Anderson Blanton‘s Hittin’ the Prayer Bones: Materiality of Spirit in the Pentecostal South (University of North Carolina Press, 2015), illuminates how prayer, faith, and healing are intertwined with technologies of sound reproduction and material culture in the charismatic Christian worship of southern Appalachia. Drawing on two years of field work in church congregations and small independent radio studios, Hittin the Prayer Bones explores radio prayers, curative faith cloths, and the poetics of breath and laughter in broadcast sermons. It is an attempt to hear and feel the Holy Ghost in sonic and material space, bodily techniques, and media technology. Throughout, it documents the transformation and consecration of everyday objects, while also offering a historiography of faith healing and prayer, as well as insight into theoretical models of materiality and transcendence.

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