Abstract:
This piece is excerpted from the second chapter of my dissertation entitled
Power and the Spirit: Methodological Studies in a Black Apostolic Church. At the
beginning of this primarily historical chapter I offer a fairly straightforward social
history following the standard accounts of the development of Black
Pentecostalism in the United States at the turn of the 20
th
century. I then provide a
different reading and writing of those past events, which is the excerpt below. Here
I perform a “genealogical” rendering of some of the events offered by standard
historical accounts, cross-cutting them with other sociological happenings from the
period, in order to conjure an alternative way of remembering the initial
appearances of the Holy Ghost in the New World. This work provides some
thoughts on the working of a genealogical methodology for sociologists. In
addition it provocatively demonstrates how such a methodology can rigorously
construct a counter memory of what may have been previously repressed by more
standard accounts. Finally this genealogical piece recounts a series of events
occurring roughly 100 years ago, a relevant act of remembering as American
sociologists gather at their centennial annual meeting to account for the rising and
declining significance of their discipline.
Convention