Rock around the Pew

Randall Stephens

For those of you who work at the intersection of southern history, religion, and music, the H-Southern Music email list just might be for you. I recently posted a question to list members and got some great feedback.

I asked about the work I'm doing for a chapter/article on the interconnections of early rock music and revivalistic religion/hot protestantism/pentecostalism . . . etc. (I wrote a little about this in the last chapter of my book The Fire Spreads, but I'll be exploring this in much greater detail now.) I asked list members about sources--primary or secondary . . . interviews, archives, what have you--that they could suggest. Here are a few of the items that I have found useful mixed in with those that I only learned about through the suggestions of list members (in no particular order). Anything else to add?

Walt Trott and Bill Carlisle, Sister Sunshine: The Martha Carson Story (1st Books Library, 2000)

Macel Ely II, Ain't No Grave: The Life and Legacy of Brother Claude Ely (Dust to Digital, 2010)

Lynn Abbott, I've Got Two Wings (Casequarter, 2009)

Rodney Crowell, Chinaberry Sidewalks (Knopf 2011)

Russ Cheatam, Bad Boy of Gospel Music: The Calvin Newton Story (University Press of Mississippi 2003)

Joe Moscheo, The Gospel Side of Elvis (Center Street, 2007)

Vestal Goodman with Ken Abraham, Vestal!: "Lord, I Wouldn't Take Nothin' for My Journey Now" (WaterBrook Press, 1999)

Bob Terrell, The Life and Times of J.D. Sumner: The World's Lowest Bass Singer (Daywind, 2009)

David Stowe, No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (UNC Press, 2011)

Gayle Wald, Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe (Beacon, 2007)

Jamie Buckingham, O Happy Day: The Happy Goodman Story (Word Press, 1973)

Jerma Jackson, “Sister Rosetta Tharpe and the Evolution of Gospel Music,” Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Culture, eds. Beth Barton Schweiger and Donald G. Mathews (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004)

Paul Oliver, Songsters and Saints: Vocal Traditions on Race Records (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984)

Stephen R. Tucker, “Pentecostalism and Popular Culture in the South: A Study of Four Musicians,” Journal of Popular Culture 16 (Winter 1982)

Jimmy Wayne Jones, Jr., “Modern American Pentecostalism: The Significance of Race, Class, and Culture in Charismatic Growth, 1900-2000” (Ph.D. diss., University of Arkansas, 2002)

Johnny Cash, Man in Black (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975)

Tammy Wynette with Joan Dew, Stand by Your Man (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1979)

Charles Sawyer, The Arrival of B. B. King (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1980)

Myra Lewis with Murray Silver, Great Balls of Fire: The Uncensored Story of Jerry Lee Lewis (New York: William Murrow and Company, Inc., 1982)

Charles White, The Life and Times of Little Richard: The Quasar of Rock (New York: De Capo Press, 1994)

Vince Staten, The Real Elvis: Good Old Boy (Dayton, Oh.: Media Ventures, 1978)

Van K. Brock, “Assemblies of God: Elvis and Pentecostalism,” Bulletin of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Religion 3 (June 1979)

James R. Goff, Jr., Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)

Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994)

Nick Tosches, Hellfire: The Jerry Lee Lewis Story (New York: Grove Press, 1998. I'm using this one for my fall 2011 course on the history of rock)

Ann Rowe Seaman, Swaggart: The Unauthorized Biography of an American Evangelist (New York: Continuum, 1999)

Jimmy Swaggart, To Cross a River (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1977)

Ain't No Grave: The Life and Legacy of Claude Ely

Paul Harvey

Here's a great radio story, courtesy of Radio Diaries and NPR, about the Rev. Claude Ely, Holiness/Pentecostal exhorter and singer from Kentucky and author of the classic "Ain't No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down." Johnny Cash's recording of the song just before he died, and a huge internet mashup done to that recording, was the subject of a post of mine some time ago. A brief excerpt from the transcript of the radio show:

People would show up to revivals because they had heard about this country singer who sang like a black man. Brother Claude Ely would thrash his guitar, shake and gyrate from one part of the stage to the other. Young men would run up to wipe the sweat off his forehead.

Gladys Presley, Elvis' mother, was a fan of Brother Claude Ely's ministry, and some people remember Gladys and Elvis getting blessed at Brother Claude Ely tent revivals while Brother Claude Ely laid hands on them and prayed for them.

This story comes from the efforts of Macel Ely, Brother Claude's nephew, who encountered his uncle's music while traveling in Europe, and wondered how it found its way there. Evidently he is producing a full-length documentary on the subject. You can hear Ely's rendition of his song along with some photos here, and a CD compilation of Claude can be found here.

A final note: somehow those who prattle on about NPR's "liberal bias" somehow never get around to talking about stories like these, which took up most of the last segment of yesterday's show from that dreaded bastion of left-wing propaganda, All Things Considered -- never mind all the locally produced reporting such as the programs about Colorado which I have written about here, and the programs about the Ozarks which John Schmalzbauer has written about for Immanent Frame here.

Here's some more information on Macel Ely's book which came from his efforts to find out about his uncle's widespread influence, Ain't No Grave: The Life and Legacy of Brother Claude Ely (published by the wonderful Atlanta outfit Dust-to-Digital, compiler and publisher of the peerless six-CD set Goodbye, Babylon, and many other musical classics).

Ain’t No Grave: The Life and Legacy of Brother Claude Ely is written as an oral, biographical history taken from the recorded interviews of more than 1,000 people in the Appalachian Mountains who knew Brother Claude Ely. Coined as the King Recording Label’s “Gospel Ranger,” Brother Claude Ely was well-known and loved by many in the earlier part of the 20th century as both a religious singer-songwriter and a Pentecostal-Holiness preacher. Few people, however, knew the personal details of his childhood, military service, and years of hard work in the coal fields of southwestern Virginia.

Now, decades after his legendary death, many fans still seem mesmerized and touched by this humble man’s quick wit and sincere desire to share the Gospel’s “Good News” with everyone who would listen to his message of hope and love. Having received popularity for his song, “There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down,” Brother Claude Ely passed along a musical and spiritual influence which can still be heard today like a mountain echo in those long, winding hollows and impoverished coal fields. Hollywood and the “King of Rock and Roll” also later acknowledged their admiration for and fascination with the late Brother Claude Ely. This book chronicles the life of one man who made an eternal impact on thousands of Appalachian dwellers. His simple sermons and folkloric songs are still providing assurance, hope, and faith to many mountain people

Holy Jumpers, Batman!

Paul Harvey

One more review of interest from Choice for you. For whatever reason, I had never heard of (or maybe I just forgot about) the Metropolitan Church Association, but they seem to fit into the kinds of cantankerous enthusiasts that Randall wrote about so memorably in his book The Fire Spreads. Anyway, perhaps some of you will want to check out this fun-looking book, below:

Kostlevy, William. Holy jumpers: evangelicals and radicals in Progressive Era America. Oxford, 2010. 240p bibl index afp; ISBN 9780195377842, $65.00. Reviewed in 2010dec CHOICE.

Based on extensive archival research, Holy Jumpers presents a significant study of the Metropolitan Church Association (MCA; "Burning Bush"), a radical faction of the holiness movement. Kostlevy (Tabor College) balances the MCA's utopian vision with its fanaticism and disruptive strategies, revealing a story of conflict in pursuit of harmony. Rejecting the conservatism of the National Holiness Association, the MCA embraced a faith for the new world of the 20th century that included holiness, communalism, premillennialism, and faith healing. Kostlevy commendably situates the MCA within other radical expressions of the Progressive Era, including populism and the Industrial Workers of the World. Known for their demonstrative worship characterized by extreme physical exercises, MCA adherents fostered divisions within families and communities, and frequently provoked violence and legal action. Using modern media with sensational content, the MCA censured and rejected almost all other denominations. Most importantly, the MCA played a decisive role in the Azusa Street Revival of 1906-1909 and the emergence of Pentecostalism. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers. -- B. W. Hamilton, Northeastern Seminary

Oral Roberts, Dead at 91

Randall Stephens

"Expect a miracle!" he told the millions who watched him on TV or attended his healing revivals. Few Christian leaders had the kind of influence or impact that Oral Roberts had.

With the recent passing of America's healing evangelist, I thought I'd post a couple of sections from obits here and provide some links. Roberts helped pentecostalism and the charismatic movement go mainstream in ways that would have been unimaginable in a previous generation. (If only Elvis had stayed in the AG church. Think of it!) Roberts life charted some of the most significant changes that pentecostals underwent from mid century to the present.

Keith Schneider, "Oral Roberts, Fiery Preacher, Dies at 91," NYT, 12/15/09.

Mr. Roberts’s will to succeed, as well as his fame, helped to elevate Pentecostal theology and practice, including the belief in faith healing, divine miracles and speaking in tongues, to the religious mainstream. During the 1970s, Time magazine reported, his television program “Oral Roberts and You” was the leading religious telecast in the nation. . . .

Mr. Roberts’s prominence and will to succeed were important factors in building the Pentecostal and charismatic movements and combining them into the fastest-growing Christian movements in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s and, by 2000, the largest Christian movement in the world. “No one had done more to bring the Pentecostal message to respectability and visibility in America,” David Edwin Harrell Jr. wrote in “Oral Roberts: An American Life” (Indiana University, 1985).

Bill Sherman, "Oral Roberts Dies," The Tulsa World, 12/15/09.

The often-controversial charismatic minister built Oral Roberts University, the now-closed City of Faith Medical and Research Center and the University Village Retirement Center in Tulsa.

He was a pioneer of the healing evangelism movement in the 1940s and ’50s and of radio and television ministry, which made his a household name to generations of Americans.

Roberts’ life was fashioned by what he described as a call to take “God’s healing power” to his generation, and every major effort he undertook was to that end.

See also:

Barbara Bradley Hagerty, "Oral Roberts, Pioneer Televangelist Dies," NPR, 12/16/09.

Charisma Magazine's collection of responses from the pentecostal charismatic community: "Healing Evangelist Oral Roberts Dies at Age 91," 12/15/09.

Blast from the past: See these Time magazine reports of Roberts's chilly reception in Australia (1956) and his damage control at ORU (2007).

I'm still waiting for Fox News or CNN to roll out Christopher Hitchens.

The New Black Gods

by Phillip Luke Sinitiere

Edward Curtis and Danielle Sigler have edited what looks to be a fantastic new collection of essays on Arthur Huff Fauset and African American religious traditions. Titled The New Black Gods: Arthur Huff Fauset and the Study of African American Religion, essays cover multiple traditions and explore many issues in the field. Religion in American History's own Kathryn Lofton has an essay. Among many others, this collection of essays might be beneficially read alongside Edward Blum's work on Du Bois, Barbara Savage's new work on Black religion and politics, Wallace Best's study of Black Chicago and religion, and Curtis Evans's book The Burden of Black Religion.




Here's a description from the Indiana University Press web site:
Taking the influential work of Arthur Huff Fauset as a starting point to break down the false dichotomy that exists between mainstream and marginal, a new generation of scholars offers fresh ideas for understanding the religious expressions of African Americans in the United States. Fauset's 1944 classic, Black Gods of the Metropolis, launched original methods and theories for thinking about African American religions as modern, cosmopolitan, and democratic. The essays in this collection show the diversity of African American religion in the wake of the Great Migration and consider the full field of African American religion from Pentecostalism to Black Judaism, Black Islam, and Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement. As a whole, they create a dynamic, humanistic, and thoroughly interdisciplinary understanding of African American religious history and life. This book is essential reading for anyone who studies the African American experience.

Here's the Table of Contents:

Introduction / Edward E. Curtis IV and Danielle Brune Sigler

Part 1. New Religious Movement(s) of the Great Migration Era
1. Fauset's (Missing) Pentecostals: Church Mothers, Remaking Respectability, and Religious Modernism / Clarence Hardy
2. "Grace Has Given God a Vacation": The History and Development of the Theology of the United House of Prayer of All People / Danielle Brune Sigler
3. "Chased out of Palestine": Prophet Cherry's Church of God and Early Black Judaisms in the United States / Nora L. Rubel
4. Debating the Origins of the Moorish Science Temple: Toward a New Cultural History / Edward E. Curtis IV
5. "The Consciousness of God's Presence Will Keep You Well, Healthy, Happy, and Singing": The Tradition of Innovation in the Music of Father Divine's Peace Mission Movement / Leonard Norman Primiano
6. "A True Moslem Is a True Spiritualist": Black Orientalism and Black Gods of the Metropolis / Jacob S. Dorman

Part 2. Resurrecting Fauset's Vision for African American Religious Studies
7. Religion Proper and Proper Religion: Arthur Fauset and the Study of African American Religions / Sylvester A. Johnson
8. The Perpetual Primitive in African American Religious Historiography / Kathryn Lofton
9. Turning African Americans into Rational Actors: The Important Legacy of Fauset's Functionalism / Carolyn Rouse
10. Defining the "Negro Problem" in Brazil: The Shifting Significance of Brazil's African Heritage from the 1890s to the 1940s / Kelly E. Hayes
11. Fauset and His Black Gods: Intersections with the Herskovits-Frazier Debate / Stephen W. Angell

Goodness, Gracious, Great Balls of Fire and Brimstone

Randall Stephens

Jerry Lee Lewis to Sam Phillips on the perils of rock and roll, Sun Records Studio, Memphis Tennessee, 1957

Jerry Lee Lewis: H-E-L-L . . . that’s right. It says “MAKE MERRY with the JOY OF GOD, only.” But when it comes to worldly music, rock and roll, anythin’ like that, you’re in the world, and you haven’t come from out of the world, and you’re still a sinner. And you’re a sinner. You’re a sinner unless you be saved and born again, and be made as a little child, and walk before God, and be holy. And brother, I mean you got to be so pure, and no sin shall enter there. No SIN! Cause it says “no sin.” It don’t say just a little bit. It says “no sin shall enter there.” Brother, not one little bit. You got to walk and TALK with God to go to heaven. . . .

Sam Phillips: Now Look, Jerry . . .

Lewis: Mr. Phillips, I don’t care . . . it ain’t what you believe, It’s what’s written in the BIBLE! . . . .

Phillips: Nah, gosh, it’s not what you believe it’s how do you interpret the Bible?

I’ll stop right there. It’s just so much more fun to hear this on youtube. A transcription can’t capture the accents and folk wisdom entailed, ya hear? I don’t even think Mark Twain could render the conversation justly. Hat tip to Joe Lucas (Historically Speaking) for making me aware of this fly-on-the-wall treasure. (How many other famous pop icons discussed hermeneutics with their producers?!?)

Hearing the above, I thought about work I’ve done, albeit very little, on rock, pop music and holiness-pentecostalism. At the suggestion of Bland Whitley while in grad school, I read an essay on famous pentecostal musicians (Stephen R. “Pentecostalism and Popular Culture in the South: A Study of Four Musicians,” Journal of Popular Culture 16 [Winter 1982]: 68-80.) Few have looked at pentecostal rock and rollers and country singers as Tucker did all those years ago. The evidence from interviews with performers, autobiographies, and secondary work is pretty stunning.

Elvis Presley, like “The Killer,” attended an Assemblies of God church. Johnny Cash spent some harrowing Sundays in a fired-up Church of God. Tammy Wynette did, too. There are other links between black pentecostalism and B.B. King and Little Richard. The latter’s autobiography will blow your hair back. All that to say that the connection between sanctified religion, gospel quartets, shouting preachers, and rock is not a mere coincidence.

Here’s are a couple questions I’m interested in, and this speaks to the above audio clip: If, as the Louvin Brothers reminded the faithful in 1960, “Satan is real, working in spirit . . .” then how does one square the devil’s music with holy living? That dilemma worried Jerry Lee, and, to a lesser extent, Elvis. How much of the vibrancy and ecstasy of early rock was a result of a religious tension? Maybe much more than most realize.

I said a little bit about this in the last chapter of my book. It’s worth quoting David Wilkerson (of Cross and Switchblade fame) who wrote about Lucifer’s rock trickery in a 1959 issue of an Assemblies of God magazine. For every Youth for Christ rally “Satan is now staging a rock and roll rally!” he said. Even worse, “Satan has used rock and roll to imitate the work of God at Pentecost! In these last days Satan has come down to baptize with an unholy ghost and unholy fire!” Rock shows looked like upside-down pentecostal revivals: “the shaking, the prostration” of the saints “are imitated by this unholy baptism—as far even to speaking in vile tongues!”

I learned that lesson in a BIG way as a young teen when my youth group watched the late-80s Christian documentary Hell's Bells: The Dangers of Rock 'n' Roll.

Warner to Lecture on the "Evangelical Public Sphere"

JOHN FEA

I just received word of this lecture series. It might interest some of our readers in the Philadelphia area:

Rosenbach Lectures for 2009: Michael Warner, Yale University

"The Evangelical Public Sphere"
Lecture Dates: March 23, 25, and 26, 2009
Time and location: 5:30PM, Rosenwald Gallery, 6th floor, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library
More information: (215) 898-7088; jpollack@upenn.edu

Monday, March 23, 2009:"Printing and Preaching: What is a Sermon?"RSVP HERE

Wednesday, March 25, 2009: "Between Freethought and Evangelicalism: Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin Franklin"RSVP HERE

Thursday, March 26, 2009:"Evangelical Publics and Christian Nationalism in the Late Eighteenth Century"RSVP HERE

Michael Warner is Seymour H. Knox Professor of English and Professor of American Studies at Yale University. His recent publications include The Portable Walt Whitman (2003), Publics and Counterpublics (2002), The Trouble with Normal (1999), and American Sermons (1999).

I have not read some of Warner' latest work, but I heartily recommend his The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

While looking at Warner's Yale website, I also came across an essay on his pentecostal childhood that might also be of interest to the readers of this blog.

Crossposted at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

Doc Watch: Journeys with Ted and Kid Preachers

By Randall Stephens

The current issue of Newsweek tips us off to the forthcoming Alexandra Pelosi documentary, The Trials of Ted Haggard, now being advertised by HBO. Wow... If Pelosi's whimsical Friends of God and Journeys with George are any indication, this should be a real treat. Set your DVRs. I've used Friends in my Religion and American Culture class, and it's worked very well.

In the not-so-recent-film category. . . I encourage blog readers to get a copy of Marjoe, an Oscar-winning 1972 documentary that will knock your socks OFF!!! I had not seen it until recently. What a revelation. A sleeper, for sure, the movie is about a one-time child pentecostal preacher who, as a jaded twenty-something, starts to test the boundaries of authenticity and holy-rolling antics. Marjoe Gortner later achieved some fame as a B movie actor--he starred in Earthquake, a classic disaster film from the Me Decade. But this picture takes us back to his days as a conflicted evangelist . . . “Should I stay or should I go now.” Marjoe's Mick Jagger-esque chicken dancing down the aisles in tent meetings and tabernacles is something to behold. The music that accompanies the former kid preacher’s Leap-of-Faith swagger could melt the heart of even the most stolid atheist. This one merits in-class viewing, for sure.

What is it with child preachers anyhow? It’s like watching very precocious/frightening child actors, right?

American Denominational History

Paul Harvey

Is there anything more dreaded, or derided, in American religious studies than "denominational history." At one time, probably not, since such studies tended to the antiquarian or the hagiographical. In recent years that has changed; and while it still does not count as "hip," it is simply a fact that denominations remain the major institutional expression of American Christianity, at least, and arguably of other religious expressions as well.

American Denominational History: Perspectives on the Past, Prospects for the Future, edited by Keith Harper (University of Alabama Press, 2008), is a new essay collection that surveys the field and projects possibilities for study in the future. It should be of particular help to graduate students and others seeking contemporary scholarly overviews and historiographical syntheses. Here's the table of contents:

Introduction, by Keith Harper

Catholic Distinctiveness and the Challenge of American Denominationalism by Amy Koehlinger

New Directions on the Congregational Way by Margaret Bendroth

Presbyterians in America: Denominational History and the Quest for Identity by Sean Michael Lucas (you can read this essay here)

From the Margin to the Middle to Somewhere In Between: An Overview of American Baptist Historiography by Keith Harper

"Everything Arose Just as the Occasion Offered": Defining Methodist Identity through the History of Methodist Polity by Jennifer L. Woodruff Tait

Black Protestantism: A Historiographical Appraisal by Paul Harvey

Mormon Historiography by David J. Whittaker

Interpreting American Pentecostal Origins: Retrospect and Prospect by Randall J. Stephens

"We're All Evangelicals Now": The Existential and Backward Historiography of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism by Barry Hankins

A Tale of Two Mavericks: Huey Long, Aimee Semple McPherson, and What Azusa Has To Do With Washington

Paul Harvey

Matt Sutton follows the tale of the two mavericks -- the Senator, and the celebrity Pentecostal woman -- from another era at the Immanent Frame. His conclusion: I've known Aimee Semple McPherson. And Governor, you're no Aimee Semple McPherson. The opening lines, just for a teaser:

Long before field dressing moose and shooting wolves from helicopters became part of American political parlance, a United States senator with White House ambitions sat down in his Washington D.C. office with the most powerful pentecostal woman in the country. The nation was facing an unprecedented economic crisis and tremendous social unrest. The senator probably hoped that the pentecostal maverick might strengthen his ticket by helping him win votes in the west and among women. The senator was not John McCain and the woman was not Sarah Palin.

No, this was a chance meeting between two of the greatest personalities of the twentieth century—Louisiana senator Huey Long and Los Angeles preacher Aimee Semple McPherson. . . .

Meanwhile, Randall Stephens asks, "What Does Azusa Have to Do With Washington," traces the Pentecostal rise to respectability since World War Two, examines the restorationism behind much conservative Christianity, and concludes that religious identity politics is alive and well.

Our Turn to Prosper

Paul Harvey

Matt Sutton's review of It's a New Day, Race and Gender in the Modern Charismatic Movement was just featured as the Book of the Week review at Books and Culture. The book focuses especially on African American and female ministers who have become prominent in Pentecostal-charismatic movements. Billingsley aims to portray these people mostly through their own words and stories, Sutton says, and succeeds in doing so. Sutton raises some important questions that naturally arise from this survey:

Billingsley has done an admirable job of identifying many of the key players in the charismatic movement, but he never sufficiently addresses the more interesting question of why so many of the most influential African American and female ministers in the United States have embraced the prosperity gospel. What does it mean that these ministers would move from a traditionally world-denying creed to one that not only tolerates the accumulation of wealth but actually celebrates consumption? What does this illustrate about religion in the United States?

. . . Neither the civil rights nor the feminist movements explain the success of the Word of Faith gospel. Instead, these leaders' promotion of conspicuous consumption and the pursuit of wealth as divinely mandated, rather than devilishly inspired, may illuminate better than anything else what is driving the success of their movement. Against all odds, they have created a faith that affirms rather than challenges the materialism and extravagances of American culture. Indeed, it is a new day.

Randall's Reach (across the pond)

Apparently we aren't the only ones who like Randall Stephens' The Fire Spreads. It just received a nice review in the Times Literary Supplement (UK). The reviewer called it a "strikingly imaginative account of riotous religious competition." Congrats Randall! You can read the full review here.

McCain the Maverick

Matthew A. Sutton

When I first heard that McCain had asked Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential nominee, I thought the choice was pure genius. This was McCain the Maverick at his best. Realizing that Obamamania could not be overcome, he was going to use the 2008 campaign to settle old scores. Choosing Palin would accomplish two things. First, it would guarantee that he lost the election, leaving it to the Democrats to fix the economy and straighten out the Middle East. As a result, the horrible legacy of his old nemesis, GW Bush, would be guaranteed. After the way the Bushies mistreated him in 2000, he would have the last laugh and all the free Arizona beer he could drink. Second, he would get one last swipe at those he dubbed the “Agents of Intolerance.” By picking a creationism-advocating, heat-packing, Pentecostal church-going Alaskan straight out of Jerry Falwell’s playbook, I thought McCain was sealing the doom of the Religious Right as we have known it. With the ascension of Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and Joel Osteen, I figured the United States had seen the last of the shrill politics of anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-environment, anti-community organizer Jesus. Palin would lure Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, and James Dobson into the spotlight one final time where they would finally be discarded.

Alas, McCain was wrong. Little did he know that his choice of Palin, rather than dooming the Bush legacy and the Religious Right, would in fact resurrect both. It looks like Jesus will equal Republican for at least another decade, which is bad news for Jesus and great news for the GOP. Who would have guessed that of all people the Maverick would be the one man who could pull that off?

Does Sarah Palin Speak in Tongues?

BY JOHN FEA

We know she is an Alaskan reformer. We know she is pro-life. We know she was a beauty queen and basketball star. We know she eats moose burgers. But does Sarah Palin speak in tongues?

According to some reports, Palin attends church at the Juneau Christian Center, a congregation affiliated with the Assembly of God. As many of you know, the Assembly of God is the largest pentecostal denomination in the world. It is known for speaking in tongues, healing, and an emotional and contemporary style of worship with a lot of hand-raising.

Palin appears to have grown up pentecostal or at least attended a local Assembly of God Church (Wasilla Assembly of God Church) during her junior high school years.

NOTE: In an interview with Time Magazine, Palin said she was born and baptized Catholic but now attends a "non-denominational Bible Church." (I am sure this will all be cleared up shortly).

If Palin is indeed a pentecostal, I am sure the pundits will compare her to two other noteworthy members of the Assembly of God who were also involved in Republican politics: Bush's Attorney General, John Ashcroft and Reagan's Secretary of the Interior, James Watt.

I am eager to hear what Matt Sutton and Randall Stephens, our "resident" pentecostsal experts, have to say about all this.

I have posted a longer version of this post at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.

Sued in the Spirit

John G. Turner

Healing ministries are potentially risky business.

According to an article in The Smoking Gun, a man is suing a Tennessee church because "catchers" failed to catch him when he collapsed under the power of the Holy Spirit:

Mr. Lincoln received the spirit and fell backwards striking the carpet-covered cement floor with the back of his head and back, causing him to sustain severe and permanent injuries ...

[Mr. Lincoln accuses the church of being] negligent in not supervising the catchers to be sure that they stood behind the person being prayed for and in front of the visiting minister to assure that they could catch someone should they have a dizzying, fainting or falling in the spirit as had occurred on many occasions before.

The above text is from the plaintiff's complaint. Evidently plaintiffs have occasionally won such cases before. I presumed people sued Pentecostal churches or ministers when the spirit failed to act, not when it did. Perhaps all folks asking for healing should have to sign some sort of disclaimer.

Thanks to Christopher Jones of The Juvenile Instructor for bringing this to my attention.

Pentecostals and Sexy-Time

Pentecostals and Sexy-Time
Matt Sutton

John Steinbeck opened his 1939 classic Grapes of Wrath with a pentecostal evangelist who explained, “I use ta get the people jumpin’ an’ talkin’ in tongues, an’ glory-shoutin’ till they just fell down an’ passed out….An’ then-you know what I’d do? I’d take one of them girls out in the grass, an’ I’d lay with her.” Representations of pentecostals in popular culture throughout the twentieth century, from Upton Sinclair’s Eli Watkins to Sinclair Lewis’ Sister Sharon Falconer to Steinbeck’s Jim Casey have all blended faith with fornication.

And, of course, these novelists have not been far from the mark. Pentecostal/charismatic leaders Charles Parham, Aimee Semple McPherson, Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and Ted Haggard were all involved in highly publicized sex scandals. How should we understand this phenomenon? For years I have been trying to understand if there is a relationship between pentecostal/charismatic faith and sex. So far I have three theories:

Unlike many other evangelical groups, pentecostals/charismatics are much more affirming of the body. Their holistic worship and embrace of the physical makes them more susceptible to physical temptation than more ascetic, body-denying groups.

Pentecostal/charismatic leaders are no more prone to sexual indiscretions than any other leaders. However, they have been better at using mass media to create celebrity ministers who thrive in the spotlight. Although all religious movements have occasional errant leaders, because so many pentecostal ministers are in the limelight, their foibles receive a disproportionate amount of attention.

Pentecostals are notoriously independent and they generally refuse to submit to any outside authority or oversight. When you combine their independent streak with the power and money that comes with the kinds of religious empires that they have been so good at building, trouble may be inevitable. Sex certainly seems to come with power and money in many other parts of American culture.

But I am still not sure that I buy any of my own theories. Why do pentecostal leaders have so much trouble with sex????

Great Material

by John G. Turner

There are several items of interest to scholars and students of American religion in the most recent Books & Culture, including a smart review of Matt Sutton's Aimee Semple McPherson by our Arlene Sánchez Walsh.

Also included is my review of Randall Stephens's The Fire Spreads. My "judgment," in summary form:

Crisply written, analytically clear, and full of colorful personalities, The Fire Spreads is the most significant study of Pentecostal origins since Grant Wacker's Heaven Below, and Stephens' four chapters on holiness Christianity provide an unparalleled introduction to that movement's emergence and growth in the South.

Randall richly explores the infighting between first Methodist denominations and their Holiness offshoots, and then between the latter and Pentecostal offspring. And he does so by finding pungent pieces in Holiness and Pentecostal periodicals:

Similar to the way southern Democrats met the Populist challenge, southern denominations responded with derision and expulsions, which holiness preachers endured as badges of persecution and signs of the Second Coming. "The Quarterly Conference will just be reading the verdict on some holiness evangelist," wrote the preacher and publisher H.C. Morrison, " … And, behold! The man has disappeared [in the rapture]."

As Sutton's book certainly indicates as well, we historians of American religion should be perennially thankful for the great material we have been given.

Pasquier on The Fire Spreads

Art Remillard

Let it be known that contributing editor Mike Pasquier knows nothing about college football. For example, he truly believes that LSU, 1) deserved to be in this year's BCS Championship game; and 2) finished the season as the best team in the nation despite playing a floundering Ohio State squad.

This being said, I will give Mike credit on one thing, he knows a good book when he reads it, as evidenced by his recent review of fellow contributing editor Randall Stephens's The Fire Spreads on H-Pentecostalism. Here are Mike's final thoughts...

This study is an important addition to the growing field of pentecostal studies. Stephens's emphasis on regional identity complements the previous works of historians like Grant Wacker and Edith Blumhofer. His ability to make sense of the complex theological features of pentecostalism makes The Fire Spreads accessible to a wide audience composed of lay adult readers, college students, pentecostal practitioners, and professional historians. Furthermore, there is something to be said for a book that is both deeply intelligent and highly readable. Though Stephens certainly discusses the role of African Americans in the development of pentecostalism, The Fire Spreads is largely about white southerners and their involvement in the movement of a fringe religious group into the mainstream of evangelical Protestantism. Anyone interested in the history of religion in the United States—and specifically as it relates to region, race, and politics—must read Stephens's The Fire Spreads.

Studying Latino/a Pentecostals From a New Contributing Editor

Arlene Sánchez Walsh, our newest contributing editor, provides us with a glimpse of her work on Latino Pentecostals from Sojourners. Sánchez Walsh is an associate professor of Latino/a church studies and church history at Azusa Pacific University. She is the author of Latino Pentecostal Identity, which won the 2005 Hispanic Theological Initiative Book Award. She is working on a project for the Louisville Institute on race, ethnicity and American Pentecostalism and writing a textbook Pentecostalism in America (Columbia University Press). When she is not writing, she is kept very busy with an inquisitive five year old, and a not-so-sleepy 7 month old. Welcome aboard, Arlene!

A History of Separation
Arlene Sánchez Walsh

The article begins with a scene gleaned from a goldmine of resources for anyone interested in American Pentecostalism, especially the interaction between missionaries and Mexicans on the borderlands, Puerto Rico, and on the East Coast. Henry C. Ball is one of the more interesting missionaries, not because of any unique cultural/racial sensitivity (no doubt, Henry Ball was a missionary boss, racist, anti-Catholic, triumphalistic) but as a major figure in the Assemblies of God missions strategy of seeking Mexican converts on the borderlands, Ball needs to be reckoned with as a deeper figure than the pages of the Pentecostal Evangel would allow.

If we take Ball at his word, he was an eyewitness to many of the indignities that Mexican workers were subjected to throughout the early part of the 20th century: fumigation, unfair and unsafe work conditions, theft of wages, subtle racism and overt segregation. Ball's sympathies for his charges are intertwined with his disdain for their supposed sloth and hatred for their residual Catholicism. Ball never seeks to reconcile this cognitive dissonance, (not too different from most of us), with the earnest desire he claims to want to "save" Mexicans and partake in their new life as Pentecostals, one would assume that such magnanimous attitudes would dull the distrust, dislike, and out and out hatred Ball writes about throughout his career as an AG missionary (1912-70). Curiously, it does not. Content with denigrating Mexicans as he is trying to "save" them, Ball, like many early Pentecostal leaders (one might extend that to many of today's Pentecostal leaders), simply did not have the theological tools to develop a social conscience beyond coarse proselytism.

The Sojourners article takes the story of Latino/a Pentecostals in a different direction, it seemed proper though to note that one could make a major contribution to American religious history mining through places like the Flower Heritage Center at the Assemblies of God headquarters in
Springfield, Missouri. One could really begin to examine issues of race, ethnicity and power that fed into the rise of American Pentecostalism. Finally, if an enterprising scholar wanted to, they could move us all beyond the black/white dichotomy of American Pentecostal history and start writing a history of American Pentecostalism that begins on the borderlands and ends in a storefront in Newark, or a cemetery in East Los Angeles (don't get me started, I have too much to do already).

Masterful Pentecostals

Paul Harvey

Our blog contributing editor's work The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South is featured in the May 2008 Atlantic Monthly, with this appropriate and accurate assessment:

"Stephens's masterful account of how the South nurtured and altered a once-marginalized religious movement-- and how that religion influenced the region-- is the most fluent and authoritative synthesis of a complex and controversial subject." The Critics, Atlantic Monthly, May 2008, p. 102

Congratulations, Randall!

More to come soon on Ed Blum's latest airplane reading, and his thoughts about the Democrats and Donkey Kong.