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OUT moving sounds 7:38 watch that leg.

OK, that goes in the sanctuary, what you think?

In downtown Saint Paul, a U-haul van is backed up to the steps of the new home of the Free at Last Church of God in Christ. The congregation has outgrown its old building and recently purchased this one. This evening Free at Last members are unloading a piano, a pulpit, and dozens of cardboard boxes. They admire their new sanctuary with its high ceiling and its balcony and seating for 800, and try out the sound system.

21:01 testing one two three. why don't you take a little quick text on it?* laughter.

OUT music. Jesus on the main line.

Sunday morning a few weeks later, the church is rocking with a joyful crowd, singing and shouting for Jesus. Free at last describes itself as a "hand clapping , foot stomping , tongue talking Pentecostal church of God in Christ"...Pentecostals take their name from the festival of Pentecost, when the Holy spirit descended on the disciples of Jesus. Their faith emphasizes not dry doctrines, but the direct experience of God. It's as though, in the words of the hymn, there is a telephone connection between people and God.

OUT 26: 57(this is a voice reciting the words of the hymn n the background) Jesus on the main line, tell him what you want. Call 'im up, call 'im up, tell 'im what you want. If you want your body healed, tell Him what you want. If you want your sins forgiven, tell Him what you want. That's been around for a long time, and I love it, personally.

Elder Joseph Webb, pastor of Free at Last Church of God in Christ, says the spirit of God - the holy spirit - works directly in the lives of church members. According to Pentecostal beliefs, the holy ghost also gives supernatural gifts to believers. Speaking in tongues - when a person makes sounds that are not a known language but resemble one - is one of the gifts. Others are healing, prophesy, and miracles.

OUT: 6:17 We might not see no Red Sea opening miracles in this time but there are other miracles that God has done. I count it as a miracle for us to be in this church. As far as the gift of miracles, I've seen people in wheel chairs get up and walk. I've seen the blind receive sight, I've seen that.

There are other supernatural gifts, nine in all. One, called "discernment of spirits," enables believers to tell good from evil spirits. While many mainstream churches tend to downplay the belief in demons and the devil, Pentecostals do not. Joe Hemstock is lay minister and member of another Pentecostal congregation, the Twin Cites Apostolic Church.

OUT 23:12 I think you would find a lot of demon-possessed people in our society today. Certainly Jeffrey Daumer who cuts people up and puts them in his refrigerator and has them for dinner, that's demon possession and I don't think any sane person would argue with that. (edit) . . .To say that God is there and available to everyone - the devil is also there and he possesses people the same way the spirit of the Lord possesses people.

The idea of possession by evil spirits might seem more in tune with medieval concepts of how the world works than with a modern, science-based viewpoint, but Hemstock and many other Pentecostals don't see science as the ultimate explanation for events in the world around them.

OUT 31:50 Science and our knowledge of science changes day-to-day. Nothing's absolute.(edit) . . .and I'm not so sure that going back to some basic elements of faith, Biblical faith, wouldn't be a good idea. I'm just foolish enough to believe that God created the world in seven days. And I believe that God turned the sundial back to prove his word to a king. I believe that he stopped the sun for Joshua in the middle of battle.

There are by some estimates as many as 80 million Pentecostals in the United States. There are few statistics on Pentecostals in Minnesota, but in the church listings in the Twin Cities phone book there are scores of Pentecostal churches. Nationwide, the Pentecostal movement is growing by about six percent a year, at a time when many mainstream Christian church denominations are declining. The growing numbers of Pentecostals have not necessarily translated into political power. Cecil M. Roebeck, a Pentecostal minister who teaches church history at Fuller Seminary in California, says that's partly because the Pentecostal movement, unlike Christian fundamentalism, includes a wide spectrum of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups.

OUT 12:34 I've sometimes said in meetings between various kinds of Pentecostals, that there is a sense in which members of the Assemblies of God, which is largely white, tend to vote on the Republican side, while Church of God in Christ, which is largely black, tends to support the Democratic ticket. So you have a real mix there and there's a sense in which we cancel each other out, in terms of our effectiveness.

Like fundamentalists, Pentecostal groups are active in the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition, on issues such as abortion and school prayer. Both groups believe in the literal truth of the Bible, but Martin Marty, who teaches the history of American religion at the University of Chicago, says there are clear differences between fundamentalists and Pentecostals.

OUT 2:29 . And I think the differences are summarizable in one sentence: if you've been talking to God and getting new messages, you can't be fundamentalist. Pentecostals, through speaking in tongues, prophesy, faith healing and so on, do have the sense that the same ways God spoke in Biblical times to and through prophets and visionaries, God can speak now.

These doctrinal divisions may not be apparent to the general public, but Marty says such differences tend to prevent fundamentalists and Pentecostals from working together.

Despite the fact that Pentecostals significantly outnumber fundamentalists, Marty says Pentecostals are powerful politically only as parts of larger coalitions. On their own, he says, they are a highly fluid vote, supporting one political leader one year, and another the next.

I'm Mary Losure, Minnesota Public Radio.


Credits: "Signs and Wonders" was written and produced by Mary Losure, and edited and mixed by Stephen Smith. Senior editors were Melanie Sommer and Mike Edgerly. The program is a production of Minnesota Public Radio and first aired on MPR news and information stations in May, 1996.