Race, Religion, and Worship: Are Contemporary African-American Worship Practices Distinct?

摘要

Drawing upon the cultural repertoire and religious marketplace perspectives, this study examines the extent towhich ecstatic, participatory worship practices are distinctive to African-American congregations and explores therole that ecstatic, participatory worship plays in contemporary African-American worship. National Congrega-tions Study (NCS) data are used to conduct comparative analyses of African-American and white congregations'participation in two forms of ecstatic, participatory worship: verbal affirmation and spontaneous physical wor-ship. Findings suggest that while spontaneous physical worship is distinctive to the religiocultural repertoires ofAfrican-American congregations, verbal affirmation is not. Traditional explanations about the origin of ecstatic,participatory worship, such as religious tradition, Pentecostalism, and social class, are less compelling thanthey were in the past. For contemporary African-American congregations, ecstatic, participatory worship is nolonger associated with marginal or less-educated congregations, but with more sociopolitically and religiouslyprogressive ones.