Historically and comparatively, pentecostals have tended to move their bodies in creative ways. Critical outsiders decried early American pentecostals as “Holy Rollers,” a comment focused on what from their perspective were the uncouth aspects of expressive pentecostal rituals. From a mainstream religious standpoint, the pentecostals stood for disorder incarnate. Indeed, radical evangelicals may have rejected Protestant traditions and rituals as lifeless and devoid of the Holy Spirit, but over time they cultivated their own implicit techniques of the body.

The body is the …