jason price
performance | church by jason price
malawi possession charisma deliverance fel icity
Holy Ghost...FIRE!
It was shortly after we moved into the university house on the quiet, concrete- cracked, hedge-lined street, that my wife and I began to hear the word of God. It did not emanate from above, but from someplace slightly askance – that is, somewhere out there – over the front hedge, past the street, off where the power lines led. Distant, then somehow close, I was surprised to realise I could make out every word. Were they saying – “ Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING! “? Yes, they were. There was a bass line, an electronic piano, some drums, a lead guitar, and, of course, the vocals, which were not so much sung as SHOUTED. Holy Ghost…FIRE! Holy Ghost… BURNING!
Living Waters and your local upstarts such as Fountain of Victory, and The Holy Ghost and Evangelism Ministries Inc., our neighbours. One reason charismatic churches have become so popular is because they offer a more energetic and embodied alternative to the rather staid religious practice of historically mainstream churches, such as Church of Central African Presbyterian (CCAP) and the Roman Catholic Church. Charismatic Pentecostal modes of religious practice rely heavily on the production and amplification of sound to enable embodied practice. In the context of peri-urban Pentecostals in a place like Zomba, this means bands and choruses plugged into bass-heavy speakers broadcasting at all-consuming decibels that reach far beyond the walls of their church; it means wired and wireless microphones carried about by pacing pastors who project the screams and shouts of their sermons deep into the aural cavities of their congregants; it means everyone standing up, hands raised to Jesus, as the worship team slips into a major key, which sets the mood for a slow, then sudden, collective code-shift into glossolalial rapture; it also means, I would soon discover, coaxing and extorting horrific utterances out of the limber bodies of hapless hosts during fierce battles between evil spirits and intrepid men and women of God.
Song and speech, utterances and invocations, a slow moving wall of noise. However they may find you, the charismatic cacophony leaves an unavoidable imprint on the ethical soundscape of many an African city. ‘Ethical soundscape’ is a concept used by the anthropologist Charles Hirschkind. In his work on the role of cassette sermons in the Islamic Revival (particularly in Middle Eastern cities such as Cairo, where he conducted research), Hirschkind claims that – far from being a simple technology that disciplines fundamentalist political subjects – cassette sermons actually evoke rich sensoriums that act as the ground upon which people cultivate ethical ways of being in line with particular models of moral personhood amid increasingly contested lifeworlds. 1 This is significant, he argues, because “the affects of sensibilities honed through popular media practices... are as infrastructural to politics and public reason as are markets, associations, formal institutions, and information networks” (2006: 9). If this be the case, and sensory perceptions do underlie (and affect) aspects of historical experience, then we must take seriously not only how 1 Which is to say that this is not some one-way street with an instrument acting on a person, but a relationship between the two. It is also to say that the the body and its senses are just as important as belief when it comes to religious practice.
BURNING…CONSUMING! BURNING…CONSUMING!
Holy Ghost… FIRE! Holy Ghost…BURNING! And on, and on it went – off and on again – for hours. Our new neighbours are one in a legion of charismatic Pentecostal churches that have sprung up and spread throughout sub-Saharan Africa since independence. Zomba, a small city set at the base of a lush plateau in southern Malawi, has its fair share. You have your American imports such as Assemblies of God, your European imports like New Apostolic, your Nigerian imports such as Winners’ Chapel, your Malawian mainlines like
28
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator