Thank you for understanding. I often fear posting to some sites (and do not) because of the lack of understanding my ideas provokes.

I myself tend to see religious cultural style quite as much in terms of class as race. Middle class white people like me only think of what Donna, in the comment above, called the “raw spirituality and emotion” in black services as “black” because we haven’t experienced it elsewhere. But there is plenty of it in Pentecostal churches of all ethnicities, and in the history of Methodism and all forms of revivalism in the white churches. The Shakers and Quakers were both named for the ecstatic physicality of their worship. The history of how all these denominations became more physically and emotionally restrained as their congregants became more middle class is fascinating.

Why physical and emotional restraint has historically gone with being middle class is a great topic for enquiry, and a good deal has been written on it. Neil Postman in “The Disappearance of Childhood” says it is related to the unnatural degree of bodily control and stillness that kids have to learn to become avid readers and highly educated, whether to be clerks or professionals. Barbara Ehrenreich in “Fear of Falling” points out that the modern middle classes have been trying to loosen up, through everything from rock music and pot to aerobics and sex manuals. I see the UUs’ desire for more spirituality, which has led them to integrate aspects of pagan and Buddhist practice into worship, and now to bring in more gospel music and so on, as related to that trend. Middle class emotional restraint just went too far by the 1950s and we have been trying to learn a better balance ever since.

My interpretation of the Reverend Pearson’s transformation, which he attributes to his “known” God,” may perhaps reflect his experience as a black man in a religious-dogma world who awakened to his inner spirit. Of course, I am not sure; what I do think is that as the community identifies with something called “the black church,” as if those who are of other religious” heritages, i.e., Episcopal, Presbyterian, etc., have no “black experience.” I wonder for the spiritual independence of my grandchildren. Will they be forced back into the limitations of dogma and style? Freedom of spirit from bodily limitations is healthy, but its integration into the Christian–any–religious tradition and culture may not be as freeing as it seems. When I look into the pre-Christian history of Europeans, they were very active–i.e.physically and emotionally. I also sing spirituals, just not gospel. My ha-penny.