Bialecki - No Caller ID for the Soul

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BEYOND LOGOS: EXTENSIONS OF THE LANGUAGE IDEOLOGYPARADIGM IN THE STUDY OF GLOBAL CHRISTIANITY(-IES)

No Caller ID for the Soul:Demonization, Charisms, and the

Unstable Subject of ProtestantLanguage Ideology Jon BialeckiUniversity of California San Diego

AbstractThe ethnography of Christianity has only one area where a sort of Khuniannormal science has been achieved: Christian Language practices has beenagreed on as a topic of vital and sustained ethnographic interest, and is usual-ly understood analytically as being shaped by a referentially oriented, individ-uating Christian [or, at times, Protestant] Language Ideology. Relying on areview of the ethnographic literature regarding Christian Language use, and onan impromptu deliverance from demons observed during fieldwork with The

Vineyard, a Southern California originated but now world-wide ChurchPlanting movement, this article argues that such an understanding is not wrong, but only partially apprehends the relevant dynamics of language use.This piece posits that Christian language use can be understood by delineating two sharply contrasting, but both valued, forms of speechcentripetal and centrifugaleach of which has different implicit concerns about the impor-tance of self-identity and the sorts of boundaries that comprise the ethical subject. [Keywords: Anthropology of Christianity, Christian Language Ideology,Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity, Southern California.]

Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 84, No. 3, p. 679704, ISSN 0003-5491. 2011 by the Institute for EthnographicResearch (IFER) a part of the George Washington University. All rights reserved.


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Christian Language Ideologie(s)In the rapidly emerging Anthropology of Christianity (Bialecki, Haynes,Robbins 2008; Cannell 2005, 2006; Lampe 2010; Robbins 2003; Scott2005), it is fair to say that language use is the area where there has beenthe most productive work. This work has been surprisingly extensive, cov-ering not only historical material (Bauman 1990), but also addressinglocales both outside (Keane 1998, 2002, 2007; Robbins 2001) and within(Bielo 2008; Crapanzano 2000; Harding 1987, 2001; Malley 2004; Shoaps2002; Stromberg 1993) the current ideological metropole for ProtestantChristianity, the United States (see Brouwer, Gifford, and Rose 1996); thisconcern for language has addressed a surprisingly wide swath of registers,including the ephemeral voice (Engelke 2007), the world-making possibili-ties of print (Keller 2005), and the vexed activity of translation (Rafael1992). In truth, this is one instance within Christianity-centered ethnogra-phy in which one cannot claim that this emergent status has resulted ina merely preliminary sketch or a hazy program for further research; rather,this emerging discussion has resulted in what has effectively become aKhunian normal science within Christianity-centered ethnography

(Robbins n.d.); this normal science can be glossed as Christian LanguageIdeology. This ubiquitous and formulaic status might give us pause. Whileit is true that some account of the systemic regularities in the use and con-ception of language by Christian populations is necessitated by the factthat Christianity (particularly its Protestant instantiations) is notorious as areligion centered around speech, this emphasis on linguistic representa-tion as a mode of inaugurating and fixing religious experience could beseen as both overreaching and completist.

But again, we may be too quick here to err. While language may not bethe only phenomenon at work here (see Lurhmann 2004; Luhrmann,Nusbaum, and Thisted 2010), it may also be that Christian language is not asmonolithic an object as it may first appear to be. If we think systematicallyabout these various Christian language ideologies, we can see that while theyshare a family resemblance, there are also moments when they differ fromeach other in what appears to be a not entirely unmotivated manner.

Where these formulations of ethical language use differ is in how theyimagine the referential dimension of language functions. Take as an exam-ple Crapanzanos Serving the Word (2000), a discussion of (among other top-ics) the way in which the language ideology implicit in Biblical literalismfunctions for certain American Fundamentalists. For Crapanzano, literal-


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ism serves as a drag that constrains allegorical readings, in which imagina-tive frontiers are occluded, where the Bible is read in a decontextualized,imperative mode, where the social is denied in a nominalist turn, andwhere the rhetorical and ironic aspects of speech are obscured by the sub-stantive and referential. Despite their couching it in a moralistic ratherthan a psychological idiom, and also despite the Fundamentalist rejectionof individualism as an ideology, Crapanzanos informants are radicallyindividuated actors, with spoken agency limited to two sourcesthedivine (often through the form of providential planning, or occasionallyinspiration) or the self (even if that agency reaches its apotheosis in its con-tinuing self-erasure through faith in, and submission to, God).

Compare that with Hardings (2001) description of Jerry Falwells rheto-ric, which emphasizes figurative and allegorical language, and where theliteral Biblical narrative is constantly being re-imagined as Falwell (here,the name for a collective enterprise, and not a single speaker) deploysthese narratives in new, expansive, and transformative contexts. Here, therhetoric functions as a sort of processual unfolding that orientates the subject not towards his or her self, but outwards and beyond, towards Biblical

typological forms and historical and futurial events that are the true siteof meaning. It is not impossible to reconcile these two narratives;Crapanzanos interest is primarily in the hermeneutic practices of this pop-ulation, particularly its academic and professional elites, while Hardingdiscusses instead the work being done by a public figure to reorient andovercome Fundamentalist separatist impulses that had kept the religiousmovement from the political arena for much of the 20th century. Thesedetails aside, though, there is something jarring in the sharply contrasting

sense of the subjectivities entailed in each authors accounts of language Harding seems incredibly centrifugal in its expansiveness; while the other,Crapanzano, due to the limitation (and at times foreclosure) of certainaspects of language, appears to be centripetal (and perhaps, as presentedby that author, claustrophobic). And these are both describing populationsthat are at least overlapping, in as much as both serve up Jerry Falwell andhis Thomas Road Baptist Church as exemplars, even if each case exceedsmerely addressing Falwell, or even American Baptists.

Loose and impressionistic as these terms are, I argue, the words cen-trifugal and centripetal do sketch out two contrasting, yet prevalentthemes in accounts of Christian Language Ideology. The use of centrifugaland centripetal as metaphors emphasize the underlying identity of these


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two different approaches to language ideology, in as much as they areboth grounded in reflexive conceptions of what constitutes ethical andefficacious linguistic acts. These two terms also provide a way of speakingof the tendency to either highlight the outward origins of language, andof the exterior cardinal orientations that fix subjectivity, or to use meta-linguistic reflection to lock down languages polysemous nature, deny itsphysical substrate, highlight personal agency, and to repress the alteritypresent in any socially grounded communicative act.

An even more clear illustration of this can be found in contrasting twomodels of Christian language ideology that are drawn from separate pop-ulationsspecifically, Keanes model of the Protestant Semiotic Ideologythat he extracts from his work with Calvanist Sumbanese and SimonColemans documentation of how language functions for the Sweden-based Word of Life Prosperity Gospel movement. Keanes work traces outthe relationship in Protestantism between proper speech, agency, and theperson. While his work could be seen as part of a larger project to identi-fy the tensions inherent in the inevitability of the material substrate ofcommunication (Keane 1997, 2007), what concerns us here is his claim that

there is a deep-running tendency in Christianity in general, and inProtestantism in particular, to valorize a state of sincerity, accentuatingan isomorphism between externally directed speech and internal subjec-tivity. For Keane, this sincerity is predicated upon an assumption of interi-ority, and that because language is imagined as originating from within,both language and thought are depicted as being fully under the controlof the speaking subject (Keane 2006:317). According to Keane, thisencourages an ethic of linguistic spontaneity (even if the rhetorical

markers of this state of spontaneity are rehearsed and formulaic) andlocates proper agency and meaning as arising from the individuated speak-er, and not from larger external networks or material items (the latter inparticular being dismissed as fetishistic). The final turn in most discus-sions of Protestant Language Ideology is the argument that the religiousautonomous subject that is produced by this stance towards language isone that is closely related, either in genealogy or structure, to the confes-sional, agentive, self-fashioned subject of contemporary modern secularlanguage ideologies, and therefore, Protestant language ideology points tosome of the disavowed religious aspects of secular modernitys logicregarding concepts such as originality and the self (also see Asad 2003). Inits concern for a bounded and fixed subject, Keanes model appears to be


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more reminiscent of Crapanzanos Baptists than of Hardings Baptistsandhence could be catalogued as centripetal as well.

By way of comparison, in a reading of how ethical language functionsfor the Swedish World of Life church, Simon Coleman finds a differentlogic, where the borders of the self are much more porous, and where theconcept of speech acts as being rooted in the specificities of the individu-ated person does not have the same importance. In this system, the believ-ers spiritual prowess is a function of her ability to internalize exterior spir-itual words, which have value because of their exterior source, while thesubjects own agency is carried forth beyond the limits of the person by afurther circulation of both words and money that follows a person-extend-ing (and credit-building) logic of the Maussian Gift (Coleman 2004, 2006).According to Coleman, these words are prized not for their relationship toan interiorized self, but for the sense of materiality that Prosperity-Gospeladherents imbue them withparticularly when these words have an effecton their equally material bodies, shaking them in ecstatic paroxysms ordelivering divine healing. In its emphasis on the exteriority of the lan-guage that comprises itself, and on expansive circulation rather than fixed

identification, it could be imagined as more akin to Harding thanCrapanzano (see, e.g., Harding 1992)and, thus, centrifugal.

Of course, this opposition we have been crafting may be moreentwined than it appears. When thinking through these two models, it isstriking to note that the very spontaneity, originality, and inward sourceof language that Keane finds so vital in morally-valued Protestant speechappears to be the structural inversion of the exterior-originated, repeti-tious language thought to be spiritually and ethically efficacious by

Colemans neo-Pentecostals. One could say that this is due to denomina-tional and cultural specificities, exigencies arising from the social, cultur-al, and technological milieus in which these particular practices arefound; however, it is important to note that both of these religious modal-ities at least imagine themselves to be fundamentally not particular butuniversal. Whatever merit this claim to universality may hold, these twomodes of religious speech certainly can be said to be close to ubiquitous;traces of both religious language ideologies can be found in Christianitiesin widely diffuse locales, both in the global south as well as the globalnorth. We should also keep in mind that there is a tendency for adherentsof each of these language ideologies to take up the practices of theotherfor Evangelical churches to become infused with prosperity-like


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Charismatic practices, or for Charismatic churches to have the fires ofrevival slake, becoming inseparable from their Evangelical co-religionistsin linguistic practice. Finally, each author has moments in which they sug-gest that the language ideology that respectively identifies theirProtestant or neo-Pentecostal subjects seems to have traces of anotherlogic or set of values that runs counter to what has been presented astheir main animating impulse. Keane observes that the tendency to aban-don a prior set of external linguistic forms in order to achieve a state ofunmediated spontaneity always fails, instead bringing new external lin-guistic forms into being that have to be internalized by good Christiansubjects in a manner reminiscent of Colemans prosperity believers.Similarly, while Colemans Faith-Gospel adherents emphasize the exterior-ity and physicality of language, this language is always in furtherance ofan individuated self whose internal agency and desires, in the final analy-sis, always seems to be the determining factor.

Given their competing claims to centrality in the global ecumne andthe constant possibility of each ideology sliding into the other, these reli-gious language ideologies could be said to be chained to each other as

uncanny doublesuncanny in the Freudian sense of that which seems tohave been superseded, but yet insistently returns. This is especially truegiven the moral historical teleology that animates Keanes depiction oflanguage ideology, and the presumably eschatological teleology that onecan sometimes intimate traces of in Coleman. If there is any value to thisobservation as a generality, we might expect to see signs of this uncannydoubling inscribed in the practices of religious bodies that subscribe tothese language ideologies, moments where the centripetal and centrifu-

gal aspects of language and semiosis more broadly appear in parasiticrelationor even change into one another.

Demons and Charisms in the Living RoomSuch tensions are present in the Vineyard (the denomination that willstand at the center of this articles discussion from this point onward), anddeliverance from demons is one space in which these tensions are workedthrough. To illustrate this, Id like to briefly sketch out one particularinstance of demonic deliverance I observed during my fieldwork, andthen work back to the relationship that demonization, possession, and thecharisms have with the two models of what constitutes valued types of


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speech. My goal is to show how the act of being attacked by (and deliv-ered from) demons can be understood as a mode of dealing with a crisisin the Protestant Language Ideology that is rooted in the constant attemptto use an iterable, exterior set of tokens to create moments of meaningthat are purportedly particular, unique, internal, and personal to anautonomous bounded individual. This is not a monological explanation I acknowledge that in instances of possession-like phenomena, there isalso the possibility of political (Lewis 1966, 1971; Ong 1987, 1988), disso-ciative (Luhrmann 2007, Luhrmann, Nusbaum, and Thisted 2010), depth-psychology (Obeyesekere 1981), or phenomenological (see Csordas 1994)mechanisms that may also be in play. I merely wish to observe that in thiscase of deliverance from demons and other associated religious practices,one can sense an attempt to work through some of the antinomies inte-gral to the form. To trace out the logic of this argument, this article willanalyze instances of demonization, demonization-related discourse, anddiscourse and practices regarding some of the other supernatural gifts (orcharisms) as they were practiced on one mixed-ethnicity, middle-classVineyard church where I did part of my two and a half year dissertation

research on Charismatically-inclined Evangelicals in Southern California.In the end, this article will claim that while Protestant Language Ideology(in the sense used by Keane and others) has a role in the Vineyard, it ispracticed in such a way that it uses concepts of supernatural authorshipof individual speech acts to acknowledge what Bakhtin has called the dia-logic nature of discourse, the ex-centric form of centrifugal languagefound in Colemans work. In short, I argue, it is not a matter of choosingthe centrifugal or the centripetal aspects of language, but rather, seeing

how they are both present, valorized, and contained within each other.The Vineyard is a large church-planting movement, with over 600

churches within (and 400 churches outside of) the United States. Theimportance of the Vineyard, though, is as much in its influence as its size.The Vineyards informal culture and use of popular music has influencedtheologically conservative churches throughout America, resulting inwhat one author has referred to as the Californianization of AmericanEvangelicalism (Shibley 1996) and another author has called a secondreformation (Miller 1997). Its open conceit is to join together elements ofCharismatic and Evangelical Protestant religious practice into a form thatis sometimes referred to as Empowered Evangelicals (Nathan and Wilson1995). Most importantly for our discussion, the Vineyard promotes a par-


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ticular spirit-filled Charismatic religious practice as wellorientatedaround concepts of a divine and miraculous inbreaking power in the mostliteral sense of the term (see Bialecki 2009a, Luhrmann 2007, Luhrmannet al. 2010, Percy 1996). Because of its success in this endeavor, theVineyard has been described as one of the way-stations on [the] transna-tional rails that are responsible for the global propagation of neo-Charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity (Martin 2002:38). Despite (or per-haps because of) this interest in the supernatural, its members are oftenmore educated than those of other churches, and the energy and intelli-gence of this movement has made it a powerful force for the populariza-tion of an unmodern-seeming set of everyday supernatural practices,such as speaking in tongues, supernatural healing, and prophecy.

Notwithstanding their global scale and their Pentecostal practices, inmany ways the Vineyard remains true to the American Evangelical portionof their theological inheritanceparticularly when it comes to languagepractices. In both practice and in explicit metalinguistic statements, theVineyard has an ethic of toning down their spiritual speech, emphasiz-ing the colloquial over the religiously charged and avoiding what they see

as the excesses associated with classical American Pentecostal speech.Vineyard pastors, by and far, prefer to keep it real, playing down thebaroque emotional and highlighting spontaneity and sincerity as linguis-tic virtues even as they engage in such non-Evangelical practices as dis-pensing prophecy and casting out the demonic.

With the passing of John Wimber, the Vineyards Charismatic (in bothsenses of the word) founder, there has been much change in theVineyards denominational structure, and a sense that these earlier prac-

tices were no longer as central to the Vineyards mission as they once were(see Miller 2005). To a very real degree, common sermons and discussionsin more and more Vineyard churches are likely to be on such issues associal justice (see Bialecki 2009a , Elisha 2004) and proper economic prac-tice (Bialecki 2008) rather than on Charismatic spirituality, suggesting thatthe Weberian process of routinization of Charisma may well be under way.

Therefore, my ears pricked up considerably when we heard about theProphet.

I first heard about the prophets arrival in a home-based small group thatI had been regularly attending as part of my fieldworksmall groups beingchurch affiliated gatherings that often stand as a spot of intimacy and bond-ing for contemporary American Christians (see Wuthnow 1994a, 1994b; Bielo


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2004). The news about his impending visit was first broken to the smallgroup well before he arrived, and there had been weeks of expectationbefore the prophet came to town. But whatever the group had been expect-ing was certainly different from what ended up taking place. The prophetwasnt originally labeled as a prophet by the small group participants, andnor was it particularly clear exactly how and when he achieved that statuswithin the small group. He was first described by the married co-leaders ofthe group as someone who was gifted at hearing from God, a Vineyard-renowned individual with a particular blessing that they had first encoun-tered at a leadership retreat earlier that year. A high school educator by pro-fession, he shared his gifts on the side, driving up and down the state topresent seminars to churches. Impressed by him, they had requested that hecome to their small group, so that the 15 to 20 people who had been cyclingin and out of the once-a-week informal meeting over the past year wouldhave an opportunity to hear from God in a new way. The act of hearingfrom God had been a thematic touchstone of the small group for some timenowit had been one of the topics that the co-leaders, a late-20s profession-al couple newly arrived from the East Coast, had been turning to with great

frequency when not engaging in the other small group activities such assinging contemporary pop-rock tinged praise-songs, conducting prayer cir-cles, and hosting informal discussions and testimony. Hosted by an engineerwho supported the group by volunteering his large apartment that was justdriving distance from a major university and technology center in RanchoPalma Vista,2 the makeup of the individual members of the group was muchlike its host and its co-leaders: mostly young Caucasians and second genera-tion Asian-Americans in their twenties, well-educated (members include

engineers, lawyers, doctors, clinical psychologists, graduate students, speechpathologists, staff members from secular, international NGOs, and two pas-tors with Masters of Divinity who were engaged in campus ministry), oftenpolitically moderate or liberal, and, despite their Southern Californian resi-dency, as often from the East Coast and Midwest as from the West. They werea sociable group, not quite gossipy, but quick to talk (and to the co-leadersoccasional distress, quick to go off topic), and so, as the day approached, theinformal scuttle often turned from, say, the latest hip-hop CD or movie, orthe location of various sales, to the special upcoming event.

At some point, the word prophet became the way to identify thisupcoming guest. During interviews, invariably held in one coffee shop oranother, the small group members I met with would ask me about him; I


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had seen him teach a seminar during the previous spring, so during smallgroup meetings I was at times called by one of the leaders to give anaccount of his supernatural abilities, something that I did with a guiltyconscience, torn as I was between my anthropological skepticism on onehand, and my desire to support the small group leaders on the other.

Finally, after weeks of expectation, seven oclock in the evening of theday came. Parking across the street from a well-lit mini-mall, walkingthrough the heart of a generically Southern California Spanish-style con-dominium complex, I went up the stairs to see what would occur. TheProphet was sitting on the couch, and seeing him was a bit of shock. WhenI had first seen him giving the seminar in the auditorium of an elemen-tary school rented on weekends by a church, he was a flamboyant, ener-getic presence, darting across the basketball court floor with the wirelessmicrophone gripped tightly in his hand as he interrupted himself withanecdote after anecdote. Here, he was a more inert presence sitting glum-ly on a couch, a balding, goatee-wearing white man in his late-40s. Slowlythe members of the small group entered, as did several guests, drawn bythe unusual nature of the evening; over the course of roughly an hour, 20

people showed up.When all the chairs were filled in the living room, and people started

to sit on the floor, one of the co-leaders picked up the guitar, prayedcome holy spirit, and started playing plaintively, slowly, the songs thatwere familiar from Church services, worship music CDs, and downloadedMP3s. The Prophet covered his face with his hands as he started rockingback and forth, in time to the music. In the background, the rustling whis-per of the polite, sub-vocal speaking in tongues found in so many

Middle-Class white Vineyard Church events could be heard.3 After a while,the prophet joined in speaking in tongues with his eyes closed, though attimes he would open them, stop speaking in tongues, and check hiswatcha sign not of bad faith, but of nonchalance. As the singing wenton, people would drift from the lyrics, with women singing the counterharmonies, and one man rushing in improvisatory prayers, in a rhythmalmost akin to scat singing, in the gaps between the lyrics.

After a good 45 minutes or so of this, the Prophet started giving whathe styled a fireside chat (like, he said, the one given by Nixon on theprojection screen at the Richard Nixon library). All the taciturn worry hadnow been washed away, and he was his prior self from the time before,the rightful center of attention. He started his talk by speaking haltingly


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about the vitality of the Kingdom and about Justice, though he slidoff topic rather quickly, discussing instead how Gods power would flipyour little theology around. From this point forward, his talk was a mixedaccount of various instances of supposed spiritual warfare with bothDemons and Jehovahs Witnesses, attacks on Christians for being reli-gious, and heathens for being heathens, was only so well received. Herepeatedly made references to broad categories such as Westerners andSuburbanites who dont get the message, with the comparison made toAfrica, a place of what appeared to be real belief thathe frequentlymentionedhe had visited. Why do we hear so many stories of peoplebeing raised from the dead in Africa (after praying for them for four days)?Because they dont know any better, they havent been educated any bet-ter. A faux pas in front of a liberal audience, he quickly repackaged hisstatement as a claim that Africans, not being awash in a consumer culture,are not schooled in the sort of empiricisms that serves to precludebeliefsomething that afflicts Westerners in general, and him specifical-ly (as he confessed Im like that too; my brain is my worst enemy). Aswas usual for that evening, he rescued himself by going off on a tangent,

asking why are there so many civil wars in Africa? Because its a place ofSpiritual Warfare. Its a land where Christians stand next to people who goto witch doctors. He ended with another change in topic, saying that ifyou wish to reach the world through Evangelical outreach, go to theUniversity. One of the campus ministers hissed a loud yes at that minute,but, on the whole, the audience was looking uncertain, restive (later on,his talk would be charitably remembered by some of those present as theweakest portion of the evening).

What he announced next was ministry time, starting it off with thestatement that first we talked about the Kingdom, and now were going todemonstrate it. That, he clarified, does not mean that everything he sayswill be correctthe person who receives the prophecy is the measure ofwhether it is right, and the prophet is as likely to be wrong as he is to beright...except, of course, when he is right; when one prophetic revelationcomes in, like adjacent guitar strings, other revelations start to vibrate, andthe more likely he will be to receive messages that are true. After anotherbrief verbal waiver (the prophet doesnt predict death, marriages, andbabiesnot because he doesnt receive information on this front, butbecause of the disruption caused by passing these revelations along), heasked the group a comment that seems as much of a casual aside as a dra-


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matic presentationis anyone here named Sarah? There were ten sec-onds of anticipatory silence. No one in the room was named Sarah.

The Prophet smiled, and said he was relievedhe was worried thatthere would be someone named Sarah in the room, and that she wouldautomatically assume that the prophecy would be about her . No, this wasa message about a promise, a promise that had been made and that some-one has been waiting on, longing for, and is there anyone here sadbecause they have been waiting on a promise? Another ten-second wait,but slowly a blond college-aged student, an active and very charismatical-ly orientated member of the church (but not a regular to this small group)slowly raised his hand as he closed his eyes in angst. Starting to slowly sobto herself, a woman in the background who had complained in the pastabout her stalled career and her single status raised her hand as well.Unsteadily, the female co-leader said that she had a vision, of a geranium,or perhaps of a tropical flower, atop a snow capped mountain that lookslike Mount Fuji, but there was no responseall eyes were instead on theProphet as he prayed over the college student, his voice a mix of sing-songtongues and a whispered speaking voice as the college student cried. He

moved over to the single woman, his hands on her head as he told herthat, you are loved by God, as a woman, you are valuable to his eyes asa woman. Casting an eye over the rest of the audience, he issued them adirectiveyou know that the prophecy is for you if your first thought isthat the prophecy is for you, and your immediate second thought is thatit couldnt be you. I looked around and noticed that this one evening, Iwas not the only ethnographer...three other people were taking notes.

He worked his way around the room, dispensing prophecy. The prophet

told one man that he wasnt meant to have a McJob, and then that he want-ed to bless the mans hands because theyll write songs to the Lord. Theprophet then turned to the mans wife, asked if they were together, andafter hearing the answer told her that you arent just some accessory foryour husband, I see you taking in and teaching wayward and lost girls, thatyou have value apart from standing in your husbands shadow...that itsokay not to dust immediately, to let the dishes go undone for 20 min-utes... He walked away from her as she cried, ending the exchange withthe communication that God wanted her to be creative.

Eventually, he worked his way to a dark-skinned, dark-haired college-aged man named Justin 4 who was also not a regular member of the group. Justin sat there, worry and obvious consternation sketched on his face, as


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the Prophet walked up and held his hands. The Prophet got his name andhis occupation (a student at the nearby University) through a little banter,and after that brief introduction the Prophet told him that, The Lordwants you to know that He is real, and that Hes not the author of yourproblems, I declare the Cross that redeems, you have value to the father,the father knows everything that youre thinking that he still loves you...He threw out a phrase, that he used earlier in the eveningYou dontneed to call the psychic friends, you just need to call 1-800- Jesus. TheProphet told Justin that he was not wasting his time, that he was notstupid, that he didnt get to the University on some quota. Justin satthere, not particularly moved, but not any less visibly anxious for thatmatter, either. The Prophet asked whether he did computer art, but no, Justin muttered that he works in biology, to which the Prophet answeredthat the arts and the sciences are very close. Another small, uncomfort-able pause, and then the Prophet said to Justin, those hurtful things inyour family, God wants you to know that its not your fault. As if he hadbeen waiting for the moment, Justin started to cry. The Lord knows yourheart, the load of guilt we take it off now. Justin continued to cry as The

Prophet continued his work, saying that he senses girl problems, but Justin was off in another world, at first slouching forward on his plasticdining table chair, and then slowly sliding off it. Walking away to prayover someone else, he called out to Justin over his shoulder, Thats thehealing of the Holy Spirit, enjoy it!

Almost everyones attention continued to follow the Prophet as he wentalong his way, but to those that stayed with Justin, it soon became obviousthat he was in no way enjoying his then-present healed state. Finally falling

clear of the chair, Justin crashed to the floor, where he began coughing andmoaning. A friend of his, the blond student who earlier had been prayedover because he had been waiting on a promise, now prayed over Justin.From the back of the room, one of the college ministers joined him inprayer with a moving gentleness and concern; the college-pastors genuinecaring did nothing for Justins immediate condition, though. Interruptedfrom dispensing prophecy, the Prophet called out in a mildly annoyed toneof voice that all the blond student had to do was to break the familiar spir-it of death. The blond student brought his face right up against Justins ashe snapped his fingers repeatedly in front of Justins fluttering eyes, rapid-ly repeating a command for the spirit to leave in Jesus name. Justinsmoans became louder. Someone rushed a metal bowl from the kitchen as


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Justin started coughing into it with more force. Justin was by this pointbeing cradled like a Pieta, and another campus minister, a charismatic, gen-tle-voiced Korean-American college pastor, came up to assist. Justins facewas by then covered in phlegm and specks of blood, as he had split his lipsin all the intensity. His eyes were glassy and red. A paper towel wiped hisface clean, but it didnt stem the mess. The newer college pastor, holding Justins hand with an obvious tenderness, asked in a calming tone what Justin wanted, and Justin said that he wanted to kill myself. Nervous, Iasked one of the co-leaders whether we should consider taking him to ahospital, but she didnt reply (the next day she told me she would havetaken him to the emergency room if she felt that he was in danger at anytime, but since the attack seemed pretty clearly spiritual in nature shethought it was important to try to get to the root of what had been hap-pening for him personally). People gathered around Justin, encouraginghim to cough it out of himself, and some of the bystanders flinched fromthe moisture as Justin started to violently double over on the floor. Theprophet interrupted, saying as if in passing that the church had lost the sym-bolism of water, and then sprinkled a little over Justins head to no obvious

effect before walking away. As if to continue the theme, someone took aplastic Aquafina water bottle and poured some water down Justins throat,but the water didnt stay down. The more gentle-voiced minister squattedin front of Justin and, after a pause, continued to talk to him in the samesoothing voice he employed earlier, telling him that Jesus died for him, andthat it isnt a guilt thing, but that Justin has to make a decision to rejecthis sins as well as whatever had hold over him. Justin bellowed a No,which, smiling, the gentle-voiced pastor took as a rejection of whatever had

a hold on him up to now. Behind them, the female co-leader read, softly,from the Psalms. She passed a small plastic bottle of oil, and the gentle-voiced college-pastor anointed Justins forehead. By now, well over an hourhad passed; Justins eyes were less red, and heavier, as if he was about tofall asleep. He mumbled that he couldnt feel his legs, and the gentle-voicedpastor prayed for wholeness and feeling to return to the bodyas he didso, he touched each limp leg, which suddenly twitched with the contact. Justin was led stumbling to a sofa, where the prophet, busy the entire time,came up to him and said in a forced, chipper manner that it wasnt theworst deliverance Ive seen, though you did toss your cookies. As theevening wound down, people prayed in thanks over the prophet; and justpast two in the morning, everyone went home.


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Exterior and Interior LanguageThere are numerous ways in which the previous ethnographic momentcould be analyzed as a linguistic object, identifying how embodied alter-ity was marked, either in spoken code or in the ritual setting (Irvine 1982),or articulating the numerous shifting frames that were inhabited by thevarious actors that comprised the larger unfolding scene (Hanks 1996).Rather than pursue these threads, though, I will trace out the various con-ceptions of language present in each of the moments described in thesketch above. I will argue that if we follow the transformations the subjects undergo, we can see that the moments of demonization, deliver-ance, and charisms fall within the two approaches towards ethical lan-guage that we discussed earlier: centripetal and centrifugal.

Take as an example the prophet himself. To the extent that his state-ments have any authority at all, that authority is present to the degreethat he himself is not the author of whats uttered, but is merely convey-ing a message originated in another space (Urban 1989, Goffman 1981).We can see this in the language used to convey the origin of his prophet-ic statements; this is evident as well as in the way that he not only dis-

owned any intentionality of the delivered messages, but also disownedany insight into what they referenced (think, for example, of his fear thatthe name Sarah was intended to identify someone who bore that name).Further evidence is seen in the degree of disinterest, and heightened crit-ical scrutiny, given to his pre-prophetic fireside chat, (which wasunquestionably attributed to him by his audience), in comparison to hisprophetic performance later in the evening, which was found more com-pelling, despite its attribution to a different agent.

A similar decentering can be identified in the use of tongues, and inthe understanding of tongues as a speech act. Tongues is often a goodmetric for the level of charismatic activity that is taking place, and wasrelatively pronounced on the night the prophet came to town. WebbKeane has suggested that tongues are best understood as another productof the regnant Protestant Language Ideology; for him, tongues are a com-municative act where the drive for spontaneity and independence fromthe outwardly determined social and material grounds of language reach-es its natural conclusion. Indeed, Keane sees this as a limit case, as anexemplar of an entirely transcendent practice that, despite being drivenby a purifying urge to root out contingent and non-ideational contami-nants, still falls prey to the material and social conditions that enable


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semiosis (Keane 2002:84, 2007:190). However, what is striking abouttongues both in practice and in conception within the Vineyard is notphysicality and alterity as limits, but instead as that what is foreground-ed. In the Vineyard church where I spent the majority of my time, tongueswere described as a love language between the worshipper and God.Despite the fact that this seems to suggest a level of intimacy and privacyresonant with both a liberal conception of self and Keanes conception ofProtestant Language Ideology, the particularities of how this love-lan-guage is thought to function works against these conceptions. As is implic-it in the word of charism, one receives tongues from God, and any senseof volition or control on the part of the subject places the validity of theact into questionI have heard informants wonder when presenting theirbiography whether in certain moments in their youth they were actuallyspeaking in tongues, or if it was simply their own desire that had triggeredan unconsciously-crafted simulacra of tongues. Further, this love lan-guage is one that is not transparent to themdespite it being a sign ofintimacy, the glossolalist is usually unaware of what the referents of hisor her own speech are. This lack of transparency in, and access to, the

meaning of ones own exterior-derived love language is highlighted bythe existence of a separate charismatic gift, that of interpretation oftongues; this gift is usually displayed in a large setting, such as a worshipservice, when, on the heels of a particularly loud or clear glossolaliacevent, someone gives a translation of its message, which is usually wor-shipful or prophetic in nature, and hence articulated as a message fromGod to the body of worshippers as a whole (Csordas 1997). This last possi-bility should give pause, for it suggests that at one moment one can be

speaking to God in a language not under ones own control or comprehen-sionin a language received from Godand the contents of that speechact are a message that is translated as being from God to others, some-thing that seems to weigh as much on the side of being decentered as itdoes on the side of immediacy, sincerity, and self-presence. 5

The materiality of tongues in a sense is also something that cannot beignored, both in its sonic and embodied aspects. First, there is the registerof voice, because it is here that the material nature of tongues comes tothe fore; in a way, absent any clear lexical markers, and with any interpre-tation either at a temporal remove, or absent entirely, there is nothing but the grain of the voice present (Barthes 1991)it is all surplus, and extra-linguistic charge (cf. Dolar 2006). Second, tongues are well-choreographed


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events. The performance of speaking in tongues is mapped on to sets ofstock-poses in ways that draw attention to the body, especially since thereis no other point of referent beyond the sonic force of glossolalia itself thatthe message can be linked towithout any immediate referent, due to thefact that this is a language beyond deciphering, one can only followtongues not out to a set message, but back to the material flesh.

To distill this discussion to a single point, despite the Vineyards pref-erence for the laconic and colloquial in speech patternsa preferencethat seemed to have deeply marked the speech of the prophetevenwhen he was making supernaturally outr claims, it seems difficult to rec-ognize in these charismatic phenomena the ideals of authority and origi-nation that we have received from Keane, but these phenomena are muchmore amenable to being thought of as an exemplar of the fundamentallyopen and physically foregrounded self that Coleman describes.

At the same time, however, if we take the demonized state to indicatewhat is, literally, unclean as far as language and self goesand there is nodoubt that demonization is an inversion of the ethically proper mode ofbeing (Csordas 1994)we are presented with what appears to be the same

constellation of forces present in the charismatic gift (exterior influenceand corporeal physicality) only given an entirely negative valence. TheVineyard, following the larger contemporary American Charismaticdemonology, sees the relationship between the demonizing entity and thesufferer not as an overwriting or replacement of the victims agency, but asa warping of it, a subtle shifting of the selfs desire by a non-self entity(Bialecki 2011). This decentering is seen not only in the proximate super-natural cause, but also in the fact that the psychic and emotional wounds

viewed as laying the groundwork for demonization often point to socialand interpersonal factors, such as familial involvement with the occult orabusive family relations. Demonization can even be the result of a viola-tion of a person, with the arc of demonic affliction passing from violatorto the violated. As stated by the Vineyards effective founder, people whohave been sinned against sexually usually have serious demonic problems.Seventy percent of all children of alcoholics become alcoholics; I believein many instances demonic influence contributes to their problem(Wimber and Springer 1987:119). This link between trauma and demoniza-tion is so strong that, during the small group meeting that occurred imme-diately after the one the prophet visited, one group members discussionof the demonization incident transitioned, without any external markers,


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from being a meditation regarding the awesome nature of the supernatu-ral manifestations that had been seen, to the new topic of human relation-ships. In particular, this person stated that she was really affected by thethoughts that human beings had inflicted that kind of hurt on Justin,that Justin was tormented as a result of others relational malfunction.It is equally telling that for her, the aftermath of viewing an instance ofdemonization was not a renewed vigilance towards the supernatural, butinstead, a heightened concern of quotidian interactions. She then conclud-ed with the observation that one of the biggest things that we can do asChristians is to concentrate on healing broken relationships. Like prophe-cy and tongues, then, demonization invokes the larger social network,rather than highlighting the individual agency (in this case, of the afflict-ed); and yet at the same time, it does so in a way that at once weakens, yetreturns us to, issues of agency and responsibility.

Finally, the impromptu ritual of deliverance itself seems to foregroundthe decentered, the conventional, and the material. This can be seen inthe multiple anointings Justin received during the deliverance, but also inthe bowl (and the effluvia that it was intended to contain) that was

brought out during the evening. In the Vineyard (as in many otherCharismatic movements, as well as in non-Christian theories of possession[see, e.g., Boddy 1989]), there is a sense that the demonic presence has acrypto-physical aspect, with coughing or vomiting often taken as a signthat the demon has either exited, or is working its way out. Even some ofthe language used to control the demon has a mechanistic qualitythestaccato recitation of the order to depart in Jesus name, rapidly repeat-ed and paired with the repetitive punctuation of snapped fingers, seems

to stress the magical aspect of language in its reliance upon the power ofthat name; it also implied a conception of repeated invocations of thatname bringing an effectiveness that seems divorced from any semanticmeaning attached to it, to the degree that these later iterations did noth-ing further to clarify whatever underlying message that might be con-tained in the phrasethe concept of in Jesus name was as clear thefirst time as it was in its final utterance, if not clearer.

So far, this analysis could be taken as a claim that in this particularinstance, Colemans reading is simply a better fit than Keanesanothercase of different village, different custom. But this stance would ignorethe fact that the language used both in the background and the center ofthe possession account above is consonant with the type of language val-


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ued in Keanes formulation. As stated before, the Vineyard does valueinformal patterns of speech, even when engaging in activities that are notof an everyday nature. To these Southern California natives, the speechpatterns associated with traditional Pentecostalism suggests a theatricali-ty, and ultimately a lack of sincerity, that cannot be accepted. As one pas-tor from another Vineyard church asked me rhetorically during a conver-sation, do Pentecostal preachers speak like that when they are orderingfood in a restaurant? Further, Vineyard language is free of the formalityassociated with other forms of ritualized High Church Protestantism first names over last, and nicknames over titles was the order of the day.While this dislike of artifice and honorifics did not reach, say, the limitpoint found in later Quaker practice (Bauman 1990), in its disinclinationto bend backwards to highlight formalistic social markers in language sug-gests a self that exists apart from position and communal regard.

The situation is complicated further when we observe that, in the deliv-erance itself, the method that successfully propels the demonized individ-ual from one state to another is an exercise of will, expressed as a literalcry from the soul, that is, Justins somewhat inarticulate, but affect-laden,

decision, which seems to be a reiteration of the prototypical act ofaccepting Jesus as savior. This act is easy to read as sincere, made mean-ingful only because it was understood to be an exercise of his personalagency, all traits reminiscent of Keanes Protestant Semiotic Ideology. Toview this charismatic scene as simply one about language where authorand animator are non-identical would be to miss these vital elements.

Further, we should note that in this instanceas it appears to be inother instances that Ive observed and accounts that Ive heardit was

the proximity of Charismatic activity (prophecy, healing, and tongues), ofoutward-originated supernatural language and meaning that runsthrough the body, that triggered the negative form of permeable, ex-cen-tric being. It was the claim to (and, apparently, the exercise of) authorita-tive language regarding Justin from a source other than Justin, someoneelse being able to speak Justins truth to Justin, that is, which triggered thecrisis that allowed both Justin and his fellow believers to see traces ofother authorities in Justins own actions. 6 Charismatic activity, by high-lighting the way in which the human-divine dyad can be seen as an imma-nent enveloping exteriority rather than as interior adherence to a tran-scendent other, raises the possibility of other forms of alterity within theself, which must be undone by regathering the self through an affirmative


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act of recommitment, highlighting and salvaging agency by using it torefute Satan, and then by putting it in abeyance before God.

In closing, Id like to suggest that these differing ways of depicting lan-guages source and power are variants of one another, that each of theseapproaches to langauge use are in some ways the answer to a crisis. As wesaw in the discussion relating demonic crises to the proximity of the gifts,centrifugal ideologies, that is, Charismatic models of language that high-light exterior authority and origination for language and ideational mate-rial, be that source human or supernatural, suffer from what we may calla chain of evidence problem; having come from distant horizons, and oftfrom invisible beings (Keane 1997), there can be no immediate suretyabout the proper provenance of the message. As one of my informantssaid, there is no caller ID for the soul, no way to determine at the verymoment of reception whether vision or language originates from God, theDevil, or the fleshhence, the importance of discernment as a Charismaticpractice. Therefore, it is no surprise that in moments where the exteriori-ty of language is highlighted by stressing its origin in alterity, such as wehave with prophecy, anxieties about the origin of speechand hence, in a

way, of the subject s proper capacity to act (Ahearn 2001)should come tothe fore. Likewise, those whose selves have already been reconstituted onthe model of sincerity, interiority and agency are just as vulnerable to slip-ping into the sort of open ways of being that marked both the charisms anddemonization. Given what we have observed, that acts of what is under-stood as sincere speech are predicated on socially typified and thus to anextent rehearsed and formulaic ways of speech, it is easy to see howthese ritualized ways of constituting spontaneous selves could slip into a

concern with possible non-self sources of language and authority.Deliverance, I suggest, functions as a way to separate and regulate thesediffering, co-present stances towards authority and agency in language.

This is not, of course, to suggest either that Keane, in particular, or theidea of a semiotic ideology is deficient. As stated above, Keanes concep-tion of purification necessitates impure internal objects upon whichthis drive for semiotic perfection can work, and this drive will always bethwarted in the final analysis due to the necessity for both social recogni-tion and a material substrate. This is simply to note that these impure ele-ments may have their own uses in a religious and representational econ-omyand receive their own sanction as ethically proper communicativeacts because of it. Nor is this use of a model of complimentary ways of


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framing speech, and crisis as a performative mode of shifting betweenthem, to deny the historical contingency of these forms.

Finally, what does this mean for the question that animates this specialissue, namely the beyond of Christian language ideology?7 If nothingelse, it suggests that in a perverse way, in certain moments Christian lan-guage ideology is its own beyondor that apparently different strains ofChristian language ideologies not only can be seen as in some ways beingvariants of each other, but can be observed as being agonistically relatedin the manner in which they are acted out as well. Rather than only look-ing to a non- or pre- Christian exterior, then, to see what ChristianLanguage Ideology is set against, one may wish to turn to the heteroge-neous nature of Christian speech itself. Therefore, we should not be sur-prised when we see contradictory formulations of ethical language, oreven of human agency in the abstract; in other words, Harding andCrapanzano may have been describing the same population after all.Further, it suggests that the way forward in the Anthropology ofChristianity may be to turn to these disjunctures as having causal forceand explanatory power themselves (see, e.g., Elisha 2008). Finally, we

should not be too surprised when we come across similar disjunctures inpurportedly secular arenas that are, none-the-less, influenced by theProtestant traditiona group among which, as Keane reminds us, wemust number ourselves.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In addition to my Vineyard friends and interlocutors who made this paper possible inthe first instance, I would like to thank Joel Robbins, Naomi Haynes, Nicole Peterson,Ryan Schram, and Eric Hoenes del Pinal, as well as two anonymous reviewers from Anthropological Quarterly for their comments or thoughts regarding this paper.

ENDNOTES1Evangelical is used here not to denote the larger Evangelical/Pentecostal political alliancethat was formed by theologically conservative Christians to break with Fundamentalismand challenge mainline Protestantisms supremacy after World War II (see Hart 2004,

Marsden 1987, Stone 1997); rather, it is used to identify the practices associated with theclassic American Evangelical denominations, which, at least before the Charismatic move-ment, strongly rejected Pentecostal-style religious activity.2Rancho Palma Vista is the pseudonym I have given to the Southern California geo-graphical vicinity in which this church is located


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3On the domestication of charismatic gifts by American bourgeois sensibilities, see Csordas1994.4A pseudonym.5Also see Agamben 1999:114-115; Csordas 1994. While I had seen it at other Vineyards,during my time at this particular Vineyard church I never saw a moment of interpret-ed tongues (when such speech acts did appear, glossolalia usually took the form dis-played in the possession narrative given above), but the core members of the church(that is, leadership and particularly committed members) whom I spoke to about thiswere familiar with interpretation as a practice (and one person who had never seen itasked for a full account, his imagination obviously caught).The lack of public interpretation at this church is most likely a result of a general nerv-ousness about tongueschurch members did not openly pray in tongues at full volumeduring Sunday morning church services, and a few members claimed that they had neverheard tongues (despite the fact that I had seen them present at events where people had

spoken in tongues). During one sea-side baptism at this church, the pastor felt it was vitalto immediately give an explanation of tongues after some one spoke in itsaying that itwas just another way of worshipping to the Lord. To the degree that tongues has to begiven a gloss at an adult baptismal rite should suggest how much under wraps they were.The seeming unseemliness of tongues, at once a love language and yet something to beheld at a distance, suggests something about the kind of instability present in languageideology. Specifically, it points to the presence, as argued here, of incommensurable andyet unmarked and co-present models of ethical language.6Again, this is not to exclude of course other catalyzing mechanisms, such as a trance-like absorption, that might have been fostered by the atmospheric praise music andmurmured prayers of the prophecy session.7This argument, it should be noted, is not a contribution to the wider and pre-existingfield of language ideology. The observation that there are co-present, conflicting,incomplete and even complementary language ideologies, or that these language ide-ologies work an erasure on non-privileged aspects of language, dates back to thefounding moments of language ideology as an analytic frame (see Gal 1998).

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