Lloyd D.Barba, Andrea ShanJohnson, and DanielRamírez, eds.: Oneness Pentecostalism: Race, Gender, and Culture. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2023; pp. xvii +263.

The Oneness Pentecostal movement has long stood on the periphery of American religious history scholarship. Only recently have academic studies begun to seriously consider the contribution of Oneness groups to the landscape of global religion. This work, edited by Lloyd D. Barba, Andrea Shan Johnson, and Daniel Ramírez, assesses the history of North American Oneness peoples in view of the issues of ethnicity, race, class, and gender. Today, Oneness (also referred to as “Apostolic” or “Jesus Only”) groups encompass hundreds of denominations worldwide, with dozens spread across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Oneness Pentecostalism engages this significant, albeit largely marginalized, movement's core ideas, figures, arguments, and misinterpretations. Alongside its overarching historical focus, the book's ten essays span the disciplines of anthropology, theology, and architectural studies. It begins with several contributions focusing on the movement from a historical theological framework. Chapter 1 is an essay by Manuel Gaxiola, a theologian who served as the presiding bishop of Mexico's flagship Oneness denomination, the Iglesia Apostólica de la Fe en Cristo Jesús. Among the first Latin American Pentecostals to earn a doctoral degree, Gaxiola maintains that the movement's immense growth implies that other Pentecostals can no longer dismiss it. David Reed traces the roots of Oneness Pentecostalism vis-à-vis its ties to prior evangelical beliefs and practices (Chapter 2). In Chapter 3, Ramírez explores the movement's hymnody, illuminating more popular expressions of its theology with a keen eye on Latino renditions. Daniel Segraves examines the theology of the Persian Oneness pioneer Andrew D. Urshan (Chapter 4). The following two chapters build on the movement's diverse origins, surveying how 1920s and 1930s migratory trends influenced the shaping and development of various Oneness churches. Barba evaluates how “Dust Bowl” migrants (out of the Western South) challenged the earlier, more sophisticated generation of Californian Pentecostals and Protestants. Particularly in the Central Valley region, Okie migrants established a reputation for their hard-liner culture of authority and confrontation amid the Great Depression. Rosa Sailes considers the multigenerational impact of the Brazier family on Chicago. Propelled by their Great Migration journey from the rural American South, the Braziers' holistic ministry reshaped the values of an urban African American community. The focus shifts in subsequent essays to the significance of gender in the movement's development. Dara Coleby Delgado explores the changing roles of women within the primarily African American Pentecostal Assemblies of the World (Chapter 7). Johnson examines how the movement's early female ministers (predominantly white) found a preaching niche in smaller congregations and on the missions field (Chapter 8). Patricia Fortuny assesses the contours of female membership in the transnational La Luz del Mundo, delineating the persistent range of Latina attitudes toward home and church life across three migrant generations in the United States (Chapter 9). In the final chapter, Daniel Chiquete elucidates how space, liturgy, and aesthetics symbolically depict the unique worship attributes of Apostolic Temples in Sinaloa, Mexico. Alongside its interdisciplinary scope, among the unique contributions of this book is its representation of the diversity of Oneness Pentecostalism. Enlarging the referent well beyond the movement's US origins, the work elaborates the breadth of its regional, ethnic, racial, gender, social, and theological reach. It portrays a robust movement with formidable Black, white, and Latino roots traversing national boundaries and the global North–South divide. It vividly depicts the movement's hitherto scarcely represented Mexican heritage. The chapters by Gaxiola, Ramírez, Fortuny, and Chiquete pay tribute to this Latino Apostolic dimension, constituting up to one-half of Mexican and Mexican American Pentecostals today. The essays frequently return to the unifying influence of the Black Oneness leader G. T. Haywood, who, perhaps more than any other early leader, perpetuated the interracial vision of the Azusa Street Pentecostal pioneer William J. Seymour. Haywood's denomination, the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, maintained a racially integrated leadership board into the 1920s, clinging to its inclusive origins when most Pentecostal churches had already succumbed to Jim Crow segregation. The book's contribution to the gender debate offers critical insight into the complexity of female roles among Oneness groups today. The essays by Delgado, Johnson, and Fortuny explore female attitudes in a movement that has challenged traditional religious norms while often masking conventional stereotypes. Although a unifying standard eludes the women of the movement — some thrive in a more entrenched household setting while others press for enhanced space in the pulpit and leadership — the work provides an incontrovertible platform for these female voices to be heard. This book supplies a timely critique of typical homogonous renderings of Oneness history, preoccupied with white US perspectives and linear narratives confined to Arroyo Seco origins. Although the 1913 Arroyo Seco camp meeting figures prominently in the movement's history, this work uncovers similar paths tracing back elsewhere. The story of Romana Valenzuela, although crisscrossing Los Angeles, illuminates the central roles in the movement's narrative of her Mexican hometown and a Black El Paso Oneness church. Currents unique to these places combine in a receptivity to Jesus' name baptism, culminating in the beginnings of the Iglesia Apostólica in Villa Aldama, Chihuahua. The book also underscores theological roots reaching beyond the movement's usually asserted Finished Work mores. The chapters by Reed and Segraves highlight more nuanced origins encompassing aspects of Eastern Christian theology. In the work's conclusion, the editors observe how such “decentering” of Oneness origins invites consideration of other influences, including Wesleyan and Mexican Apostolic roots (p. 243). There is little to not recommend about this book. Although Canadian origins receive minimal attention, this gap may speak instead to the prodigiousness of the movement's US and Latino roots. To my knowledge, no work has offered such extensive insight into the Mexican mores of the movement. Oneness Pentecostalism will appeal to a range of scholars, including historians, alongside those interested in how the movement's narrative intersects the areas of theology, anthropology, and architecture.

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