Caring Cultures: How Congregations Respond to the Sick

Notes

221µ Notes Introduction 1 “Little Bit of Light,” Carol Johnson, Noeldner Music. 2 Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, formerly Victoria Terminus, was built over ten years’ time, starting in 1878, when British colonial presence held sway in India. My appreciation of this architecture is in no way an endorsement of a western, engulfing colonialism that gives an obligatory nod to local styles. Rather it is meant to be an example of how one style can retain its identity while being transformed by another. 3 Elaine Scarry speaks of the “translation” of the body’s pain into “insignia of power” and “an emblem of the regime’s strength.” 4 See Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man (New York: Random House, 1947). Chapter 1 5 All the names of the pastors, caregivers, and care receivers have been changed. 6 Dr. Willie Jennings, personal communications. 7 It was Howard Thurman who first observed slaves’ affirmative answer to this question. Deep River: Reflection on the Religious Insight of Certain of the Negro Spirituals (New York: Harper, 1955). 8 Raleigh, N.C.: Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States, 1862. 222 Caring Cultures 9 I am grateful to Tammy Williams for this insight. 10 “Contract” language is from Wacker, 2001. 11 Wacker quotes G.B.S. [Studd], in Upper Room, November 1910, p. 134. 12 Wacker quotes John G. Lake, “Transcription of John Lake’s Diary,” November 29, 1910, typed, p. 11, Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center , Assemblies of God, Springfield, Mo. 13 First formulated by William A. Clebsch and Charles R. Jaekle, Pastoral Care in Historical Perspective 4 (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1975) 8–9. 14 Tammy Williams (2002) defines three understandings of healing in African American churches: care, cure, and holism. Healing Waters Church largely emphasizes healing as cure, but at times speaks of healing in terms of both care and holism. Chapter 2 15 The scholar is Glenn Hinson, who wrote about the Hanford family in Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). 16 Further description of African American women’s historical commitment to health work in churches and in clubs often associated with churches can be found in Susan L. Smith’s Sick and Tired of Being Sick and Tired: Black Women’s Health Activism in America, 1890– 1950 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Chapter 3 17 Northern and Southern Presbyterians remained alienated longer than other denominations. Though the Methodists and Baptists also split at the time of the Civil War, the Southern Presbyterian Church was the only one to remain a regional, southern denomination at the time of the Civil Rights movement. The Methodists had reunited in 1939 and the Southern Baptists had moved beyond the boundaries of the south to become a national denomination (Alvis, 6). 18 This long, complex, yet still grammatically correct sentence is also an indication of the way Presbyterians articulate their ideas carefully and according to precise rules of grammar. Chapter 4 19 Intuition and personal conversations hint at gender differences in the desire to maintain distance during illness. One can speculate that men do not want to appear weak and women do not want to appear Notes 223 unattractive. Men fear being seen as frail; women fear being seen as ugly. 20 This, of course, begs the question of a parallel history of damage at the hands of much received tradition. It could also be argued that women, lesbian and gay people, and the Jewish people are some groups whose suffering has been intensified because of Christian tradition. 21 Robert Wuthnow lists various motivations for caring offered by interviewees. They include biblical tradition, compassionate feelings , self-interest, and obligation to serve others. The First Downtown Church people emphasized a subset of biblical tradition: Jesus’ example. (Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991], 49ff.) Chapter 5 22 This was explained to me by Teresa Berger. 23 Pollero is another word for coyote, a person hired to transport illegal immigrants across the U.S. border. 24 Cora Bass, Sampson County Yearbook, 1956–57 (Clinton, N.C.: Bass, 1957), 84. On the Confederate memorial, see S. L. Smith for the United Daughters of the Confederacy, North Carolina Division, North Carolina’s Confederate Monuments and Memorials (Raleigh, N.C.: Edwards & Broughton, 1941) 117–18; Joseph Abram Ryan, “The March of the Deathless Dead,” Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous (New...