The Spirit Moves: An Ethical Pneumatology of Upheaval

In conversation with Amos Yong, Ashon T. Crawley, Keri Day, and J. Kameron Carter, I present my own account of an ethical pneumatology describing the Spirit's work to bring upheaval to communities suffering under injustice. In support of that account, I trace the pneumatologies at play in the Azusa Street Revival. Yong notes that phenomenological pneumatologies were utilized to sanction white supremacist attacks against Azusa, while ethical pneumatologies were cited by Azusa’s leaders to justify the countercultural character of their worship. Crawley contends that where Azusa did affirm aesthetics, it was in the privileging of incoherence— through the gift of glossolalia—so that persons and communities might be liberated from the settler colonial logics developed to justify white supremacist dominance. By engaging these analyses, I consider the ongoing entanglement of aesthetic pneumatologies with white supremacy and articulate how ethical pneumatologies can better resist the same.