R. G. Robins. A.J. Tomlinson: Plainfolk Modernist.
R. G. Robins’s work offers a thoroughly contextualized portrait
of A.J. Tomlinson, the early Pentecostal leader and founder of the
In part one, Robins repudiates the tendency to characterize the radical holiness movement and early Pentecostalism as antimodern and out of touch with a rapidly modernizing American culture. According to Robins, historians too often read these groups through the lens of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy. Whereas Mainstream Protestant Modernists receive the lion’s share of attention in narratives of religious adaptation to modernity, such analyses shortchange other groups on the cultural margins who also adopted modern characteristics. Radical holiness and Pentecostal saints, like some of their more well-to-do neighbors, displayed a “fundamental optimism about human possibilities, an expectation of ever more grand discoveries, an admiration for efficiency, and a cheerful eagerness to discard the old and experiment with the new” (20). Believers also often exhibited progressive attitudes regarding racial and gender equality. In short, radical holiness and Pentecostal saints reflected a “plainfolk” style and mannerism, but this should not veil their affinities to modern American culture.
Robins acknowledges the strong primitivist impulse within the movement, but he downplays
its antimodern implications. Instead, he emphasizes the way in which
primitivism facilitated religious innovation.
Similarly, he recognizes the antistructuralism
inherent in many radical holiness and Pentecostal rituals. Drawing in part on Victor Turner’s argument
regarding communitas,
however, he argues that the subversion of modern forms evident in adherents’ emphasis
on religious ecstasy ultimately gave way again to the structures of modernity
that informed believers’ day-to-day decisions.
“There were ‘antimodern’ movements enough in
late-Victorian
In part two
of the book, Robins walks the reader through significant events in Tomlinson’s
life, focusing primarily on the formative stages of Tomlinson’s spirituality and
ministry. For example, Robins carefully
describes the world of Quaker holiness that shaped Tomlinson’s early
experiences, and then traces his flirtation with Populist politics, his
missionary efforts in rural
Robins’s claim that early Pentecostals’ pragmatic adaptability overshadowed antimodern tendencies within the movement proves more problematic. Here he relies on careful definitions of modernization as a social-structural process as opposed to a symbolic-moral phenomenon, and of modernism as an “ideological aspect vis-à-vis these trends that valorizes them and self-consciously adapts to them” (20). Robins admits that Tomlinson and his fellow saints were antimodern in their rejection of materialism and in their resistance to a desacralized vision of the world around them, but he nevertheless argues that “the weight of [radical holiness and Pentecostal] habits and values were plainfolk modernist” (62). Some, however, may question the degree to which Pentecostals’ “worldview in which the sacred suffused and governed every sphere of life”—a clearly antimodern stance as Robins admits—should be relegated to a secondary status in defining their attitudes toward modernity (60). Pentecostals’ resistance to materialism played a crucial role in shaping their experiences and identity, and cannot be downplayed so easily. Here, many readers will likely find Grant Wacker’s model of early Pentecostal primitivism and pragmatism (which in large part parallel Robins’s antimodern and modern categories) more useful for making sense of Tomlinson’s spirituality. Wacker depicts these tendencies as two more-or-less equally influential currents coexisting within the movement [1]
In the end, Robins offers a thorough, carefully researched biography of Tomlinson’s life and a provocative rereading of radical holiness and early Pentecostal culture. Those interested in the history American Pentecostalism will find the book rewarding, as will students of the complicated relationship between religion and modernity.
Joseph Williams,
[1] For example, see Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostals and American Culture (