Fire from Heaven-African American Religious and Musical Trends and Traditions --a Book Review Essay

Fire from Heaven - African American Religious and Musical Trends and Traditions - A Book Review Essay Crawley, Ashon T. Black Pentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017. 320 pp., notes and index; ISBN: 978-0-8232-7455-0.Miller, Monica R. and Anthony B. Pinn (eds). The Hip Hop and Religion Reader. New York: Routledge, 2015. 454 pp., index; ISBN: 978-0-415-74101-9.The two books under review here provide readers with a fascinating look at African American religion and hip hop from a historical, contemporary, and global perspective. Written by wellknown scholars of African American religion and culture studies, these volumes are embedded in two very important major fields of inquiry in the area of Black/Africana Studies- religion and music. Until now, the fields of African American religion and African American music have lacked the creation of coherent and relevant books that highlight and examine the intersections of hip hop, religion, and theology. Moving beyond traditional and institutional notions of religion, these books grapple with an assortment of ideas and concepts that most scholars within these fields regularly discard. But, the scholars of these volumes traverse a variety of subjects that helps us understand the intertwining of African American religion and music today with much more precision and clarity.In Black Pentecostal Breath: The Aesthetics of Possibility, Ashon T. Crawley, an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, presents an intriguing, sophisticated, and somewhat controversial study on the history, development, cultural activities, and spiritual manifestations of the strand of modern Black Pentecostalism that emerged in 1906 from Los Angeles, California. Specifically, Crawley examines the concept of "blackness" as well as the "fleshly practices and performances" of Black Pentecostalism that has a creative space and a very flexible aesthetic for individuals to become highly imaginative in their expression of faith and survival (p. 26). Also crucial is the author's claim that the religious practices of Black Pentecostalism, such as "whooping, shouting, noisemaking, and tongues speech" are so distinctive in this denomination of African American religion that it allows for nontraditional and unorthodoxy activities to exist and thrive for persons of African descent in the United States who are under consistent assault be the larger society (p. 30).In comparison, Monica R. Miller, an Assistant Professor of Religion and Africana Studies, as well as the Director of the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Lehigh University, and Anthony B. Pinn, the Agnes Cullen Arnold Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, explores the interconnectedness of religion and hip hop based upon a cadre of religious topics and geographic locations during the past thirty-five years. In general, the editors' volume rest on the notion that religion and hip hop studies has "reached a point where reflection on its content, attentions, and scope is necessary" (p. 5). Furthermore, Miller and Pinn concludes that their volume examines two powerful and distinctive disciplines that foster "an alternative form of religiosity" (p. 5).In his somewhat jargon-laced book Black Pentecostal Breath, Crawley employs a rather complex methodology and writing-style to examine the resistance and empowerment of the Black American experience in the United States, especially during the time of enslavement. Specifically, in chapter one, the author uses the act of heavy and short breathing (or whooping) within the Black Pentecostal church movement, through the sermons of three little-known African American women preachers, as a metaphor to demonstrate the power and spirit of resistance and perseverance that persons of African descent used almost daily against the racially-charged and harshly violent world around them. …