Notes
Notes Chapter1. SeekingUnderstanding:"YouGotto Bein It to Feel II" 1. From a conversation with Elder W. Lawrence Richardson (1986). Elder Richardson began his long and distinguished career as a gospel singer in the mid-1920s and brought his Spirit-filled singing to the public for more than six decades. He sang lead with the Nashville quartet the Fairfield Four from 1982 until his passing-shortly before his eighty-first birthday-in 1993. 2. Though rarely addressed in the literature on African American religious experience, such spontaneous touches are in fact a familiar feature of sanctified life. References to such moments regularly appear in church testimonies, and evidence of their frequency confronts anyone who speaks with saints about spiritual means. For historical examples, see Harrison (1893:366) and the 1920s testimony of Sister Kelley (in Egypt, Masuoka, and Johnson 1945:161-68); a fuller discussion of this phenomenon in sanctified talk appears in Hinson (1988). For examples of analogous (but by no means identical) phenomena in other African diaspora traditions, see Sheila Walker's discussion of nonceremonial possession in Haitian Vodoun (1972:43-44). Arguing from a stance of positivistic disbelief, Walker locates the cause of such possessions in human psychology rather than supernatural agency. She describes nonceremonial possession as a kind of psychological coping mechanism called into play when a believer experiences "extreme personal stress, fear, pain, or fatigue, or when the honor, interest, or life of the subject is threatened" (1972:43). Unfortunately, Walker never addresses the causal explanations offeredby believers,and thus gives us no basis for comparing the processes of spiritual invocation with those used by the saints. 3. From a conversation with Elder Lawrence Richardson and Rev. Samuel McCrary (1985). The same emphasis on song, prayer, and preaching appears in a traditional aphorism often heard among African American Baptists: "The Church consists of three booksthe hymnbook, the prayer book, and the Bible." Comparable comments are voiced by Baptist theologian Wyatt Tee Walker (1979:22) and Rev. William Herbert Brewster (in Reagon 1992a:196). 4. From a conversation with Lena Mae Perry and Ethel Elliott (1993). Sister Perry, as we shall see, sings with the North Carolina gospel duo the Branchettes. 5. From a sermon delivered by Rev.W. A. Daye (1993). 6. Many saints reserve a closet in their homes for deep prayer, thus following Christ's injunction to pray in private (see Matthew 6:6). Such "prayer closets" were once common in sanctified homes, though their use seems to have decreased in recent decades. Nonetheless, references to prayer closets still abound in testimonies and devotional remarks. 7. For further discussion of expression as a register of options not chosen, see Hymes (1974:104-5). Both Tedlock (1976) and Urban (1982) discuss the connotative crossreferencing of communicative acts within an experiential frame. 8. For detailed discussions on multisubjectivity and the need to present an event's «reality " as contested and negotiated rather than as monologically decreed, see Clifford (1983: 118-46); Tyler (1986:122-40); and Marcus and Fischer (1986:30-32, 67-73). 9. The ethnography of communication approach, pioneered by Dell Hymes (see esp. 1962, 1974), encourages ethnographers to simultaneously address the broadest spheres of context and the most intimate spheres of feeling. In setting forth this approach, Hymes divides communicative inquiry into four levels of ethnographic specificity (1964:13-25; 1974:9-25). The first level focuses on the communicative event and the community's designation thereof. Noting that the range of features deemed diacritically significant for the definition of each event varies with community and situation, Hymes offers a heuristic guide for identifying relevant components (see esp. 1974:53-62). The second level details the systematic relations of communicative components, focusing on patterns of co-occurrence and the relative integration of communicative features in the conduct of culture. In essence, this level charts the norms of combination, examining which components go with which others and how the combined wholes engage. Moving beyond relationships to consider capacity and function, Hymes's third level addresses the culturally and situationally defined capabilities of components. This level focuses attention on differential competence and performance evaluation, issues that are particularly relevant to the study of religious communication . Drawing these three realms together in the working interlock of culture, the fourth level addresses the activity of the full system. For situated analyses utilizing an ethnography of communication approach, see Baugh and Sherzer (1984), Bauman (1977), Bauman and Sherzer (1974), Gumperz and Hymes (1964), and Gumperz and Hymes (1972...
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