In this work, Anderson Blanton illuminates how prayer, faith, andhealing are intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction andmaterial culture in the charismatic Christian worship of southernAppalachia. From the radios used to broadcast prayer to thecurative faith cloths circulated through the postal system,material objects known as spirit-matter have become essential sincethe 1940s, Blanton argues, to the Pentecostal community'sunderstanding and performances of faith.
Hittin' the Prayer Bones draws on Blanton's extensive sitevisits with church congregations, radio preachers and theirlisteners inside and outside the broadcasting studios, and morethan thirty years of recorded charismatic worship made available tohim by a small Christian radio station. In documenting thetransformation and consecration of everyday objects throughperformances of communal worship, healing prayer, and chantedpreaching, Blanton frames his ethnographic research in thehistoriography of faith healing and prayer, as well as theoreticalmodels of materiality and transcendence. At the same time, his workaffectingly conveys the feelings of horror, healing, and humor thatare unleashed in practitioners as they experience, in their ownwords, the sacred, healing presence of the Holy Ghost.
