An Eternal Pitch: Bishop G. E. Patterson, Broadcast Religion, and the Afterlives of Ecstasy

“Uniquely groundbreaking in its analysis of media, Pentecostalism, and Black preaching, An Eternal Pitch reimagines the ways in which sonic techniques shape our relationship to spiritual and material worlds.”—Marla Frederick, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Religion and Culture, Emory University

University of California Press, October 2023

An Eternal Pitch examines the homiletic life and afterlife of Bishop G. E. Patterson, the dynamic spiritual leader of the Church of God in Christ from 2000 to 2007. Although Patterson died in 2007, his voice remains a staple of radio and television broadcast, and his sermons have taken on a life of their own online, where myriad YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok users enact innovative forms of religious broadcasting. Their preoccupation with Patterson’s “Afterliveness” punctuates the significance of Patterson’s preoccupation with musical repetition: across the decades of Patterson’s ministry, a set of musical gestures recur as sonic channels, bringing an individual sermon into contact with scripture’s eternal transmission.

Braxton D. Shelley is Associate Professor of Music, of Sacred Music, and of Divinity

Read more about An Eternal Pitch in this FAS Featured Books Series interview with Braxton D. Shelley.