Reciprocal Ethnography and the Power of Women's Narratives

Elaine J. Lawless

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780253042996
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Folklore & Mythology
• Index: Social Sciences

Folklorist Elaine J. Lawless has devoted her career to ethnographic research with underserved groups in the American Midwest, including charismatic Pentecostals, clergywomen, victims of domestic violence, and displaced African Americans. She has consistently focused her research on women's speech in these contexts and has developed a new approach to ethnographic research which she calls "reciprocal ethnography, " while growing a detailed corpus of work on women's narrative style and expressive speech. Reciprocal ethnography is a feminist and collaborative ethnographic approach that Lawless developed as a challenge to the reflexive turn in anthropological fieldwork and research in the 1970s, which was often male-centric, ignoring the contributions by and study of women's culture. Collected here for the first time are Lawless's key articles on the topics of reciprocal ethnography and women's narrative which influenced not only folklore, but also the allied fields of anthropology, sociology, performance studies, and women's and gender studies. Lawless's methods and research continue to be critically relevant in today's global struggle for gender equality.

1

SHOUTING FOR THE LORD

The Power of Women’s Speech in the Pentecostal Religious Service

PENTECOSTALS IN SOUTHERN INDIANA ARE QUICK TO ASSERT that theirs is a religion of equality; all members, male and female, are equal in the sight of God, and all may participate in the ecstatic behaviors that have become the trademark of this charismatic religion.¹ In fact, if anything, the newcomer to a Pentecostal religious service would report that women dominate the services: they are there in greater numbers; they sing more; they march and dance around the church with tambourines more than men do; they are more likely the ones to go into a trance, jerk, fall down, and speak in tongues; and it is they who more often go forward to the altar area for special healing. For all of this, male authority and control in a Pentecostal church must not be confused with female spiritual power. Although women can be preachers in this faith, at least in name, they are rarely pastors. Men maintain the position of authority in this religion that is based squarely on a biblical hierarchy that places women below men. The traditional sex-linked roles in this religious community dictate behavior models and support only those performances that maintain and perpetuate the status quo. By recognizing this fact, it is possible to understand the differences in the artistic verbal performances of Pentecostal men and women.

This study of women’s speech in the Pentecostal religious service supports I. M. Lewis’s contention that ecstatic religion is most attractive to those segments of society that are politically impotent, providing them a means for expression and group identity (Lewis 1971, 32). Denying any innate tendency toward hysteria in women, Lewis correlates the “peripherality of women” in most, if not all, social systems with female possession tendencies: “It is in terms of the exclusion of women from full participation in social and political affairs and their final subjection to men that we should seek to understand their marked prominence in peripheral possession” (1971, 88). Attraction to trance and possession experiences provides a means for establishing cohesion for disjointed groups, according to Lewis, who sees such experiences as “thinly disguised protest movements directed against the dominant sex. Thus, they play a significant part in the sex-war in traditional societies and cultures where women lack more obvious and direct means for forwarding their aims” (1971, 31). The testimony performances of Pentecostal women illustrate the artful manipulation of performance rules, delivering to the performers and their audience of other women a moment of respite from the domination by the male members of their religious community.

This study is based on fieldwork done with one white, rural Pentecostal church in southern Indiana. Although this church can be recognized as representative of the rural Pentecostal churches in this area, study of religious performance is enhanced by concentration on one church community. At Johnson’s Creek Church, as at other rural Pentecostal churches, women are active participants in the services. They are encouraged to sing loudly, bring special prayer requests to the pastor, testify, sing “specials,” listen to the preacher, “let God have his way” in ecstatic release, and come to the altar for salvation and healing. The entire focus of a service is on the anticipation of the moment(s) when the women are released from their rather formal daily poses and begin to respond to the ecstatic nature of the service and the admonitions of their male leaders. Charismatic religious behavior is seen as evidence of God’s presence in the room. Women sing; women pray; women testify; women even preach. However, for all this activity, women manipulate the creative force of their verbal art most obviously in the performances of their testimonies. This can be illustrated by first examining the way Pentecostal women preach and by contrasting their style of preaching with their style of testifying. Although women are allowed to preach, they are not allowed to preach “like men”; it is only in the performance of their testimonies that they are permitted the freedom to perform such that they have potential for control of the services.

Pentecostalism permits both women and men to become preachers. Women can, in fact, become licensed preachers. One female Pentecostal showed me her “card” proving she was a licensed preacher in the United Apostolic Church of Jesus Christ, Inc. She explained her role as preacher in this way: “I can just do anything my husband can do. Now, there are some organizations that don’t believe in women ministers. Some won’t ordain them, won’t give them licenses. But I get my turn too. I haven’t been put down (asked to preach) on a regular basis yet, but they’ve been wanting me to preach a revival” (Connie S., May 21, 1980, her home, Stinesville, Indiana, interviewed by Elizabeth Peterson and E. Lawless). About her style of preaching, she said, “Of course, women, I don’t preach like my husband. Everybody has their own style. I would say I preach a lot simpler than my husband does. My husband is just, I’ll have to admit it, he’s deeper than I am. Now, that’s just my style, I mean, I’m just simple. As far as being educated in order to use big words and things like that, now, my husband can do that” (Connie S. 1980).

Some of the conflicts surrounding the reality of how women preach are revealed by what this woman says. Even though she has been licensed, she has not been given a regular position for preaching in the church. Furthermore, she is quick to pay deference to her husband as the better preacher and to limit her own capabilities. This woman’s statements, as well as subsequent statements by her husband about her, support Robin Lakoff’s observation that “we can learn about the way women view themselves and everyone’s assumptions about the nature and role of women from the use of language in our culture, that is to say, the language used by and about women” (Lakoff 1975, 1). The issue of women preachers in the Pentecostal religion is certainly reflective of the cultural expectatio...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Learning to Listen, Hear, and Include Women’s Voices: The Genesis of Reciprocal Ethnography
• 1. Shouting for the Lord: The Power of Women’s Speech in the Pentecostal Religious Service
• 2. Rescripting Their Lives and Narratives: Spiritual Life Stories of Pentecostal Women Preachers
• 3. Access to the Pulpit: Reproductive Images and Maternal Strategies of the Pentecostal Female Pastor
• 4. “I Was Afraid Someone Like You . . . an Outsider . . . Would Misunderstand”: Negotiating Interpretive Differences between Ethnographers and Subjects
• 5. Women’s Life Stories and Reciprocal Ethnography as Feminist and Emergent
• 6. Writing the Body in the Pulpit: Female-Sexed Texts
• 7. Woman as Abject: Resisting Cultural and Religious Myths That Condone Violence against Women
• Appendix: Selected Publications by Elaine J. Lawless
• Index
• About the Author