He made a way out of no way: Religious experience in an African-American congregation

Sociologists have expended little effort to examine the experiential dimension of religion. When social scientists hale turned their attention to religious experience, they have used a definition of the concept which has overly restricted its scope. This paper is based upon an ethnographic study of an African Methodist Episcopal congregation made up primarily of the working poor and near-poor. I use the data to study the reported experiences of congregational members concerning the action of spiritual beings in their everyday lives, and I discuss the role of social ties and the cultural devices of metaphor and narrative in shaping these experiences. Finally, I demonstrate the influence of social location - primarily race and class - on attributions to supernatural agency.