Makes Me Wanna Jump & Shout: Religion, Ecstasy & Race
Kate Moos, Managing Producer
We had a cuts-n-copy session this week for an upcoming show on Democrats and religion, with Time Magazine editor Amy Sullivan, herself an Evangelical Christian. Mitch had placed some fabulous music in the rough version of the show: the Campbell Brothers performing Sam Cooke’s yearning “A Change Is Gonna Come”. But it gave me pause, because one of the points Amy Sullivan makes in the course of her interview with Krista is that liberal Democrats have historically “delegated” religion to black churches, and have been uninterested in engaging with white Christian piety in this country. Sullivan argues that in 2008 this changed, with much more evidence of a vibrant religious presence — albeit a self-conscious & studiously interfaith one — at the DNC.
Still, it seems to me there is not only a political but a racial divide in how we members of the media, and the liberal “intelligentsia,” perceive devotional practices that fall outside the mainline habit of sitting up straight in church while being lectured.
Sarah Palin, a white person who was at least at one time associated with the energetic devotions of Pentecostal worship is handily dismissed by many liberals as — therefore — a kook. Apparently white people are dismissible if they engage in ecstatic devotion, at least for Jesus. But the same liberal sensibility finds the ecstatic worship of African-American Pentecostalism charming, authentic, and soulful. What gives? I think this is racism of a pernicious variety.
We accept the full-bodied worship of African-Americans because, at least subliminally, they are still The Other — that is, they are other than the dominant, hyper-rational, majority white culture.
I’m not an apologist for Palin or any candidate, nor am I an apologist for Pentecostalism, though I do sometimes find Pentecostalism’s fervor and emotionalism persuasive, beautiful, and deep. I just don’t like what I smell underneath the high-toned dismissal of Palin’s Pentecostal roots, when it’s accompanied by the wholesale enthusiasm for our cultural appropriation of gospel music, blues, and soul.
