Abstract
This article examines three distinctive impressions of Pentecostalism within the black religious imagination: Zora Neale Hurston, who engages Pentecostalism as primal African spirituality within the New World context; James Baldwin, whose representation of Pentecostalism focuses on the religious performativity and theatricality of the tradition; and Ithiel Conrad Clemmons, who argues for Pentecostalism as religious innovation, with much to teach the broader religious community about the importance of religious experience in the doing of theology. Hurston, Baldwin, and Clemmons being deeply ensconced in the complexity of black life and black religious culture, critique as well as affirm the power of the Pentecostal experience for individuals and their larger communities.