Pentecostal Plurality and Sexual Politics in Africana Worlds

This chapter demonstrates the plurality of Pentecostal discourses on, and attitudes toward, issues of sexual diversity in Africana (African and African diaspora) contexts. It distinguishes and explores three discursive registers through which Pentecostals engage in sexual worldmaking: spirits, eschatology, and mission. The chapter demonstrates that each of these complementary frames is broad and flexible enough to allow for very different theological narratives and socio-political implications. Thus, although Pentecostal sexual worldmaking takes place within these discursive frames, reflecting the family resemblances within global, and specifically Africana Pentecostalism, the discourses within these frames reflect a considerable degree of flexibility and plurality and thus represent very different possibilities of Pentecostal sexual politics. In Pentecostal Christianities, the emphasis on the Holy Spirit tends to come with a broader concern with spiritual realities which often are understood in a dualist scheme of God and the Holy Spirit versus the devil, demons, and evil spirits.