Melting Pot Melting? Spring 1997

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lts Thursday evening. A dozen people sit comfortably in a suburban living room, coffee mugs settled, eyes closed, hands stretched, one of them quietly playing a guitar. "You are here," they sing, "and I behold your beauty; your glory fills this place." Across town the band revs up at the holiness church. Hands clap, voices shout. "Ain't nobody gonna take my place long as I'm alive to glorify his holy name!" It gets louder as it goes longer. The weekly charismatic Eucharist is underway at the downtown Episcopal church. A young priest in white robes has led the congregation through the liturgy. After a half-hour interlude of singing Scripture choruses and praise songs, the congregation receives Holy Communion. In a meditative space in the service, several people now offer prophetic words of encouragement to the congregation. In a hospital room a young woman looks up at the television. As a gospel quartet finishes a happy number, the

camera closes on a big-haired woman whose make-up runs down her cheeks.

"Oh, friend, Jesus loves you tonight. And some of you are being touched by the Lord right this very minute." Far from the city, forty people sit on hard pews in a Pentecostal church hidden in the trees off a two-lane road. After a powerful time of singing old hymns in un-air-conditioned Southern splendor, Brother Earl drips with sweat as he exhorts the faithful to love not the world. Several members of the congregation now lie on the worn carpet, slain by the Holy Ghost, laying their burdens down.

Black, white. High church, low church. Urban, rural. Calvinist, Arminian. Charismatic, all. In any way other than the great mystical bond we share as brothers and sisters in Christ, is there such an animal as "the charismatic worshiping ...

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