Fire in My Bones: Transcendence and the Holy Spirit in African American Gospel (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780812217179)

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. Personal stories ground the discussion at every turn, while experiential testimony fuels the unfolding arguments. Fire in My Bones is an 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.

Author: Glenn Hinson
ISBN-10: 0812217179
ISBN-13: 9780812217179
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Language: English
Published: 12/15/1999
Pages: 424
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 8.70h x 5.90w x 0.90d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2000 pg. 148

About the Author
Glenn Hinson teaches anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.