Flaming?: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance: The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in Black Male Gospel Performance

335 Pages·2020·6.618 MB·English

by  Alisha Lola Jones

Flaming?

Flaming?
The Peculiar Theopolitics of Fire and Desire in
Black Male Gospel Performance
ALISHA LOLA JONES
1
3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-i n- Publication Data
Names: Jones, Alisha Lola, author.
Title: Flaming? : the peculiar theopolitics of fire and desire in black
male gospel performance / Alisha Lola Jones.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2020. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019044915 (print) | LCCN 2019044916 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190065416 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190065423 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780190065447 (epub) | ISBN 9780190065454 (Online)
Subjects: LCSH: Gospel music—H istory and criticism. |
African American male singers. | African Americans—S exual behavior. |
Sex role in music. Classification: LCC ML3187 .J63 2020 (print) | LCC ML3187 (ebook) |
DDC 782.25/ 40811— dc23
LC record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2019044915
LC ebook record available at https://l ccn.loc.gov/ 2019044916
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Paperback printed by Marquis, Canada
Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America
Acknowledgments
Since the third grade, I have dreamed of being a researcher and educator. My
parents and faith community have supported my vision, even when the path
I took was into new, brave, and unkind worlds. First and foremost, I would like to
thank them for their support. As I write these acknowledgments, we are dealing
with a deafening silence as we mourn the loss of my natural and spiritual father,
conversation partner, promoter, multi-m edia trailblazer, and “wisdom friend”
Rev. Dr. Alvin Augustus Jones. To my fearless mother Rev. Dr. Martha Butler
Jones, thank you for being vigilant about my academic and artistic formation,
despite the various structural barriers that arose. My brilliant sister Rev. Angela
Marie Jones has made me smile, kept me grounded, and celebrated with me
during this process. Thank you to my fine partner Rev. Calvin Taylor Skinner
for holding me up as I neared the finish line. I appreciate your insight, patience,
and compassion when I needed it the most. To the members of my home church
International Kingdom Church in Bowie, MD, I am grateful for your consistent
prayerful support and presence namely Lisa Lynch, Elaine and Jimmy Grant,
Paula Christopher, Margo Reed, Angela Telesford, Dozier Johnson, Gemma
Louis, and Deborah Williams. 
The University of Chicago music department faculty undoubtedly sharpened
me as an ethnomusicologist while I conducted the dissertation research that is
the foundation for this book. My dissertation committee, Philip V. Bohlman,
Travis A. Jackson, Robert Kendrick, and Emilie M. Townes, dean of Vanderbilt
Divinity School, was the best collection of conversation partners during my re-
search. I must convey what an honor it has been to work with my dissertation
committee chair Melvin L. Butler. He is a superlative mentor who has demon-
strated rigorous research and equally brilliant musicianship, sincere collegiality,
precise instruction, and engaged guidance in a manner I aspire to resemble. I
also thank my graduate school peers for challenging me as a scholar.
I received support from two Fund for Theological Education fellowships, Swift
Dissertation Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Dissertation Fellowship; the Joint
Residential Fellowship from the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of
Race, Politics, and Culture and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality;
a Martin Marty Junior Fellowship; and a Franke Institute for the Humanities
Affiliated Fellowship. I thank the numerous colleagues and institutions who have
invited me to present my research in progress.
viii Acknowledgments
My colleagues in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and
throughout the campus at Indiana University (Bloomington) have been in-
strumental in making sure that I complete this book project. I am fortunate to
converse every day with countless undergraduate and graduate students whose
questions and insights have sharpened my conceptual frameworks.
I thank the manuscript reviewers for their careful examination of my book
and their productive recommendations that have made this research richer.
Specifically, I would like to acknowledge my editor Suzanne Ryan and the many
members of her staff at Oxford University Press, including Leslie Johnson,
Richa Jobin, and Andrew Maillet. I would like to express my deepest gratitude
to colleagues and students who were willing to closely read and converse about
my research namely Lauren Eldridge Stewart, Kimberly Peeler-R inger, John
Orduña, and Allie Martin.
Fascinating people inspired this research, several of whom are cited in this
book. Thank you for allowing me to observe you and I hope that people will be
stretched by your work. To borrow from a song of ascent Psalms 126:1, I am truly
“like she who dreamed” of completing a research project that I think engages
with both the academy and the community. Now, more than ever, I look forward
to a life dedicated to loving God with my mind, and sharing the fruits of that dis-
covery in a contribution to the body of literature in music research.
Setting the Atmosphere
An Introduction
God don’t need no matches, He’s fire all by Himself.
— Reverend James Moore, Live with the
Mississippi Mass Choir (1990)
“Being able to quickly find the address of God” was multi-G rammy award
and Stellar1 award-w inning gospel music producer Donald Lawrence’s way of
describing the most prized musical competency in music ministry at the 2017
Hawkins Music and Arts Conference in Chicago. Within historically African
American Pentecostal worship, a minister’s capability to get to God instantly
and usher God’s presence into worship seamlessly is referred to in the vernac-
ular as “setting the atmosphere.” To achieve this contact with God, ministers teach
believers to seek God first and all men will be drawn unto God (John 12:32) and by
extension, the assembly of believers. Setting the atmosphere requires a form of self-
giving, where they prepare congregants to be receptive to the move of the Spirit
through ministers’ skillful interplay of message and music. Vocal music ministers
in particular use the body aesthetically and sonically to stimulate and inflame tran-
scendence among participants.2 In effect, worship leaders are to be exemplary God
chasers and catchers.3 They tap into the Pentecostal and gospel music4 traditions to
“take people there,” that is, to happiness, to joy, to love-m aking, to heaven in sen-
sually and sexually conservative religious spaces. Gospel singing in particular is
at once understood as worshipful, erotic, and sensual activity for both performers
and listeners in which fire and desire are ignited through the process of encoun-
tering God—t he One described in the Bible as a “consuming fire” (Deuteronomy
4:24; Hebrews 12:29). However, setting the atmosphere is more than collectively
experiencing the performative qualities of a worship leader’s spiritual fire. The telos
of setting the atmosphere is to fulfill participants’ expectations to have a tangible
encounter with God during the worship experience.
Countless followers of Jewish and Judeo- Christian faiths have described
their ritual approaches to5 and encounters with God and sightings of celestial
Flaming? Alisha Lola Jones, Oxford University Press (2020). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190065416.001.0001
2 Flaming?
beings6 throughout the ages using imagery,7 signifiers,8 and sensations of fire;9
however, the entire body of literature on fire symbolism in Christianity is out
of the scope of this work. One core Pentecostal Christian account in the New
Testament centers on the spiritually symbolic significance of fire established
on the Day of Pentecost following Jesus Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Pentecostalism is marked specifically by the belief in speaking in other tongues
(glossolalia) as the Holy Spirit gives believers the ability and the interpretation
of those unknown tongues (xenoglossy) by someone in the midst. The events
are recounted in Acts:
On the day of Pentecost all the believers were meeting together in one place.
Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty wind-
storm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. Then, what looked like
flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. And everyone
present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages,
as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.10
The miraculous in this tradition is animated by metaphoric and real fire that is
sounded and heard in a lingual, articulated, and envoiced manner, a sign that the
Comforter has come to remain among those who await the return of Jesus Christ
the messiah. Moreover, it is precisely the sense of audiation, that is, hearing as
both a spiritual and cultural practice that begs for more examination in how we
interpret the move of the Spirit.
Assumptions About Gender Expression
Setting the atmosphere is also a theological, aesthetic, economic, and political
enterprise during which participants negotiate style, sociocultural bias, and spir-
itual familiarity. And, unfortunately, regular churchgoers are watching the en-
terprise fail, symbolized by the decline in men’s church attendance. Now, church
leaders are trying to fill the void by reinventing their worship service formats and
programming throughout the week. As Christian believers investigate what may
be repelling men, some have arrived at conclusions along gendered and musical
lines attributing feminization11 of the church spaces with the loss of “the mascu-
line spirit” as indicated in the following excerpt:
The feminization of the church . . .
Why its music, messages, and ministries are driving men away.
The next time you go to church
Setting the Atmosphere 3
Ask yourself, why do churches today look more like the women’s department of
a store than a battalion of men poised to kick demons away? Churches today have
become very dainty. Hanging out in church for most men seems immasculine [sic].
The lack of men within the church, both in a numeric and leadership sense, has
crippled our churches. How do we regain the masculine spirit in our worship? Men
in the pulpit draws [sic] men. Have the worship and the music leader use weighty
worship music . . . Let the young men accept the masculine task of the patriarch.12
The opening of Reginald Williamson’s antagonistic workshop PowerPoint was
presented in response to what he called “a great discussion in the 21st century,”
which posited a contradiction to what ministers say should be leaders’ emphasis
as worship is engineered. Instead of focusing on seeking God, Williamson is
concerned with attaining a male-d ominant vision of men in worship who are
poised to engage in battle, as he puts it. To draw primarily men and then their
households to church, Williamson proposes focusing on what cisgender heter-
osexual men like. He maintains that the prevalence of “feminine” elements and
ambience in the black Christian landscape dissuades men’s church attendance
and spiritual flourishing— and Williamson is not alone in this position. In his
controversial misogynoir13 message “I’m My Enemies’ Worst Nightmare” (aka
“These Hoes Ain’t Loyal”14), Dr. Jamal Bryant preached that the churches were
feminized through the participants’ gravitation toward emoting, and in contrast,
US Muslim mosques15 are more attractive to African American men because
those entities cater to men’s reasoning as thinkers.16 Bryant’s views are a femme-,
trans- , and homoantagonistic sample of popular discourses with which I have
been accosted as a woman in pulpit and music ministry that are meant to keep
women in their place and elevate cisgender, heteropresenting men.17 However,
there are still other spectators who would retort that despite Williamson and
others’ statements, images and sounds of black male participation in Christian
worship life abound on the sanctuary platform and television programming.
Gospel enthusiasts like myself may not find occasion to do critical analysis of
the predominantly male images and social interactions that are ever-p resent in
the pulpit and on the platform in African American churches and in multimedia
gospel music presentations. This omission is due in part to cultural anxieties
around critiquing the fact that black men are absent in certain parts of society.
Representations of African American male religious and civil rights leaders have
been a fixture in the media for more than a century; however, I have found that
the pervasive imagery of black men in church leadership that is presently dis-
seminated through the media conceals their underrepresentation in the African
American church experience. To be more specific, those images deflect attention
from the black male underrepresentation phenomenon in the church pews.
4 Flaming?
Scholars in men’s studies, religion, rhetoric, performance studies, sociology
have researched a decline in black men’s participation in African American
Christian worship experiences across denominations in which charismatic ex-
pression is permitted. Religion researchers have found that church leaders are
incorporating male- centered teachings such as Muscular Christianity into the
sermons and music of the worship, especially in African American churches.18
In message and music, Muscular Christianity preachers and teachers advo-
cate for an imagined, monolithic, and elusive black masculinity to re-e stablish
men as “rightful” leaders in churches and homes. This strategy to use Muscular
Christian content seeks to rectify the perceived underdevelopment of strong
male identities. Church leaders also advocate for men’s extracurricular involve-
ment in developing boys who do not display signs of feminine masculinity or
exhibit the potential to be sexually queer. These faith leaders maintain that men’s
active presence in church stimulates men’s participation in households, while
the leaders overlook solutions for the historical, socioeconomic issues that con-
tribute to men’s absence in the home such as un- and underemployment and
mass incarceration in the United States. Moreover, a culturally relevant focus on
African American men’s issues such as disproportionate youth victimization,
police brutality, resident vigilantism, myriad trauma, and heavy grief is deficient
in popular Muscular Christianity teachings.
Nevertheless, Williamson’s and others’ observations regarding male absen-
teeism in black churches are partially true, but his argument and analysis are
ill-informed. He does not account for or consider that men are pursuing private
devotion, religious pluralism, other faith practices, or nonreligious lifestyles.
Even though I take exception to several points made in Williamson’s presen-
tation, I also take the popularity of his perspective seriously and consider
two issues that Williamson asserts that are deterrents to men’s attraction to
church: women’s advancement in church leadership and men exploring symbol-
ically same-g ender intimacy with God.
While these oppositional teachings are attractive and familiar to some believers,
recapturing a mythical past, there are countless men and women who are turned
off by the male- dominant social order and anti-m atriarch perceptions that male-
centered theologies reinscribe. Such theologies cast women’s gender equality
and advancement in church leadership as an impediment to men’s ability to wor-
ship. Socioculturally, black women are the backbone of “the black church.”19 And
while women represent over 60 percent of the financial contributors, laborers,
and laypeople in historically African American Protestant congregations,20 they
are severely underrepresented in the paid, decision-m aking roles of church lead-
ership. The majority of these women—s ingle mothers, teenagers, widows, and
the elderly— are exploited as laypeople, especially in music ministry roles. And
yet they serve as maternal pedagogues who are endowed assumedly with mother