Translating Azusa

This response discusses Keri Day’s contribution “Queering Azusa” from the vantage point of an Africa-related study of religion. It raises three questions regarding “queer Azusa”: The first is about the generalizability of Azusa as a queer theological resource; the second about the limitations of queering as a liberative register in African Pentecostal contexts; and the third about the im/possibility of constructing a genealogy while considering multiplicity. Acknowledging Day’s decolonial approach, the response points out that a focus on queer Azusa might rather reproduce coloniality by subordinating the multitude of social realities and practices to a single model. It thus argues for the decentering of Pentecostal history and an understanding of multiplicity that emphasizes relationality, emergences and continuous transformations.