Captive Body Sanctified: Protest, Enclosure, and the Possibility of Otherwise

In this paper, I seek to illuminate the relationship between the doctrine of sanctification and the community of the sanctified, giving particular attention to the role of the Black woman within scholarship on the sanctified church. At least since Zora Neale Hurston, scholars of Black pentecostalism have understood the sanctified church as an identity-in-protest to one or more of the forces inimical to Black life—whether patriarchy, antiblackness, capitalism, or homophobia. However, given the biblical-historical-theological contours of the doctrine of sanctification, as well as the socio-political realities facing Black women, I argue that the doctrine/identity of “sanctification/sanctified” forms a grammatical enclosure within which the flesh/body must abide. In light of the stronger associations of Black pentecostalism with conservatism (relative to progressivism), I question whether the grammar of sanctification forecloses the Black pentecostal church’s ability to escape the enclosures of colonial modernity.