities of the

church in terms of: the proclamation of God's news (kerigma), the work of the people

as praise and worship of God (leitourgia), the self-giving of the church in service to

those in need (diakonia) and the fellowship of the church that welcomes all

(koinonia)19 They will be asked to reflect on the role of a pneumatological dimension

in the theology of the church in their own understanding and how to define the role of

the gifts of the Spirit in the church today.

According to Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz,20 the goal of ethnographic interviews is

"to learn from people, to be taught by them." They also make it possible to hear many

voices instead of only the voices of the leaders of the community.

18 James P. Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 1979), 4.

19 The Pentecostal tradition is characterized by the predominant place that occupy orality in their articulation of their faith, specifically in worship, through preaching, testimony, songs and so on. But also for their capacity to serve, where other Christian traditions are not present and for the weight of communal affection. For this reason diakonia, leitourgia, koinonia and kerigma are relevant when Pentecostals try to explain their concept of church. These features have their background in the biblical testimony of Acts that describes the beginnings of the church. (Acts 2:44-47).

20 Isasi-Diaz is an exponent of Mujerista theology, which is described by her as a liberative praxis-reflective action that has as it goals the liberation of Hispanic women. This theology brings together feminist theology, cultural theology and liberation theology. Isasi-Diaz utilizes the ethnography and meta-ethnography as two qualitative research methods to gather the voices and lived experience of Hispanic women and to elaborate mujerista theology.

21 Ada Maria Isasi Diaz, En la Lucha: Elaborating a Mujerista Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 66.

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The ethnographic approach has emerged with a new appreciation among

educators, urban planners, sociologists, health workers, psychologists, politicians, and

also theologians. When we talk about what it means to be church for women it is

necessary to listen to them and to observe them, but also to allow them to become our

teachers. The ethnography22 is a qualitative tool that allows the researcher to see

through the eyes of the one being researched. In other words, this methodology

allows the evangelist, to be evangelized as well.

One of the most important criteria for doing ethnography is to acknowledge

that knowledge of all cultures is valuable.23 This acknowledgement has been

increasingly important in theology in recent years. Many of today definitions of

theology consider Christian on the gospel in light of their own circumstances, but also

reflection of life in the light of their faith.24 I argue that the voices of Pentecostal

Hispanic women need to be present in the theological discourse that articulates what

it means to be church today, and that they need to be considered equally valid with

the dominant voices. Taking the voices of women into consideration, part of my

method consists in performing interviews that will give us knowledge of how

Hispanic Pentecostal women understand the church and its mission, to document the

existence of a concrete reality and to describe this reality in its own terms.

According to specialists on ethnography one of the particularities of this

method of doing research is the role of participants. Usually, these participants are

understood as subjects who are studied to confirm or contest a specific hypothesis.

22 Ethnography has been defined as " the work of describing a culture," which essential core is the concern with the meaning of actions and events to the people we seek to understand. See James P. Spradley, The Ethnographic Interview (USA: Wadsworth, 1979).

23 Ibid., 10 24 Clodovis Boff, Teoria delmetodo teologico (Mexico, D.F.: Ediciones Dabar, 2001).

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Participants in ethnographic research are called informants, those researchers

approach with naive ignorance. I prefer to call them colleagues. My study is an effort

to describe and propose what it means to be the church from the perspective of

Pentecostal Hispanic women. Toward that aim, and contrary to responses to a survey

questionnaire, the language used to formulate questions in this method, is the

language of the interviewed, the language of Pentecostal Hispanic women.

As well as any other methodology, the ethnographic approach has its

weaknesses. Robert Schreiter reminds us that, first; the development of a contextual

local theology is often set out as a project and not carried beyond the first couple of

steps. The questions are addressed to the Christian faith but there is no time to

continue the dialogue. Second, due to concerns on identity, the ethnographic approach

can often overlook conflictive factors for the sake of maintaining harmony and peace

in the community. There also exists the possibility to fall into a type of cultural

romanticism, leading to inability to see people own shortcomings and the sins of their

historical experience. Finally, much of this analysis can be done by experts, while

excluding the communities themselves.25

Design

My research to the theological literature reveals that there has only been

modest theological work done by Pentecostals on ecclesiology, and all the work that

has been done by male theologians, who address questions that are of interest to this

population. For this reason my study can be classified as exploratory. This study

25 Robert Schreiter, Constructing Local Theologies (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999), 14.

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intends to be a departing point for other works in this area. The focus will be

interdisciplinary, including the analysis of readings or documental research along

with the interview. This interdisciplinary methodology will allow me to hear the

voices of history but also to give voice to the ones that have never been heard.

Participants

The constitution of the sample was as follows: 10 Hispanic Pentecostal

women between 21 and 66 years old. These women are active member of various

Hispanic Pentecostal Churches: classical, charismatic, native, or neo-

Pentecostal.29 Some are laywomen, pastors, teachers, missionaries, or evangelists,

but all of them are or have been deeply involved in the Pentecostal Church.

Every interview started with a greeting and word of appreciation for the

collaboration in this work. I informed each participant about my research, its aims,

objectives and methodology. I also communicated with them individually about my

responsibility to safeguard their rights, interests, and sensitivities. All agreed to have

the protection of saying things "off the record" and to decide what they did not want

Classical Pentecostals refers to those who trace their Pentecostal origins to a revival that began on January 1st, 1901 at Charles F. Parham's Bethel Bible School in Topeka, Kansas and William J. Seymour, a black Holiness preacher and the "outpouring of the Holy Spirit" started at Azusa St. in Los Angeles, California on 1906, which initial evidence is speaking in tongues.

27 Charismatic refers to those Pentecostals that emerge from the Charismatic renewal movement in the Roman Catholic Church in 1967 and other renewal transdenominational movements among Protestants who emphasize a "life in the Spirit" and the importance of exercising extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, including but not limited to glossolalia.

28 Native Pentecostals refers to those indigenous Pentecostal churches that grow from native initiatives and share the emphasis in the Holy Spirit and the exercise of the gifts of the Spirit.

29 Neopentecostals is a catch-all category that comprises around 19.000 independent, non-denominational, post denominational denominations and groups that cannot be classified as either classic Pentecostal or charismatic but share a common emphasis on spiritual gifts, the Holy Spirit and Pentecostal-like experiences, signs and wonders and power encounters. (See the New Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, xx)

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to appear in my notes. They agreed also to remain anonymous and receive no

compensation.30

I gave them a detailed explanation about the interview, how the questions

were going to be asked, and the language expected to be used and answered any

questions about the interview.

As Spradley recommends,31 at every stage of the interview I expressed

interest in the participant's answers, and at the same time expressed a kind of "naive

ignorance," to make them feel open and collaborative. Sometimes I repeated what

they expressed, and restated the participant's terms, incorporating them. The

interview atmosphere was a friendly one. These interviews are much more a

conversation, a dialogue. As Spradley describes it, in this method, "the goal is to learn

from the people, to be taught by them."32 It is through their experience that the

researcher can grasp what they believe and how their beliefs impact their daily life.

The interviews were conducted in the setting of the women's specific churches, at

their homes or any other place convenient for them.

In the course of its development, Christian theology has undergone a number

of shifts in perspective with regard to what theology is and what theologians talk

about. The Enlightenment place human beings and their experience on the intellectual

agenda, meaning that theology could no longer be understood as an abstract and

"objective" science, but had to account adequate for its "subjective" dimension. This

aperture to a new epistemology joined to an emphasis now upon context and the role

See Appendix B for the Consent Document. Spradley, 67. Ibid., 66

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of communal experience in theological reflection created the space to hear the voices

of those who had been silenced.

Doing theology has to do with the lived experience of people. For this reason,

these interviews intend to look more closely at the life and experience of these

women and to take into consideration what has been overlooked for many years,

particularly their understanding of what the church must be. Today, the dominant

understandings and practices considered significant arise from the experience of men

in the Church. As Isasi-Diaz points out, "by using the lived experience of women as

the source of theological reflection, gives us the opportunity to be self-defining, to

give fresh answers, and, what is most important, to ask new questions."33 Vitor

Westhelle affirms that "justice begins here; it begins not in fulfilling the requirements

of the prevailing regimes, but by setting other conditions, other parameters."34 In the

last decades, women studies have undergone many changes that had an impact on the

feminist methodology and epistemology. The women's experience has become the

source and scientific, theoric and empirical starting point.

I was born and grew up in a Pentecostal church. This background allowed me

to be in contact with women of faith who spend much of their lives working, serving,

worshipping and being deeply involved in the life of the church. All of the

participants in this study are known to me and had the confidence and the openness to

dialogue with me.

Isasi-Diaz, En la Lucha, 73. 34 Vitor Westhelle, "The Word and the Mask: Revisiting the Two-Kingdoms Doctrine," in

The Gift of Grace: The Future of Lutheran Theology, eds. Neils Henrik Gregersen et al. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 178.

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To choose the participating colleagues in my research, first I identified Puerto

Rican Pentecostal women from different backgrounds, age, social status, and so on.

Then, I wrote down, their specific characteristics to be sure that the sample would be

the most representative as possible. The next step was to make appointments and to

proceed with the interview. I made written notes of their answers and their questions

as well, being conscious not to translating what they expressed. I used the insights of

these women to articulate a conception of being church that is born from their

experience.

In the opinion of many analysts, Pentecostalism is an expression of the

popular religion of the marginalized communities. Orlando Espin,35 who has worked

on popular Catholicism, has identified this religious expression as one of the most

distinctive elements of Latino culture and an essential dimension of any project of

Latino Theology. He argues that the popular understanding of Christianity has a

history in the medieval age, in the pre- reformation Spanish Christianity and the pre-

Tridentine ages. In the Hispanic community it has been a response to the imposition

of beliefs of the hierarchical and patriarchal church, which in the name of God and in

the name of the evangelization of the New World tried to eradicate any sign of the

indigenous native people and through a dehumanizing process of colonization,

kidnapped African people from their homelands to use them as instruments of forced

labor while submitting them to a process of deculturation. A popular interpretation of

Christianity came into being when native indigenous people and enslaved African

people adopted Christianity in a native and African way. Espin points out that popular

35 Orlando Espin and Roberto S. Goizueta, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997).

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religion is popular because is one created, practiced and lived by the marginalized

people.

Contrary to the traditional and "official" understanding of Christianity that

considers popular religion as a problem, as an exotic, eccentric, voiceless and

irrelevant one, in a Hispanic/Latino theological articulation, popular religion is taken

seriously as a locus theologians. Hispanic popular religion is a source of hope in the

struggle. Their fiestas, celebrations, family concept, community, and prayers give

people the strength, faith and hope to their daily struggles and also help them to voice

and to act their own spirituality. Sometimes it represents the only vehicle available for

them to express their understanding of themselves, the world or the Divine. Espin

affirms that Hispanic popular religion has theological significance, pastoral

importance as well as cultural relevance.36

Hispanic Pentecostalism as well as Popular Catholicism represents an

alternative religious response for the Hispanic community. Even while Latino

Pentecostalism rejects many medieval and colonial Catholic symbols and practices, it

has managed to hold on to the very "sacramental," symbolic ethos and worldview that

made pre-Reformation Christianity possible.37 Espin argues that the ever-increasing

number of Protestant Pentecostal churches as well as the current popularity of

Catholic Charismatic movements among U.S. Latinos has to do with the crucial role

of cultural and religious preservation that the Pentecostal movement is playing.

Therefore, my intention is to provide a platform for the voices of Pentecostal

Orlando Espin, The Faith of the People: Theological Reflections on Popular Catholicism (Maiyknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1997).

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Hispanic women, in order to allow them to elaborate their own ecclesiological

reflection.

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