Holy Ghost People

Recently, I attended the first meeting of the semester for the “Pragmatics & Poetics Reading Group” here at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, led by UW-Milwaukee anthropology professor Thomas Malaby. We began with William James’ classic The Varieties of Religious Experience and, while not the favorite James text of mine (I prefer the Principles of Psychology), we discussed the forms of intense religious experience recounted by James, as well as their connections to the kinds of experiences we believe many good videogames are attempting to encourage in their players. I question whether or not that actually happens in practice, but the issue of trying to capture experience — and decidedly unusual experience — was interesting to think about.

Anyway, fast forward a week to a rather quiet Friday evening, and based on last week’s discussion (and an offhand comment from Tom), I decided to track down Peter Adair’s amazing 1967 documentary Holy Ghost People. I’d last seen this in college, around 1990 or so, and only remembered vague snippets — the interviews at the beginning, the singing, the snake-handling (and snake-biting). Documenting a meeting of a Pentecostal Church in rural West Virginia, the film paints a fascinating (and eerily distant) view of this kind of religious experience. Watching the film was extremely tough for me, as someone deeply skeptical of these sorts of experiences (especially in today’s political climate), but it’s worth checking out. It’s probably less entertaining than Religulous, but also you wouldn’t have to put up with all of Bill Maher’s irritating smirking.

Anyway, Holy Ghost People is worth seeing, up in its entirety on YouTube. I have no idea how long something like this will last before it’s taken down, but it’s there for now. Incidentally, the user who posted it (athephi) has a number of other interesting films/documentaries about religion and atheism on his or her feed, so I recommend checking them out.

Now, the movie (in six parts):