Pentecostal Oral Liturgy as Primary Theology

Abstract

An ongoing task in Pentecostal studies is identifying categories that articulate Pentecostal theology in manners congruent to the intensely embodied liturgical practices that fund Pentecostalism as a theological tradition. In this paper the author suggests as a promising rubric, the patristic era’s monastic and ascetically rooted, Evagrian notion of prayer as theology, which has deeply funded the liturgy as primary theology movement. Together, the author calls these notions the Evagrian-LAPT grammar of prayer/liturgy. Part One explores how Steven Land’s A Passion for the Kingdom monograph was a direct by-product of the LAPT movement, thus describing Pentecostal spirituality through the Evagrian-LAPT grammar. Part Two suggests how this grammar clarifies three pertinent foci within Pentecostal spirituality; Pentecostal primary theology, liturgy, and liturgical ascetics. Part 3 delineates as the liturgical ascetics of Pentecostalism, the shalomic efficacy of its oral liturgy, which generates its primary theology of eschatological hope.