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Reckoning with Enslavement

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References
1.	For an extended discussion of "southern gospel" see, Douglas Harrison, Then Sings My Soul: The Culture of Southern Gospel Music (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 2–5, 80–109.
2.	Ibid., 2.
3.	Today's professional southern gospel includes many family and mixed gender foursomes and trios, configurations that were and are common in the singing convention world that dominated southern gospel in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. But professional southern gospel has always been strongly grounded its history and identity in the male quartet.
4.	Here, following Loyal Jones, "Southern Uplands" designates the regions and people of trans-Appalachia and extends eastward into the Piedmont and westward to the Ozarks. See Jones, Faith and Meaning in the Southern Uplands (Urbana–Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 9. For more on the rise and spread of southern gospel regionally and nationally, see James R. Goff Jr., Close Harmony: A History of Southern Gospel (Chapel HIll: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 50–109; Don Cusic, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Madison: Popular Press, 1990), 153–162; 171–176.
5.	For more on the demographic profile of southern gospel see Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 175–180.
6.	Not that "southern gospel" never made an appearance before the 1970s and 1980s. Music publishers of seven-shape notational gospel music and the convention singing tradition to which these publishers catered were familiar with the term for much of the twentieth century. This essay is interested primarily with professional southern gospel, which descends from convention singing but has been distinct from it since the 1930s and 1940s.
7.	Anthony Heilbut, "Black Urban Hymnody," on Brighten the Corner Where You Are: Black and White Urban Hymnody (New World, 1978, NW-224).
8.	Stephen Shearon, Harry Eskew, James C. Downey, and Robert Darden, "Gospel Music," Grove Music Online, July 10, 2012, accessed October 15, 2013, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2224388.
9.	The conflation of "southern" and "white" to describe this music circulates widely among scholars and non-specialists, but has only been tentatively stated in scholarship. My reading sees race, racism, and a racialized concept of self and other in southern gospel as an important, not always dominant, factor in the emergence of "southern gospel" and the cultural function of the music. For a fuller discussion of "southern" as a racial signifier and readings of race and white gospel see Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 96–103.
10.	Ibid., 203, especially note 53.
11.	Following Harry Eskew's lead in the Grove Music entry for Gospel Music, Stephen Shearon uses "northern urban" gospel to designate commercial Christian music of and for primarily white Protestants that emerged in the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century revivalism in urban areas outside the South. Key figures include Ira Sankey (the evangelist Dwight Moody's song leader), Homer Rodeheaver (Billy Sunday's music director), and George Beverly Shea (Billy Graham's most famous soloist). "Northern urban" gospel is the historical forerunner of today's Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). Even though I do not have a better name for it, I remain deeply ambivalent about "northern urban gospel." (See Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 182–183). "Southern" gospel has its own difficulties, not least the fact that not all gospel from, of, or appealing to people in the South is a white enterprise. "Gospel," as Heilbut has noted, is "the favored term for what working-class black congregations [do,] often to the exclusion to white traditions." See Heilbut, "Black Urban Hymnody." Black gospel draws heavily on southern lifeways, many of its biggest stars have been from the South, and it has always found a good portion of its audience there. Still, the cultivation and creation of twentieth-century commercial black gospel's golden age (1945–1960) was largely rooted in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other urban centers in the Midwest and Northeast where many black southerners moved during the Great Migration. See Shearon et al., "Gospel Music," and Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News in Bad Times (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard, 2001 [1979]) and Harrison, "Why Southern Gospel Music Matters," Religion and American Culture 18, no. 1 (2008): 27–58. "Southern gospel" remains the preferred term in the study of white gospel music of the South. Unlike "northern urban" gospel (a phrase with no currency outside academe), it is the preferred way to self-identify within the culture and the most widely recognized way to describe the music to outsiders.
12.	These longstanding conflicts precede the twentieth century. Southern gospel's negotiation of them has often manifested in overt racism or a way of thinking, talking, and singing that renders whiteness falsely normative. Southern gospel has found itself in alliances with black gospel traditions and the black church. As Stephen Shearon has noted, both white and black gospel have "liked aspects of what the other was doing" ever since blacks and whites began singing sacred music near one another in North America. And both black and white gospel have "borrowed those aspects, reinterpreting them for their own cultures" and purposes. See Shearon, email to H-Southern Music Network mailing list, March 27, 2009.
13.	Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 103.
14.	Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004), 169.
15.	Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 3. For more on cultural-geographic conceptualizations of place, see John Agnew, The United States in the World Economy: A Regional Geography (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987), and Cresswell, Place. Taylor's development of the social imaginary builds on (but also departs from) Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 2006). In addition to these sources, my own use of social imaginary theory is indebted as well to Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).
16.	Brooks Blevins, Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ole Boys Defined a State (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2009), 4.
17.	On "lived religion," see David D. Hall, Lived Religion: Toward a History of Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 3–21.
18.	I have in mind the period in American conservative and fundamentalist evangelicalism inaugurated by Richard Nixon's conjuring of the "silent majority" of cultural traditionalists who opposed the advance of liberal policies and social practices in the US. This period was followed by the mobilization of right-leaning Protestants (and many conservative Catholics) into a political base for the Republican Party in the Reagan Era and a power base for evangelical leaders (including Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, Pat Robertson's—and later Ralph Reed's—Christian Coalition, and, more recently, Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, and Tony Perkins's Family Research Council); and the not-entirely unrelated realignments within conservative and fundamentalist Protestantism wrought by the rise of non-denominational evangelical mega-churches and the Tea Party. Representative scholarly studies include Nancy Ammerman, Baptist Battles: Social Change and Religious Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2001); Susan Friend Harding, The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Politics and Language (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); Darren Dochuk, From Bible Belt to Sunbelt: Plain-Folk Religion, Grassroots Politics, and the Rise of Evangelical Conservatism (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011); Mark Hulsether, Religion, Culture and Politics in the Twentieth Century United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
19.	1990 coincides roughly with the emergence of what would become the Bill and Gloria Gaither Homecoming Friends video (later concert) series. In addition to being the vehicle through which The Martins received fame, Homecoming marked an epochal shift in the reception and self-concept of southern gospel. My focus on professional southern gospel music is distinct from the avocational or amateur tradition, known as convention singing. Southern gospel denotes "an overlapping, commercialized national network of musical products, professionals, and their fans, commonly referred to as 'the industry'" (Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 4–5). For an overview of southern gospel's history and development within the wider domain of American gospel music, see Shearon et al., "Gospel Music," and Don Cusic, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Madison: Popular Press, 1990).
20.	Within southern gospel, "CCM" designates nearly all other forms of commercial Christian music deemed insufficiently pious or overly commercialized (marketed in ways different from southern gospel). Sometimes this includes black gospel, particularly the performers who take inspiration from the mainstream music industry (pop, rock, R&B, and hip-hop). More conventional black gospel singers (such as Angie Primm and the late Jessy Dixon, both of whom have appeared on Gaither Homecoming videos) and black gospel choirs are generally held in high regard in southern gospel. The Gospel Music Association (GMA), Christian music's umbrella professional organization that administers the Dove Awards (Christian Music's Grammys), classifies this type of black Christian music as "traditional gospel," as distinct from "contemporary gospel," which encompasses black gospel in the style of mainstream R&B. Many southern gospel performers and groups incorporate covers of traditional black gospel songs and spirituals into their repertoire. Southern gospel performers often emulate black gospel style—including arrangements, vocal techniques, and use of choirs as backing voices. See Goff, Close Harmony, 233–236, 269–274. For an analysis of the cultural and religious tensions between southern gospel traditionalists, who founded the GMA, and the CCM fans and performers whose tastes have dominated the GMA for nearly forty years, see Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 91–96.
21.	Sales of "Christian/Gospel" (which consists overwhelmingly of CCM and black gospel music, but also includes some southern gospel) reached a high point in 1998, totaling $836 million; in 2012, total sales in the same category were $24.2 million. See "Music Album Sales in the United States in 2012, by Genre,"Statistica.com, 2012, accessed January 28, 2014, http://www.statista.com/statistics/188910/us-music-album-sales-by-genre-2010/; Natalie Gillespie, "Gospel Music Sees Record-Setting RIAA Numbers," CCM Update, March 29, 1999; and Lindy Warren, "Top 15 Impact-Makers in 1997," CCM Update, December 22, 1997. The only subgenre of white Christian music that remains relatively strong is Praise and Worship music, whose fortunes have been buoyed by the demand for choruses in non-denominational evangelical churches. The precipitous decline in "Christian/Gospel" has devastated most sectors of the market. Professional black gospel, which has a historically longstanding relationship with African American worship traditions to a much greater extent than commercial white Christian music has with white Protestant churches, has remained creatively vibrant. Heilbut notes that this vibrancy is driven by the rise of name-it-and-claim-it prosperity gospel in the black church, which is intensely homophobic and discourages its members from thinking in "broad sociological" categories in favor of a self-aggrandizing theology that links spiritual well-being with personal wealth (See "The Gospel Church and the Ruining of Gay Lives: An Interview with Anthony Heilbut," interview by Douglas Harrison, ReligionDispatches.com, July 30, 2013, accessed January 28, 2014, http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/culture/6221/the_gospel_church_and_the_ruining_of_gay_lives%3 A_an_interview_with_anthony_heilbut/; and Heilbut, The Fan Who Knew Too Much: Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations [New York: Knopf, 2012]). GMA has drastically shifted its outreach and marketing emphasis toward black gospel artists and groups, going so far in 2011 as to move the Dove Awards from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry to Atlanta, the unofficial capital of black gospel music. In 2013, the Doves moved back to Nashville, not to the Grand Ole Opry House but to the auditorium of a small religious college in the suburbs (Dave Paulson, "Dove Awards Fly Back to Nashville," USAToday.com, October 14, 2013, accessed January 28, 2014, http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2013/10/14/dove-awards-nashville/2984327/).
22.	George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), 1–5. Randall Balmer, My Eyes of Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into the Evangelical Subculture in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Donald Dayton and Robert Johnson, eds., The Variety of Evangelicalism, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001). Dayton offers an alternative account of "evangelicalism," emphasizing the rise of Pentecostalism and holiness traditions, which, as Jonathan Dodrill notes, "do not seem so bent to ward off liberalism." Dayton, The Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1987); and Dodrill, "Evangelicalism Examined . . . Again: Continuing the Debate between Donald Dayton and George Marsden," in The Continued Relevance of Wesleyan Theology: Essays in Honor of Laurence Wood, ed. Nathaniel Crawford (Eugene: Wifp and Stock, 2011), 84.
23.	David Stowe, No Sympathy For the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011) notes that the poly-generic style that defined the emergence of CCM in the 1980s was linked with the politicization of Christian music as part of the broader mobilization of evangelicals and social conservatives (246–248). And see José Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
24.	For more on southern gospel's shift within Christian entertainment from a "dominant" to a "residual" status, see Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 103–109.
25.	"Seeker" sensitive models of congregational development and worship emerged in the 1970s and 1980s as part of the so-called church-growth movement, an organized effort to expand church membership and participation beyond traditional populations. This movement was popular among (though not exclusive to) non-denominational evangelical megachurches. The Willow Creek megachurch, under the leadership of Bill Hybels, is the most prominent example of a seeker-sensitive church. These congregations structured worship, congregational culture, and church outreach to target "those who had never established a relationship with Christ and the Church, and those trying to reconnect" (Lester Ruth, "Lex Agendi, Lex Orandi: Toward an Understanding of Seeker Services as a New Kind of Liturgy," Worship 70, no. 5 [September, 1996]: 386–405). This model "avoided conventional church approaches, using . . . Sunday services to reach the unchurched through polished music, multimedia, and sermons referencing popular culture and other familiar themes. The church's leadership believed the approach would attract people searching for answers, bring them into a relationship with Christ, and then capitalize on their contagious fervor to evangelize others" (Matt Branaugh, "Willow Creek's 'Huge Shift,'" ChristianityToday.com, May 15, 2008, accessed May 15, 2014, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/june/5.13.html). Interestingly, Willow Creek leaders published a study conducted by the church in 2008 that indicated the seeker-sensitive model did not reliably lead to consistently reported levels of spiritual development or maturity among those who were attracted to the church by its seeker sensitivity (Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson, Reveal: Where Are You? [South Barrington, IL: Willow Creek Association, 2007]).
26.	These denominations were most frequently represented in original ethnographic research I have conducted into the contemporary culture of southern gospel. See Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 75–180.
27.	Here, I am borrowing an image first popularized by Ray Stevens in "Mississippi Squirrel Revival," on He Thinks He's Ray Stevens (Universal, 1987, MCAC-5517).
28.	Although CCM borrows heavily from mainstream secular music and performance styles, it does so to cultivate a canon of popular music that signifies Christianity's cultural relevance and the music's evangelistic savvy, while claiming a special status derived from CCM's pious commitments to conservative evangelical values and theological positions. This dynamic was captured in the 2014 Grammys. Nominated in the "Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music" category, CCM soloist Natalie Grant attended the ceremony, only to leave before the show ended. "I've many thoughts about the show tonight," she tweeted, "most of which are probably better left inside my head. But I'll say this: I've never been more honored to sing about Jesus and for Jesus. And I've never been more sure of the path I've chosen." Many fans and most observers interpreted her actions and words as a rebuke of a mass wedding of gay and straight couples performed during the broadcast. (Jennifer Jones, "Natalie Grant Responds after Leaving Grammys Early," Christianitytoday.com, January 29, 2014, accessed January 31, 2014, http://www.christiantoday.com/article/mass.wedding.at. 2014.grammys.criticized.as.political.stunt.to.push.gay.marriage.agenda.natalie.grant.responds.after.early.exit/35586.htm). While CCM is less fundamentalist than southern gospel, it participates in the long drift of conservative evangelicalism toward separating itself from the wider world of American life and culture.
29.	For a cogent analysis of how shape-note gospel from the South mediated cultural conflicts and status instabilities of white, southern farmers, see Gavin James Campbell, "'Old Can Be Used Instead of New': Shape Note Singing and the Crisis of Modernity in the South, 1880–1920," Journal of American Folklore 110, no. 436 (1997): 169–188.
30.	Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 67, 211. Molly Worthen has mapped contemporary evangelicalism's uneasy relationship with post-modernity and religious self concept. See Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford, 2013).
31.	Premillennial dispensationalism has been the dominant theological paradigm for fundamentalist evangelicals in the United States since the mid-nineteenth century. It emphasizes the unfolding of God's dealings with humanity in phases or eras ("dispensations"). Premillenialists espouse a literalist interpretation of scripture that foresees the imminent return of Christ to earth. Most fundamentalists and many conservative evangelicals believe this return will be presaged by certain historical events, including cataclysmic conflict between Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land, the rise of Anti-Christ, and the emergence of a one-world order. Christ's return coincides with the rapture of living Christians and the raising of the righteous dead to heaven. Following the rapture is Tribulation, a seven-year period during which Anti-Christ reigns on earth, Millennium (during which time Satan is bound), and ultimately the establishment and eternal reign of Christ's kingdom. See Robert K. Whalen, "Premillennialism," The Encyclopedia of Millennialism and Millennial Movements, ed. Richard A. Landes (New York: Routledge, 2000).
32.	For more on The Martins's biography, see the following section and note 41.
33.	This element of cultural separatism has reemerged in the past generation within southern gospel. In its resurgence, one hears from the gospel stage and in other acts of self-representation an intensification of emphasis on social resentment and cultural grievance. See Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 1–3.
34.	Goff's remains the most extensive and influential account of southern gospel's market decline. Researched in the 1990s and published in 2002, Close Harmony traces the music's development from the nineteenth century. However, in light of the subsequent collapse of most of the southern gospel industry not affiliated with the Homecoming Series, Close Harmony offers an overly optimistic view of southern gospel prospects in the twenty-first century (283–287).
35.	Examples of changes and shifts within professional southern gospel since 1990 include the disbanding of numerous groups as well as the retirements and deaths of many of the mid-twentieth century singers who anchored the genre's golden era. Recording companies experienced similar contractions.
36.	Sheldon Shafer, "National Quartet Convention Ending Long Run in Louisville," Louisville Courier-Journal.com, September 3, 2013, accessed October 1, 2013, http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20130903/SCENE04/309030069/.
37.	Douglas Harrison, "Slouching Toward Pigeon Forge." Averyfineline.com, September 24, 2012, accessed October 1, 2013, http://averyfineline.com/2012/09/24/slouching-toward-pigeon-forge/.
38.	Pamela Fox, Natural Acts: Gender, Race, and Rusticity in Country Music (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009), 7. For more on links between country and gospel, see Douglas Harrison, "Grace to Catch a Falling Soul: Country, Gospel, and Evangelical Populism in the Music of Dottie Rambo," in Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and the American Culture, edited by Roxanne Harde and Thomas Alan Holmes (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 77–96.
39.	Jennifer Lena, Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 2.
40.	Lower compositional sophistication, more uneven production quality, and rougher cuts by commercial standards—all defining features of the southern gospel sound of the past twenty years—can function for many evangelicals and fundamentalists as indices of a more real music and catalysts for a more authentic experience of the religious self.

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