A BETTER BLEND

R. G. Robins writes in his introduction to his book Pentecostalism in America "I struggle into an uptown high church and watch milquetoast frissons ripple through the congregants as their choir downshifts into some honkified spiritual, and I think back to Brother Elmer shouting like a turbo-charge whirling dervish and Sister Trixie, head snapping like a whip, unleashing a staccato stream of other tongues while Sister Vivien torched the piano and Brother Cooper, on the nights he wasn't backslidden, flayed the drums and while my own preacher-man daddy split nifty rifts off his Gretch Signature guitar, with Sister Shirley all the while belting out the gospel blues like some soulful Holy Ghost Loretta Lynn, ..."

What he makes me remember is just how little emotion there is in the average Protestant worship services that I am familiar with. The Presbyterian have been called the "Frozen Chosen" and Robins' description of his Pentecostal worship service gives me a pretty good idea of how far apart the two traditions really are. I could not get our choir director even to use a high school church member who was a great drummer to come in and add a beat to all our hymns.

The human being is a combination of body, mind, soul, heart, spirit, and passion. All of us enjoy different combinations of those elements. It would seem to me that the tradition I had needs a lot more passion and emotions in it and the Pentecostal tradition could benefit from a little more mind. Robins does write that the Pentecostal history is marked by divisions and conflicts over doctrinal and theological positions which suggests the expressions of the holy in words (the mind) matter to them as well.

But it is sad that we could not let it rip once in a while, feel a little passion and emotion in our response to the amazing mystery of life and the gratitude we have for all that we have that we don't deserve. Damn, life can be so good. Damn, life can be so horrendous. We ought to feel it as well as think it. That would be a better blend.