Congregants, she felt, treated the singing and music as entertainment, rather than as a participatory experience. These attendees' feelings were consistent with what other African Americans expressed about the worship services at Crosstown. This suggests that African-American and white attendees were working with two different sets of cultural norms and expectations for what worship ought to look like, in this case, what constituted upbeat worship. For whites, worship at Crosstown was upbeat, but for African Americans, that was far from true. Further, where whites particularly enjoyed the
...more
