Preaching and other verbal performance in a United Church of Canada congregation: Speaking of experience.

Abstract

This is a study of the ritual of Sunday worship in a United Church of Canada congregation. Its seeks to provide a contextual analysis of the preaching and other verbal performances which are the most significant ritual elements. The work of Pierre Bourdieu is critically assessed. On this basis, an account of preaching as symbolic labour is developed. Samples of preaching collected through participant-observation of the services are analysed to show the ways in which preaching serves to provide a discursive resource for the (re)production of communal individual conceptions of the "self" among members of the congregation. Age and gender are identified as key variables among this urban, middle-class population. A particular group of upwardly mobile, female adults is identified as especially responsive to the way in which the verbal performances of the minister provide a model and the linguistic resources for the production and transformation of self-description and self-understanding. In these ways, some account of the persistence of this example of mainstream, conventional Christianity is given.