Abstract
This essay proffers that Black Holiness Pentecostalism shares the legacy of Black slave religion. This heritage consists in but is not limited to rituals, patterns of worship, preaching, testifying, shouting, and to the singing of members in the faith communities. How this heritage was bequeathed to Black Holiness- Pentecostalism or the route that these traditions traveled to arrive in Black Holiness-Pentecostalism is not always clearly delineated, but their presence is attested in five primary Black Holiness-Pentecostal groups. Since this article avowedly suggests that a historical continuity is present between African traditional religions and the Black Holiness-Pentecostal Movements in America, it should come as no surprise that a brief overview and delineation of major Black Holiness-Pentecostal groups in chronological sequence will be helpful in appreciating how it is that Black slave religion shapes Black Holiness-Pentecostalism on the American scene. Present within the corpus of Black Holiness-Pentecostalism, too, is a discernible epistemology, i.e., a way of knowing. Being Black, poor and Pentecostal, a condition of triple jeopardy, Black Pentecostals developed a worldview much closer to the reality of the world than that of the privileged. To see and construct social existence only from the vantage point of the privileged can, in fact, impose a severe limitation on one's ability to engage the Holy in a robust way. It is for these reasons the present essay contends that the legacy of Black slave religion informs Black Holiness-Pentecostalism.