Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South by Anderson Blanton (review)

Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South is a provocative and exciting ethnographic contribution to the broader fields of American religion, Pentecostalism, and southern studies. Anthropologist Anderson Blanton considers how technology, oral communication, material objects, and bodily movements intersect with the spiritual, transcendent categories with which Pentecostals engage the world. He analyzes what Pentecostals see, feel, hear, practice, and perform and thus articulates how this captivating religious movement expresses ideas about unseen realms, divine healing, and the presence of the Holy Spirit. The book’s main title—Hittin’ the Prayer Bones—comes from Pentecostals in southern Appalachia, the geographical focus of Blanton’s research. It is, Blanton describes, “a percussive genuflection that literally sounds an embodied technique of divine communication” where “the Holy Ghost is materialized within the space of charismatic worship” (p. 1).

The opening chapter addresses the auditory transmission of divine healing through the material medium of prayers and preaching on the radio. Transcribed radio sermons, the literal voice of Appalachian radio preachers rendered in vernacular form (such as power pronounced as par), punctuate the chapter’s analysis of charismatic healing history (p. 20). Blanton connects this practice to the pioneering work of Oral Roberts who popularized divine healing across radio waves in the mid-twentieth century. Blanton documents how the listeners’ “tactile contact with the radio loudspeaker became a prosthetic extension” of the preacher’s voice and ultimately transmitted divine healing (p. 23).

The second chapter assesses prayer cloths, a literal snipped section of cloth typically several inches long by several inches wide, most often associated with figures such as A. A. Allen and Oral Roberts. Blanton explains how for Pentecostals the material dimension of a prayer cloth rendered the Holy Spirit’s work visible through the application of oil, the vocalization of prayers directed toward the cloth’s use for healing or protection, and the activation of the cloth’s power by placing it on the skin. Blanton innovatively observes that the cut cloth, as it circulated in Pentecostal circles, symbolized “the notion of portability and itinerancy” central to the movement’s spiritual improvisation (p. 65).

Chapter 3 explains what Blanton calls “the anointed poetics of breath,” a phrase for the vocal performance of Pentecostal preaching (p. 115). The preacher’s open mouth, a “hollow cavity of linguistic potentiality,” is his site of investigation (p. 156). Blanton links sound, voice, and sonic expression to the microphone and listening audience to explain how Appalachian Pentecostal radio preachers invested meaning in the spoken and performed word through laughing, smiling, or speaking in tongues.

The book’s final chapter analyzes prayer—what Pentecostals call “standin’ in the gap”—as both vocal and material aspects of faith and belief. In the studio, Blanton observed southern Pentecostals lay hands on one another during prayer as if to extend the Holy Spirit’s reach through radio signals and send divine power through speakers. This practice capitalized on Oral Roberts’s “point of contact,” the notion of invisible transmission of divine power through material objects and a core belief in Pentecostal experience (p. 22).

In sum, dense yet readable prose embodies Blanton’s thick description of southern Pentecostalism. His finely textured study couples ethnographic observation with a unique collection of documentary materials, including cassette tapes of radio programs and sermons, printed publications from Pentecostal ministries, and material objects (such as prayer cloths, microphones, and Bibles). Three “interludes” between the book’s four chapters print sermon transcripts, key textual artifacts for Blanton’s rich analysis. Eight images from Blanton’s research enhance understanding of Pentecostalism’s historical record. Hittin’ the Prayer Bones is a rewarding book, indispensable for scholars of Pentecostalism and religion in the American South.