The Holy Spirit: A Folk Perspective
Henry H. Mitchell

THE Holy Spirit for me is a living reality, a presence with whom I am familiar and by whom I am often richly blessed. There is a sense in which this presence is abiding and constant. Despite all the spontaneity connected with my African American heritage, a great majority of us have never been guilty of what has been called over-subjectivity. We have traditional safeguards, spoken and unspoken, against this kind of excess. I invite you to consider these safeguards now as basic ingredients of a folk doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES AND SAFEGUARDS
As I rummage through memories of my early years, I recall biblical phrases and verses constantly integrated into conversations about the Holy Spirit. It was all part of an oral tradition deeply imbedded in the language. Folks during my childhood were not literal and rigid about biblical criteria, but we were dead serious about the authority of the Word and impressively familiar with it.

In the first place, we knew the reality of the Holy Spirit. No person growing up in my
culture in those days would ever be able to say what the Ephesians said in Acts 19:2, "We have
not so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost." There was never any question about the
existence of the third person of the Trinity, only questions about activity or insight alleged to have been revealed by the Holy Spirit.

I have a vivid recollection of my Grandmother Estis. I can hear her now in response to a supposedly spirit-led outburst at a camp meeting: "You know very well the Holy Ghost ain't the author of no such confusion" (1 Cor14:33).

When I was in my early teens, I kept church pledge accounts and saw supposedly spirit-filled persons giving pittances from their plenty. Even I could see the falsity of their spirituality. Jesus had said that where one's treasure is, there one's heart would also be (Matt 6:21). Likewise, all my life I have seen whole congregations freeze up in response to manifestly unbiblical utterances, no matter how much the preacher claimed to be moved by the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit acted not only in the dramatic experiences of conversion, but in everyday choices as well. Of course, consciously or unconsciously, some people tended to make up their minds and then try to get the Holy Spirit to confirm their decision. We always checked such decisions against the ethics of the New Testament. It was not acceptable for someone to decide to act against biblical principles and then blame it on the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit's activity was not limited to negative prohibitions, however. Nor was the Spirit the enemy of scholarly wisdom. Grandpa Henry Estis had only a third grade education, but he had sound views of the Holy Spirit. In a tiny town called Harvestburg, in Ohio, in the late 1920s, he preached with fiery conviction against zeal "not according to knowledge" (Rom 10:2). For him, and even for a youngster like me, the Holy Spirit was compatible with education, because God created all truth.

The images of spirituality as anti-intellectual are stereotypes. Indeed, in my experience, the Holy Spirit is the best scholar of all. Much of my most creative work is inspired and guided. I dare not take personal credit for many of my best contributions.

CULTURAL SAFEGUARDS
In African American culture, we have traditionally built-in cultural safeguards, so that even when we have seemed to some to be dangerously out of control, we have been quite safe. There are culturally established expectations beyond which the subconscious is conditioned not to let us stray Because of this, nobody has ever gotten injured or caused injury while
genuinely possessed by the Holy Spirit.

I have never seen a problem with a sincere shouter. The person was treated with reverence and cared for. If a shouter seemed careless and hurt somebody, it was automatically assumed that this was not the Holy Spirit at work. And in fact there were almost always other factors in plain sight to justify the judgment that this was another spirit, not the gracious Holy Ghost.

In one of my first books I told of a young mother known to shout. One night at a revival one could see that she had a shout coming on When she could hold out no longer, she executed a pass of her tiny infant to the lap of her grandmother. She then sailed over a pew, all of this with no injury to anybody. I have never had any doubt that God the Holy Spirit uses Holy Spirit possession to accomplish healing catharsis.

Years later, in depth psychology, I learned of a subsection of the rational ego which is never deactivated in sane persons. It monitors all behavior in all cultures, and sounds the alarm when there is real danger. It guides persons who shout, steering them around hazards. This caution
does not mean that the possession is not authentic; it only signifies that the Holy Spirit uses the
unconscious as well as the conscious.

I see in this psychological insight a crucial word of assurance to mainline Protestantism, that there need be no fear of not being "proper" just because we surrender ultimate control of worship to the Holy Spirit. This is another way of saying that in all cultures, virtually all of the time, the Holy Spirit moves persons within the well established expectations of their culture. Therefore most people will never shout, simply because they did not grow up in the midst of worship which included shouting.

With all my education, I have shouted, even though I once questioned the sincerity of most persons given to the expression called shouting. When my spiritual joy exceeded my cup's capacity, my cultural background permitted me to override my intellectual prejudices.

MOTHERWIT: THE COMMON SENSE CRITERION
The final factor in the African American traditional understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit is called motherwit. This is another name for the hard-won common sense so significant in Black survival. Early African American experience never permitted the luxury of fantasy and make-believe in relation to real conditions. Even the emphasis on the details in heaven had a very practical earthly significance: it provided a light at the end of the tunnel of cruel oppression, without which it might not have been possible to survive. It was the one option that kept the slave society from being hopelessly and absolutely closed. So even heaven had a common-sense function.

While we have asked for myriad miracles, we have tended not to claim delivery until common sense validated receipt. We have frowned on undue expectations of the power of the Holy Spirit, so that a diabetic I knew was severely criticized for asking the Spirit to do what God assigned to his local physician.

African American religious tradition places great stress on the call to the preaching/pastoral ministry. Here the Holy Spirit is widely known, even expected, to deal directly and personally with the called. In response they are often known to feel commanded to leave their "nets" to follow Jesus, just like the disciples (Mark 1:1 8). But common sense, in the mouths of older pastors and others, is often known to intervene. My wife and I have advised middle-aged adults to "keep your nets until the Holy Spirit arranges to replace the income needed by your family."

When a group of my seminary students once insisted that the Holy Spirit directed them to engage in a songfest long past chapel time and even lunch hour, I felt no hesitation in declaring that the Holy Spirit would never make a habit of causing them to miss classes. The Holy Ghost and common sense told me to tell them, "Lunch maybe, but not classes."

The survival of America's most oppressed minority has had much to do with their status as America's most obviously religious group – its most responsive culture to the movement of the Holy Spirit. So the strong loyalty of many African Americans to the biblical principles, the cultural safeguards, and their firm grip on common sense have worked together to hammer out the understandings of the Holy Spirit which I still hold dear. With this reality I have made it through many dangers, toils, and snares. It has been a blessed heritage, and I treasure this opportunity to try to put on paper that which I should have recorded long ago.

P.S.: Charismatic Christian groups are growing rapidly, while "major brand" denominations shrink. One very important reason for this could be a wide-spread hunger for the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit in a very personal, folk-oriented way. Traditional denominations, once prone to be suspicious of the supposedly over-subjective tendencies of charismatics and their kin, must be increasingly open to the spontaneity and expressiveness which charismatics associate with the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Henry H. Mitchell is Mentor for a Doctor of Ministry Program at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He has recently co-authored the book, Preaching for Self-Esteem.