For over a year, from September 1917 through October 1918, Charles Mason was investigated by the Bureau of Investigation, a forerunner agency of the FBI, for seditious statements against World War I. Mason was even jailed briefly in Lexington, Miss, for his pacifist views. This would be an obscure footnote in history, easily overlooked, except for the fact that Mason – better known as Bishop C.H. Mason -- was the founder of the largest Pentecostal denomination in the United States – the Church of God in Christ (COGIC).

As COGIC celebrates 110 years as a church body, and 100 years as a Pentecostal group this year, I could not help but notice this pivotal footnote in history, when I was asked to represent the Pentecostal Charismatic Peace Fellowship at the Christian Witness for Peace in Iraq church service at the National Cathedral in Washington on Friday, March 16.

Some Americans have stereotypes of peace supporters as anti-America, liberal, and if Christian – mainline protestant. I am none of the above. In the words of poet Langston Hughes, "I too sing America." I am African American: unashamedly Christian, and unapologetically Pentecostal.

Whether in the mainstream media, or on the cocktail circuit, at the congressional briefing, and perhaps even in the Oval Office, the beliefs and convictions of Pentecostals may be dismissed as naïve at best and repugnant at worst, with their vision of world transformation – popularized by the bestselling Evangelical fiction of the rapture, the Left Behind series.

However, the factual and historic African American Pentecostal position is as prophetic as it is pragmatic – we simply believe by praying "come Lord Jesus," and behaving in a way the Lord commands – such as being peacemakers -- we directly confront evil in the world. This confrontation naturally has political consequences in the high stakes world of global terror and the prosecution of war.

My life has been shaped by various Pentecostal churches – including COGIC. And today, in a legacy to Mason's teaching, their church manual affirms, "We believe the shedding of human blood or the taking of human life to be contrary to the teaching of our Lord and Savior, and as a body, we are adverse to war in all its various forms."

The prophetic edge of early Pentecostalism has been shed for practicalities of assimilation. While many Pentecostals rightly fight to save the lives of the unborn who have yet to hear the gospel, far too many have accommodated to a political agenda that will kill far too many of the living who have never heard the message of the prince of Peace, Jesus, who we claim died for us while we were yet combatants with him.

So I marched.

I marched, because I want to be in the number when the saints go marching in. I marched because I want to live holy. I marched because a charge to keep I have, a God to glorify, a never-dying soul to be fitted for the sky. I marched because the wages of war and sin is death, but the gift of God – who is our peace – is life. I marched with a post-critical, second naivete, willing to reclaim a full Gospel which proclaims Jesus only as our savior, baptizer, healer and soon-coming king – in every realm including the global war of terror.

Pentecostals like to call themselves saints. A Christian scholar and pastor in Washington – Dr. Cheryl Sanders – says the term "saint" is an ethical designation black Pentecostals named themselves as they attempted to live above and beyond racial oppression and religious marginalization.

As such, I can hear the saintly voice of Mason 90 years later, calling beyond racial strife and religious separatism, quoting his final authority – the Bible, which says in the New Testament, "For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness."

-March 2007