Radio as “Point of Contact”
Radio as “Point of Contact”
Prayer and the Prosthesis of the Holy Ghost
This chapter describes the miraculous power of the Holy Ghost and its particular mediations through the radio loudspeaker. Through this exploration of prayer translated through the radio apparatus, this chapter also introduces key performances of charismatic worship and techniques of prayer that recur throughout the book. Articulating the phenomenon of “radio tactility” as an efficacious point of contact for the communication of healing virtue, this section moves comparatively between performances of divine communication in southern Appalachia and broader Pentecostal practices of the twentieth century. While grounded in the contemporary practice of curative radio prayer among charismatic communities in southern Appalachia, this chapter also recalls formative practices of faith during the Charismatic Revival of the early 1950s, when millions of listeners tuned in to Oral Roberts’s Healing Waters radio broadcast and were instructed to put their hands on the radio during the healing prayer.
Keywords: healing prayer, radio, sound and hearing, religious sensation, Appalachia, media theory, mass media ritual, charismatic worship
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