The saints of the African American sanctified community say that the soul is the domain not of body or mind, but of spirit. And when the Spirit touches spirit, the soul rejoices in an epiphany of truth and knowledge.

Speaking of soul, Spirit, and experience draws discourse into a realm rarely explored by ethnographic inquiry. Ethnography has traditionally avoided encounter with the subjective realm of experience -- not just supernatural experience, but experience in general. In Fire in My Bones, Glenn Hinson focuses on a single gospel program and offers a major contribution to our...