Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel

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University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000 - 408 páginas
The saints of the African American sanctified community say that the soul is the domain not of body or mind, but of spirit. And when the Spirit touches spirit, the soul rejoices in an epiphany of truth and knowledge.

Speaking of soul, Spirit, and experience draws discourse into a realm rarely explored by ethnographic inquiry. Ethnography has traditionally avoided encounter with the subjective realm of experience -- not just supernatural experience, but experience in general. In Fire in My Bones, Glenn Hinson focuses on a single gospel program and offers a major contribution to our understanding not just of gospel, but of the nature of religious experience.

A key feature of African American performance is the layering of performative voices and the constant shifting of performative focus. To capture this layering, Hinson demonstrates how all the parts of the gospel program work together to shape a single whole, joining speech and song; performer and audience; testimony, prayer, preaching, and singing into a seamless and multifaceted service of worship: the service becomes his model, from the opening song to the final benediction. Personal stories ground the discussion at every turn, while experiential testimony fuels the unfolding arguments.

Fire in My Bones is an extraordinary and original exploration of experience and belief in a community of African American Christians, but it is also an exploration of African American aesthetics, the study of belief, and the ethnographic enterprise.

 

Contenido

Seeking Understanding You Got to Be in It to Feel It
1
Belief Knowledge and Experience The Lord Can Be Mysterious
9
Experiencing the Holy Just Like Fire Shut Up in My Bones
14
A Conversation Youve Got to Open the Door
25
Beginnings Happy to Be in the House of Worship
30
Scripture Its About Being Sincere in Your Heart
43
Prayer The Vibrations of the Holy Spirit Go Out There
53
A Conversation Its the Words of Him Thats Speaking Through Me
74
Format Lets Give the Lord a Praise
189
Purpose The Anointing of God Breaks the Yokes
203
False Purpose We Didnt Come for No Form or Fashion
230
Elevation Go Slow Rise High Catch on Fire and Sit Down
264
Invitation The Souls of Many Are Yet Lost
308
Benediction May the Grace of God Rest Rule and Abide
314
Stepping Around Experience and the Supernatural
327
Notes
335

Song Sing Till the Power of the Lord Comes Down
84
Praise Up Above My Head I Hear Singing in the Air
110
Welcome Not for the Appointment but for the Anointment
125
Response God Aint Coming into No Dead Heart
149
The Emcee If You Have a Dry Emcee You Have a Dry Anniversary
163
Bibliography
377
Acknowledgments
391
Index
397
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Glenn Hinson teaches anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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