Review: Preaching on Wax
- Dec 1, 2015
- 2 min read
Published in The Journal of American History
Martin thus locates in phonograph religion the roots of several of the most significant developments in African American Christianity over the last century.
For most readers, the names of black celebrity preachers such as T. D. Jakes, Creflo Dollar, and Juanita Bynum will be far more familiar than that of James Gates. Yet, for a time, Gates's recorded sermons outsold even popular entertainers such as Ethel Waters and Bessie Smith. He even shared a recording studio with Louis Armstrong. His success, along with that of other “phonograph preachers,” paved the way for the televangelists of today, as Lerone A. Martin argues in this deeply researched and wonderfully engaging book (p. 172).
Martin offers the first narrative account of how and why scores of African American Protestant ministers came to record and market their sermons to a mass popular audience during the interwar years. While these ministers were less well known than white contemporaries such as Aimee Semple McPherson or Charles Fuller, Martin demonstrates how their “‘phonograph religion’ significantly contributed to the shaping of modern African American Christianity” in at least four ways (p. 3). First, these recorded sermons made black Christianity “a mass-produced commodity,” repackaging its rituals and tenets for the commercial marketplace (p. 5). Second, phonograph religion laid the foundation for modern religious broadcasting, through its innovative use of new media, its industries of production, distribution, and promotion, and its distinct style. Third, preaching on wax created new celebrity preachers whose primary source of authority and influence was their “broad commercial appeal” (p. 7). Finally, these preachers' dependence on the dictates of the market reshaped the nature of their authority, constraining their ability to engage in pointed social critique, though not in a narrowly deterministic fashion. Martin thus locates in phonograph religion the roots of several of the most significant developments in African American Christianity over the last century.
