Son of A Preacher, Quiet Pentecostal
THE ROOTS OF HIS FAITH
David Van Biema
On the day John Ashcroft was sworn in to the Senate in January
1995, he met with his ailing father and some friends in a home
near the Capitol. After hymn singing and words of heartfelt
advice, the Rev. J. Robert Ashcroft, a titan in the Pentecostal
Assemblies of God denomination, knelt beside his son and
anointed his forehead. He used some Crisco cooking oil from the
kitchen.
As Ashcroft notes in his 1998 book, Lessons from a Father to His
Son, Kings Saul and David were anointed in much the same way. So
are England's monarchs. Yet the ad hoc ceremony hints at the
kind of enthusiastic, free-wheeling worship that has
historically marked Ashcroft's branch of evangelical
Christianity. (Some Pentecostals anoint their houses and TVs.)
It also happens to be a style his denomination has downplayed as
it has moved into the mainstream, a move that no one exemplifies
better than Ashcroft.
Pentecostalism first exploded onto the American scene in 1906,
when a black Holiness preacher named William Seymour conducted a
nightly, mixed-race revival in the humble Azusa Street area of
Los Angeles. Participants fell into trances, spoke in tongues
and otherwise experienced what they said were the gifts of the
Holy Spirit, like those bestowed on Jesus' Apostles. Separate
black and white denominations soon formed, but Spirit-soaked,
"experiential" Christianity took off. Globally, it is the
fastest- growing Western worship style, with up to 500 million
adherents. Nationally, its largest white-majority denomination
is the Assemblies of God based in Springfield, Mo., into which
John Ashcroft was born a kind of upwardly mobile prince.
In its first half-century, Pentecostalism understood itself as
the faith from across the tracks. Its members were poor, and its
emotiveness put off some other conservative Christians. A
millennial faith that believed the Second Coming was imminent, it
frowned on political participation. "Why would someone meddle in
this fallen world, which is going to be judged and displaced
anyway when the Lord comes?" says Harvard's Harvey Cox, author of
Fire from Heaven, a study of the faith, paraphrasing their
argument. But the faith's isolation decreased as the century
progressed, thanks in part to the exertions of J. Robert
Ashcroft, a legendary church official who persuaded the
denomination to give its Bible students a full liberal-arts
education.
His son took the next step--into high-powered mainstream
politics, sanding down Pentecostal edges as he went. The last
Assemblies member to attain high government rank, President
Reagan's Interior Secretary, James Watt, once let drop that "I do
not know how many future generations we can count on before the
Lord returns"--a statement exploited by foes who claimed he had no
reason to preserve natural resources. Says John Green, a
politics-and-religion expert at the University of Akron: "I've
never heard Ashcroft say anything like that. [His electoral
experience] may not have moderated the substance, but it's
certainly polished up the style."
In fact, Ashcroft's religious substance is also fairly smooth.
As the Assemblies' members became more affluent, the group
de-emphasized its more unusual practices, including the once
central gift of tongues. Ashcroft has followed suit. Says his
longtime friend, Assemblies official George Wood: "I have never
in a service observed John expressing one of what we call the
charismatic gifts." Nor does he mention them in his book,
despite much talk of God and Christ. Instead, he is known as a
writer of gospel songs and a punctilious churchgoer who once,
while Missouri Governor, surprised a Sunday-school teacher in
California by popping up in her classroom for tutelage--a
profile that could fit any upstanding Evangelical. The same
might be said of the role his faith plays in his politics. "If
he's confirmed, the distinction will not be that he's
Pentecostal," says Green. "It will be that this is the
highest-ranking post a conservative, card-carrying Evangelical
has ever had."
--By David Van Biema
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