social forms, such as religion, obscuring the relationship between these social
forms and the societies in which they are found, and obscuring also the rela-
tionship between social solidarity, inequality, and local orders of practice, in
modern contexts in which beliefs and values are not shared.
Our empirical data are designed to illustrate the problems and confusions
that arise when social phenomena which are ordered through practices in
details are treated as if they were ordered by belief and value. We aim to
show that even though speaking in tongues, praising, and prophesying are
essential to the beliefs of both Assemblies of God Churches studied, and that
their practice is justified in terms of those beliefs, beliefs are insufficient for
actually producing those religious experiences. It is only when as practices
they are enacted recognizably in local congregational settings that partici-
pants are enabled to have (and are accepted by others as having) the emo-
tional and belief experiences associated with them.
There are ways of enacting the practices of expressing the Holy Spirit that
are treated as inappropriate within a particular church’s service and nega-
tively sanctioned as a consequence. These same inappropriate ways would
be considered appropriate in another church setting. The differences between
appropriate and inappropriate instances of tongues, prophecy and praise are
a matter of practices in detail and not of beliefs – which do not vary between
these churches.
The varying local details of practices are consequential for the resulting
belief experience, however, as people whose enactment of practice is judged
to be inappropriate do not have the same experience as those whose prac-
tices are accepted and ratified by the group. Appropriate practices receive an
interpretation from pastors and/or congregation through which the speaker ’s
presentation (and hence their beliefs and moral status) are affirmed. By con-
trast, we have seen inappropriate practices drowned out by music, ignored
and not given any interpretation, publicly chastised, and brought to a halt
by ushers. In these cases participants did not have a positive experience (even
though their practices would have been accepted elsewhere) and in being
sanctioned their beliefs and their own moral status in the community, were
called into question. Pastors would refer to the “need to get right with God,”
for instance, as an explanation for the inappropriateness of their performance.
Although the beliefs are the same at the two churches we studied, and both
officially represent the same faith, their accepted form of practice differs. What
is accepted as appropriate in one church is not accepted in the other. Thus,
254 • Bonnie Wright and Anne Warfield Rawls