Content Warning: The source material contains descriptions of drug abuse and addiction, sexual and physical violence against minors, and animal cruelty. Additionally, the source material endorses dated ideas about sex workers, sexually active women, and persons with substance use disorders. The source text also shows anti-gay bias and is prejudiced against Black and Hispanic people.

Practitioners of Pentecostal Christianity believe that baptism of the Holy Spirit endows baptized persons with God’s power and that they can use this power to transform their lives. In The Cross and the Switchblade, Wilkerson seeks to demonstrate the potency of this practice. As a Pentecostal minister, he believes that “the heart of the Gospel is change. It is transformation. It is being born again into new life” (57). He demonstrates that transformation in action through various narratives centered around the lives of teenage gang members who turned away from addiction and crime after receiving baptism of the Holy Spirit.

When Wilkerson first reads about the murder of Michael Farmer in Life magazine, he is horrified by the violence of the crime. However, he senses the potential within the “stooped, scared, pale, skinny children” who committed the crime (27). Wilkerson travels to New York to preach to the boys about God because he believes that God is “just waiting for each one of them to crawl right out of that old sin-shell and leave it behind.