Introduction to the Special Issue in Memoriam David D. Daniels III

I have struggled with writing the introduction to this volume of the Journal of World Christianity honoring Bishop Dr. David D. Daniels III. It is still very difficult for me to grasp that he is gone.1 He was my mentor, a good friend, someone who was full of life, full of discoveries and questions. David and his prodigious intellect spanned continents, time periods, and traditions. In every conversation that we had, I learned something from David about history I did not know. From talking about Ethiopians in the Reformation, to the Kingdom of Congo, to the history of the Church of God in Christ, nothing escaped him. Nothing! He was truly a Renaissance man, a polyglot in all the best ways.This article cannot capture the fullness of who he was and his contributions to the study of the history of world Christianity and to the lives of the people and scholars that he touched. What I can do, however, is give my thanks to him by writing this, in the hopes that people will not only understand what formed the foundation of his scholarship but also his commitments to family, friends, and most importantly, God. Whether you knew him as a churchman, a professor, a colleague, an ecumenist, or a friend, he was always solicitous of everyone and gracious.If I had to summarize David’s life and work, he dedicated his scholarship to telling the forgotten stories of Africans in the history of Christianity and demonstrating their contributions to the overall history of Christianity globally. He was engaged in a lifelong reclamation project and a reconciliation project. Reclaiming the voices of Christians of African descent throughout the history of Christianity and reconciling races to the oftentimes tortured history of Christianity.What drove his research were the silences in history, the places where the voices of African-descended peoples had been left out or forgotten in the passage of time. His research and writing were fundamentally about discovery and storytelling, honoring the place of faithful Black ancestors in the 2,000 years of Christianity. In that framework, then, I want to discuss his scholarship, service, and faith.David trained with the renowned African American historian James Melvin Washington at Union Theological Seminary. His dissertation, “The Cultural Renewal of Slave Religion: Charles Price Jones and the Emergence of the Holiness Movement in Mississippi,” is one of the most cited and mined sources for the history of both the holiness movement and the beginnings of the Pentecostal movement, especially the Church of God in Christ.2 David worked on a manuscript to become a book from the dissertation for many years but did not complete the project, mainly because he kept uncovering new findings that reshaped his understanding. Despite that, his dissertation remains a groundbreaking work for many who have studied the late nineteenth-century Holiness Movement in the United States, the beginnings of the global Pentecostal movement in the twentieth century, and the history of the Church of God in Christ.David never published a book. In retrospect, David’s voluminous output in the form of articles, chapters in edited volumes, conference papers, and other presentations showed the depth and breadth of his knowledge, interests, and concerns about the church and the wider world that it engaged. From correcting the stories about Pentecostals’ involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, to exploring the Ethiopians who were making contributions in the sixteenth century to the Protestant Reformation, David’s research corpus dove deep into the activities of African-descended persons, their beliefs, faiths, and actions, not only for equality, but for God. It also illuminated the issues of race and interracial cooperation in early Pentecostal communities and honored the various ethnic communities present in the movement. From our discussions about Catholicism and the Kingdom of the Kongo, to modern-day church movements and personalities, all of it was echoed in his academic bibliography. As the Henry Luce Professor of World Christianity at McCormick Theological Seminary, he took that vast knowledge in his research and writing to his students and to those of us fortunate enough to be mentored by him.At his installation as the Luce Professor, David closed his magisterial talk by asking, in a series of questions, what would happen if sixteenth-century sub-Saharan Christian Africa and the 150,000 to 200,000 African Christians who existed in Europe at the time were moved to the center of our study of the period? Why had theologians and historians of the church forgotten or concealed this history in the debates of the nineteenth century about whether Africans had souls or not? His questions that defined the end of that talk still resonate for us today.It was not enough for David to research the church; he also served it. His denominational commitments had him serving on the historical committee for the Church of God in Christ, and few commitments to the church were more pronounced than his participation in various ecumenical dialogues, including the World Alliance (now Communion) of Reformed Churches-Pentecostal Dialogue and the Lutheran World Fellowship-Pentecostal Dialogue and in important conversations and meetings like the Memphis Miracle, where the Pentecostal Fellowship (an all-white body) was dissolved to form the Pentecostal and Charismatic Churches of North America.For his denomination, the Church of God in Christ, he was irreplaceable. He was a walking archive of the church. He knew so many of the saints of the church who had gone on or were about to take their leave or had some treasure trove of materials they were holding on to. Without him and the connections he had, many of us who would write academically about the Church of God in Christ would have never had access to nor understood the intricacies of the denomination. I can remember very clearly him telling me when I was applying for a PhD program, when I mentioned I wanted to write about Charles H. Mason, the key figure in the founding of the Church of God in Christ, and he said, “I think you’ll find more on the women’s department.” That, friends, was an understatement.Which brings me to the next charism David had. He was a phenomenal mentor and teacher. So many of us have benefited from his knowledge and input and his willingness to sit and talk, call and talk, or share a snippet of information that invariably sent you down a rabbit hole of knowledge in some archive or library. Whether at McCormick, or around the world in places like Asian Pacific Theological Seminary, or at conferences like Society of Pentecostal Studies, American Academy of Religion, and American Society of Church history, one would find him engrossed in conversation with students and scholars alike who were eager to learn from him, to exchange ideas, and to hear his wise advice. Whether he was advising or writing a letter of recommendation, you could always count on David to not only be present but to encourage you or steer you in the right direction, no matter how good or flawed your scholarship was.A fact about David that most people did not know was how many boards and committees he served on. He was a founding board member of this publication, the Journal of World Christianity, and served as an associate editor for two decades. He served as a trustee at several academic institutions for theological education and on advisory boards for a number of foundations and centers. Chances are if you received a grant in theology or religious studies in North America, Dr. Daniels had read your work or was part of the committee that recommended your work. Without revealing all the organizations that he read for, suffice to say that his expertise and affability made him easy to work with and made sure that the kind of groundbreaking scholarship in race and history that he cared about would be funded.It was not enough that God gifted David with a sharp intellect, God also gave him a voice. Preaching, teaching, or singing, he had the kind of voice that made you stop and listen, to gather yourself, that bought your soul closer to the Lord. When I heard him sing “Yes Lord,” the classic song sung by Charles H. Mason of the Church of God in Christ, I understood why it was such a powerful refrain for the saints of the church. His love of music would show in his presidential address at the Society of Pentecostal Studies, where he talked about the sonic world of Azusa Street and the role of “earwitnesses” to the early Pentecostal sound. Even the title of the address was a sound itself: “‘Gotta Moan Sometime’: A Sonic Exploration of Earwitnesses to Early Pentecostal Sound in North America.”3I was blessed to spend an afternoon with David a few months before he passed away. We had not seen each other for a while, because a few months after my father died, David became ill. Our emails and conversations dwindled, in part because I wanted him to have his strength to get better. That was not to be. When we finally did meet in a sunny restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey, I was struck by how much weight he had lost. But he was still David. Looking back, I was astonished that he spent our hours-long conversation at the table talking about the traveling he hoped to do, the writing, and the projects before him. I was acutely aware that he might not finish any of them, but in retrospect, I realize he was outlining the threads of research that remained, and the stories that needed telling still—the stories he would not be here to tell.Thinking back on that day, I wished I had said how much his friendship, his intellectual sharing, his mentorship had meant to me. It wasn’t that I had not said it before. I wanted to have that day to enjoy the richness of his research, his excitement about new findings, and the hope to be able to make all the talks that he had scheduled that fall, without thinking about death trying to take over him.These articles that follow in this special volume represent a heartfelt thank you from a few of those who knew him, who were bound to him in intellectual and spiritual endeavors. David’s body may be absent from us, but he is present with the Lord and the cloud of witnesses whose stories are known because of his scholarship. Thank you Bishop David Daniels III, for saying “Yes Lord” and fulfilling your calling.