Old School Preaching

I was surprised to see Jim Bakker back on TV, but I probably shouldn’t be. His PTL Club scam that he used to run always struck me as absurd, but lots of people supported it financially. God wanted a theme park and shopping mall just for Christians? Jim and Tammy Faye were ridiculous and all but parodies of themselves, but they had a huge following and were taken seriously by many people. They must have been meeting the needs of their followers somehow. Bakker's not much of a preacher, though.

When I lived in West Virginia, there was a local TV preacher on public access. His was a very low budget production, and his particular gift was the ability to lay on hands and heal folks with deviated septa. “I can breathe through both nostrils! Hallelujah!” I tried to catch his program whenever I could for the sheer audacity of it.

When I was a kid in the Bible Belt, there weren’t so many TV preachers. There were plenty of radio preachers. Also, quite a few preachers made a living by preaching in Revivals. They would pitch a circus tent or arrange to use a church and have services every night for a week. As there was not much other entertainment, there would be quite a turnout. There was a Revival going on somewhere all the time. These guys were very charismatic and specialized in arousing sensations and emotions that one could attribute to the working of the Holy Ghost. They also made you want to empty your wallet when the collection plate came around.

I sang in choir and was part of a small touring singing group through church. We were the official “Stay and See America in Georgia First Bicentennial Singing Group”, and we made appearances in churches and town squares and Revivals all over the southland. We performed in connection with a Revival preacher in two venues, and I was disillusioned when I realized that all the preacher’s poignant pauses, tears, and seemingly spontaneous eruptions of emotion were carefully choreographed and rehearsed. He may very well have been a complete charlatan, but he did give folks what they came to Revival meetings for.

The best Revivals were held by what we called the “Holiness” people. They believed that you were not saved until you were “baptized by the Holy Ghost” as well as with water. The baptism of the Holy Ghost was evidenced by “speaking in tongues” and wild emotional outbursts during church services. As near as I could tell, speakers in tongues were spouting gibberish while in an altered state of consciousness, but some Holiness people claimed to be able to interpret the statements of the speakers. Regular church services for Holiness people were pretty dramatic with the preacher shouting and chanting and trembling and congregants jumping around on the backs of pews, writhing on the floor, blabbering gibberish and quaking with spiritual ecstasy. So you can imagine what a Holiness Revival was like! The first time I went to a Holiness meeting was when I was 12 or so, and I was so frightened by the apparent madness of the congregation that I fled into the night and walked 5 miles home in the rain.

Working class churches, even of the non-Holiness variety, tended to be marked by more emotional displays and charismatic preaching. The believers required an emotional, visceral sense of the presence of God in their midst. It was as if they not only loved God, but were in love with Him. They had little chance to let their hair down outside of church and took advantage of the opportunity on Sundays.

Mainline churches did not tolerate outbursts among the congregants. The story goes that a Holiness fellow found himself in town on Sunday and stopped in to the First Baptist Church. During the sermon, he would loudly interject “Amen”, “Hallelujah”, “yes Lord”, and “Preach it, Brother” until one of the deacons asked him to be quiet. I’ve got the Holy Ghost!” explained the visitor. The Deacon replied, “Well, you didn’t get it here.”

I do appreciate good old fashioned preaching as a folk art form.