ABSTRACT Drawing on minutes from the Assemblies of God USA General Council Meetings and Assemblies of God publications, primarily from the 1960s, this article demonstrates how white Pentecostal experiences of racially segregated suburbanization formed white Pentecostal knowledge of God, cities, and Black people. White Pentecostals, then, can be considered as part and characteristic of a larger white social group and therefore drawing from what Charles Mills calls an “epistemology of white ignorance.” The study of inequality, specifically Charles Tilly’s Durable Inequality, can aid in understanding mechanisms constituting this epistemology. White Pentecostals would emulate categorical inequalities as they generated religious knowledge about cities and Black people. This religious knowledge generated from the white experience of segregation would inspire fear of cities and Black people, disassociation from social movements, and new drives for inner-city missions.
C. Norman Coleman (Thu,) studied this question.