Pentecost Confessions From a Former Pentecostal

Dancing down the aisles and on the grave of my old denomination

Image via Lawrence OP on Flickr

Pentecost is red. I wore red to church today, and most of the other church members did, too. They’re all in the know: you wear red on Pentecost. That’s just basic church liturgy, ya know. Advent is purple, and Black Friday is black, and Easter is white, and normal times are green. Supposedly.

I can’t stop associating Pentecost with purple, however. Because I grew up in a Pentecostal church, the carpets were a dark, deep church purple, and so were the big parts of the stained glass window. I was married in that church. My babies were dedicated (infant baptism for us non-infant-baptism folks… a stance I actually still hold, believe it or not!) there. My parents were married there. My sister and I were dedicated there. My grandmother played the organ there for half her life. I was baptized there. The defining color was purple.

I was baptized again two summers ago, outside, with my children, into the United Church of Christ. I’d long been a member; now, my baptism was formal, too. I wanted a baptism in a church that actually loved me no matter what. That’s not the church I grew up in, that’s for sure.

They read the Pentecost Bible verse today at church. Acts 2:1-21. (As a Christian communist, I prefer Acts 2:42-47.) The Pentecost was a holiday taken relatively seriously: serious enough to make it to the widespread liturgical holiday calendar for mainline Protestants who have let go of various saint days and feast days otherwise. But I have a few confessions about this day, which holds so many mixed meanings for me.