Black Theology in The Books Store

The author began ministry in his teens and was pastoring by his early twenties. He speaks frankly about his and other ministers' odysseys from sincere, well intentioned prodigies to cynical, sinful, showman.

He soon discovered that things in the church were not as they seemed. In this ground-breaking book, he describes a secular and often profane ministerial community that is often shrouded in pseudo holiness.

He exposes the thoughts and motivations of both ministers and congregations and their degenerate power struggles which often turn violent.

Glenn Hinson focuses on a single gospel program and offers a major contribution to our understanding not just of gospel but of the nature of religious experience.

A key feature of African American performance is the layering of performative voices and the constant shifting of performative focus. To capture this layering, Hinson demonstrates how all the parts of the gospel program work together to shape a single whole, joining speech and song, performer and audience, testimony, prayer, preaching, and singing into a seamless and multifaceted service of worship. Personal stories ground the discussion at every turn, while experiential testimony fuels the unfolding arguments. Fire in My Bones is an original exploration of experience and belief in a community of African American Christians, but it is also an exploration of African American aesthetics, the study of belief, and the ethnographic enterprise.