Theologian Dr. Robert Beckford.

[Popol Vuh]

In these two videos Dr. Robert Beckford explores the origins and the history of the Bible. I think they are very well made and done in a honest approach on the subject.


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7785317849743909385

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7956238808750388174

[struggle4progress]

1. Back to my roots: speaking in tongues for a new Ecclesia

BY ROBERT BECKFORD

... Although others had focused on the role of glossolalia as the initial sign of being filled with the Spirit, it was the black minister of Azusa Street Church, William Seymour (1870 – 1922) who linked glossolalia with social transformation. A generation before the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, Seymour realised that one’s commitment to the gospel of Christ could not result in oppressive practices towards one’s fellow men and women. There are two areas where Seymour developed a theological praxis in and through glossolalia.

First, for the Azusa Street Church, where Pentecostalism was born in 1906, the gift of speaking in tongues was not just an initial sign of receiving the Holy Spirit, but also a signifier of a commitment to radical social transformation. The gift of tongues was a continuation of a just world order established by God in the New Testament Church. Therefore, the outpouring of tongues in the small church on Azusa Street was a continuation of this order. One could not have tongues and continue with forms of social discrimination! What we witness here is the birth of a political pneumatology. That is to say, the Azusa Street revival teaches us that the Spirit of God is a force for challenging social structures that discriminate in the world today. This is the reason why Michael Dyson has suggested speaking in tongues can be experienced as speaking a radical language of equality.

Unfortunately, the connection between tongues and the socio-political world has been lost as Pentecostalism spread beyond Azusa Street. However, as Alan Anderson has argued in a South African context, in some cases the relationship between pneumatology, power and radical social change remained. Consequently one way in which we might revive the political potential of Pentecostal pneumatology is by re-contextualising the interpretation of tongues so that it is once again connected in a more explicit way to social change. In that sense, the Church would also rediscover the gift of interpretation as the ability to translate the Spirit-inspired language of equality
into the real world of colour, gender, wealth and sexual orientation ...

However, Seymour’s cultural contribution was more than the introduction of music ... Seymour brought to Azusa the black religious heritage. This was a religious tradition that utilised story, song, dance, polyrhythmic clapping and the swaying of bodies. What is important here is the recognition that Christian religion is also a cultural system. Therefore, as we say in my tradition, “to have church” is also to experience and explore culture. Seymour demonstrates one way in which we can redeem black cultural forms so that they become vehicles for interpreting black faith within the Church ...

<pdf file:> http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/exploratory/articles/beckford00.pdf
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<pdf file:> http://www.biblesociety.org.uk/exploratory/articles/beckford00.pdf